Creativity and Grant Theft Intellectual

I was discussing the shifting paradigm taking place in the computing and Music and Arts Industries with a colleague a couple of weeks ago, and he said that Artists (Musical or otherwise) should have no expectations of receiving compensation for their work these days. We go to a church where “Circulation of Energy” (i.e. money and time) is the order of the day, and that I shouldn’t have this expectation in the coming shift.

This reflects the general opinion of much of the population these days, that anything that can be ripped or downloaded should be free to have, and this idea is especially coming from the minds of teens and twenty-something’s. None of these folks goes into work at a job they have (if they have a job) and on payday tells their Boss, “You know, I love my job so much, you don’t have to pay me. I just love doing it so much!”

Creatives often spend years, or even decades, learning and then crafting their vision to produce the work that other non-Creative minds take for granted. It doesn’t just spring out of the head and onto the page or CD without great effort and sacrifice. For someone to say, ‘Well, it’s there, and it’s there for me to take’ only disrespects the Artist whose work you value enough to take.

In an age where jobs are being outsourced and Corporations are crying poverty -- ‘We Can’t Afford to have Americans make our products. They expect too much in pay and benefits…’ (this from Corporations who also want to sell those very same products to those same un- and under-employed Americans) – those same Corporations are screaming ‘Theft!’ by this population that has incorporated their tactics.

Creative Work of Art, Music and Dance should be compensated for. The greater the Work, the greater we should expect a return for our investment of time and effort to give you any pleasure you get from our work – not just taken for the ability and the technology to do it.

I have been a Visual Artist for decades. I have done close to a thousand images in drawing, painting, multi-media or sculpture. I’ve also shot close to 5000 images with my cameras over that time, creating images and showing life in ways that most people (even Creatives) have not seen it. This took tens of thousands of hours of my time over those decades. If I charge a thousand dollars for a drawing that seem small in comparison to billboards, it reflects that time spent perfecting my craft. And yes, I consider myself a Master in both Drawing and Photography. I expect to be paid for my work and what it reflects of my life and time spent.

A very well dressed Man walked up to me at a gallery opening of mine in the past, and asked me how much time it took to draw an image he was looking at. I made the mistake of telling him how much. When I did, he told me I was asking “too much” for it. He then (apparently calculating that hour to do this image at Mickie D’s wages) told me what he thought it was worth. I was too stunned to tell him what I thought his opinion was worth.

To those who think that because it is on the Web or in Digital format that the work should be free, I say, go back home and let Mommie and Daddy take care of you then. Don’t waste my time/steal my work. If you have nothing to offer anyone else, why should you expect to take what someone else has to offer – for nothing?

It's that Time of the Year!

And I"m not talking about either Christmas or the Beginning of the School Year. No, It's Election Time! Or as I refer to it as, time for Electile Dysfunction! And only the Red Pill will cure this one, not the Blue Pill (in either Matrix or Erectile Land).

NO. Elections are rigged. There, I said it. No matter whether you vote for Obama or That Other Guy, guess who is going to win?

Obama was allowed to win the last time, because... Well, because the economic shit was about to hit the fan, and they needed Somebody To Blame. Enter, Barack Obama. Not only a Democrat, but a Democrat of Color. ("See, I told ya one of Them would get us in trouble!") Can you spell Set Up?

So now they want one of Their Own back in office, and, enter Willard "Mitt" Romney. (Why are all the Mormon Higher Ups called "Willard?") Sorry to be blunt. (And I hope I'm just being paranoid.) Just like I predicted pre-Bush in 1998, I think that no matter who the "Popular Vote" comes in for, The Electile Dysfunction College with install ROMULUS into office instead of POTUS.

Just saying. And hope I'm wrong.

The Internet and the Money Net

Hurricane Sandy is now history, and I'm sure living in New York City has not returned to anything approaching 'normal.' But what is the current condition of the City that Never Sleeps? Goddamned if I know, because no matter how I phrase it, it comes up with one 'current' condition -- you can't get any real information on the Internet, because everything is 'Monetized.' In other words, you only get what Those Who Pay Gobs of Money want you to see. Forget any real information. Google doesn't want to you to see any real information, but only what their Paid Advertisers have paid Lots of Gob Googly Money for you to see.  It's pitiful, shocking, and God help us, the way the world works now. Nothing's (almost) free these days. Some Body's Got To Make Money on It.

Fuggedabout it!

The Myth of “Whole Grain Goodness”

     The Corporate self-enthroned Kings of Crops are jumping on the whole foods bandwagon and grinding it into the ground. By claiming the moniker “Whole Grain Goodness” for their GMO uber-processed foods (especially cereal) they are killing the ‘goodness’ factor, and infecting the entire whole food movement in the process (just like they are trying to do with all non-GMO crops).

