Wherefore the assaults on bicyclists and pedestrians?

An hypothesis:

Car culture is an adjunct of the culture of obedience. The people of the U.S. have bought into the notion that being confined in a cage with wheels is freedom. Some resent being shown that other means of locomotion (feet, bicycle, skate board) are possible. Laws that make walking along a highway or across a street or using a skateboard outside a segregated venue illegal serve to reinforce that people with cars are special.
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How to explain the Congressional death march.

The writing is on the wall. In 2016, the House lost 9 more Republican seats and the Senate saw female presence increase to 20 seats. Seniority, upon which power has traditionally rested, is on the way out. So, this is their last chance to make mischief and express their displeasure with an electorate that sent a numbskull to the White House.
“Après moi le déluge” is not necessarily an expression of disinterest. Rather, it is just as likely a matter of intent. “As I depart, I’ll leave a mess behind.” That’s probably what the Unjust Steward in the biblical parable, anticipating revenge, said to himself.

Somebody does not like trees.

The deforestation of about 500 acres infused $331,000 into the Airport accounts to subsidize a losing proposition. That’s over and above the 41% of the annual budget that the Airport Commission derives from leasing land, rather than transport operations. A similar subsidy to ground transportation would move many more people around and relieve congestion.

Car culture is denuding and strangling Glynn County. More on that later.

Hurricane follow up

The other day, we participated in a reciew session, sponsored by the UGA seagrant program, to assess the community’s preparations and response to Hurricane Matthew. Our puddy was the only male person willing to participate in the exercise. For that matter, we had to sort of invite ourselves because the incitation to participate was issued to Brunswick residents and we, of course, are residents of St. Simons Island and our newesr properties aren’t in the city either.
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Where Car Culture Comes to Die

Let’s hope!
Some people get agitated about “paving paradise,” but the promoters of industry see this sea of vehicles in the Marshes of Glynn as the salvation of a county, 40% of whose children live below the poverty level. The cars come in and the cars go out, just like the ocean’s waves and, we are told, deposit wealth on our shores. More likely, if we’re lucky, dead cars don’t shed as many toxins as the ones that clog our highways and commercial sites.

Whither the Ruling Elites

The ruling elites, whose word used to be law, have been fighting for their privilege ever since the civil rights revolution threatened to enable the people to govern, just as the Constitution proposed. Universal suffrage, freedom of information, public access to the halls of legislatures all threaten the hegemony of the ruling class. Nominating technocrats as surrogates has not worked. Neither has reducing elected public officials to rubber stamps. The people persist in making their interests known. Consumerism has not deterred them. The ruling elites relying on currency as a lever of control has also backfired. The citizenry has responded by setting up a gigantic shadow economy ($2 trillion a year at last counting) which managed to mitigate the crash of 2008 into a mere recession. Not many banksters went to jail, but over 500 bank failures put a significant crimp in their ranks AND prompted effective regulation. Most recently, somebody has invented the term “cognitive elites,” as if cognition were some sort of negative. Which it is, if the ambition is to be born into the ruling class. Of which, by the way, the Dude is a prime example. If he hadn’t inherited a bundle, along with the retinue that handles it for him, he’d be living under a bridge. Making money the signal of rank was effective, as long as money was relatively scarce. Now the myth of scarcity is imploding. The shield of money and the law behind which the ruling elites have been operating is in the process of being rent.

Birds of a feather

We say “birds of a feather flock together,” but since humans don’t have feathers, it might be useful to explore by what characteristic appearances or behaviors they recognize each other.

A love of gossip
Antagonism towards outsiders
Status consciousness
Cause and effect confusion
Disordered thinking
Fear
Bluster
Habit and Ritual
Accumulation
Adulation
Personal fixation
Opposition

Blame the Accountants?

Distinguishing between revenue and income.

It may not be hard, but the way accountants classify the flow of currency is also not in accord with reality. “Revenue,” a French word meaning to “come back,” refers to something (in this case currency) coming back (as taxes) to the Treasury, the place it started from. That is, revenue refers to a process, a change in location, regardless of who or what sets the process in motion. When currency is taken in by some entity other than the Treasury, it is “income” and the law provides that some portion of that be returned to the Treasury for accounting and redistribution purposes. Exempting some entities from this process is an example of favoritism (rewarding failure and punishing success) and manipulation. 

Accountants, assuring accuracy by counting everything twice, have quite inadvertently created a false picture of reality, an unrealistic static model, into which economists have then tried to stuff our communal enterprise by prescribing its behavior. In other words, economists are prescriptive, rather than descriptive (moralistic rather than scientific) and that largely accounts for why their predictions are mostly wrong. They are focused on what should be, rather than what is.

Perhaps the irrationality of finance actually attracts irrational people to dabble in it. Now there’s a thought.