The Epson R2000 is probably quite
adequate for the task at hand.

Have you ever wished you could just print your own money when you need some? I mean the US government does it, why can’t you? Well, the simple fact that you can may surprise you. Most of the laws that make printing your own money illegal have to do with printing someone else’s money. If you print off a bunch of US hundred dollar bills, there’s a really good chance you’ll end up in jail. Even if you’re just a brilliant aging artist who’s really just obsessed with doing a good job. But the fact is that as much as the people (and by “people” we mean banksters and politicians) who make it their entire life’s purpose to reap personal benefit from screwing you over a fictitious commodity would prefer that you think otherwise, in most of the states in America, there is nothing stopping you from creating your own fictitious commodity and using it for every day commerce. In fact it’s already happening with varying degrees of success all over the country; there are about 150 currencies on this Wikipedia list of local currencies, from the Berkshire BerkShares to the Detroit Cheers, to the Fairfax Fairbuck. And aside from these physical currencies, there are huge economies evolving right now that are entirely digital, like BitCoin or Ripple, and recently, even Amazon is getting in on the “let’s make our own money” game with Amazon Coins. I personally find it ironic that the people who claim to be the only ones who know how to manage currency and the economy are the ones who have made such a mess of both. All the while somehow managing to maintain their own hordes of cash and liquidity. Okay, actually it’s not ironic at all, we’re just a bunch of ignorant suckers who are taking part in the biggest con in the history of the world. Aren’t you getting tired of it? So let’s take things into our own hands. We couldn’t do any worse than the goons at the Fed, could we? And the time is ripe for a paradigm shift. One of the core problems with global economics right now is that speculative wealth is entirely untethered from the real-world resources that create it. There is a literal monopoly on the production and control of currency and wealth simply because we make it easy for the centralized power of banks to exist, simply by sheepishly playing along with the big Ponzi scheme. So there’s an interesting angle – maybe we could file a class action suit against the federal government and banks for colluding to monopolize the money supply! We jest of course. This is part one of a three part series; we’re just having some fun here, but in parts two and three we’ll look at the history of money, and the realistic obstacles to decentralizing the control of it. For now, I’m going to go make millions of dollars. On my fancy Epson inkjet.

Context here if you don’t get this joke

First, the perfect gifts for your socialist friends who are pushing us off that Fiscal Cliff:

	A timeless classic which will make any socialist happy, since no commerce whatsoever need take place. At least, that is, if you’re smart about it and steal it from an abandoned coal bin. If you MUST buy it, make sure it was mined by ethically treated union members, or you’ll risk the pious wrath of your labor-loving comrade.
	Yup. A rock. But this is a politically correct holiday rock. That’s why there’s no bow or other symbol of some patriarchal, robber baron capitalist pseudo-holiday. Be sure not to suggest even a remote connection to the idea of “Pet Rocks” though, which implies “ownership” of another sentient being. Great for throwing through government windows!

Gift Ideas for Our Wealthy Overlords-to-be

Charles Dickens Action Figure	What better symbol for your new role as a Dickensian slumlord? Keep this little guy on your desk as a reminder that it’s your very purpose in life to prevent the starving masses from having a happy Christmas.
Wall Street Victim Action Figures	Put a bunch of these on the floor and shower them with worthless pieces of paper to bring back memories of the good old days, when you did the same with toxic mortgage deals but actually got to skim the cash off before the con collapsed on the little guy.
Bullwhip – 105 Inch	If you want something done right, do it yourself. Or whip someone ELSE until THEY do it right. Now that the dollar is almost worthless, you can’t create as many wage slaves. But maybe you can have REAL ones!
Potty Putter Putting Mat Golf Game	The new Wealthy Power Elite will have so much leisure time that they’ll have to practice golf while crapping, if they want to maintain a competitive game.

