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“Now, this ain’t just ranting and raving. This ain’t just blowing off steam. I got a little evidence to support my claim.” “But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.” So stated comic George Carlin, see the video posted below, and Carlin also said what follows.
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations.
They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking.
They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.
They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, ’cause they own this fucking place.
It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.
And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe.
All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people — white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on — good honest hard-working people continue — these are people of modest means — continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them.
They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all — at all — at all.
And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
That’s what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
– George Carlin
All but the first sentence in the above is per GoodReads. There was spacing added by MHLivingNews and the words Senate and Congress were capitalized, but otherwise the remarks by Carlin are as shown at this link here.
Carlin was a comic. According to “Scraps from the Loft” that was part of a longer stand up routine “Recorded on November 5, 2005, Beacon Theater, New York City, New York.” It included the statement used in the first sentence: “Now, this ain’t just ranting and raving. This ain’t just blowing off steam. I got a little evidence to support my claim.”
Carlin may not have provided a handout with footnoted examples of what he was claiming. But that was a few weeks after a document from CitiGroup dated October 16, 2005, linked here, was ‘leaked’ and made public. That CitiGroup document to investors said the following.
“WELCOME TO THE PLUTONOMY MACHINE In early September [2005] we wrote about the (ir)relevance of oil to equities and introduced the idea that the U.S.is a Plutonomy – a concept that generated great interest from our clients. As global strategists, this got us thinking about how to buy stocks based on this plutonomy thesis, and the subsequent thesis that it will gather strength and amass breadth.”
But as MHLivingNews and our MHProNews sister-site has reminded readers for some years, even before Carlin and CitiGroup made their statements, former Governor Jerry Brown (CA-D) said the following.
“In effect they’re creating a colonial society here in America through the global accumulation of financial power.” Jerry Brown
If you feed the quote and attribution above into a search engine, there are on this date two places out of billions of webpages online that specific statement appeared per Google on 8.9.2024.
Gov. Brown also said in that same interview that the system is rigged. That was per Seasonal Chef in 4.1996, approaching 3 decades in the rearview mirror. To Carlin’s “rigged” game point, Brown also said this.
“We have to deal with where we are…Government is the tool of the moneyed powers. That concentration of power is happening because Congress is bought off. The system is rigged. And anyone who because of some schoolbook imagery thinks we have some sort of a democratically elected government is not reading the signs of the times.” – former Governor Jerry Brown (CA-D).
To Carlin’s point, consider what left-leaning Bing’s AI powered Copilot said in response to the following.
When did (what year or date) George Carlin say the following: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason
George Carlin delivered this thought-provoking quote during one of his stand-up routines. Although I don’t have the exact date, the sentiment remains relevant. Carlin’s words highlight the influence of powerful interests on education and critical thinking. He emphasized that the system won’t improve because it serves those who control it—the wealthy business interests who shape decisions behind the scenes1. It’s a powerful critique that continues to resonate today. …”
MHLivingNews did a little more digging, as was noted above, and found that date was November 5, 2005, and Carlin delivered that in the Beacon Theater, New York City, New York. Which is an example of why AI, as Bing, Google, and others admit, is not perfect. You should double check results, they advise. MHLivingNews and MHProNews routinely do so when the answer appears to be apparently off in some way.
Brown said that “…Congress is bought off. The system is rigged.” Carlin went further saying the same pattern occurs at the state and local level too. Someone could push back somewhat and say that not everyone is “bought off.” That said, Carlin’s point on education was illustrated in a post on MHProNews some months ago.
The GOAT Academy says billionaire John D. Rockefeller said in 1903, that he wanted a nation of workers, not thinkers. It is usually attributed as “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” In Quora, James Keenley said a year ago that:
While that quote is widely attributed to John D. Rockefeller, it wasn’t his assertion.
The words were written by Frederick Gates, a Rockefeller associate who served on the General Education Board, a private foundation funded by Rockefeller to support higher education. …”
Either way, be it Rockefeller’s words or that of his associate Frederick Gates, it is reasonable to think that they reflected Rockefeller’s views. Gates served on the General Education Board, which ironically underscores the point made by Carlin in his comedy routine quoted above.
Candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump have been saying “the system is rigged” for years-to-decades. It isn’t like Carlin or Brown where the first to think it. The belief that the system is rigged is widely held. Per left-leaning Axios: “Poll: 70% of Americans believe the political system is rigged” published on 8.25.2019.
More than half of all Americans believe traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like them (64%) and that America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful (61%).
That is similar to polling in 1.9.2020 by Pew Research that said:
70% of Americans say U.S. economic system unfairly favors the powerful
The notion that the U.S. economy is “rigged” to benefit the wealthy and special interests was a major rallying cry in the 2016 presidential election and is already resurfacing in the 2020 race.”
But MHLivingNews and our MHProNews sister site have for years made the point that no polling is necessary to make this point, because ultra-billionaire Warren Buffett has openly said as much. Buffett has an outsized influence on manufactured housing, through the Berkshire Hathaway owned Clayton Homes, 21st Mortgage Corporation, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance (VMF), and other corporate interests that broker and finance manufactured home communities (MHCs).
Why is affordable housing suffering in the U.S.? According to notorious Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) member Frank Rolfe, he has asserted in writing that a combination of special interests and public officials don’t want to solve the problem. Rolfe has also said that he “blames MHI” for the low level of new manufactured home sales in the U.S. While Rolfe’s words may be a case of one finger pointing out with three fingers pointing back, it is nevertheless interesting to see him make such assertions. Rolfe’s business interests, it should be noted, reportedly do considerable business with Buffett-led and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) owned Clayton Homes and 21st Mortgage.
To Carlin’s points. A lack of critical thinking, which he asserted was due in part to the education system and much of corporate media has contributed to the loss of the American Dream. The good news is that Carlin’s concerns have become, in several respects, mainstream per polling and the public admission of Buffett. Rockefeller funded a nonprofit to influence education. Buffett and others of his ilk have funded nonprofits too to spread his thinking, influence, and beliefs. Understanding that the system is rigged is a first step. Better yet is understanding how the system is rigged is a logical next step. Working to stop that is important. Buffett reportedly reads hours a day. Like him or not, it is apparent that he does think critically (analytically). Grasping how he funds and influences candidates, nonprofits, associations, media, and others is useful in grasping what is necessary to solve the affordable housing crisis.
Because we should not want to be a nation of renters, do we? A steady stream of distractions, ‘entertainment,’ various kinds of pain killers, and the like can keep millions from not only seeing reality but the solution to reality. There are more of us than there are of them. The many can beat the money. See the linked reports to learn more. America didn’t get into the mess because the population is busy reading and thinking critically. America is in this situation because not enough people think deeply and critically based on evidence, not mere habits or emotions. ###
9) There are reasons to believe that the majority of independently owned manufactured home community operators are not predators. Those looking to buy a new or preowned manufactured home in a land lease should do their homework to make sure what kind of track record a company has. Reports like those linked below may be useful for those seeking affordable housing, rather than unaffordable housing. The consolidators of manufactured housing are often arguably in the predatory category, or as Olson said: “It’s such a huge corporation and you do the math, they’re already making multiple millions of dollars a year and it just seems like they’re, you know, taking from people that can’t afford it.” ###
Mobile Home and Manufactured Home Living News explores the good, bad, and ugly realities that keep the most proven form of affordable home ownership under-appreciated and misunderstood. MHLivingNews provides third-party research and other resource collections and reports not found on other sites. We also provide thought provoking analysis that are designed to open minds and hearts. This is the widely acknowledged best source for authentic news on mobile and manufactured home living, as well as the policies that impact this segment of housing that provides 22 million Americans with good, surprisingly appealing living.
We lay out the facts and insights that others can’t or won’t do. That’s what makes our sister site and this location the runaway leaders for authentic information about affordable housing in general, the politics behind the problems, and manufactured homes specifically. That’s a wrap on this installment of “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) (See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHLivingNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing. For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com. This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position, and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
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