The Truth

We are fast approaching the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most confounding conspiracies of our nation's history: The assassination of John F. Kennedy. The late president's nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the death of his uncle, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship." The lone gunman theory is still being debated, half a century later. I blame Stephen King.
Which got me thinking, in a conspiratorial way, about all this fiscal crisis nonsense. It began with a little snippet I read about a trillion dollar coin that could be minted to stave off any sort of trouble with our national debt. There's this loophole that allows platinum coins to be created in any denomination, and the beauty is, all we need is one. Wouldn't a two trillion dollar coin be twice as good? Why not just print more money and give everybody a raise while we're at it?
As it turns out, none of this "finance" stuff is real after all. The stock market is just a make believe playground where "dollars" are traded for "shares," and inflation, recession and depression are just cards handed out at these bizarro games of Monopoly played by people nobody really ever sees. We continue to live this lie because it's a whole lot easier than trying to get the rest of the planet to agree to hit the reset button on the so-called Global Economy and start dealing with everyone as equals. That wouldn't be any fun, would it? What fun is a game that you can't win?
Which may have something to do with the announcement made by California's governor, Jerry Brown, that he just found a ninety-eight point five billion dollar surplus in his state's budget. How about that? He and his wife must have been doing a little cleaning around the Governor's Mansion after the holidays and found some change between the couch cushions. Jerry wants to put a big chunk of that money back into education and health care. What a guy. Of course, this is the same guy who just a few months ago pushed his own plan to raise taxes ever so slightly to avoid any further budget shortfalls - in education and health care. Confused? You won't be after you've read the full report, but I'll give you a preview: Jerry, Dallas, Marilyn Monroe. Just put the pieces together. Or believe everything else you read on Al Gore's Internet.