And because the very same Corporate Giants (monsters, really—where’s a monetized David with a room full of lawyers when you need him?) essentially own the FDA (a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Monsanto) and Congress (Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Monsanto and Koch Bothers Industries) now, this overtaking of Whole Foods and their inherent healing properties is all the more monstrous.

To advertize that their foods have “Whole Grain Goodness” is an abomination. First of all, their “Whole Grain” foods are anything but. Then add on top of that, that those foods are also Genetically Modified (adding everything from insect DNA to animal and God-knows-what-else DNA to ‘grains’), they cease being ‘grains’ (or other food ‘components’) as well.

This is scurrilous and false advertizing at its most demonic. It is taking what should be a (especially to the Native Populations of the World) sacred component of all of our lives, and twisting and perverting it (and Us in the process), into not only the already stripped commodity that ‘food’ is, but making it further into substances that will not only make its consumers sick (and thus needing all the ‘medicine’ that they will turn around and charge exorbitant amounts of money to ‘cure’ us with), but may also be in the process of killing all of us off.

I’ve included the link below for you to follow for some tips on true food to eat.

http://fitbie.msn.com/eat-right/tips/your-food-really-whole-grain

There are also other sources to look towards re: food as well, but too many to include here.

If you are still eating meat and poultry (with the various hormones and other toxins/toxic factory farming techniques), and seafood (heavy metals, and since the Japan Tsunami, plutonium and other heavy Toxins), you should also consider dropping those from your diet. Even factory-farmed fish have illnesses and parasites you don’t want to ingest (and No, the FDA is not going to do Anything about Any of This! See Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Monsanto.)

With Cancer on the rise from both environmental as well as food-based causes, it is best to clean up your food intake to stave off any illnesses you needn’t suffer from.

"Damn I'm rich! $$$$"

This was the post of someone I know on Facebook regarding a web site he went to on the relative wealth of most Americans. I know it was meant to show that We The People aren't really doing so badly compared to the rest of the world. I also know it was meant to engender gratitude for what We have. But it still is a gross over-simplification of what the real issues are (and to the conspiratorial mind-set, perhaps is meant to calm and mollify those of us in the 99% of this country).  

But the real issue is in all of this, that however much We Americans have (once again, at least in the 99%) more than the rest of the world, poverty is relative. If you only make a dollar a day and subsistence is $1.25, that's much better than making $6 an hour when you actually need $8 to truly survive. These sites and 'meters' don't take into consideration a great many things. For an increasing many in this country, they are skewing more towards Third (and Forth) World living every day. 

Americans need to simplify their lives for the most part. And they can do with a lot less in the material realm than they think they can. Americans have been led into thinking that they Need To Have so much, because... well, because They're Americans, dammit! The Country has been marketed into excessive material to prove how well We Are as a country (and to feed the 1% 's insatiable need to OWN EVERYTHING). Americans are now as a People being forced to cut back their expectations because those said expectations were not anywhere approaching reason (that's why most Americans are up to the tops of their increasingly disappearing hairlines in DEBT [called the "Sweet Spot" by the Credito-Industrial Complex]).

But that said, the incidence of homelessness is increasing exponentially in this country. I for instance was homeless for almost three years (living on the couches of friends, etc. with no money coming in). And I had these resources to keep me from the worst of it. According to this sites scale, I'm filthily wealthy -- and believe me, that ain't the case.

So, yes. I am relatively well off. I now have enough money to eat, and to pay my (adjusted due to disability) rent. I don't have a car still (in LA, that's sacrilege!). And here it is, yet another holiday, and I didn't have enough 'spare cash' to do anything besides go to a pot-luck party later today. In the meantime, I'm 'working' (writing). I hope someday soon to at least have a car to go for a (small luxury) scenic drive for a holiday. Perhaps soon, I'll have even more available funds to do even more.

But right here, right now, I'm grateful for what I have. I wish everyone else that gratitude as well. 

And I also wish that the World some day comes into more of an equitable equal distribution of quality of life. We're not there yet though. Don't let the truly Wealthy mollify you into believing that this is 'all right' (cause it ain't).

Letter to Modern (Villainous) King John: Jaime Dimon, JP Morgan

History repeats itself ever and again, tyrants come and go by name, but the injury to Others remains the same. Here is a letter I edited and added to (italics meaning my addition to their suggested text) from a boilerplate letter by Roots Action America as part of an email campaign to one of Wall Streets Villains... I mean, Corporate Raiders. Ahem.