Gift Ideas for the New Brokeass You

Just because you’re broke doesn’t mean you get to skip Christmas. Like my grammaw always said to my cheapskate grampaw, “don’t stick a bow in yer ass and tell me it’s Christmas”

Super Mullet Wig	Your fall from the fiscal cliff is going to happen so fast you won’t even have time to grow a proper mullet to suit your new socioeconomic class. Be prepared. Get a wig.
Waitress Action Figure	You can play with this waitress action figure in your pretend restaurant, because you won’t even be able to get a waiter job at Appleby’s, let alone a REAL job.
Construction Worker Role Play Set	With any luck, by the time your kids are old enough to get a real job (at the age of eleven under the new labor laws) one of the few available will be building security fences in the gated communities of the rich. Might as well give them some occupational home schooling.
My First Tattoos Kit	This fun tattoo kit for kids will help them plan ahead so that when they end up in debtor’s prison, they won’t get one of those gaudy jail tats.
Beer Can Holster Belt	Big surprise: one of the post econopocalypse laws will prevent citizens from owning guns, for fear of an armed revolution. Beer will still be prevalent though, perhaps even encouraged. Much like how the Pharaohs kept the pyramid builders liquored up on mead. You’ll need someplace to carry it.
Lionel Tinplate Train Set ($2,759.99)	Neener neener, just kidding. Only the rich kids get actual toy trains. And they’ll cost over two grand, like this one.
Redneck Life Board Game	Still messin’ with you. This really should be in the rich people section. Not only can you not afford it, you wouldn’t find its meta-irony amusing any more.
Redneck Yard Sign	Face it. In a few years, people won’t be able to tell if you are or not, as the car you can’t afford gas for starts rusting out in the yard. Might as well plan ahead and get this now, before your credit card is cancelled.
Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It” Action Figure	Sure. We can do it. If by “it” you mean slaving away making luxury items for your evil overlords who finally stopped outsourcing, and brought the jobs home. At the same wages they paid in China.
The Magic School Bus Chemistry Lab	After the New Power Elite finish dismantling the public school system, the six kids you have because they also outlawed birth control will have lots of time on their hands. Might as well put ‘em to work making meth like that guy in Breaking Bad. Bonus: You can get high to escape your miserable existence! Magic school bus indeed.
UPS Guy Costume	This will prepare those same kids for the inevitable job as a peon delivering the toys that the rich people buy THEIR kids on Amazon, which get shipped out each day from the ubiquitous slave camp like shipment centers, formerly known as “the post office”.
Buffalo Bill’s Hickory Shredded Beef Jerky Chew	Under normal circumstances, the poverty stricken often chew tobacco. You’ll be too broke for that. Better replace the tobacco with something that also provides nutrients. If jerky in fact contains any nutrients. The container is also great for pickup games of street hockey.
White Trash Etiquette: The Definitive Guide to Upscale Trailer Park Manners	Just because you’ve been reduced to living in a trailer doesn’t mean you have to ACT like you live in a trailer. Or maybe it does. This handy guide will help you sort things out.

Cadillac Escalade

As a metaphor for America, this is probably the most symbolically accurate. Although the typical owner couldn’t afford it when they financed it, they use it to express their wealth and power while partying like there’s no tomorrow. Plus, it’s big and fairly solid, so in spite of all the recklessness it represents, there’s a decent chance that the driver and passengers may actually survive, although they may require life support to do so after the crash.

Popemobile

In the God-forsaken wasteland that is the global economy, having God on your side may be the only thing to save you. Approximately $375,000, Pope not included.

Bugatti Veyron

The Veyron is a great choice, because – much like investment banking – it was designed to do one simple thing, but does it in a way that is inaccessible to 99% of the world’s population, and does it with an utter disregard for fossil fuel consumption, safety, or practicality, serving only to stroke the ego of whoever is at the wheel. It also does what it does at incredible speed, but with a long and spectacular arc.

1966 Thunderbird Convertible

Hey, if it’s good enough for Thelma and Louise, it’s good enough for me.

Aston Martin DBS V12

Look. It’s one of the cars that James Bond drove. I’m sure there’s some gizmo for Fiscal Cliff situations. If not, it’s priced exorbitantly high enough to be a good metaphor for global finance.

Maybach Landaulet

At a half million dollars, this little baby has all the same things going for it as the Veyron in terms of being a symbol for the vulgarity that can come with stratospheric wealth, but it has the added benefit that you’ll have a great view of the canyon as you plummet to your death.

MRAP

The road to the Fiscal Cliff is bound to be a political minefield, so what better choice than a “Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected” vehicle? Plus, it looks so badass that you’ll hardly care what anyone thinks about where you’re headed, and when you get there, who knows – maybe all its badassness will actually protect you when you crash into the valley below, or – as they say in the military – you “achieve maximum surface contact”.

Stretch Limo

In spite of having a lot metaphorically in common with the Escalade, this is a far superior choice in terms of survivability. Aside from the accordion effect of such a long vehicle hitting nose-first, as long as you choose the most rearward seat, your fall would additionally be cushioned by the bevy of hookers you brought a long.

