This headline says it all

 America is a country founded by war, expanded by war, and grown powerful and rich through war. It has been at war for most of its exisence. It celebrates violence and promtes it. It needs it. At least this is what the NRA and the arms industry need.

It's killing everyone else.

Our present world is the result of neoliberal economics and neoliberal armament policies. Both must end.

But both are good for business. 

Mass Shootings Are Good for Business, Say Gun Industry Executives

Posted on Dec 4, 2015

    “You can see after a tragedy, there’s also a lot of buying,” Jeff Buchanan, the chief financial officer of Smith & Wesson, told investors in September.  (southtyrolean / CC BY 2.0)

Behind closed doors, makers and sellers of firearms in the U.S. have told investors and Wall Street analysts that mass shootings are opportunities to make lots of money.
How does this happen? “Following a mass shooting, there is talk of gun control, which the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates attack as an assault on the Second Amendment,” writes Lee Fang at The Intercept. “Notably, gun and ammunition manufacturers often donate, either directly or as a portion of each sale, to the NRA. The fear of losing gun rights leads to panic buying, which brings greater profits to gun retailers, gun companies and their investors.”

“The gun business was very much accelerated based on what happened after the election and then the tragedy that happened at Sandy Hook,” Ed Stack, the chief executive of Dick’s Sporting Goods, a leading gun and ammunition retailer, said in September 2014 at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference. Stack noted that the industry saw “panic buying” when customers “thought there were going to be some very meaningful changes in our gun” laws. The new sales “didn’t bring hunters in” but rather “brought shooters into the industry,” he added. […]

Last year, Tommy Millner, the chief executive of Cabela’s, a retailer that sells guns, boasted at an investor conference in Nebraska that his company made a “conscious decision” to stock additional weapons merchandise before the 2012 election, hoping Obama’s reelection would result in increased sales. After the election, the Newtown mass shooting happened, and “the business went vertical … I meant it just went crazy,” Millner said, according to a transcript of the event. Describing the “tailwinds of profitability,” Millner noted Cabela’s “didn’t blink as others did to stop selling AR-15 platform guns,” and so his company “got a lot of new customers.” The AR-15 is a high-powered assault rifle based on the military’s M-16 model but without the full automatic capacity[.] […]

Smith & Wesson chief executive James Debney, speaking to the Roth Capital Partners conference in 2013, explained that “the tragedy in Newtown and the legislative landscape” resulted in sales that were “significantly up.” The “fear and uncertainty that there might be increased gun control,” Debney said, “drove many new people to buy firearms for the first time.

“You can see after a tragedy, there’s also a lot of buying,” Jeff Buchanan, the chief financial officer of Smith & Wesson, told investors at the RBC Capital Markets conference in September of this year. Buchanan noted that the political landscape of 2016 is uncertain, but that fear of gun control could be on the horizon. […]

Gautam Khanna, an analyst with Cowen & Co., a market research firm, interviewed Mark DeYoung, then the chief executive of ATK, an ammunition manufacturer, at the Cowen Aerospace conference in 2013. Khanna asked DeYoung if he would make pricing decisions based in part by the “Newtown shooting tragedy.”

DeYoung responded that “obviously we are all shocked” by “what happened in Newtown and what happened in Aurora, Colorado, and what happened in Tucson, Arizona, with Gabby Giffords.” But, he added, the company will continue to “respond to market pressures,” including increases in demand. On a separate conference call that year, DeYoung noted that certain “spikes” in demand have driven sales.

Fang cites Ladd Everitt, the director of communications of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, as saying that businesspeople’s rhetoric around mass shootings “doesn’t surprise me at all. […] This just shows the guys in the suits understand this and are utterly cynical about it.”

