I cannot add anything of value to this narrative regarding concerning a live in endless cycle of poverty without the luxury of planning or the sort of fancy, subsidised foresight that we imagine ourselves to enjoy from an outsiders' perspective, except that this story is a provoking and important one to read (and reflect upon and share) and apply to ones own contrived blinders.
Monday, 2 December 2013
relative poverty
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
till by turning, we come around 'right
catagories: America, holidays and observances, lifestyle
Friday, 8 November 2013
doctor pangloss, i presume?
Though this kind of story might seem a bit belaboured—in spite and because of the very cultural isolationism of gentrification which causes the wealthy and the poor to
believe their station in life exactly what it ought to be and every one
else is just as fortunate featured in the article, Zero Hedge has a list of twenty-one facts and figures that add insult to injury. Such a brand of capitalism does not seem equitable at all and only designed to support the illusion of limitless opportunities and detached entitlements.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, philosophy
Sunday, 6 October 2013
rushmore syndrome
There is a name and rather long history, it seems, associated with the closure of popular and highly visible attractions and programmes in the midst of a budget crisis—whether or not the cordoning-off has anything to materially do with the financial issue at hand.
Like using teachers, soldiers, first responders or 9/11 as fodder for another volley, the so called Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore Syndrome has been invoked time and time again, by politicians of all stripes either to sugar-coat unpopular riders or to demonstrate that good civics cannot necessarily pick and choose cosier services to the exclusion of others. Such actions, however, are more than symbolic considering, despite the toolishness and visitors and caretakers affected and whose weariness and frustrations are mounting, that the cobbling together of concessions, without real compromise or earnest efforts to address the root of galloping and perennial problems, has gone on for years—absent a showdown or truce.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
pollster or keep calm and carry on
One would think given the virtual omnipresence of America's spying-apparatus, some one in the US government—with influence—might have had an inkling at least of how
unpopular and damagingly disruptive a government shutdown and the
emergency furlough to follow would prove. Enough studious bureaucrats
were wringing their hands over it for days, working frantically,
mongering rumours and nursing disbelief to gauge public reaction and
sentiment. For that matter, one would think that the intelligence
agencies would have had some insider-knowledge and could have predicted
the stalemate in the legislature and where the cracks are forming in
each side's stance and whom will eventually give in. Though non-essential services have been curtailed, time is still of the essence and only after one full day of this new reality, panic and doom is setting in. As for the households directly impacted, dreading a pay-check even docked by a few days' pay that may never materialise because money is tight mostly already spent, the mounting inconveniences that lurk after funding is appropriated with weeks of catch-up, shuttered monuments, parks and museums, and science projects put on hold weren't already reason enough to find a quick resolution—there are attendant consequences.
Among the knock-on worries are the Federal Depositors' Insurance Commission (FDIC) being incapacitated and unable to launch any new investigations should a bank declare bankruptcy, the potential for delays in ship- and airfreight for a nation warehoused with vulnerable, interdependent just-in-time systems or that the federal courts will exhaust remaining funds in ten days or so. A few days more and business and the exchanges will begin to commiserate as well as more and more deadlines are trounced. So much for omnipotence, I guess.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, transportation, travel
Monday, 30 September 2013
speakeasy or yes, minister
For some time there has been a continual soap-opera cycling in the hallowed halls of the US government, yet it is hardly the stuff of dramaturgy without great license and a keen imagination, being that the dialogue outside of what the public is subjected to and the secretive pow-wows whose proceedings are all to easy to envision, is the sum total of the exchange. The two parties do not engage one another off-line, as big as the growing disconnect between civilian and military leaders. That is not to say that backroom, unregulated deals are preferable—enough of those end up codified without the watch-dog of checks and balances or the consent of the public that the elected legislature is supposed to represent, but at least, without too much theatre or romanticism, there was in the past the water-cooler, the break-room or social-dues that saw senators and congressmen, regardless of political ilk, spending time together at private haunts, after hours.
This club culture is undone by hasty retreats to their constituencies whenever recess is called, which no matter how short can find repre- sentatives home and back again in no time and the conscience decision not to filter one's public and private lives. Thinking of two congressmen casually finding commonalities by forgetting differences and spending a spare moment together seems unfortunately like a laughable prospect nowadays, for fear one might question their party loyalties. I couldn't say whether any great compromised was ever reached in Congress by a dining-out but it's a fact that only keeping company that's like-minded is quite sufficient for justifying one's own views—or rather the unshakable views that one is expected to have.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, lifestyle
Friday, 27 September 2013
aca, ada, abracabra
It is the Anti-Deficiency Act of 1882, as amended, that puts the American government in the precarious situation of dismissing some one-third, deemed non-essential—which has the interesting ring of the imagination of Douglas Adams (not a statesman)—of its workforce without compensation. The government will still discharge its duty to protect, duty to warn with a skeleton crew, who themselves will not see their salary until such time as Congress has set a budget, being legally bound against the incursion of further debts that it cannot vouch for. The last time a full government shut-down happened, notwithstanding many intermediate close-calls and political staring-contests, was in the winter of 1995 and 1996 and I remember being quite frustrated that the National Galleries were closed to visitors and I came expressly to see a special Rembrandt exhibit.