Volvo V40

Only choose the Volvo V40 if you actually want to survive. It set records on international safety tests last year, and as you can see, it is racing toward a cliff RIGHT NOW, as if to prove how ready it is. Parts and service will be costlier than with a domestic vehicle, but you won’t care, because as with all these scenarios, you’ll probably be on life support of some kind anyway.

Ford Fiesta

Nothing says “austerity” like a Ford Fiesta. It’s even built in Spain! Just don’t go over the Fiscal Cliff at speeds faster than 45 miles an hour, or you’ll end up like this.

Moller M400 Skycar

Yeah, Right. If it existed! Much like the eternal financial bliss that Alan Greenspan told us was in our future, this thing suffered from a lot of irrational exuberance, and never became a reality.

Another way to achieve your goal is to create a legitimate business that so insinuates itself into people’s lives that they feel they can’t live without it, and then charge them enough to buy deregulation for yourself, so you can basically get away with murder, price-fixing, repossession of property, and slave-like labor practices. This would be the health and insurance, telecom, mortgage, and mobile device industries, respectively. The health and insurance industries get a special Goodfellas bonus for somehow maintaining their reputations as wonderful, life-saving services, in spite of the fact that the latter drives you to bankruptcy by weaseling out of paying when you most need them, and the former is often everything BUT healthy. As Walter Cronkite observed decades ago, “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”

But if you REALLY want to carve out your name in history as a master criminal – and never spend a single day in jail – you need to do BOTH of the above, by going  into banking or economics. Banking is the field for you if you like shopping for $87,000 rugs while your company is going under, or if you enjoy contriving elaborate schemes to strip the average working stiff of his self-esteem and home while telling him he can’t live without what you have, even though it was never yours to begin with. Economics, on the other hand, is a great field if you admire the basic methodology of the TV weatherperson, palm reader, or astrologer, but prefer hanging out with politicians and bankers.

The scary thing about all this apparent hyperbole is that it really isn’t hyperbole at all. Since 2008, we’ve witnessed the most massive financial crimes in history, seen very little in the way of punishment, and in fact seen the very perpetrators of the crimes elevated to the highest levels of government. Often in the very agency that is intended to regulate the industry in question. Even scarier is that these people are either blithering idiots who have no idea whatsoever how markets work, or they made this all happen on purpose.

If you’re a student of economics, there’s no hope of persuading you to think differently than you already do, because you’re almost certainly already indoctrinated into one of the two main schools. If you’re a Keynesian, you’re probably smugly saying “I told you so” and selling lots of books. If you’re a neo-classicist, maybe you’re still running around gazing at the world with 20/20 hindsight, constructing logical fallacies to explain the catastrophes after the fact. Or maybe there’s another secret frat house within the neo-classical school. Maybe this whole global economic shift is intentional. Maybe it’s just a variation of the kind of scorched earth policy suggested by the Starve the Beast strategy. We will never know, since so many things are either veiled in secrecy, or buried in the mind-numbing avalanche of data.

At the end of the day, there’s not much middle ground. Those responsible for guiding the markets over the past few decades were either dead wrong about their theories (operating sort of  like a Shaman doing a raindance while it’s raining), or they were intentionally engineering a world-changing shift in how governments work in relation to banking and finance. How could it be anywhere in between? Take the arrogant, floppy eared, squinty-eyed Ayn Rand sycophant Alan Greenspan. Wrong at almost every turn in his career, but rooms would fall silent when he spoke, eagerly awaiting his pronouncement about the new prime lending rate. Or his banal twaddle about irrational exuberance or whatever. At least he finally admitted to 30% of his ignorance. And more recently, two of the people who – if they really knew what they were doing – were best positioned to see catastrophe coming and failed to do so. And to fix the problems they failed to see coming, resorted to the exact opposite of what their own theories would recommend. They used the Invisible Hand as a big bitch slap to the world in general, basically telling us that if the government didn’t pay for the mess, the world would end. And then these guys not only kept their jobs, they either got bonuses or government appointments to boot.

The question of criminality is not a matter of opinion; in the aftermath of the financial crises of the last several years, the SEC has filed hundreds of actions. Over 700 in fiscal year 2011 alone. The scale of misdeeds by the financial services industry is literally mind-boggling. Even trying to list the most egregious here would be absurd; information in quantities like this literally requires databasing.

