Privatization-Nationalization Pendulum.

The Privatization-Nationalization Pendulum, or PNP, is an interesting sociopolitical phenomenon. The PNP doesn't swing with a natural rythm or periodicity. As you can see from the representative animation above, the pendulum is manipulated from a centralized source. Services which are needed by all citizens are privatized and nationalized and privatized and nationalized with an apparently haphazard periodicity which seems to defy logic. Unless of course one is paying attention.

If one were paying attention one would notice some obvious and well-publicized constants. The swings of the pendulum, either toward nationalization or toward privatization, are always preceded by a crisis. Such a crisis is financial in nature. Such a crisis is always a crisis which could have been prevented. There are entities which recieve enormous financial benefits of each pendulum swing. The rats on the treadmills always find themselves running a bit harder after a pendulum swing to pay for those enormous financial benefits which accrue to special entities. Sometimes silly plebes vote for a pendulum swing. They probably wouldn't vote in favor of letting someone hit them on their heads with a hammer; that would be too obvious. But most of the time pendulum swings are imposed without a plebiscite.

Wouldn't it be nice if people of different nationalities compared notes on the PNP?
People in South American countries and European countries could tell Americans a lot about their immense dissatisfaction with the PNP.

Wouldn't it be nice if people lived longer? Possibly.
If people lived to be 150 years old they would be able to stay on the treadmill longer. They could provide much more wealth for the richest 1,000 families in America. Especially for the newest of the nouveau-super-riche Bushes. Warren Buffet said it quite right, "The rich are different." The Bush diaspora are in fact, Born to Bilk Bushies.
On the other hand maybe 150 years would give the babes from whom the candy has so easily been taken enough time to wake up and smell the coffee. It's possible that within a lifetime of 150 years even the dumbest rats on the treadmill would come to understand the pattern of PNP periodicity.

The Lord giveth? Maybe, but the Schlemiel also taketh away.

The PNP has swung for more of the American birthrights without so much as a whimper from the rats on the treadmills. The Loyalty Enforcer wants the Social Security jackpot. That's why he has virtually bankrupted the government for the rest of your lifetime. That way he can say we can't afford not to privatize Social Security. He hasn't made it official yet, you say? Everybody knows Bush wants it. His rubberstamp congress is waiting to give it to him. There are no moderate Republicans. And what Democrats there are are actually fawningly servile sycophants.
As you should be before too much longer...
Because it's too late now to do anything about it.
Except to say...
We told you so, we told you so, we told you so.

Whitehouse photo.
"It's as easy as taking candy from a baby."

Click for 696 x 657 image.

Feb 20, 2003:
Manned space flights? Of course manned space flights. Anything else defeats the purpose and is just plain ridiculous. The whole point of manned space travel is quite obviously, to learn to get humans used to living in space, a new frontier. Robotics can be used to do most experiments in space. Most that is, except for the the most important experiment, conditioning humans for life in space. The question of which can do the other experiments more cost effectively, robots or humans, is just a big fat Red Herring. Unless one believes that if god had intended for humans to fly, he'd have given them wings.

Free Market propagandists always substitute the word let for make. They said that if John and Jane Q. Public or educational institutions wish to have NASA imagery or other NASA benefits, let them pay for it. What they meant was, of course, make them pay for it. Everyone has known for years that Republicans have wanted to privatize NASA. The first phase was a continual shrinkage of the budget, the Defunding Phase. Then the Crisis Phase. Now after the preventable tragedy in which seven astronauts have died, they have their chance. Oh goodness! What to do now? Privatize it. Make them pay. And shroud military aspects of the space program in more secrecy. That will be the outcome of the tragedy.

Click for 720 x 467 image.

It will be quite ironic when ecologists begin to use China's satellite imagery after free marketers *make them pay* for NASA's images which had once been freely available.

Suggested Reading.

Yertle's story leads off with his attempt to build a bigger kingdom on the backs of his loyal subjects, literally. King of everything he can see, Yertle orders his turtles to stack up under him to build a towering throne. "He made each turtle stand on another one's back and he piled them all up in a nine-turtle stack." But a plain little turtle named Mack--stuck at the bottom--decides he's had enough. "I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down on the bottom we, too, should have rights!"
Amazon.com
In real life, of course, there isn't such a happy ending.

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