Delusional thinking. Trapped inside a world of knee jerking. Multi-Generational Trauma on steroids. Fear thy self and thy enemy, so self-loathing in a bipolar self-aggrandizing flipping. Yo-yo thinking.
If you attempt to get a bead on the “situation,” you know, THE Situation, it is almost impossible to be and to live and to survive in this society without many forms of media and collective consciousness pollution from flooding even a 9 to 5 and 8 to midnight, M-Sunday worker, busting his butt with two jobs.
The air is a miasma that is impossible to shelter from, and the spirits are wandering hoping for some form of sanity in the living. No matter how you open up your phone — and it is always on, no, 24/7 — or how you navigate your working life, the dirty deeds of the marketers and madmen and the propagandists and behavioral mad scientists and political pirates come through. You can not shelter yourself completely, or even partly with any significant buttressing against the poison of our times.
No man or woman is an island, no matter how hard some of my email friends think they are that Island in the Slipstream having checked out of the good old USA or Canada. Living in Baja, setting up a simple palm frond hut and simple low water and low yield garden, sure, it is an Island Unto Itself. But, in Baja, in Mexico, with so many injustices around and near and possibly just down the road? How does one buffer one’s totality from all of that?
There is a certain instantaneous insanity that captures the world, even the ones in Nomad-Landia or Off-the Grid-Landia, because to be of this world, is to be of this world. Same old passport, USA, no matter where one might find his or her island of peace. More power to them. But the DNA is pretty much a determinant.
Yet, some of us are navigating other rough seas, and sure, what a deal, getting out of Dodge City to end up in some red-tiled roof town in the grape vineyard hills of Portugal, with full WiFi, a heck of a Saturday market, and stroller dancers on Wednesdays and free museum entry on Mondays. The Church bells, the uniformed school children kicking footballs and drinking lemonade.
It’s that easy, no? Good health, at least a cool $500,000 in some investment portfolio, and, hmm, minimum, what $4,000 a month, not counting many “incidentals”?
Okay back to earth and gravity. I was looking into school bus driving since Joe Biden’s and FDR’s Social Security is an utter joke. Actually, just van driving was the ad I answered, as in special needs. Oh, that old time monopoly religion, and that old time making money off of the taxpayer, and that old time transnational fun. I was skirted into getting a commercial driver’s license, because the school district is hurting for bus drivers. I wonder why.
With more than a century of experience in providing safe and reliable transportation to students across the U.S. and Canada, we at First Student understand the priorities of today’s K-12 community. We can help you build a transportation solution tailored to your community’s needs.
Think Brussels, as this company’s headquarters is ensconced well in one of those lovely expensive buildings:
EQT Infrastructure completes acquisition of First Student and First Transit, the market leading providers of essential North American transportation services.
Oh, so, who is selling the taxpayer down the proverbial river without a paddle? And, these companies, like First Student, has 55,000 mostly part-time drivers and others, and that is just one aspect of our so-called public schools selling the public down the private sewer hole. That’s right, the janitorial services and food services, run by another privatizing baron, Sodexo:
Founded in Marseille, France, in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 56 countries, Sodexo serves 100 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Food and Facilities Management Services, Benefits & Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services.
Yikes, they used to be a big private prison builder:
Sodexo does not contract with any prison entities, detention centers, or correctional facilities, public or private, in the United States. Sodexo does not operate any prisons or detention centers in any of the countries with the largest number of prisons. We provide food for staff and prisoners, maintenance and, in some cases, prisoner skills training, education and programs in 84 prisons in mainland Europe and Chile. Sodexo also fully manages five prisons – all in the United Kingdom.
Ahh, the Old SodexoMarriot scam: Sodexho Marriott and the For-Profit Prison Industry
An article in The Independent reported that inmate Natasha Chin was found unresponsive in her cell in 2016 at the Sodexo-operated prison HMP Bronzefield; her death was attributed to “medical neglect” on the coroner’s report.
In 2021, at HMP Peterborough, female prisoners reported having inadequate access to menstrual care products and other sanitary items. In 2017, four HMP Peterborough inmates were unlawfully strip-searched.
Companies, such as Marriott International, and private individuals’ lawsuits against Sodexo allege discriminatory lawsuits and mistreatment of employees. Since 2000, Good Jobs First, a subsidy and work violation tracker, reported over $103 million has been paid in penalties by Sodexo. (source)
Oh, I had talks with food services and the administrations in two colleges, asking why local amazing caterers in Spokane could not get on our community college campuses with the cafeteria contract. I talked with local caterers who certainly could’ve fulfilled a healthy and creative food and beverage contract with the schools. And still following a local farmer-production ethos.
However, it’s all about economies of scale, underselling, and giving away (sic) funds at the end of the year for student and faculty groups. Legal (sic) bribery.