The most disturbing thing of all though is that little is likely to ever be done; no significant players have gone to jail, and when cases ARE successfully prosecuted, the banks pay fines in the millions against offenses in the billions. It becomes merely the “cost of doing business”. And you and I don’t seem to care, we still stick our hard-earned money in the same bank that we bailed out while we argue about Mitt Romney’s dog transport methods and Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

And any seemingly organized civil reaction has turned out to be a joke. While the Tea Party is far from the band of PBR-swilling yahoos that most smartypants liberals like to frame them as, they have largely either (quite successfully and intelligently) folded themselves into the conventional political process, or on the fringes, are obsessed with looney ideas about sovereign citizenship and other misinterpretations of constitutional law. And the Occupy Movement? NICE JOB. Call yourselves “Occupy Wall Street”, get the world’s attention, and then spend the next six months arguing about everything BUT Wall Street. Christ, even HIPPIES were more effective in fomenting social change.

So while we will probably continue to see these quiet wrist slaps by the SEC, most bankers can sleep well tonight in their five hundred dollar jammies, because the Department of Justice isn’t going to actually put anyone in jail. Why? It’s too hard, they say. These cats are just Too Big to Jail.

Financial Services

This is the one that’s probably going to kill us all, so let’s tackle this first. Money is probably the closest thing we have to a “commons” these days, and we all know about the Tragedy of the Commons. You see, back in Ye Olden Days, if Ug needed some fire for his cave, he might go over to Grok’s place and trade him a few dead possum for a lit torch, or a shiny rock for his girlfriend. This later became a little more civilized, and their descendants Jeb (who didn’t know how to milk cows) and Josh (who didn’t know how to forge a plow) would do similar trades, and sort of knew that they both needed the actual ground that they walked on and the water that flowed through it, or they’d die.

Later, some smartypants convinced everybody they needed a boss, and commenced to governing them. Not long after that, an even smartypantsier guy came up with the idea that dragging sheep over to Jeb’s place every time you needed a bunch of the nice sweaters his wife made was kind of silly, and suggested that everyone agree that they could use pretty metal coins as the means of exchange in place of the actual objects. Of course, everyone wanted pretty metal coins, and once you had a bunch, you needed a safe place for them, and VOILA! Banking was born. This guy was even cleverer than that though. He pointed out that since pretty metal coins were heavy, and since he was keeping them all safe in one place for you, it wasn’t much of a stretch to issue little pieces of paper to represent the coins.

We all know where this leads. Pretty soon, the Banker guy is creating all sorts of imaginary money just by signing sheets of paper and saying “ABRACADABRA” or “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”. The most modern form of this sleight-of-hand-slash-pigeon-drop is known as “Financial Services”. The “service” provided is that when you give all your money to the banker, he’ll go spend it all to get himself deregulated by the government, so he can do all sorts of foolhardy gambling with it. He actually will make billions, even trillions of dollars, but he’ll do it with doomed Ponzi Schemes, and along the way he’ll tell you you’re not a good enough person to borrow any of it. Later, when the whole thing falls apart, he will have made so much money that you barely notice that he saves a few mil for himself as he rightfully insists that life as we know it will cease to exist if you and your offspring don’t bail him out. And with a bigger loan than you would have ever DREAMED of asking HIM for.

But before long, it won’t matter how many dollars changed hands. Because by that point we’ll actually be calling them Yuan. As I type this, the Chinese Yuan is worth about 0.1573 US Dollars, which makes the old Hawaiian rhyme “Ching chong Chinaman sittin’ on a fence/tryin’ to make a dollar outa fifteen cents” especially poignant for the moment. But soon, you won’t care how many dollars equal a Yuan, because the dollar will no longer be the global standard for currency exchange.

Lobbyists & Think Tanks

It’s pretty comical that the average person devotes any time at all to thinking about who they’re going to vote for and what the reasons are. Why think, when think tanks have done all the thinking for you? They’re much better at it than you are, and once they’ve decided on the best way to get you thinking about whatever they want you to think about in the way they want you to think about it, they’re going to get you thinking that way. That’s why you care more about gay marriage and abortion than the fact that the Supreme Court picked your president for you back in 2000 or that the country is umpty bajillion dollars in debt. Once they have YOU thinking the way they want, they turn things over to the lobbyists, who get the politicians thinking the way they want, basically by buying whatever legislation the think tanks wanted, just in case you don’t actually vote for it with all that democracy and freedom you’re so proud of. The upside under Chinese rule? There’s pretty much only one think tank, and it’s called the National People’s Congress. And it pretty much rubber-stamps all its decisions.