I was content, however, at the time with making snow-angels on the Capitol. There were dread inconveniences (a weak word) to public services and those employees embargoed, and this time we can only project the impact of disrupting the paper-push of bureaucracy the hardship of individuals just now starting to recover from the last rounds of an administrative-, as opposed to an emergency-, furlough, though the predictions of doom and despair did not come to fruition at-large and the output of the federal government is largely invisible and looks expendable until one is personally affected by the loss of a cog or two. Though the causes reach back much further and the US government has expanded into something unwieldy and self-serving—surely to be redressed by follow-on show-downs like the looming matter of America's debt burden that will make this intransigence seem like theatre, the major bone of contention that is keeping the legislative branch staunchly divided is over another Act, the Affordable Care Act (a new idea only to America, though, with most of the rest of the world having put universal health-coverage in place long ago), and not in costs, immediate nor long-term, but rather in perception and principle. The devil's advocate seems to keep company with a business-lobby not renowned for its fair labour-practices to begin with, and considering that all of the really awful and onerous laws that the US has implemented and unleashed upon the rest of the world (lately, at least, if not always) have been done so at the beck-and-call of this same cartel, perhaps it would be wise to consider careful what these groups through inflexible fear-mongering might be trying to un-write.
catagories: ๐, America, economic policy, graphic design, labour
Sunday, 15 September 2013
laissez-faire is everywhere
There were several stories in circulation this week, echoing from many corners of the world and many times without deference to this being the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the too-big-to-fail financial house whose downfall placed economics internationally in chaos, that proclaimed real and shadow markets to be fully recovered and no longer in danger of relapse.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, America, economic policy, labour
Friday, 13 September 2013
austausch, b-gosh
Long had European Union Commissioner for Internal Affairs Malmstrรถm held her tongue over the on-going revelations of the breadth and depth of indiscriminate intelligence gathering on the part of the US—not, I think, out of a lack of concern or zeal but rather to not bait controversy prematurely, but digesting the reported reach of the spying, suggested that the lack of transparency could lead to the EU's withdrawal from the SWIFTBanking Treaty with the United States.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, America, economic policy
Friday, 9 August 2013
speakeasy or mayor mac cheese
Via Slate Magazine, we find out that the kids' menu is not merely an extension of the atavism of adult palettes—to the same level of maturity for refinement, or an attempt to inculcate young and impressionable adherents but rather come from a strange mix in America of medicine, morality and marketing.
catagories: ๐ฆ, America, food and drink, lifestyle
Thursday, 8 August 2013
redux or fe-fi-furlough II
While I am very happy that the forced vacation of the majority of Defense Department workers ending some the hardships incurred on individuals and families and the discontinuity of work, faced now with the alternative, layoffs and a reduction in force seem even more unpalatable.
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, labour
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
cri de couer or you can't handle the truth
Although I still declare that anyone truly shocked by learning that the world is the prying, groping place is a measure naรฏve or even complacent or complicit, public attention and outrage ought not be placated by life intimato Ars, the words of prophets of doom, or by practicality, commonality—offensive aspirations.
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
percentile or blue-screen
catagories: America, foreign policy, labour
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
oh weal, oh woe or ttip—ta ta for now
Watchdog CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) delves into the details of the US-EU trade agreement that was ratified at the G9 summit and shows how, without much imagination of an embarrassment of gullibility, public welfare is becoming a nuisance easily steamrolled by business interests, constituted in such a way as to give industry carte-blanche to flagrantly ignore established national laws and policies and give pause to governments thinking of championing the common weal. Of course this development is vying for attention (or rather, seeking cover) with the Conference itself and the effective-date for FATCA in Germany, plus whatever distracting scandal of the day.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, America, economic policy, environment, labour
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
pyrrhic victory or the hundred years’ war
Though characterized and distilled mostly as the proprietary authority for businesses to demand applicants, supplicants and current employees surrender their social-network profile upon request, which while good for garnering glancing concern and attentions, is sadly short-lived and is not engaging public dialogue in CISPA is again positioned for passage in the US Congress, despite conflating opposition.
Just as there are champions for keeping us over-safe, we have our tireless advocates, but the issue and the real, long-term stakes remain something that is easily placated or dismissed.
eroding privacy. Victorious skirmishes, sometimes ceded over inflated (at least, in the here-and-now) fears, overshadow—by design, I think, the larger struggle, since these assaults are becoming perennial continuing-resolutions politically.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , America, networking and blogging
Saturday, 2 March 2013
ab in beurlaubt
The US executive and legislative branches were unable to reach or fake a compromise, which triggers a count-down, sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption, towards budgetary sequestration across most of America’s federal programmes, mandatorily paring funding and raising the spectre of furloughs (unpaid absences) for hundreds of thousands of government workers world-wide.

catagories: America, economic policy, labour, Wikipedia
Friday, 25 January 2013
autostrada
Since their inception, there have been standards enshrined in the culture of highways, Autobahnen with the intent of breaking up monotony without sparing on utility. There are mandates for gentle curves in order to keep drivers alert, in contrast to straightaway, required in some places to allow for emergency airplane landings.
Sometimes such subtler persuasions are overshadowed by constant construction works, same-otherwise by a few vistas of spectacular scenery and roads hugging the contours of the landscape. There are still, however, quite a number of long numbing stretches of road, especially for the express route through flat lands. Although not common in America or Germany, there are score of techniques tried in France, Denmark and the Netherlands to with art streaming along the margins, posts a-pace with the traffic that change like flip-book animation, rather abstract and Jungian and light installations. Some really creative things have been done, but now such Dutch civil engineers are applying their artistry to creating smart-roads, beginning with a stretch of highway by Eindhoven.
catagories: America, Europe, technology and innovation, transportation, travel
Saturday, 12 January 2013
underpass or suburban legend
Though second- and third-hand tales abounded, until recently there was no undisputed evidence of cow tunnels boring under the streets of Manhattan’s West Side. Although far less incredulous than giant crocodiles, sprung from unwanted pets flushed down toilets, lurking in sewers, urban spelunkers are beginning to map out this forgotten underground network, meant to reduce the traffic of livestock brought into 1870s Gotham disrupting human transportation.
catagories: America, antiques, food and drink, transportation
Thursday, 10 January 2013
cosign and spirograph

catagories: America, economic policy