So long, ol' Pete

I Digress: Norm MacDonald, Adam Eget, 420, Hitler

4 minutes 11 sec

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1094-1096

We have far more things in common than the few things we may disagree about. This disconnection comes from participating in the shenanigans: attacking people on the opposite aisle instead of finding common ground, believing people who earn fortunes from us by manipulating us on TV and radio, accepting political messages of the right and the left as objective truth, and, most damaging, believing that earning a living is a requirement, when in reality, it is not.
You’re not the only one frustrated
Copiosis

…And the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do….
POTUS

The Spell of the Yukon

by Robert Service



I wanted the gold, and I sought it,

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it —
Came out with a fortune last fall, —

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I've watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o' the world piled on top.

The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness —
O God! how I'm stuck on it all.


The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em good-by — but I can't.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back — and I will.

They're making my money diminish;
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight — and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell! — but I've been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite —
So me for the Yukon once more.


There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.























It’s the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1091-1093

get a good job, go to therapy, take interesting vacations! Seems a little thin on some level.
Charles Taylor, exclusive humanism, and the Dharma
Posted on June 16, 2013  
by Hondo Dave
No Zen in the West

Buddha was once threatened with death by a bandit called Angulimal. "Then be good enough to fulfill my dying wish," said Buddha. "Cut off the branch of that tree."
One slash of the sword, and it was done! "What now?" asked the bandit. "Put it back again," said Buddha.

The bandit laughed. "You must be crazy to think that anyone can do that." "On the contrary, it is you who are crazy to think that you are mighty because you can wound and destroy. That is the task of children. The mighty know how to create and heal."
thanks to Vancouver Traditional Martial Arts Dojo

No Jobs, No Benefits, and Lousy Pay
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. 10, 2014

New York Times headline

Larken Rose does Socratic Aporia

Larken Rose 20 min 12 sec

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1088-1090

In recent decades, American workers have suffered one body blow after another: the decline in manufacturing, foreign competition, outsourcing, the Great Recession and smart machines that replace people everywhere you look. Amazon and Google are in a horse race to see how many humans they can put out of work with self-guided delivery drones and driverless cars. You wonder who will be left with incomes to buy what these robots deliver.
Abolish the Corporate Income Tax
By LAURENCE J. KOTLIKOFF
New York Times
Published: January 5, 2014



Often as an activist I am meeting people who are the "new poor" and more often than not they are the whites who have fallen into poverty. They tell me, "I worked hard, I did all the right things, I am not a drug addict," etc. This is because they are appalled at the benign and silently conveyed hatred and blame for their condition directed toward them, the lack of assistance for them. I just want to scream at them, "Soooo, you mean that the woman who used to clean your house, the man who labored in the hot sun in your manicured yard, the person who cooked your food in that exclusive restaurant, they all did *not* "work hard enough" so they deserve their poverty and you do not?"

These newly poor are the ones who had good jobs and were laid off, fired, or whatever who now have to face the "McJob" economy that slipped in and took over while they remained silent because their bellies were full. These are the ones who laughed at activists like me when we tried to tell them these attitudes that later molded Welfare Reform would destroy the middle class and all that my grandfather and others who followed that had fought to attain to make working and economic conditions better for all. They think they "deserve" these services more than others who have always struggled in poverty all their lives because see, "those people" CHOSE to be poor, they did not.

What the hell? Who in the world wants to be poor????

Most people, even the poor, do not understand that poverty is an institution it is not a "choice". This institution remains firmly ensconced in our society because it is based on exploiting racism, sexism (including LGBTQ), ageism, classism, and the disabled in order to keep the upper classes in place.
Cat Sullivan

the Living Wage Foundation states in big letters on its homepage that: “We believe that work should be the surest way out of poverty.”

The “surest way”? What are they thinking? Are we living inside a Dickens novel or something? (No wonder we’re seeing a rise in regressive measures such as workfare). In the technological 21st century, only a small fraction of total wealth is generated by human labour (and the fraction seems to be dwindling all the time, according to Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The End of Work) – I see no logical or economic sense in making “work” a condition for having a living income.

News Frames

Anxiety Culture

[emphasis JS]

Quoting Mother Nature

5 seconds

Illustrated Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1085-1087

Industry and utility are the angels of death who, with fiery swords, prevent man's return to Paradise. . . . And in all parts of the world, it is the right to idleness that distinguishes the superior from the inferior classes. It is the intrinsic principle of aristocracy.
Schlegel, Lucinde (Leipzig), p. 32. (AP 379)





So, millions of British workers are anxious and frustrated. Is anybody surprised at the precariousness revealed by the latest Skills and Employment Survey, published on Monday? The national survey, carried out every six years, shows that more employees feel insecure than at any time in 20 years; that work is being intensified, with people being asked to do more and work longer; and that for the first time people working in the public sector feel more insecure than those in the private sector.
Job security is a thing of the past - so millions need a better welfare system
Guy Standing
The Guardian, Tuesday 21 May 2013

…that June 2013 Gallup survey, “The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement,” only 30% of workers “were engaged, or involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace.” In contrast to this “actively engaged group,” 50% were “not engaged,” simply going through the motions to get a paycheck, while 20% were classified as “actively disengaged,” hating going to work and putting energy into undermining their workplace. Those with higher education levels reported more discontent with their workplace.

AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine

Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane