The King Who Would Be Good

He was always the Nice Boy - and he always wanted it kept that way. "I want to do what's good for my community!" he excitedly told everyone he met, sure of the approval he'd obligingly receive. So he did those things considered Good and Honorable, he did what "ought to be done." When he saw how well it worked out for him, he wrote a book as a young man detailing his success of daring to do good. And he became Comfortably Left.

When an evil king came to power - a king more evil than all other evil kings put together - the people were obligingly blind and they received the king's approval they sought as their turning of a blind eye gave carte blanche to the king's wickedness. Until one day they woke up to find the treasury empty and looted. The king had given power to his fellow Rapists to steal and pillage throughout the land. When the vast number of those of weak character saw this, they joined the Rapist army, mocking their victims as losers.

Though the people of the king's land had no intentions of changing their hearts, they did find the pain of the free range Rapists eventually unbearable and threw the Evil King into the dustbin of history. "We want a nice boy now!" they claimed as their dark hearts suspected the king was in fact a reflection upon who they were. "Let us be called nice people!"



The Rapists were furious with the idea of a new king possibly interrupting their looting of the land, driving those in the middle to the bottom and those at the bottom to their grave. Though the old king had used a gun on his opponents the Nice Boy chose only a taser for himself. He declared this a new era of peace and cooperation, and the taser was a sign of his greater humanity - in his own mind anyway.

Walking the Street Of Walls, the new king witnessed a gang of rapists cleaning out the valuables of the house of an elderly woman. "She's weak and deserves to die! We are the winners!" they cheered. But the Nice Boy had lectured mightily against such behavior and now came time for him to make good on his word as he raised his taser towards the rapists.

At first they were scared. "Don't tase me, bro!" pleaded a cowering raping man. But the Boy Who Needed To Be Nice could not fire after being directed not to do so by another. After all, wouldn't he then be rejected by the one he tased? Wouldn't he be reviled and called just as mean as the Evil King was? Would he not then be labeled uncooperative by his rapist opponents after he'd promised a new era of peace?

Hey, Somebody don't stop that man!

The woman who was losing her life had no such reservations as she called out to him: "Shoot the bastards before they drain me dry! You'll get my vote!"

But the King Who Would Be Good demurred. "No, I shall not fire. I shall rise above such partisan behavior and reach out to the other side. I offer you my hand, good rapist."

But the Rapists' victim remained stubbornly insistent. "Fuck these damn rapists! They're taking everything I own. Don't leave me to die a slow and agonizing death!"

Such angry language soured the King's good ears. "No, ma'am. I'm afraid you do not understand the situation. ["The fuck I don't!" she retorted unheard.] We must all come together. We must live as one. And besides, you have to vote for me anyway or the evil king will come back in power. I shall heed no criticism from your sorry ass!"

While the King busied himself ensuring his political future, the Rapists finished their looting and then spat upon the king's shoes on the way out. "You fucking bastard! How dare you try to stop us! We hate your damn guts!"

Duly chastised, the king hung his head in apology. "I am sorry. I will try to do better to help you. I shall make more speeches on how we need to become as one."

But the old woman remained adamant and - in the eyes of the king - ungrateful. After all, was he not trying to fix things and bring peace to the land? "You goddam moron!" fumed the newly destitute woman. "Living as one doesn't mean we all become assholes!"

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Gas spike tab hits $100 billion

"A key reason for concern is the sharp rise in gasoline prices so far in 2011 — nearly 70 cents per gallon — which is siphoning off household income at a run rate equivalent to $100 billion per year," writes economist Andrew Tilton.

That means Americans who thought they would pocket $110 billion this year in aggregate thanks to the payroll tax holiday are now down to $10 billion – which amounts to about $33 for each man, woman and child.

With the purchase of every gallon of gas – and every item with a transportation cost – we are raped, robbed, beaten and taken to the cleaners. Oil speculators take money out of our pockets on a massive scale each and every day. You know what kind of effect that has on someone making 8-10 dollars an hour or another fixed income? It can be crippling. We claim to praise hard work in this country but the truth is we’ve made it a sin.

As Dr. King said, justice delayed is justice denied. The longer we wait to resolve this, the more irretrievable damage is done. For us to be so helpless in the face of such an obvious and outrageous wrong, what does that say about the direction of this country? Who is it that has hope in this?

The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill, signed into law on July 21, 2010, mandated that the CFTC write rules for the oil markets designed to stop speculation from controlling prices on crude oil and gasoline and driving them to astronomical levels, as they did in 2008. The bill also demanded that these rules be in place and working by February of this year.

There's just one problem: Those rules haven't yet been written and approved.

They haven't been written largely because of the pushback that the CFTC has received from the traders that make massive profits from the financial oil markets and the advocacy groups and lawyers that represent them.

Don't blame the bastards for being bastards, that's what they do and they need to be in jail. But after all, why not do it if you know nothing will happen to you? Better to ask why we let them get away with it in the first place. This is an us-or-them situation. And if we continue to do nothing we will continue to crumble in on ourselves until there is nothing left. Why does no one take this seriously? You think so little of your life and your children’s future?

But it's important to remember that chasing destructive speculative activity out of a commodity market is not an impossible task. In January 1980, the Federal government and the exchange overseeing silver futures trading, the COMEX, took collaborative action: In a series of draconian but necessary measures, the exchange instituted a "liquidation-only" restriction for the market, forcing speculators to either take delivery of contracts or find massive credit for their holdings while the Federal Reserve blocked commercial lenders from extending that credit. The impact was immediate: Within three months, prices dropped 77%.

There’s no mystery on how to fix spiraling gas prices. Everyone in the oil market knows forcing traders into taking delivery drives out the speculators. Your President knows this too. And yet he does nothing but to say the right words and do the wrong thing. If you want to defend the man, feel free to do so. If you want to defend his actions, you seal your own fate - and I pity you not.