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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

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The Love Of Money As The Root Of All Evil

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” -- Dwight David Eisenhower

People love their money.

They love their bargains.

They’ll rush to Wal-Mart to buy a plastic bowl for $1 rather than one at a local mom & pop shop for $1.50.

Of course, very little of that $1 they spent at Wal-Mart stays in their community -- a few pennies in the form of low wages, but then we have to add our tax money going for SNAP cards because Wal-Mart’s employees often don’t make enough to live on.

Not like the mom & pop shop, where the 50-cents extra they charged pretty much stayed in the community: They paid for their house, they bought their kids clothes, put food on their table…

Mom & pop? Working for Wal-Mart now.

Living in a cramped apartment, not that nice house they dreamed of retiring in.

The stores and businesses that depended on them spending their income in town?

Most of them have gone under, absorbed by Wal-Mart and other big box multi-national conglomerations.

As much as the moral scolds like to tell us Rome fell because they were decadent, the truth is Rome at its gladiatorial / orgy worse was Rome at the peak of its power and influence.

It fell after it split apart.

And it split apart because the Western half didn’t want to pay for the upkeep of the Eastern half, i.e., the business end of the empire.

The Eastern half needed roads and infrastructure and sound political government and armies (oh, lordie, how they needed armies) and the fat cat landed gentry in the Western -- protected by thousands of miles of terrain and sea from those who would do them harm -- refused to pay their fair share.

So Diocletian split the empire in twain, letting the greedy bastards to the west fend for themselves while he established a new empire that would eventually become known as Byzantium to the east.

The Western empire, what we think of when we refer to the Roman Empire, fell a little less than two centuries after that, overrun by Germanic tribes (we call them “barbarians” but the kneeslapper is they were Christians.

Byzantium stayed a going concern for about a millennia after that, but eventually it fell for the same reason: The people taking the most out of the society refused to pay anything into it, and a younger / tougher empire (the Ottomans) came a’knockin’.

Without Pax Romana the Mediterranean world became a far more violent / perilous place. Europe split up into a plethora of kingdoms / principalities / duchies constantly jostling with one another to take more money.

Oh, sometimes there were inventions and technological breakthroughs that added coins to the coffers, but mostly it was finding a neighbor who had something you wanted, figuring out their weakness, and taking it from them.

The Enlightenment strove for a better world, but it took money to be a philosopher in those days and since that wealth typically came from peasants / serfs / slaves doing all the grunt work while the philosophers sat around thinking noble thoughts, it didn’t take long for racism -- the belief that there are different races and some are inherently superior to others (and those deemed inferior were good for nothing but common labor in order to keep the philosophers philosophizing).

Mind you, there had been prejudice and bigotry and chauvinism before, but while Hebrews and Philistines may have hated one another, they at least recognized their common humanity.

They didn’t decree the other to be doomed to perpetual servitude due to their so-called race.

The Enlightenment and Christianity did much to poison the well in Europe and later in America, but they did have some positive points.

Both, despite the cruelties their practitioners ladled out on others, held high ideals of universal rights.

Those ideals would live on, and foster generations of thinkers and ethicists and moralists to come.

But the cruel side had its fans, too.

The colonies that would eventually become the various nations of the American continents (and let’s not forget Australia and New Zealand while we’re at it) all responded with varying degrees of success to those ideals.

They also offered plenty of opportunities for those who loved wealth above all else to flourish, inevitably at the expense of huge segments of their respective populations.

As faulty and as flawed as the American Revolution was, it ended up sowing the seeds for similar movements in other countries.

In France they took root just as the clock ran out for the aristocracy.

Just as in Rome and Byzantium, the French rulers realized they were heading towards disaster. For a century and a half before the French Revolution, the various Louis would establish a royal commission made up of the best and the brightest in the kingdom, and had them examine the problem and offer a solution.

The solution was always the same: The ones with the wealth needed to take less and put some of what they had back.

Nobody wanted to hear that (well, nobody with money) and that’s why the guillotines were dropping day and night.

Various trade and crafts guilds had sprung up at that time; al were hammered down.

Socialist movements and parties were started; they were hammered down.

Trade unions were formed; they were hammered down.

