Early to bed, Early to rise, Time isn't on your side

"8:58, first time I’ve ever been early for work. Except for all those daylight savings days. Lousy farmers." -Homer Simpson

Sure, I'm late to write a post about Daylight Savings Time (huh huh huh! See what I did there???) but, Benjamin Franklin's bullshit aphorism aside, the fetishiszation of getting up or being early has its roots in historical propaganda designed to make people into obedient workers.

The two greatest conspiracies Protestant conspiracies are Daylight Savings Time and Hops in Beer.

Hops weren't always a standard ingredient of beer.  You see after the Duke of Bavaria issued the Reinheitsgebot, the famous German Beer Purity law, in 1516 it was right in time for Martin Luther's break with the 95 Theses in 1517 and the nascent Protestant communities found a drink to put their followers quickly to bed at night; No Funny Business!  You see good Protestants were expected to get up early, work all day, read the Bible, then drink "a couple beers" and go to bed and do it all over again the next day, except Sunday when they were expected to go to church all day.

Getting back to Daylight Savings Time, having done night shift work for years I know how flipping your sleep schedule, working in the dark, or driving to and from work in the dark is physically and mentally exhausting.  And I applaud when everyone sees the one hour time changes in Spring and Fall have similar effects.  I don't know if Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time is the better option but, it's time to stop this silly flipping but, it's time to also stop working ourselves to death anyway.

Waking up early became a sign of a good worker and what American business has always wanted is workers willing to over exert themselves without being paid for their labor.  It became de rigueur to basically work without pay...  Because Real hard-workin' Muricans love to get to office before the boss to show their go-getter spirit and middle management potential.  There has never been a more insidious turn-of-phrase than; Early is on time, Ontime is late, and Late is Unacceptable.'

Work won't love you back.  And getting up early has taken more for man than it give us;  According to Bertrand Russell monumental tome The History of Western Philosophy (1945),

Queen Christina of Sweden, a passionate and learned lady who thought that, as a sovereign, she had a right to waste the time of great men. It turned out that she wanted daily lessons from him, but could not spare the time except at five in the morning. This unaccustomed early rising, in the cold of a Scandinavian winter, was not the best thing for a delicate man. Moreover, Chanut became dangerously ill, and Descartes looked after him. The ambassador recovered, but Descartes fell ill and died in February, 1650.

Rene Descartes was the first person to invent a new systematic process of philosophy since Aristotle.  Descartes monumental Cogito is a philosophical question which all modern thinkers must address.

Office Depot Capitalists demand Illinois Taxpayers pay them or else

Corporate Tax Subsides should be relabeled The Pleasure of Working For Us Tax. Office Depot and OfficeMax merged earlier this year and since that business announcement have been playing Illinois and Florida off against each other in the never ending Race-to-the-Bottom.

This has been a standard tactic of Corporations. They learned long ago workers are interchangeable and that by going to legislatures they could get State Governments to provide them with legally constructed tax havens and public assistance.

On December 10th, Office Depot announced their newly merged company will put its headquarters in Boca Raton, not at the existing OfficeMax offices in Naperville, Illinois. This despite a promise by the Illinois Government to pay them $53 million in welfare over 15 years.

And all Office Depot would have had to do would be to promise to keep 2000 clerical jobs in Illinois for that welfare. The vast majority of products sold in these stores are not made in Illinois or Florida, but China. Some paper products are produced by the Illinois company North American Paper.

So, while the Office Depot Corporate Welfare deal fell through, Sears Inc and CME Group still received millions of Illinois Tax Payer Dollars in the last 2 years and are promised hundreds of millions more over the next decade and a half.

Meanwhile, 80,000 Illinois residents are set to lose Federal Unemployment benefits in January, while 109,000 Illinois residents collecting State benefits would be unaffected at first.

"While today’s job growth allows most newly unemployed individuals to find work after a several weeks, the long-term unemployed face additional hurdles," Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) Director Jay Rowell said in a prepared statement." Ending this modest program based on a calendar date rather than economic principles and job skills could slow economic growth."

That's because benefits paid to Illinois residents are often immediately are pumped back into the economy in terms of purchases or rent, while money given to Corporations is funneled away from the state. After Sears received their Illinois Welfare in December 2011 they closed 2 Sears and 3 K-Mart stores in the State, 3 months later. They got their money from the State and left.

"I'm a Wealth of Nations guy," Republican Congressman So and So stated on MSNBC during the Republican Government Shutdown.

I seriously doubt that Republican So and So has actually read The Wealth of Nations. It's one of those books people place on their mantle to look smart and a phrase that right-wingers trot out as way of an argument instead of actually defending their positions. 

It's allows the Republican or Right-Winger to merely say the words, 'Bible. Wealth of Nations. Freedom. Flag. Founding Fathers. Ronald Reagan.' They don't actually say anything when confronted on the actual failings of their sick and twisted ideology.

Similarly, when Republicans want to attack they say, 'Liberalism. Marxism. Entitlements. Mainstream Media.' and so forth.

It's not an actual argument to make vague allusions to phrases or concepts but it is a good stimulus-response mechanism. It's all designed to invoke emotional r-brain responses in their duped and unthinking conservatives dronez.

What we are seeing in Illinois with Sears, CME Group and Office Depot and with thousands of Corporations across the Nation is Capitalism in action. Capitalism is the Privatizing of Profits and the Subsidizing of Losses.