Masters of the Universe category archive

It’s Comcastic! (Also, language.)

Steven M. suggests that the One Per Cent are embattled in their own minds (even though any objective measure shows that they are completely in control of everything). A nugget (emphasis in the original):

I’ve said for years that gunners enjoy believing they’re under siege. If criminals are everywhere, and if government is always on the verge of turning fascist and tyrannical, then the adult toys gun owners enjoy become tools of justice and civic virtue, and gunners become heroes.

(snip)

The rich want to believe that they’re under siege, too. That would make them heroes just for continuing to show up at their offices, and for giving a few people jobs. If the rich are under siege, then whatever they want government to do to the have-nots — cut the social safety net, permanently refuse to raise the minimum wage, transfer even more of the tax burden to the 99% — is justified, because those people are trying to harm them. That makes the millions the rich contribute to pro-plutocracy, pro-inequality politicians the only reasonable response: What? We’re supposed to have a social contract? With these savages who want us dead?

Follow the link, if only to see the title of his post. It is a gem.

Also, see this post, which offers additional support to his thesis.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Money makes them special. Just ask them.

(Moved below the fold because it autoplays on some systems. That’s just rude.)

Read more »

Leonard Pitts, Jr., skewers Tom “Kristallnacht” Perkins.

Just read it. No excerpt or summary can do it justice.

Another bank bites the dust. Mastering the universe no more is

Syringa Bank, Boise, Idaho

My father was a banker, back when banks were expected to have integrity.

These days, he would be ashamed to admit his past.

The Trump card.

Wow. What a rant! (Warning: Language.)

And the sad part is that it’s mostly true.

How’s that trickle on economics working out for you, huh?

I missed it last night. Another bank bit the dust.

And you were worried about NSA surveillance:

Here’s how it works: based on the company’s (Amazon–ed.) substantial database that includes customers’ previous orders, product searches, wish lists and online shopping cart contents, Amazon will determine which items customers are expected to want to buy, and then ship those products to warehouses geographically closer to those customers. Even a customer’s mouse lingering over an item is catalogued and could be used to anticipate demand, the company says.

If you think this sounds a little terrifying — that a company to which you’ve unwittingly handed over reams of detailed, personal information about yourself is now taking that very information to essentially get inside your head and anticipate what you’re going to do before you’re even aware of it yourself — don’t worry, you’re right! And Amazon knows you think that!

They are stopping short of just shipping you stuff and billing your credit card.

For now.

We have a feral pig problem right here in River City:

Back Bay hogs descended from the standard domesticated Hampshire pig left behind by farmers in the 1920s. Once free, they transformed over several generations into something much tougher. Hogs in a new environment quickly undergo what biologists call “phenotypic plasticity.”

“Their hair got long, they developed tusks, their teeth elongated, their heads sloped, tails straightened out and their chests became armored in thick cartilage plates,” Bishop said.

A state biologist has called them “the biological equivalent of a military battle tank.”

But that’s not the scariest part.

Rumor is, several of them are banding together, moving to Wall Street, and starting a bank.

Steven M. considers Sam Polk’s argument that wealth addiction is a thing (follow the link for a description of “wealth addiction”).

The problem isn’t the existence of wealth addiction. We’re always going to have wealth addicts, just as we’re always going to have alcoholics and drug addicts.

The problem is that, in this case, we’re letting the addicts decide how society deals with their addiction.

In a way, this is what we do with guns in America, at least at the national level and in the red states: we let the junkies control who can obtain the stuff, how freely it’s sold, and how few restraints we can put on its exchange, by means of their unchallenged access to elected officials.

I don’t disagree with Steven M.’s analysis of the problem. The inmates have bought the asylum.

I do, however, resent the use of the word “addiction” in this context.

I’ve been addicted–cigarettes, in my case–and I’ve known persons addicted to far worse things. Addiction is a physical thing–when you stop the substance, you experience real, measurable physical symptoms.

When “addiction” is applied to excessive acquisitiveness, computer gaming, or sexual behavior (“sex addiction”), it puts a gloss of involuntariness over what is, ultimately, persons behaving badly because they want to, not because their body punishes them when they try to stop.

There’s another, much more descriptive term for “wealth addicts”: Pigs.

They get coddled.

Via PoliticalProf.

One less master in this universe. The final page has been turned on

DuPage National Bank, West Chicago, Illinois

As Matthew Hutson points out, you just have to ask them.

But say you’re in that top 0.01 percent — or even the top 50 percent. Would you want to admit happenstance as a benefactor? Wouldn’t you rather believe that you earned your wealth, that you truly deserve it? Wouldn’t you like to think that any resources you inherited are rightfully yours, as the descendant of fundamentally exceptional people?

Of course you would. New research indicates that in order to justify your lifestyle, you might even adjust your ideas about the power of genes. The lower classes are not merely unfortunate, according to the upper classes; they are genetically inferior.

Read the rest.

Its absence is noted.

Together with SunTrust loan officer Victor Miguel Vidal, 48, of Miami, the defendants are accused of using fraudulent loan applications to get construction mortgages valued at almost $50 million between 2003 and 2008. The loans were made by Bank of America, Wachovia, SunTrust and Regions Bank. Most of the loans have been foreclosed by the banks.

It is not comforting to know that banks with which I have had dealings (no, I will not say which ones) allowed themselves to be suckered like rubes at a carny.

Trickle on economics:

They have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

January 1, 2014 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Masters of the Universe | Bookmark this post