But the thing was each movement that got hammered down created a more brilliant and far tougher phoenix to replace it.

By the late 19th / early 20th century communism looked mighty good to a lot of people.

Again, the intransigence of the greedy (call them financiers or industrialists or robber barons or whatever) pushed the world into war yet again, this time bankrupting Germany, Austria, and Hungary (as well as finishing off the Ottomans, last seen sacking Constantinople).

Around the world people clamored for more input, more control in their daily lives.

Czarist Russia -- brutal, heavy handed, autocratic czarist Russia -- fell to the Bolsheviks (who proved to be no less brutal, heavy handed, and autocratic than the czars).

Germany threatened to go down the same path and the industrialists and financiers -- who sure as hell weren’t missing any meals -- backed a crazy little ex-corporal who promised to keep the labor unions and the socialists and the communists under control.

We know how well that worked out.

In the United States, the wealth made their money directly or indirectly off the back of slave and immigrant labor, and when much to their great dismay the legal form of slavery disappeared, they found new methods of enforcing the old ways, which we now refer to as jim crow.

Poor whites weren’t much better off than their African-American neighbors, but as Lyndon Johnson observed: ”If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

The United States was not that much better than German when it came to race hatred.

Indeed, the Nazis -- even while condemning US segregation for propaganda purposes -- studied jim crow carefully and applied its lesson to non-Germans in their territories.

The wealthy 1% nearly destroyed the United States with the Great Depression, but the gratitude they showed to Roosevelt for saving capitalism was to undercut and fight him every step of the way.

Because, hey, if it wasn’t making money right now for them!!! then it had to be evil, right?

Right?

And just as the plantation owners in the antebellum South used propaganda to argue slavery was actually a good thing for those enslaved (because both the Bible and Darwin -- at least according to their readings -- said so), so did their spiritual / philosophical / and too damn often direct biological heirs with their anti-communist rants via the John Birch Society and other front groups.

Fred Koch, founder of the Koch family fortune, also founded the John Birch Society.

And let the record show that when the Koch family businesses operate within the law, they do nothing illegal. They anticipate the ebb and flow of supply and demand and invest accordingly. Nothing wrong with that -- but there’s a lot wrong with what they use the money for.

For generations Americans have been told that socialism is bad, that Marxism is a failure.

And the truth is socialism works when it’s used wisely, to put the brakes on the worst excesses of capitalism.

And Marx gets a bad rap for what he didn’t do; i.e., the spurious claim that he created the blueprints for world domination.

Marx was a brilliant diagnostician but woefully lacking as a hands on practitioner.

The thing is…Marx knew this and recognized it.

Das Kapital analyzed the problem of capitalism in the 19th century.

Marx never intended it to be the final word on the matter.

He wanted those who came after him to be constantly examining and critiquing the way politics and finance work, so that both systems could be constantly tweaked and modified.

His posthumous work, Grundrisse (short for “Fundamentals of Political Economy Criticism”) were not intended for publication but rather Marx’ own personal resource / reference notebooks for his other work.

He was never satisfied with it and put it aside, possibly because he felt the topic was too great for just one writer to expound on.

Of course, once he was dead nobody cared, and it was promoted as literally the last word on the topic when in reality it was filled with what Marx himself would acknowledge as half-baked ideas, concepts he was spitballing in an attempt to find the real, underlying truth.

Imagine somebody finds some wistful half-completed bucket list you leave behind when you die and tries to live their lives according to that.

Gives you an idea of the problem, no?

But just as the hard line communists in Russia embraced Grundrisse for their purposes, so did Fred Koch and the John Birch Society for their own purposes.

Koch was a businessman who dealt with Russia in the days before WWII.

(Most international money people are whores and will go wherever they can find a buck.)

He didn’t like what he saw -- a fair enough assessment -- but what scared him was that there was something in the underlying structure of Russian society that might be appealing to non-communists.

Remember what I said about the Enlightenment and Christianity?

Add Marxism to that.

It ain’t the solution to all the world’s ills, but damn, it ain’t wrong about the causes.

Now the way the Koch clan tells it, when Fred saw Red, he realized it was a brutal, unworkable economic system and to stop it from spreading, he needed to form the John Birch Society to keep it from taking root in America.

