Mid-month monkey-grinder time!
I don’t particularly enjoy sticking my paw out and asking for your help, but in the Age of Goo-guh and Gesichterbuch, it’s the only way lesser outfits like EPautos can survive. We’re not a crony capitalist or CIA-funded project. EPautos remains online and kicking Clovers because of your support.
I do take requests, by the way. Anything you’d like covered – or any questions you may have – just send a note my way ([email protected]) or (better) post here.
UPDATE: Progress! Several people have stepped up (LG in particular). We’re getting there!
Meanwhile, thanks again to all of you who’ve supported the site to date and who continue to do so – and thanks in advance to those who will in future!
Our donate button is here.
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EPautos
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I think your financial struggles are indicative of the really major problem we face today. Its not that we don’t support you, we do, but we don’t have the cash. The barter and swapping society that was common as recently as a hundred years ago was killed by paper cash. Most people would have no idea how to let alone even consider barter as a way to obtain something. Cash was created so the government had a way it could tax us. The whiskey rebellion was over that non-existant cash when it wanted its taxes paid. Even if they had wanted to pay, they weren’t able to. The government puts people into a place they cannot even comply even if they wanted to. Obamacare is a great example of putting people in a place they cannot comply. Make everyone a “criminal”. Today almost everyone lives from paycheck to paycheck. 40% of people in the USA makes under 20 grand a year. That means half your readers, if they are a slice of America, are dead broke. Including me.
Now even cash will soon go away since they want to trace ever cent we spend. Soon we will probably have government agents asking why we spent money on something. Do I sound like a guy with the tinfoil hat? To a lot of folks today, yup. Like Eric, I am in my forties, and I have watched this play out too. Why are most blind to it?
Ordinary people are being swamped at every turn today. People are noticing that, but why can’t they 2+2?
Things that used to be easy are increasing difficult. Hard to keep employment, let alone employment at a rate of pay to maintain even a modest lifestyle. Lifetime debt, huge costs to be “insured”. Common pass times like fishing or hunting that have become a hassle because some DNR drone wants to make sure you follow every little stupid rule. You can’t change a muffler, or use a normal lightbulb or flush a toilet with five gallons of water. SWATed because you didn’t pay back your student loans or installed a straight pipe through a catalytic converter. All these problems were not problems as recently as the 1960’s.
All the results of the government, which is run by people who think they are smarter then you or me, lording it over us because they went to ivy covered drone college. This is what a “professional” government has gotten us. They of course can do whatever they want, fly in private planes, vacation several times a year, have several huge houses and get rich “working” for the government. Maybe the corrupt spoils system of the 19th century actually is better for the majority. Or maybe it’s because it didn’t end, just changed its tune a bit, hiding itself better.
If I wasn’t using my brain, I would likely be at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally instead of writing this rant.
But it shows how far we have fallen over the last couple of decades. That people think he is the solution. But even he is a chump. He may actually be a true believer since he is probably the only broke congressman. He is nearly 80 years old and has never woken up. His brain is mush from the drugs he probably took back in the 1960’s. But he has managed to never earn a honest dollar.
People look for a leader and that is a bad habit we need to get over and get over quick. Just because the black robed Scalia died last week we now face the fact that the second amendment is one “vote” from being gone. We passed that point already, when it comes down to one.
The reality is: they want our independence.
Take our ability to say no. Only an independent person can truly say no. You can’t say no when your using public benefits. The vet that wants to use the VA hospital, well surrender your handguns. Too bad if you live in a bad neighborhood and that handgun is hardly a luxury.
All the little pieces go together neatly when you think about it a second. They don’t even hide them anymore. All will surrender at some point. Just look at Apple, they may write an open letter to the public saying they don’t want to surrender the contents of “your” iphone. But they will at some point, even a giant that agrees with the big government 99% of the time because 99% isn’t enough . Probably late on a Friday afternoon. I would bet you big money on that, but I don’t have no money. It will be “for the public good”. You honestly think that bomber used the iphone provided by a government agency (it was owned by the bomber government employer)? If anything they should blame that government agency for not setting up the iphone itself before giving it out to its drones.
And there won’t be nothing on that iphone the FBI doesn’t already know. But its their chance to get that backdoor. They won’t get that court order next time. They will simply run the program, and it will be your phone.
Sanders will drive us further into serfdom and slavery for he has absolutely no clue how things really work. He’s going to tax people people into dependency while creating more freeloading dependents. And of course where will he have the government get the goods and services? The very wealthy who own the corporations with the inside track for the contracts.
The alternatives? The Warmongering HRC and the authoritarian Trump.
Exactly, Brent.
We find ourselves in the unsavory position of the German people circa late 1932. We may choose the commissar, the junker, or the fuhrer.
Lovely, eh?
I think this Simpson’s quote with Homer and Bart going to sell grease to a recycling center sums up how Sanders and most politicians think the economy works:
Homer Simpson: Okay, boy. This is where all the hard work, sacrifice, and painful scaldings pay off.
Employee: Four pounds of grease… that comes to… sixty-three cents.
Homer Simpson: Woo-hoo!
Bart Simpson: Dad, all that bacon cost twenty-seven dollars.
Homer Simpson: Yeah, but your mom paid for that!
Bart Simpson: But doesn’t she get her money from you?
Homer Simpson: And I get my money from grease! What’s the problem?
Good one, Dr O, that’s about the way it comes out.
What is the monthly goal in dollars donated? Antiwar.com posts their total amount needed for their quarterly (I think) donation drives, and that’s a help in determining how much to kick in.
Hi Ed,
The server/hosting (including back-up) is a couple hundred a month, so it takes that much to reach break-even (not be operating at a loss).
The frustrating thing is thousands of people visit this site every day. I ought to be able to have a full-time or at least, on-call tech support guy (we used to have that) but ever since Goo-guhl goo-guhled us, I haven’t been able to afford it. Adsense used to bring in about $1,800 a month and that was enough to pay the bills (including Dom’s salary) as well as mine.
Even Lew Rockwell is feeling the pinch.
The Achilles Heel of the liberty movement – as far as media goes, at least – is that it’s very popular but not popularly supported.
The left and right have massive financial support. A site like HuffPost, for example, is a multi-million-dollar operation. Why? Because lefties support it.
Same goes for the flip side of the authoritarian coin.
I have had numerous conversations with other freedom-minded writers; some big name people. We are all frustrated by the lack of support; in particular, that there doesn’t appear to be any well-heeled individual (or entity) that shares our philosophy and is willing to help fight the war for minds.
Surely such people exist. And yet, unlike say the Koch Brothers, they don’t step up. Why?
I wish I knew the answer to that one.
The one I come up with is the one I don’t like to think about.
It is this:
That there’s no money (or power) in it.
So, $200-300 a month? Why not put it up there on the pie chart icon? The reason I asked is that when I did my usual $25 donation, the display didn’t tick upward for several days, which had me thinking “man, $25 isn’t even 1% of the monthly goal”.
I also remembered you saying:
“With 100,000-plus people visiting this site every month, we should have no trouble meeting expenses (and being in a position to devote full-time attention to this gig). All it would take is 5 percent of the 100k to send us the equivalent in donations of two Starbucks lattes per month.”
From here:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/07/18/monkey-paw/#comment-642206
$50,000 for the total needed? Dag, mane. That kind of made me feel like a freeloader with my little once in a while (not monthly by any means) $25 bump. Anyway, I’m thinking that if I checked in here on the last day or so of the month and saw that EPA needed $50 to meet the monthly nut, I would probably just add $50 to the pot instead of my usual $25, or if the site goal was a little short and I had already donated my budgeted bump, I would likely add in the little bit needed.
Anyway, that’s a thought. For a donor to see what’s needed and how much remains might be a good idea. It might help, who knows?
Hi Ed,
I have to update the pie chart manually – I pretty much do everything here, in terms of writing the rants, editing and formatting them, responding to people’s comments, dealing with site maintenance, etc. It’s a lot.
On the rest:
In terms of readership, this site has an audience comparable to that of a mid-sized city newspaper… that has a full-time paid staff of writers, editors and so on.
Here, it’s just me.
I’m not looking to get rich. I’m just trying to not go broke!
eric, going broke is the point of your favorite search engine/browser, be all end all and of course the righteous and leftous pols. Now they’re trying to destroy cash with several people writing their Ph D’s stupid ass opinions of communism cloaked as ‘keeping us safe”.
I just worked my 3rd day in a row after a hiatus of 3 days in the month before. Did you hear that big “whump’ when the patch shut the vault door? Well, everybody in west Texas did. I stopped to get some parts I had to install on the run today and the parts store owner(6:30 am)was sitting there and said a few months ago there was a line nearlyout the door this time of day. I told him the equivalent via me was to have nobody come in the last month except for 3 customers.