"It was 797 years ago this week that King John was confronted and forced to share power and wealth, forced to concede rights to others through the Magna Carta.
Yes, that was me. I did that. And I'm back. 
You and your villainous fellow Wall Street rable who call yourselves royalty have pushed The People too far this time. Yet again.

You will not be shot at, nor will you be hung for treason (at least, not yet), but you will be rightfully taxed for all that you and your fellow Robber Traders have fattened yourselves at the expense of the Common Man. While you sit behind your computer screens making millions each day (unrigthfully with Other Peoples Money to which you have no conscience to plunder), I'm going to tax you 50 cents on every $100 you trade.
I can raise $350 billion with which to save lives. and redress the wrongs that you and your cohorts have so willfully created through your short sighted and ill-gained dealings. I'll invest in healthcare, jobs, education, and other basic needs, while you and your court won't even notice the missing bags of gold.
Wall Street has laid waste the economy, and the People were forced to bail you out at knife point. And yet you demanded more.

Now I and those whom you have plundered say No More. It's time for a Robin Hood Tax, a financial transactions tax, a little bit of modern justice, and a siege against misappropriate dealings and scurilous activities..
I'm coming. And this time, I have a million faces not just a small faithful band of brothers.

Sincerely,
Robin Hood

(formerly known as Robert, Earl of Locksley)

Plastic, Profit and 'Progressive Nonsense!' oh, my.

[The below was written as a(n expanded) response to a story on NPR (and a comment from a Conservative critic railing against "Progressives" and their/my agenda against 'Free Enterprise and the American Way'), regarding the banning of Bottled Water containers movement that is growing on college campus'. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/12/146692656/battling-the-bottle-students-and-industry-face-off-over-water>. ]

Ah, "Conservatives!' Things like 'conserving the ecosphere' don't appear in their agendas. 'Conserving' profit, however, always does. 'Saving American Jobs' always does too, while these same 'Conservatives' either help to/ or are directly related to shipping 'American Jobs' to Third World countries, and the China they were so rabidly against (until it became a 'hugely profitable market.'

They don't want to ban plastic bottles, and where I live in Santa Monica, Ca., rail against the banning of plastic bags. 'Outrage!' they say. 'People should be able to buy whatever they want to!' they cry (when it effects their same bottom line about not beiing able to sell another kind f plastic -- most of which ends up either in the trash, or worse yet, gets ejected as soon as it gets out of the store ('I gotta right to it. I pay for it.' Yes, you do. All of us do.)

Which leads us to the Pacific Plastic Gyre. As big now as the state of Alaska (imagine that) and still growing, it is quickly polishing off the Pacific and its ability to recycle air, as well as, yes, ending up in the seafood you eat (which I haven't now  since sixteen -- Oh, the 'Conservative' horror! I've been a vegetarian since then). This, along with the killing of the Gulf of Mexico from, first the runoff from the Mississippi and the factory farming all along its length, to the BP oil spill (which seen from space in NASA photos whose trail of death is shown to be reaching almost to the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize).

That profit eclipses ecology comes as no surprise, but the depth of the self-serving-ness of these 'Conservatives' for some reason always does.

"Class Warfare" vs. Crass Warfare

So. President Obama calling on Taxing The Rich is "Class Warfare," as if the Rich don't know a thing or two about Class Warfare.

When did things get so crazy that the Poor and the Middle Class have to pay full taxes, but for some reason, The Rich need to be exempt? The reason usually given is that; "The Rich are creating jobs for Americans, and that's why..." Nonsense (and my language is cleaned up here for a general audience). The Rich don't create jobs for Americans, they create jobs for their companies. And when it suits them to ship those jobs to foreign shores for slave wage employees, they do it. In a heartbeat. Except for my mind, their having a heartbeat is questionable.

The Rich make often many times (millions to billions of times) the amount of the average American Worker. And to top it off, many of their industries would not exist in this "Capitalistic" society if they hadn't received massive subsidies to build those very same industries (the most egregious examples being the Oil and Nuclear Power companies). And to top even that off, not only do they pay no taxes on their massive incomes, most of these "Captains of Industry" continue to get major subsidies.

Which never, by the way, get talked of being cut by the lackies of The Rich from the US Budget in any way like those elements of/programs for "...the least of these" -- "The Poor will always be with You."

Yes, it's time for The Rich to pay their fair share of taxes. And while we're at it, let's cut their entitlement programs. Let their  business rise or fall by their economic standards, losses, and gargantuan egotistical mistakes. If we need to rise and fall by our personal capitol and mistakes, then so should they.

Tax The Rich and Cut their subsidies, Mr. President. No more Entitlements for those who don't 'need' them becasue of their business expertise (or lack thereof).