Hold that thought.

If a system is unworkable, just let it collapse.

In fact, as a capitalist you should be interested in propping it up as long as possible both in order to rake in as much cash off them as you can in the time they have left and to make its ultimate collapse an even bigger warning to future workers.

The Koch propaganda machine has been working for literally generations to keep Americans from examining what’s wrong with our system.

They embrace racism because it enables them to keep labor costs down by pitting one group against another.

They fund the evangelical fringe, not necessarily because they believe them, but because they can deliver large swaths of the voting population.

(And of course, many white evangelicals prove themselves to be bigots, so promising to get rid of their taxes and keep “those” kids out of their schools and neighborhoods goes hand-in-hand).

They made a couple of runs at getting their agenda pushed through -- notably with Goldwater (who failed) and Reagan (who didn’t) -- but their desire to take more money by rendering all form of socially just government regulations impotent has produced an unintended consequence.

Donald Trump.

Just as the mad little corporal tapped in on simmer racial and religious resentment in Germany, Trump has done the same here.

A lot of white people are scared that their day is O.V.E.R.

At current demographic projections, come 2048 white people will drop to only 49% of the population.

The largest minority in a nation of minorities.

That means they’ve going to have to learn to cut deals with other groups.

And those groups, because they were marginalized for literally centuries, have learned to be much more self-reliant, much more imaginative, much more focused, much more innovative.

African-American culture is going to dominate the United States in the second half of the 21st century and well into the 22nd.

I want us to walk away from the precipice.

I want us to recognize there is literally no future in burning down the house to make sure the black folks don’t get in.

I want us to recognize reasonable precautions and controls on capitalism do not make people poor but rather prevent poverty from ruining lives.

But I fear for this country.

A few other empires, as they started splintering, recognized their peril and took steps to minimize the chaos and impact.

It took ‘em a while, but England managed to learn to let go of its vast empire in peaceful / democratic / diplomatic ways that enabled them to maintain good relations with former colonies around the globe.

The Koch mentality can’t do that, I’m afraid.

It can’t abide the thought that somebody else has a say in how they do business for the simple reason that those people’s lives are adversely affected by choices the Koch empire makes.

But we as a nation need to also recognize we slit our own throats every time we place price first and foremost in our shopping.

The Trump supporters who bemoan the demise of their single industry towns never seem to realize the decline started when they began saving a few pennies by shopping at big box stores and franchise fast food restaurants.

In their desire to save a few pennies, they threw away family fortunes.

History offers some grim warnings about empires that slide into this level of oligarchy.

Rome fell.

So did Constantinople.

The guillotine blade fell again and again and again until finally people were willing to accept Napoleon in order to regain stability.

And Napoleon started wars that led to World War One…

…and World War One allowed Hitler to rise thanks to the industrialists and the financiers.

The 1% of their generation.

We have to be more informed and more insightful in our daily choices.

What profit a person if they save a few pennies, yet lose their soul?

#capitalism #Marxism #socialism #morals #ethics #politics

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blackpjensen · 7 years

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DHS Increases Number of H-2B Visas by 15,000: This Week’s Industry News

Want to keep up with the latest news in lawn care and landscaping? Check back every Thursday for a quick recap of recent happenings in the green industry.

DHS Increases Number of H-2B Visas by 15,000 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on July 17 that it will be increasing the number of H-2B visas by 15,000. To qualify for the additional visas, petitioners must attest, under penalty of perjury, that their business is likely to suffer irreparable harm if it cannot employ H-2B nonimmigrant workers during fiscal year 2017. “Congress gave me the discretionary authority to provide temporary relief to American businesses in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary workers,” announced Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. “As a demonstration of the administration’s commitment to supporting American businesses, DHS is providing this one-time increase to the congressionally set annual cap.”

A-LIST Releases Environmentally Friendly Lawn Grass List Want to provide your clients with turfgrass better able to withstand a variety of stresses? Check out the new list of perennial ryegrasses and fine fescues approved by The Alliance for Low Input Sustainable Turf (A-LIST). The A-LIST is an independent, non-profit industry initiative fostering the development of turfgrass varieties that meet metrics like water conservation, reduced fertility, heat and drought stress tolerances, all with no fungicide or insecticide applications. Nationally recognized cooperators selected on a regional basis test the turfgrass to include environmental adaptability.

