Wealth Bondage

Nonprofits a Global Force - Wild Ponies

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Via  Giving New England: The nonprofit sector involves 40 million people worldwide, and spends $1.3 trillion a year, and although it represents a major social and economic force in the world, it still lacks clout as a player in civic society. More...

Business, Government, and Civil Society. How many do we need? Candida says, "Just one in the sulky and a matched pair between the shafts." What pressure we can bring to bear on "Candidia Cruikshanks" and her Pony Boys will be through voluntary associations. Business is global, the US Government is increasingly global in influence. The counterweight has to come from valuing differences, while uniting in a common cause around the world to lobby for sustainable economic structures, human rights, environmental protections, and even representative government. How else except through voluntary association will we ever have a significant voice? When Candidia through her lackeys at AEI creates NGOwatch to keep an eye on global Civil Society, her concern should be an accelerant to exercising our Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Wild Ponies, Candidia, running free. 

The Greater Good

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Those who have not heard of the Greater Good Public License may want to consult the clear explanation provided by George Dafermos in the WB comment section here. George's closing words are a rallying cry: The GGPL is not a money making mechanism and is neither concerned with facilitating lawyers. It's about a person-to-person agreement about being ethical in a community of peers.

At Rottweiler, Jr. Gerald Gleason and Curtiss Leung trade thoughts on the endangered Middle Class. And Curtiss satirizes The Road to Serfdom. (Seems that Road leads to Adjunct Positions.) Vitia joins the conversation on liberal education and a democractic (or aristocratic) society. 

Social Ventures

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Community Wealth Partners helps nonprofit organizations generate Community Wealth by getting them to think about their assets in a new way - as valuable commodities that can be leveraged to create wealth. Once these assets have been identified, we work with organizations to find where the best overlap exists between these assets and market opportunities. CWV is uniquely positioned to help organizations find this overlap and bring the best opportunities to market.

"False binaries" is a nice phrase I have picked up from rummaging for Critical Theory textbooks in the dumpters behind the local community college. Here are some from the world of civics.

• 
  
  Nonprofit/For-Profit


• 
  
  Idealistic/Crass


• 
  
  Gift Culture/Capitalism


• 
  
  Commons/Ownership

In fact there are plenty of nonprofit that are as crass as can be in pursuit of winner take all capitalism,. Certain think tanks come to mind. Likewise, there are businesses, particularly locally owned, that are community oriented. The most interesting hybrids may be for-profit ventures, or alliances, on behalf of the commons, social justice, or the environment. Gifts are hard to get. Sustainability may best be achieved in some cases by an organization that makes a profit, while staying focused on achieving larger social goals. For those who come to "social good" from an entrepreneurial background, it is worth asking, "What can I do to achieve the results I want for society? Would a nonprofit or a for-structure be most effective and sustainable? Does my new venture have products or services that it could sell? Could the constituency for the cause be served via a business model such as employing the disadvantaged, pioneering environmentally sound products, providing member services such as education, or access to information, or to software, or whatever it is at a profit?

Keeping Irony Alive in an Age of Fake Absolutes

Posted by The Happy Tutor

No Cause For Concern (June 29): It is only when one swallows the illusions generated by the 'simulacrum' of the US media that one can easily distinguish victim from perpetrator and bystander, and proceed to restitute moral absolutes, safe in the knowledge that any violence done to you is more real, more unequivocal, more immoral than that which you do to them.

Kerygma?

Posted by The Happy Tutor

For Nietzsche the most unbearable thought was the Eternal Return. Yet now we have something far worse, The End of History.