Gun manufacturers’ stocks did surge after the shooting in San Bernardino this week. The event fits within a trend that has seen gun-makers’ stocks quadruple returns on the S&P 500 over the past five years.
As The Guardian reported Thursday:

More than an hour after the stock markets opened, Smith & Wesson stocks were up by 2.62%. Stocks of Sturm, Ruger & Co were up 1.67%.
Gunmakers saw their stock rise even as the overall stock market fell on concerns that the Federal Reserve would raise interests later this month. […]
On Tuesday, the FBI revealed that last week on Black Friday the National Instant Criminal Background Check System performed a record number of gun background check. About 185,345 background checks were processed, a 5% increase from last year – and equivalent to about two a second.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Canada needs to join Scandinavia.

Capitalism beats socialism only in the American mind. Democratic socialism may not bleat the American dream, it actually delivers the best living conditions on Earth for the largest number of its citizens.

I prefer a good reality to the best dream.

10 Reasons Why Denmark’s ‘Democratic Socialism’ Is Much Better Than America’s Crony Capitalism

November 2nd, 2015 | by Vandita

Economy

37

Recently, Denmark, a small Scandinavian country of 5.6 million people living in an area half the size of South Carolina, thrust into the spotlight of the US presidential race when Democratic hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton sparred over whether there’s something capitalist American can learn from Denmark’s democratic socialism.
While the spotlight flattered Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, in a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he said Bernie was wrong to call his country socialist.
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism, therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy… The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”
Nonetheless, there are 10 reasons Americans should maybe dream of the Danish way:
1. Per capita income
According to per capita income data from the World Bank, Denmark’s per capita income is $6,000 higher than in the US.

GDP per capita (current US$)

Data from World Bank

2. Poverty rates At 6% of the population, Denmark has the 2^nd lowest relative poverty rate in the OECD, well below the 11.3% OECD average. According to the US Census Bureau, the official poverty rate in the Unites States in 2014 was 14.8%. There were 46.7 million Americans in poverty.
3. Rate of employment With an employment rate of 72.8%, Denmark ranks 7^th highest among the OECD countries, and above the OECD average of 66.2%. The employment rate in the US is 67%. In Denmark, any worker who worked at least 52 weeks over a three-year period, can qualify to have 90% of their original salary paid for, for up to two years. The percentage of out-of-work Americans receiving compensation from unemployment insurance is at its lowest level since the 1970s.
4. Work week Americans stay chained to their desk – an average worker puts in an average of 47 hours a week, and only takes 16 days of vacation a year. Danes work an average of 33 hours a week, and have the right to 5 weeks of paid vacation per year. 5. Healthcare costs At $4400 per capita, health expenditures in Denmark are well above the OECD average of $3300. In America, National Healthcare Expenditure is projected to hit $3.207 trillion this year. The US population is currently hovering at around 320 million, so it is estimated that healthcare spending will reach $10,000 per person in 2015.

Health expenditure, total (% of GDP)

 

Data from World Bank

6. Tuition costs
In Denmark, college is free and students are paid $900 per month to go to school, provided they live on their own. And this funding lasts up to six years. By contrast, an average US student pays over $31,000 a year in tuition to attend a private university, out-of-state residents at public universities pay $22,000 a year in tuition, and tuition costs for in-state residents at those same universities is still over $9,000.
7. Business atmosphere
In 2014, Forbes ranked Denmark as the best country for business. Forbes used 11 different criteria to rank countries — innovation, property rights, red tape, taxes, investor protection, stock market performance, technology, corruption, personal freedom, freedom of trade, and monetary freedom. Under the same criteria, the US ranked 18. Denmark came in No. 3 for ease of doing business in World Bank rankings of 189 countries; the United States was No. 7.