It’s tough. I’m looking and filling out apps but the entire damned economy is tanking. I’m not making excuses, just simple reasons. The elite have fucked it all up and we’re gonna be the bad guys(who have to pay for it all). I’m sick of making trillionaires even wealthier. Next time somebody says we need to auto-deposit a paycheck I’m going to tell them what I think……. and then bend over and take it without vaseline.
On a good note, fuel went up 7 cents today and I did what I rarely do, didn’t look at the price of WTI or Brent today. BTW, WTI is some of the best crude in the world, maybe the best when considering it’s lack of sulfur. I’d sure like to build some collecting and processing facilities for it……now.
So now I lay my old butt down to sleep after 14 hours, stopping hauling to fix the truck(air line problem) and hauling 586 miles, not the worst but plenty since everything I ate or drank was done at 70 mph.
Reasons that “they” (the gunvermin) want to eliminate cash include:
1. Surveillance. Track every transaction. If you buy a stick of chewing gum they want to know about it, catalog it, analyze it.
2. Keep everyone toiling on the plantation for massah. Currently it is still possible to work for cash in the underground economy and keep whatever you manage to earn away from them. (At least from their direct grabbing.) Do away with cash and there is not even the theoretical possibility of escape.
Cash is freedom and privacy. THEY DON’T WANT THAT. What they want is total control.
What makes it worse is that people are now accepting the cashless society voluntarily on the basis of “convenience.” (I want to spew every time I hear some prole say “I have nothing to hide!”)
More and more when I pay cash people look at me like I’m from another planet. I’ve even run into “cashiers” who don’t know how to handle a cash transaction.
This is not going to end well.
Yes, and these dicks even come right out and say it. Their goal is total tyranny. They’ll be mandating the new toilets that analyze everything going through them. Cold dead hands, old toilet, etc. I have plenty pasture and can build an outhouse in a couple days.
Amen, Jason.
I’ve noticed more and more shops have trotted out these wave-your-device payments things. People put their phones near them and (I guess) their credit cards are debited.
The government has gotten smart. It really has.
It finally figured out that “convenience” is the ticket to tyranny. It’s a soft tyranny, much as Huxley predicted. But, nonetheless.
UPDATE: Progress! Several people have stepped up (LG in particular). We’re getting there!
Had to buy a new cell phone this weekend (beat the old one to death for non-performance.)
Overheard a conversation between seller and a father who was buying a phone for his son.
The retailer couldn’t understand that the man valued FREEDOM more than “SAVINGS”…
The father wanted to BUY the phone, not put it on a contract and pay over time.
+++
I’m trying to tell the intern how the world really works… It’s the same thing. He cannot understand how things USED to be – nor that the Gov’t (Das Boot) is actually the ENEMY of freedom and morality and progress. Had to explain to him, in terms of the bank we work at: Risk is bad. Change is risk. Stasis is “progress” because of this, because in stasis, nothing changes, and risk is managed, and therefore the money keeps flowing in….
I’m still not sure he understands…
And I didn’t even waste my breath on the salesman at the Verizon store. Too fucking stupid to breathe. Appropriate means of dealing with that animal (not person) is euthanasia.
You think I’m extreme, but consider: We control clover with herbicide. What’s the difference? Because it’s vaguely mammalian life it’s special? Let me guess,
Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
But when the clover overruns the field, the farmer plows it under anyway. They think they are farming humans….
What’s the difference? We can be the most moral men in the cemetery…. Or we can build a better world for Clover to share, on the backs of the Clovers – which is what will happen either way. (I know, I sound dangerously close to THEM.)
But if I cannot force them to leave me alone – I don’t own myself.
If I own myself, and CAN force them to leave me alone – then I can force them to leave each other alone, too. (Original purpose and meaning of the social contract: we give up certain freedoms, such as the freedom to bash in another’s skull and take his stuff, because by living together, we can BOTH have houses instead of living in a cave. it’s NOT the mess we have now, obviously, where THEY can tell you how to shit, and fine you for not shitting in the prescribed amount of time, and wiping with the right number of squares of T.P.)
It’s going to happen either way, we can escape or we can shepherd the sheep. Wish it wasn’t so, but they are too many. And ultimately, as with a fallow field or animal husbandry, you plow them under or cull the herd to prevent disease & weakness. Right now, that very method is being used against US.
We’re being plowed under. When do we stop them? (And how, since Clover is most identified by being willfully blind and ignorant? This isn’t an outreach or education program, it’s survival. Clover isn’t accepting the hand offered in fellowship, won’t see the ugly reality. My concern is that many of us don’t, either. “Tyranny of good intentions,” & “Freedom in Chains.”)