Staffing K12, and colleges, well, done by outsourced staffing and professional head hunter outfits. Money money money in every aspect of the taxpayer base.
Back to the First Student. I had to get fingerprinted, and then I took the commercial learner permit test, at $60 with Oregon DMV (I took two of the four tests over). Then, well, I was supposed to get some medical check. In the end, the $13.50 an hour for the training period that will eventually get to $19.00 an hour to have all those K12 students on the bus, pick up and drop off, that’s it for this multi-billion dollar monopoly. Tons of on-line junk, and again, more middle application services running part of the show.
Note: The local Air B & B is paying $21 an hour for that service. Sure, you have a time limit, and, sure, you have to photo each room, and upload to prove to the Vacasa outfit the job was done, and to shunt any complaints from the next renter who might lie about garbage still in the pails or sheets in the washer.
In the end, everything about capitalism, whether it is transnational, monopoly, casino, parasitic, what have you, is absolutely against the worker, counter any collective bargaining, without regard to health and safety, anti-getting ahead for the lower economic class, and antithetical to a great work environment, etc. We have no single payer affordable health care-dental care-mental health care. We have outrageous de-regulated air travel. We have no train travel of note. We have not local public busses or micro-vans running 24/7. And, mom and pops can’t deliver kids to and from school because of the super high insurance rates, the litigation threats and expensive fuel costs. Again, the money is made by having money, by deploying economies of scale, through sophisticated thuggery with their lobbies and lobbyists, by stashing politicians in their pockets, by going IPO with publicly traded status, and through the endless graft and grifting galore.
We have turned our own citizens against our own public services — bridges, roads, biologists, justice departments, criminal investigators, FCC, SEC, you name it, we have become a nation that hates anything that might be government regulation and citizen oversight, in favor of this childish attitude: “the companies and corporations, they want to do good, because they have kids and families too, so why would they pollute them or endanger them . . . so let the corporations run America?” This mentality gets some of us to the point where a few vaunted ones and some middle class ones just want to get hell out of the USA because of these top reasons: broaden your horizons; moving abroad is a wonderful challenge; cheaper than you’d expect; new kinds of food; better education prospects; the main reason that people move abroad is employment; learn a new tongue; let go of the stress and let your new environs take over; build your confidence; lose your attachment to things.
This is the rationale for the new expats who want a fully WiFi, Zoom ready community up in the hills with the sheep, yodelers and fresh cheese.
Where are Americans emigrating to and why?
- 40% opt for the Western hemisphere — Canada, Central and South America.
- 26% move to Europe.
- 14% head to East Asia and the Pacific — think Australia and New Zealand as well as China and Japan.
- 14% head to the Middle East.
- 3% travel to Central or South Asia.
- 3% choose Africa.
In 2015, the most popular countries for expats of all nations to move to are:
- Ecuador
- Mexico
- Malta
- Singapore
- Luxembourg
- New Zealand
- Thailand
- Panama
- Canada
- Australia
I’ll take Andre Vltchek’s DV piece, Stop Millions Of Western Immigrants!
Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.
Western migrantsare charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!
We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.
No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European,North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations.They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.
Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrantsare snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.
So, here we are, the transnational, economies of scale, end of mom and pop shops, with a big fish eats little fish mentality as oppressive as anything the Amazon Publishing, Starbucks Coffee, Well Fargo Banking can deliver us. Pick an industry or service industry, and you can see what monopoly looks like and how each year the shifting baseline moves closer and closer to us being those useless eaters and workers and breathers. Until, taking care of precious children, youth, before and after school, on slippery and icy roads, we get paid as bus drivers less than, well (not to knock people who clean for a living), but toilet and laundry cleaners.
Do your own research — check out the top mining companies, top offensive weapons companies, top lumber companies, top grocery chains, top insurance, top medical services, etc., etc. You end up with fewer choices, bigger barons.
And we aren’t just consumers and marks and interest rates and fines and penalties and fees and closing costs and overdrafts and tickets and maintenance fees and tolls and VATs to them. Each way, each step in this Western Culture, each transaction, each nanosecond that might give “them” a chance at marking us for rip-off, i.e. profits, we become useful idiots and useless everything else.
And we come down to this — public schools, taxpayers, footing the bill for major investment companies that rule the yellow bus mafia?. This is the way of Capitalism. You get $19 an hour driving a bus with school children, but $21 an hour cleaning up after a bunch of beer-drinking, dog-peeing, messy and dirty Air B & B customers.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.
Paul Haeder | Radio Free (2023-01-05T01:42:27+00:00) Having the System(s) All Locked Up — Monopolies!. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/05/having-the-systems-all-locked-up-monopolies/
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