Let them eat stimulus checks

Instead of the good old Keynesianism we need– long-term government investment in projects to make the nation energy independent, a masive overhaul of the nation’s public transportation system and electricial grid, dramatic public works and incentives to remake the country from suburban sprawl to small towns and cities surrounded by productive farmland, incubating green businesses, and other things that need to be done anyway and which private industry can’t or won’t do–, each of us gets a couple hundred bucks in the mail and are told to… GO SHOPPING!

“Sure, I know you’re malnourished and need hearty, filling, nutritious food, over the long term, in order to return to healthful self-sufficiency… so here’s a little candy bar right now with lots of sugar. Be sure to eat it right away.”

Pathetic. Insulting. Completely backwards. So out of touch as to be condescending without even trying to be. Marie Antoinette calls out from the balcony in Crawford, Texas, “let them eat stimulus checks”.

Shill Out

Whenever I stumble upon an opportunity to do so, I shill for a friend's business, NearlyFreeSpeech.net. In addition to being my web hoster– and a damn good one–, I believe in their philosophy, and I've become even more convinced of the vital need for the service they provide whenever I see crap like the telecom industry's attacks on net neutrality. The Internet is not a broadcast television, and must never be allowed to become one.

For the last 4 years, I've included NearlyFreeSpeech.net's tagline as my email .sig; since I know how hard it is to compete with huge MegaCorporations and their massive ad budgets, I figure a little guerrilla marketing goes a long way.

I sometimes felt guilty about being such a shameless shill. But then I read this:

They had 12 people working there full time, and were hiring 10 more. You do the math. No wait, I'll do it for you: that's 880 posts a day (if minimum was met). However he said the better ones could do around 8 or 10 an hour.

So I guess a lot of guerilla marketing goes an even longer way. The idea of some mega-corp renting out a boiler room of paid shills pretending to be actual members of some community or other… eek. I've seen those ads that said "GET PAID TO SURF THE INTERNET", and went, heh, yeah, that's funny, who's gonna fall for that. Well, maybe it's not so funny.

Invasion of the credibility snatchers.