Ultimately, I don’t need to RULE them, either. I just need them to understand they need to run their OWN farm – not mine. I don’t want their farm, with the dilapidated barn, the sickly animals, and the subsistence lifestyle. But unless I can apply force (E.G., guns) to their press to pillage my farm – which has a stately manor house, modern combine, and healthy animals protected from predators – they will overrun me. It’s their envy of me, their love of money, that’s the problem. Since they can’t manage their farm, they want to tear mine down, make sure i live in squalor. FedGov wants to help them, because it equals votes. Votes = “progress” (stasis).
I’m open to Plan B, I just can’t see one.
“Convenience” strikes me as a very feminine concept. Passive.
The world should come to me and do my bidding. I have the pussy, so I make the rules…. And if something goes wrong, it’s SOME MAN’S (some other actor’s) fault.
think of how things are said: Passive.
“He knocked me up!” (HIS fault, she’s just along for the ride.)
“It was so romantic…” (no acknowledgement of effort)
“It Just Happened.…” (not JUST happened, indicating time, but just HAPPENED, I don’t know how the stars aligned and I felt the earth move and I fell into his arms and…)
I could go on, it gets repetitive. “The car came out of NOWHERE (while I was talking about my latest boyfriend and how cute he is and the puppy he has and his apartment and did I mention he’s a millionaire and and and and and…)”
She is ALWAYS a princess, a virgin, and innocent. For F’s sakes, I’ve heard VP’s talk this way! It’s part of the brain. Just how they’re wired. And yet our society tells them they’re equivalent to men? Can do anything they want? Yet, if you look around, listen to them – they are generally NOT the actor. Things happen TO them.
It’s “convenient.”
I don’t have to WORK. Don’t have to DO. It JUST HAPPENS….
Personally, I find it repugnant. I want a woman who can stand on her own two feet, but likes having me in her life. I don’t want her to fall apart when I’m not there. I can’t afford to help her that way, endless support, endless resources, toss everything into a black hole and get nothing back. Life is too much like that in the first place.
I’d rather use a card for convenience – but then pay it all off at the end of the month. Cash lost is lost – cards are easily replaced.
But if you get down to brass tacks? Cash is better than cards, and it makes you more aware of you spending. Not as “convenient” because you must account for it. Mentally, you must act. Physically, you must act.
And those ACTIONS are what separate (differentiate) an adult from a child.
IN-convenience. It means: Planning. Actions. Time awareness. Prioritization. Coordination and Communication. Identity.
Everything our Cloverian society is losing….
Hell, they’ve commoditized sex – why buy the old heiffer when you can rent a young, even virgin, calf?
After all – gaming the 18-year-old with a (company redacted) ID and a “Vice President” business card, and a “black” credit limit, is MUCH easier (and more enjoyable) than trying to persuade a 40-year-old, out of shape, ill-tempered harridan that she’s special, her udders are beautiful and special, and her “secret garden” hasn’t been invaded by a few hundred other men before you got there….
The old one might be “convenient” in the sense of “available,” but the new one is “convenient” in the sense of, ubiquitous & fresh & new and easy to fool & looking for adventure instead of trying to load you with baggage (Both mental and emotional baggage, and a relationship)….
BTW, as for the proles, “I have nothing to hide:” Neither does the old heifer, necessarily, but she still uses a pushup bra, lipstick, cosmetics, skin treatments, spa treatments, conditioners, gym membership (maybe), personal trainer, and an iPhone surgically implanted in her hand….
I see your point, Jean. But ‘convenient’ can also mean taking less time to do the necessary, so there is more time left to do what you want.
Oh, and BTW again. If the pols want to find somebody to paint into the corner of being a domestic terrorist, WTF ever that is, if it means I don’t fall for their BS, they only need a touchup bottle to paint me there.
Morning, Eight!
I’m sure I’ve already got a FEMA bunk with my name on it. After all, I am an “enemy of freedom” in the eyes of The Chimp and his admirers, since I do not agree with and even openly denounce the government, its wars and abuses. I do not love INGSOC or Big Brother. I refuse to admit that 2 plus 2 equals 5.
Etc.
” I pretty much do everything here, in terms of writing the rants, editing and formatting them, responding to people’s comments, dealing with site maintenance, etc. It’s a lot. ”
Yes, I get that. In the interest of helping yourself with sitework, check this out:
http://www.cozmoslabs.com/wck-custom-fields-custom-post-types-plugin/
That’s just one page. You may like to look around the site and check out the blog there. Their software for WP might help you deal.