Monsanto Fights California’s Listing of Glyphosate as Cancer Causer On July 7 glyphosate, an herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto Company’s popular Roundup weed killer, was added to California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. California voters approved Proposition 65, a ballot initiative in 1986. Monsanto vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation, and called the decision “unwarranted on the basis of science and the law,” and has vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation.

Ditch Witch, Grasshopper Showcased as Made in America Ditch Witch represented Oklahoma at the Made in America Product Showcase celebrating American-made products hosted at the White House on Monday, July 17. A Ditch Witch JT20 horizontal directional drill was on display at the event. Thanks to suggestions from Kansas’ Governor Sam Brownback and members of Congress, a Grasshopper 727 EFI FrontMount mower represented Kansas at the same event.

Arborjet Expands Organic Solutions with Eco-1 Garden Spray Arborjet Inc. has announced the expansion of its organic plant solutions line with its new Eco-1 Garden Spray for protection against insects, mites and diseases. Eco-1 Garden Spray made its debut at Cultivate’17 this week. Eco-1 Garden Spray is a botanical blend of thyme and peppermint oils with flaxseed oil, creating a unique emulsion that offers up to 15 times more active ingredients for highly effective control. Other included ingredients help the oils mix with water and dissolve an insect’s exoskeleton for additional pest fighting power.

MTD Completes Transaction with Robomow F. Robotics Acquisitions Ltd, the makers of Robomow, is now a subsidiary of MTD Products Inc. The transaction, which closed as planned on July 2, 2017, will enable MTD to employ Robomow’s progressive technology and broad line of robotic products under MTD’s brands in Europe and North America; while Robomow will benefit from MTD’s broader outdoor power equipment portfolio, sales and marketing resources, and global network of dealers. Robomow’s operations will remain headquartered in Pardesiya, Israel.

OPEI Installs 2017-2018 Officers, Board Members Members of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute gathered June 20-22 for their 65th annual meeting to discuss the challenges ahead for the outdoor power equipment industry and also its potential for growth. OPEI members also elected officers and installed board members for 2017-2018. They are as follows:

OPEI Chair: Daniel Ariens, chairman & CEO, Ariens Company

OPEI Vice Chair: Tom Cromwell, group president – power, Kohler Company

OPEI Secretary/Treasurer: Bjoern Fischer, president, Stihl Incorporated

Immediate Past Chair: Tim Merrett, vice president, global platform – Turf & Utility, Agriculture & Turf Division, Deere & Company

Rounding out OPEI’s board of directors will be as follows: Edward B. Cohen, vice president, government & industry relations, Honda North America, Inc.; Tim Dorsey, president, Echo Incorporated; Marc J. Dufour, president & CEO, Club Car, LLC; Tom Duncan, president and CEO, Positec Tool Corporation; Peter Hampton, president, Active Exhaust Corporation; Jean Hlay, president & COO, MTD Products Inc.; Jeff Hohler, president, Consumer Brands Division, Husqvarna Group; Paul Mullet, president & CEO, Excel Industries, Inc.; Rick Olson, president & COO, The Toro Company; Lee Sowell, president – outdoor products, Techtronic Industries Power Equipment; Todd Teske, chairman, president & CEO, Briggs and Stratton Corporation.

CASE Announces SiteControl CoPilot System for M-Series Dozers CASE Construction Equipment has introduced their new SiteControl CoPilot powered by Leica Geosystems. Available factory-installed or as a retrofit on select CASE M Series dozers, the CoPilot system bridges the gap between automatic and indicate-only systems and offers a entry into 2D and 3D machine control technology. The system allows operators to set a desired slope/grade reference, and automatically holds that slope/grade without the need for lasers, masts or GPS.

KAI Design & Build Hires 10 New Architecture Department Employees KAI Design & Build in St. Louis, Missouri has hired ten new employees to its Architecture Department including:

Carl Karlen, of Brentwood, MO, Senior Designer/Senior Architect.

Christina Laney, LEED GA, of Clayton, MO, Intern Architect.

Bruce LaSurs, RA, LA, of Webster Groves, MO, Project Manager.