His Verdict & Sentence

"Candidia"

Insofar as "Dick Minim" posted to the Wealth Bondage Gang Blog without my express prior written persmission, and insofar as that post advanced a theory of the liberal arts at odds with WB Bondage's Corporate Ideals, as announced by Myself in an official post prior to Dick's, and insofar as Mr Minim has solicited and engaged the sympathies of Flunky Bloggers throughout Corporate America, and our recruiting pools on College Campuses, and as Mr. Minim has thereby threatened the stability of Wealth Bondage and its Mission, that of Ending History, therefore, I, Candidia Cruikshanks, hereby place Mr. Richard Minim on formal notice.  He will wear a sign around his neck, saying, "Kick me, I am a Liberal" for the next two weeks.

Identity Politics - A Parable

"M"

Curtiss and IA,

It's OK. If Candidia wants you to write a post in her name abusing me for my insolence in posting without her permission, how is that different? She writes it, you write, I write it, she has Tutor do it. She invented the Voice, as Disney invented Micky. She owns it; it is her signature; her trademark. Without it, WB is just another House of Mirth. Why does she taunt you? Because she likes to mock the Voices of  the Oppressed and the Marginalized. She wants to hear you choke on your impotent rage, trapped in your own good liberal manners, your own speech codes dictating that you be inoffensive or silent. She wants to see your back stiffen in resistance so she can break it. We are like gladiators from the slums of Academics, Technology, and the Arts. We are fungible assets. Temps, Adjuncts, contract workers, rank and file employees, nobodies. She divides and conquers. "Difference" makes her gloat. She turns us against one another, to fight it out, for her amusement, and that of her Guardians. This one lives, that one dies. This one leaves without a limb, that one receives a silver tray heaped with gold. I don't mind being abused. Whipping boy is my title. I don't mind with Tutor, we do it for love. But with Candidia, it is just a job. If you don't abuse me, someone else will. I would rather you have the money than others I could name. Shoot, let's get it over with. I will write my own reprimand (see post above). Heaven knows, I have the template in my word processor, having cashiered so many of our peers. I'll split whatever she gives me three ways. unless it of course it is another kick in the behind.  You know it reminds me, though, of one of The Happy Tutor's aphorisms, "The hangmen hang another upon command." But let's get this over with. If IA and Curtiss won't use the sword, I will fall on it.

"Dick Minim"
Whipping Boy
For Wealth Bondage
A Corporate Gang Blog

Meet Master Bates

All the World's a Stage - Shakespeare

Master Bates Himself

As the Psychopomp for Wealth Bondage, Master Bates is responsible for stage sets, lighting, costumes, props, and extras. He constructs simulacra of University Classrooms, Confessionals, Altars and Pulpits, News Desks, the Steps of Congress, Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf, Mock-Ups of MT Rushmore, Scenes of Wanton Destruction, Toppled Statues, Cheering Crowds, or whatever a particular client requires. He procures the books in the bookcases behind politicians in scenes marked with gravitas. He provides whips, chains, clamps, police truncheons, tear gas, gas masks, protective riot gear, nuclear blast protection hats, handcuffs, straight-jackets, zip ties, rope, electric prods, gurneys, medical tables, various instruments of torture, fruits, vegetables, pillories, stocks, dunking stools, spanking benches, benches of justice, gags, spreaders, crosses, meat hooks, as well as office furniture, a podium with microphones and backdrop with the key words punched up in Big Type; he gets the gunny sacks, guillotine, electric fences, barbed wire, ball and chain, Fortune's Wheel, and much else.

Master Bates is also in charge of procuring whatever Hot Amateur Talent may be needed for a particular scene of Wealth Bondage Power Exchange. Adjuncts, Full Professors in Academic Regalia, policemen, delivery boys, speech writers, students, children, dogs, horses, cats, nonprofit executives, Jesters with Bells, secretaries, clerics, Nuns in Wimples, newspaper reporters, dust-covered soldiers, hot and sweaty football players, cheerleaders, traveling salesmen, Farmer's daughters, weeping mothers, Sisters in Pigtails, neighbors, pundits, dock workers, feminists, gamekeepers, Supreme Court Justices in majestic robes, marginalized Mexican groundskeepers, sissy maids, butlers, chauffeurs, dog-walkers, trust officers, philanthropic consultants, tax attorneys, CPAs on the take, hookers, babies in arms, bar-keeps, stooges, stool pigeons, and more.   