Baby Boomers

You can complain about Generation X or Millenials all you want, but it’s the Boomers that wrecked it all, just by being so damn plentiful. If you haven’t done the math yet, there will soon be about three times as many retirees trying to collect Social Security checks as there are younger working people paying into the system. This makes it inevitable that the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history  will collapse; there was already a $46 billion deficit in 2011. Politicians have known this for decades, but if they had bothered pointing it out, they wouldn’t have been able to gouge your paychecks in the guise of paying into  the system, when in fact the money was going to pay their salaries, pay for wars, or whatever else needed cash injections. That’s why GOP think tanks started calling it your independent retirement plan back in the 2000 election cycle. If they let you think about “Social Security”, you’d get all pissed, but by putting the onus on YOU, we now have the bizarre result that the average working stiff is against receiving their own benefits, contemptuously calling them “entitlements”. This is all less of a concern under Chinese rule, since EVERYBODY gets all the benefits they want, because NOBODY REALLY HAS MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Religion & State

Want more church in your schools, and more God in your government? Try moving to Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Medieval Europe. Those are examples of what life is like when you get all religiousy in politics, and the separation of the two was one of the most intelligent things about America’s founding documents. On the bright side, since Chinese rule has a few decades of being atheistic, the worst they’re likely to lay on you is some Buddhist or Confucianist thinking, which doesn’t have many specific rules about dancing and gay marriage, last time we checked.

Duocracies and Duopolies

Do you like Coke, or Pepsi? Verizon, or AT&T? Democrats, or Republicans? The polarized, black and white, red vs. blue, “for us or ag’in’ us” thinking that has overtaken the American dialog and paralyzed our government and made all consumer choices between “Shitty Thing A” and “Shitty Thing B” will no longer be a concern once we’re all speaking Mandarin and making electronic components for foreign countries. This will also be a blessing at the supermarket, since we’ll no longer have thirty-seven toothpastes to agonize over.

Homeland Security

Do you remember how weird it was when they announced the new “Department of Homeland Security” shortly after 9/11? No, I didn’t think so. I’ve always been astounded by how few people picked up on the Hitler-and-Stalin era vibe of the moniker. In my opinion, Bush may as well have donned a little moustache, gone on the air and said “Vee haff cree-ayeted ay noo dee-partment to PROTECT ZEE BELOVED HOMELAND!” while straddling a V-2 on Pennsylvania Avenue. Well, now that we’ve had the TSA anally probing us for ten years, and AT&T has eternal license to tap all our phones and web connections, we should feel right at home under the oppressive watch of our new overlords.

Manufacturing & Trade

All you so-called “patriots” that have been belly-aching about how we sent all the jobs overseas to slave labor cities can finally shut your yaps, because all that manufacturing will come back home under Chinese rule, except WE’LL be the ones with the bleeding fingers, making iPhones for twenty cents a day, and living on rice gruel.

Prison & Education System

It’s pretty impressive the way America shifted all the money away from education and into the prison systems without anybody noticing. And pretty handy too, if you’re planning a new totalitarian state.

Health Care & Energy

These are two things about America that probably astound the world. The former, because although we basically created the whole idea of modern health care, pretty much no-one here has any, and the latter because we not only created the machines that made us addicts to the oil that runs them, we have the natural resources and ingenuity to fix the problem, but rather than collecting energy from the sun to power things, we use coal to generate the electricity to run our air conditioners to protect us from the heat  the sun beats down on us 365 days a year.

Branches of Government

We could prattle on here about how the brilliant balance of government put in place by our forefathers is just a big shitshow once the president routinely invokes executive privileges, congress holds someone in contempt weekly, and the Supreme court is an active partisan wing of government that shapes elections, but that would be boring. Besides, this will be yet another benefit of the single party system that will guide our lives once we start paying our rent in Yuan.

Jeff Daniels probably put it all pretty well in this clip from The Newsroom:

Ironically, he later said they weren’t trying to make a big statement, they were just trying to create a good show.