Chris Link, CM-BIM, CDT, LEED AP, of Godfrey, IL, BIM/VDC Manager.

Jacob Manse, of Chesterfield, MO, Intern Architect.

Decorda McGee, LEED GA, of University City, MO, Intern Architect 2.

Matt Niemeyer, of Gillespie, IL, Project Architect.

Jason Randle, of St. Louis City, MO, Project Designer.

Andy Sebacher, RA, LEED AP, of Florissant, MO, Project Manager.

Adam Walker, of Florissant, MO, Project Designer.

Porous Pave Selected for Federation Housing, Inc. Federation Housing, Inc. completed the Gil Rosenthal Garden of Peace at the Samuel A. Green House, a low-income housing tax credit building for the elderly, by installing 1,650 square feet of Porous Pave XL permeable pavement for the garden’s walkways and circular patio. Located in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Garrett Churchill, Inc. designed and installed the five-foot-wide walking paths and 24-foot-diameter patio with Porous Pave XL batch mixed on site and poured in place at a depth of 1.5 inches atop a four-inch base of compacted crushed aggregate.

Simplot Partners Targets Northern California The J.R. Simplot Company has opened a new Simplot Partners retail location in Sacramento, California. The location will enable Simplot Partners to meet the growing demands of turf and horticulture customers in northern California and Nevada.

Ruppert, Associated Builders And Contractors Host Networking Event Ruppert Landscape partnered with Associated Builders and Contractors of Metro Washington to host their summer networking event on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 at Ruppert’s corporate headquarters in Laytonsville, Maryland. More than 550 people attended the event. ABC’s Metro Washington chapter has been holding its Summer Networking Event at Ruppert headquarters for nearly 19 years.

ILCA Announces 9th Annual Turf Education Day Illinois Landscape Contractor’s Association and the Chicago Botanic Garden have come together to present the 9th annual Turf Education Day. Stay informed about the latest turf care products and practices. This day of training and education is for any professional who cares for and looks after turf. The event will be Thursday, September 21, 2017 at the Joseph Regenstein, Jr. School at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Former WLCA President Roy Zehren Dies at 87 The Wisconsin turf industry lost a long-time friend and leader on June 10. Roy G. Zehren had a passion for sharing information and networking. He served as President of the Wisconsin Landscape Contractors Association in 1968-1969. He was a founding board member of the Sports Turf Management Association along with the late Harry Gill, the storied Brewers Grounds Manager who were early pioneers in organizing the Sports Turf Industry. With his growing expertise in designing natural turf drainage systems, he founded Natural Athletic Turf, Inc. and Sports Turf Consultants in 1974. Zehren worked with golf courses and professional sports teams across the country, including the Milwaukee Brewers, to develop systems that could sustain healthy natural grass playing surfaces. Zehren was a 39 year member of the Wisconsin Golf Course Superintendents Association.

Durante Rentals Chris Jones Wins CFO Innovation Award Chris Jones, Durante Rentals Co-Founder and CFO, was honored with the 2017 Small Market Companies: Thinking Big Award at the 2017 CFO Innovation Conference. The awards ceremony and dinner was held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. CFO’s received recognition in fourteen CFO-focused categories with finalists and award recipients selected by an independent panel of judges.

Excellence in Irrigation 2017 Award Winners Announced The 2017 Excellence in Irrigation honorees were presented awards at the American Society of Irrigation Consultants National Conference in Seattle, Washington. A total of eleven projects were identified as deserving special acknowledgement as examples of unique or outstanding irrigation design challenges and solutions. The individuals were independently judged by a panel comprised of an academic team from Cal Poly Pomona and Kansas State University and peer review. Challenges must be unique and the site solutions must successfully address the distinctive climatic, structural, agronomic and system operational needs of each project.

National Concrete Masonry Association Will Celebrate 100 years in 2018 The National Concrete Masonry Association is celebrating 100 years and is planning events for 2018 including a gala event at the summer 2018 Midyear Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. NCMA is offering sponsorship opportunities that will recognize each company’s support of this event and their commitment to the association, its mission, its activities, as well as their investment in this industry’s future.

Read last week’s industry news roundup: Former STIHL President Fred Whyte Dies at 70

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