Master Bates is best known as the agent and handler for Pony Boy, having taken him from a Dude Ranch in Palestine, TX where he was giving pony rides to the local kids, to the Blue Grass of KY, where he won top honors as a gelding. Pony Boy under the Guidance of Master Bates is always Running for Something. A polished Trotter, Pony Boy gets $400,000 a night just to pace himself around and around the Oval Track here at Wealth Bondage. With Mistress Candidia in the sulky, he is the odds on favorite to win the Derby again this year.

Master Bates likes to watch. Although WB would not be possible without him, and each of our scenes shows his adroit hand, he works out of sight, for the most part, in the control booth, bringing up the footlights, directing the music, calling in the special effects, cuing and fluffing the actors and actresses, seeing to last minute changes of costume, plumping his gelding's empty codpiece, and whatever else it takes to keep our Viewers on the Couch, spellbound, until they too are called to enter the Dance of Life and Death at Master Bates' command. For this is theater in the round, Reality TV, where the boundaries between actors and audience are blurred. 

In short, Master Bates pulls together the many pieces needed to make our Masquerades a rousing success, and to keep you coming back for more. He creates the illusion that is reality -- for upon this stage we enact the entire world.

One more point, for the benefit of our other quests, please turn off your beepers and cell phones. Anyone who disturbs the illusion, will be dealt with summarily by Brothers Ashcrop and Chainy.  Brothers and Sisters in Bondage, put your hands together for Master Bates!

Liberal Education - Get Me My Fucking Ghostwriter!

"Candidia"

IA,

Your comments to my prior post displease me. Dick has become unmanageable. He dotes upon you, for you are among the very few who treat him with respect, why I don't know. But I would very much appreciate a reply by me, written from you, in response to his massive but crappy post below. Use your liberal education to hammer the little fucker flat. His impertinence wearies me. Now be quick about it. I want to get back to him today. No hard words. No bullshit quotations from some fucking 18th century preacher. Contempt is the sea he swims in. They say you have the makings of a good Hack. Show me!

You can post a draft here, in the comment section, or on your own pathetic little site. If it is any good, I will use it under my byline. You can make more in one day than you have seen as an Adjunct in the last 12 months. You need food? Health insurance? Show me what you got. Invisible? Let's keep it that way. You do the wordsmithing. Handle the fucking details. I get the credit because I manage and inspire you. I am the human face of this whole fucking Company. Without me, what are you? Some little pissant ex-almost-history professor.

You know how many Adjuncts want this job? Get to it. 100 words or less. No fucking semi-colons. Two syllables per word max. I don't talk like you fucking academic sissies. You are so smart. You know so very much. Get over it! This is the real fucking world. Now drop Minim on his pointy little head. The next time he posts he had fucking well better clear  it with me first, the pompous little shit is driving away the paying clientele. You think Pony Boy comes here to listen to Minim talk about first editions of 18th century sermons? They come to be tortured, yes, but Minim is beyond any politician's pain tolerance.

Write like a Winner, you fucking loser, and make it snappy. Or, I will use a pro like Jeneane.

Candidia

Your Immediate Superior? -- In your dreams!