Media Control & Citizens United

Remember back in The Before Time when we’d laugh at Russia’s TASS news agency and the way they would print the most seemingly absurd things, like “Russians First on Moon“? Well, today we’re Russia. And TASS is FOX, or CNN, or MSNBC. Don’t kid yourself that Fox has cornered the market on propaganda as journalism. Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher are just as full of crap and useless to you as Bill O’Reilly. Sadly, if you want accuracy in reporting, you have to turn to Comedy Central. Everybody in the world knows this except us, because they’ve been dealing with political control of media for decades, if not centuries.

Combine the narrow control of a few media conglomerates with legislation like Citizens United, which gives corporations the same rights to free speech as humans (except that most humans can’t afford to spend a billion dollars on TV time to promote their preferred candidate) and you essentially have elections that are sold to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether or not your kid gets an education.

I’ve personally begun A-B
testing for the revolution.

If you’ve visited DissociatedPress.com with any regularity over the last few years, you know that I’ve been a bit annoyed with Wall Street since 2008 , when the industry built on gambling your hard earned dollars on sophisticated ponzy schemes to line billionaire bankers’ pockets with bonuses came tumbling down like a lost weekend in Vegas. Except when the hustlers lost their wad and woke up with a brain splitting hangover, they somehow managed to convince everyone to float them JUST ONE MORE TIME, swearing they’d mend their evil ways. Well, like any addict struggling with an addiction, they lied of course, slipped themselves a bunch more bonuses and wild parties just months later, and in the big picture, pretty much broke capitalism in the process. So it was with some excitement that I started watching the Occupy Wall St movement begin to gather steam last month; I even set up a site at OccupyAnnArbor.org, figuring if the movement didn’t arrive in my town on its own, I would HELP it arrive. No worries there though, within a few days of creating the site, about 1200 people had gathered spontaneously on one of the many Facebook groups that had suddenly popped up. Which is what I think the power of this movement is; it is genuinely grass roots and citizen-driven. People make fun of the cardboard signs being used at most gatherings, but to me those signs are a GOOD thing. As soon as we start seeing a lot of professionally-produced signs, we can probably assume the movement has been co-opted by a particular party or interest group. But that doesn’t mean we have to prove the “none of us is stupid as all of us” adage is actually TRUE. I think all the ninety-niners (see what I’m doing there?) should take a moment to read Frank Luntz’s Words That Work, and maybe Lovemarks, the brilliant book by Kevin Roberts about why we love the brands we love. The reason to read that first book is because Luntz helped the GOP understand the winning strategy of “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”, and the reason to read the second one is because it might help protesters understand that as much as using a black power fist makes you feel like you’re partying with Jimi Hendrix and Malcolm X, it makes the casual viewer think you’re a naive socialist who is out to undermine the American way of life. So while lots of artists like Shepard Fairey and Rob Sheridan are offering up free designs, I think even these talented designers are going a little too “oppressed laborer” with the imagery. So I’ve assembled a few images and ideas of my own about how to reframe the revolution a little. Feel free to chime in or share some interesting thoughts of your own, and if you’re looking for some inspiration, there’s a healthy collection of motifs here.

Language & Message

First of all, some simple thoughts on message and agenda. One of the funniest quotes I’ve heard recently was when a friend said “The problem with Occupy Wall Street is that they don’t have a single clear talking point I can sarcastically dismiss.” Which is the bright side of the the complex message behind the movement. It’s real. It’s human. It’s palpable. And therefore it doesn’t fit into a soundbite. All the same, there’s no sense fogging it over with demands for dismantling the American way of life and the immediate elimination of automobiles, or whatever.

Keep it simple

It’s about corporate influence peddling, corruption, and failed representation of the citizenry. Bankers, politicians, and corruption. Stop trying to roll in health care, war, big oil, environmentalism, gay rights, Social Security, film incentives, and your vision of a perfect socialist world. That’s for later, and that’s how politicians work. They start with simple values and sneak in all their pet agendas in the final demand, making it impossible to know what their values really are.

Don’t Accept Party Support

No matter how much you like the values of that party’s platform, they don’t give a shit about you. They just want to harness you as a voter block. The recent endorsement by the Democratic Party should is anathema. It’s sort of like having Charles Manson or Bernie Madoff say what a great guy you are. Union support is iffy, but very probably okay, if the looser “Occupy” brand stays intact.

Don’t Wait For Instructions

It was people who love being in charge who got us into this mess. Why would you wait for instructions from someone who feels like coming up with a list of instructions at a time like this? I can’t tell you how many downward-spiralling groupthink threads I’ve seen on the web where intellectual liberals did the intellectual liberal thing and talked an idea into oblivion instead of just DOING something. These are my instructions to you: don’t wait for instructions. Just DO SOMETHING. Your heart is probably in the right place.