8. Parental leave
The Danish government gives new parents an average of 52 weeks — a full year — of paid time off after having a child. Those 52 weeks can be availed at their own discretion. In addition to the 52 weeks, new mothers get 4 weeks of maternity leave before giving birth and 14 weeks after. New fathers get 2 additional weeks after the birth of their child. New American parents get nothing. In the US, 1 in 4 new mothers go back to work within two weeks of having a child.
9. Saving & expenses
Danes save more money for retirement than Americans do. Gross national saving (which includes savings by both individuals and government) in 2013 was estimated at 24.1% of GDP versus 13.5% in the US. Danes spend about 49% of their GDP on “household consumption”. In America’s more consumption-oriented economy, household spending consumes 69% of GDP.
10. Danes Are Happier Than Americans
Denmark ranked No. 3 of 158 countries in the United Nations’ 2015 World Happiness Report; the United States was No. 15.



Denmark has a generous social safety net that comes at a cost that not all Americans might be willing to accept: high taxes. Denmark’s taxes came to 48.6% of the country’s economic output in 2013; nearly double the United States’ 25.4% that year and highest in the OECD group of wealthy countries. The average income tax rate for a single person without children is 38.4% in Denmark compared with 24.8% in the US. Denmark uses taxes and social spending aggressively to narrow the income gap between the rich and the rest. The costly model, therefore, has worked to – lower poverty, unemployment, inflation, budget deficits and national debt. Is America ready for this?

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Yipeeee!

Ding dong Harper's gone!
Welcome Back Canada. :-D

My life's work

Questing for balance amid madness, from the heart of existence to the limits…

 

The Continuum Chronicles 

is an eight-volume account of Armageddon on Aldyryc, in the prime reality, where all things imagined have a basis and affect other realities, including ours.

The Blue Knight 
is the story of Logosien Di Lzander, the first Champion chosen to fight the Final Existential War. Raised as a martial monk of the Goddess of Perfection, his birth is the battle that begins the war.

Becoming Empress Morgana Le Fey’s hero knight, Logosien runs up the ladder of success while descending into darkness. Paragon, saviour, deceiver, and conqueror, he unleashes great evil while helping usher in a new golden age.

Struggling to remain human while becoming the gods’ weapon, he is hunted by insanity incarnate, the S’Skahahn, until they succeed in taking everything. He rises as Champion of Order, sworn to save his son from his god-like enemy and dedicated to their destruction.  For a chance, he must survive the infernal wyrm’s fury, the Underworld’s depths, and his soul’s judgement.

Creation

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Appendices

What happened to aspirations?

How sad our politics when national dreams have given way to the neoliberal mantra of low taxes and self regulation.

The results: 30+ of middle-class stagnation and reduction, a growing infrastructure deficit, unemployment and underemployment, and the obscene concentration of more than half the worlds wealth in the hands of the 1% -  who are the ones actually referred to when we speak of "the markets". A few very wealthy traders (I wouldn't call them investors, they only invest in themselves) cause the fluctuations in the stock markets, manipulating them with sheer weight and more than willing to gamble on speculation. When the markets disapprove, it is they who do so, not some invisible hand or the general investor.

It's time for something more than a balanced budget. That's useless if you're not accomplishing anything worth accomplishing.



 

The NRA Sacrifices American Lives

For their ideology and paranoia, the NRA wields its weight to crush all reasonable gun restrictions. They do this large through fear. Afterall, your neighbouir might have an assault rifle, so so should you. Never mind getting rid of assault rifles. Never mind that its blantantly obvious gun laws are needed.

Firearms are restricted in Canada. You need to take a short safety course to get a an acquisition certificate. Imagine the state requiring a couple hours of your time in exchange for lethal force. For anything more sexy than your run-of-the-mill hunting rifles and shotguns you need a special permit. We don't tend to own guns meant only for killing people. We don't have handguns in our purses, but the crime rate has been dropping for more than a decade.

Yet the NRA claims our American friends need more guns. Every man, woman, and child (younger the better) should carry on the hip. We've had less than a dozen mass shootings during the last 50 years. America has them routinely.

Who's to blame?

The NRA.

They certainly aren't helping and definitely don't mind sacrificing your children.