RE: The Purpose of a Liberal Education

"M"

Based on the churlish comments to Candidia's earlier post, I really must weigh in here. Let me begin by saying that I do not want to start (if you will excuse the expression) "some kind of pissing contest" with Leo Strauss and his high born heirs. The one thing that really upsets me is immoderate emotion. It clouds my ability to think clearly and gives me an absolutely splitting migraine headache. I have long been of  the opinion, however, that there are two sides to every story. Even when we glory in our own achievement, as no doubt we can be forgiven for doing, when our achievements are on the scale of Candidia's, we must master our animalistic passions, our human all to human vanity, and let our reason rule. We must -- must we not? -- treat one another with courtesy. Each of us has worth and dignity in the eyes of what some people such as AKMA call "God," at least when he is in church talking to his fellow believers. Justice is blind because she abstracts from partis pris. Likewise on this site, we, or at least those of us who are better bred, discuss the issues openly and with mutual respect like Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, if I may say so, Candidia, with your permission. (I wish she would not glare with that vulgar expression, but I shan't let it deter me for the space of this post.) As an example of moderation, in discussing education, even the role of business in education, let me ask Invisible Adjunct to stand and be recogninized, though she hides her face in shame. Abused and broken in by her liberal arts education, as if by an uncaring lover, shown the door without a word of farewell, cast into outer darkness, she has not a word to say to anyone that is unpleasant or divisisve. She takes the the liberal arts into her own soul, and accepts the judgement of her tribe. Like the meek may she inherit, well, whatever comes her way. May the sheep be gently sheared by the Good Shepherd for whom we are precious, every one, whether Outcasts, Adjuncts, Full Professors, or those with Endowed Chairs.

I would appreciate, then, all our readers, and those who take the liberty of commenting in our comment section, helping me maintain the proper decorum. Let us eschew vulgarity. Let us never be bitter, nor harsh, lest our words offend. Let us temper our own insights with the recognition that we might learn from others, even those whose views, education, and person seem at first glance unpromising. The purpose of a liberal education is to awaken the light reason in our souls; to illuminate what is dark in us; to ameliorate our baser passions; to cultivate good taste and good manners, and to help us learn and disseminate the best that has been thought and said. A liberal education makes a person fit for polite society. It civilizes us; it helps us subdue the Old Adam. With a liberal education, we become more refined; rising above all that is churlish, base and servile. (Well, I mean that in the right way. Servility has its pleasures.) Your education is your calling card. A good education fits a graduate to do anything, for a gentleman or gentlewoman can easily master the meaner trades, should he or she be called to do so. Those with a good education cleave to one another, in business, marriage, long term relationships, and philanthropy, so that you can live your entire life among our own kind. (Pace the Happy Tutor, who has his own talents, though his formal education is quite deplorably lacking.) A good liberal education, even after you leave academics makes you Philosophical. "C'est la vie!" (Such is life.)

For IA and the many tens of thousands of Adjuncts cast to the four winds, let me say by way of consolation, and to give hope to these despairing souls, that I myself have continued to collect first editions of 18th century sermons, and could have done no more had I been Head Librarian of the Sterling Library at Dear old Yale. Without Latin and Greek, and a deep appreciation for the Horatian and Ciceronian Style, I could quite easily have been led astray by some Mountebank. Of course, on one point I can agree with Candidia, it did help to have Mummy's Trust Fund.

Let me, then, in closing, simply thank all our esteemed readers for your continued best efforts. I dearly hope that each and everyone of you will find your proper station in life, whether you are called to Public Service, the Law,  the Clergy, the Media or any other Profession affected with the public trust, be it ever so humble. Remember that each of us is Stewards of the Talents entrusted to our care. When the Master or Mistress comes, she or he or she will expect an accounting. Woe unto those who have buried their talent! (Enough, Candidia, with the whip!) Whether of high estate or low, may you have the strength to bear it calmly. (Stop! God that hurt.) The mind is its own place.... Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. To thine own self be true, and thou canst not then be false to any man. I urge you to be sincere and without guile in all your doings. Each of us contributes to the greater pattern that is the cosmos. Something greater makes itself felt, (Ouch!) even in our most humble actions. Let us, then, rejoice, the wise and the ignorant alike, both those in academics and those outside, for all are folded into the bosom of time, and all work for the great good of humankind, though it takes a good education to see it.

My apologies, Mistress, if my words have displeased you. I speak subject to correction.