Visual Design

I wish the firm that did much of the 2008 the Obama campaign materials – celsiusDesign – would step up and volunteer their services. The brilliant typography and visual theme choices made by that firm probably had as much influence on Obama  getting elected as his campaign stumping did. In the primaries, Hillary’s stodgy and reliable-looking design themes made her campaign look crusty and slow in the head, and in the actual election, McCain’s material looked like signage for the local military recruiting office.

The Not-so-invisible hand, i.e: The Fist

This image, while it probably satisfies some occupiers’ sense of rebellion and solidarity, probably says to the casual viewer “I am a communist who wants to ruin your economy even more”. And in some cases, this may even be partly true, as in the case of some of Occupy LA. members.

Below is my first stab at a new look for the revolution, followed by the theory and design guidelines:

The first thought was that “We Are The 99%” and “Occupy Wall St” have built enough basic brand identity that it might be possible to merge the two in simple graphical fashion. Since people are “Occupying” all over the country, I thought I’d drop the “Wall St” and lose the “We Are”, representing the 99% idea more graphically. Some basic guidelines were to use a common legible typeface, and graphical elements that avoided gradients or 3D elements, so they would be easily reproducible. I also went with red, white, and blue, for the obvious reasons that the colors display patriotism, and include both major parties’ colors. But as I tried a lot of typefaces and  arrangements of the “99″, I realized the tendency to do the “cutesy eye thing” was overwhelming, and while fun, kind of diluted the message. So in the end, I dropped the 99, figuring the pie chart “O” said it well enough:

Feel free to criticize, I’m not actually a graphic designer.

I also adapted the original AdBusters “Wall Street bull” motif for OccupyAnnArbor.org weeks ago. If you’re familiar with Ann Arbor’s “Diag” area, you’ll recognize that the bull looks right at home on its brick-paved central meeting plaza:

We’ll be featuring a collection of images from around the web in an upcoming piece, feel free to suggest a link in the comments…

This image really has little to do with
the article, but we spent a lot of time on
it so we like to use it whenever we can.

I wish I were the US government, or a bank. Then, whenever I’m broke or actually running at a deficit, I could just say “that’s okay, Deficits don’t matter” or “people of America, if you don’t give me exactly the amount of money I need, life as you know it will cease to exist” and everyone in America (and their grandchildren) would give me billions of dollars, which I could share with my other friends who had been frivolous about finances or made some insanely bad investments. Unfortunately, I’m not a bank or the government, so it is mostly with a detached amusement that I sit and read about the shirtless flirts in Washington that we pay so much to sit around arguing about the annual budget. I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised that congressmen spend all their time looking for dates on Craigslist, when the alternative is actually trying to understand monstrously incomprehensible legislation like the health care bill, net neutrality issues, or for the near future, the federal budget. I mean, have you actually ever looked at the thing? Even when the New York Times creates a clever and relatively simple interactive graphic, it’s mind boggling. But definitely preferable to buying the darn thing, I mean, The basic overview is 216 pages and costs 38 bucks, and the Appendix is 6 times longer than that (1368 pages) and costs 75 bucks. If you bought all the available related publications, you’d have 2448 pages to sift through, at a cost of $214.00. And that doesn’t include the CD-ROM, which thankfully is not an audio book read by Timothy Geithner. If you want to learn more about how the budget is put together without spending 200 bucks, the Wikipedia page goes in-depth. Over 13,000 words in depth in fact. Remarkably, the words “billion” and “trillion” are only used 81 and 59 times respectively. Me? While everyone else sits around arguing about taxes, spending, sacrifice, and responsibility, I’ll be kickin’ back, ignoring the doorbell and the phone as creditors continue harassing me. Why? Because deficits don’t matter. And besides, I oddly find myself agreeing with Fox/WSJ writer Paul B. Farrell’s rant Fed dictator Bernanke needs to be toppled – Forget Mubarak, it’s Fed reign of terror that must end. To distract myself while I sit here broke with it not really mattering, I think I’ll play a few rounds of the poverty survival game  Spent. Because virtual homelessness is a lot more fun than real homelessness.

Apparently even the prayers of Ronald McDonald won’t protect the riot cops of Southeast Asia…

All photos Boston.com’s Big Picture