For some wordsmiths a blog is a small business, but not Labann. All of Bike&Chain’s nearly 3,000 pages are ad free and open source, so not-for-profit, though not worthless exactly. From 2008 until 2021, dropped 20 to 40 posts each year; since pandemic, shared less than 10. Sounds like slowing down, but some posts quadrupled in length, because they covered more complex issues affecting bicyclists after deeper dives, and those interesting times they curse you to live in have now come with a clown car of callous and corrupt incompetents in control.
When you discuss generalities you make little sense. When you offer instructional specifics they’re too dense. Yet entertaining parables and formulaic fables get revered, even if generally fictitious or situationally factual. Truths have to apply all the time everywhere, may cause anger or generate fear, but unless they predict how to take advantage few readers care. Prophets are defined after the fact through any self fulfilled act. Busy bees believe divisive buzzes, forget their allegiance pact. Big topics present many perspectives that criminals and ignoramuses ignore. But assessing self in world then disclosing what’s discovered is bound to bore.
Small business is America’s largest private employment sector, 46% of workforce, often conducted from a garage or home basement. Government is nation’s number one employer, not unlike most industrialized countries. Economists have always agreed that severely reducing either will cause a global depression. Among wage earners, whether they serve badly or well, more will always be better, because 80% of corporate projects are fulfilled by 20% of those assigned, while transacting paychecks as widely as possible fights desperation and despotism. Who’ll pay IRS their $6 trillion in annual revenue? The top 1% will get obscene tax cuts, while former tax payers will be collecting short term unemployment benefits. Their math doesn’t add up, and might inspire a filing moratorium or voter recall of congressional fascist minion.
Trains, behemoths compared to also made from steel bicycles, require lots of steam to get rolling, like honking up hills by bike, but both are remarkably efficient otherwise, because they absorb kinetic energy. Same momentum applies to economy. Republican recession sent record public debt into stratosphere and stranded nation at station until democrats returned to invest in workforce and restore normalcy to keep on rolling awhile. According to Harvard sociology professor Mathew Desmond, if only top earners paid taxes they owe, poverty across country could be cured.
Now on revenge tour, unsatisfied with domestic terrorism with thousands dead from random shootings, tactics too slow setting factions at each other’s throats, tearing coalitions asunder, and walling off restoration with insurmountable obstacles, why not confiscate bank accounts and property? China and Russia still need trillions to wage war against Africa, Europe, India, Taiwan, and USA. Allies are dumping treasury notes in massive numbers. Cryptocurrency, computer based Ponzi schemes contrived to launder crime loot, plunged 27% since inauguration; bit coins will never deserve strategic treasury reserve. Tariffs bar imports and try to strip America of its territorial resources. Citing waste deterrents, this bash and grab really betrays citizens and innocents. Social Security has always been separately funded, 4 trillion on account good through 2040, and has no effect on future obligations due to fewer babies being born and recipients living longer, false flags, because expectancy has dropped and population has grown from legal immigration by tens of millions in short order, lies exposed.
Gangster DOGE denigrates civil servants, some of whom work at home, which surged during COVID to prevent contagion but was customary for many feds not limited to deployed reservists, enforcement agents, and FEMA coordinators. Telework decongests highways, put boots on the ground to respond quickly, and saves enormous amounts of fuel otherwise wasted during pointless commutes to cubicles; likewise, bicycling. Big Oil has GOP in their pocket and hates efficiency that impacts their bottom line, especially bicycling. Not the only reason, 9 to 5 on-site attendance also makes it easier to target and terminate beltway bureaucrats. Chainsaw change in no way improves, just deals death, decimates families, and disregards needy. Two out of three citizens disagree with these cuts, but their representatives in congress bend a knee to ruling oligarchy.
Climate crisis directly threatens food supply. It increases capricious tornadoes, excessive heat, severe hurricanes, and unexpected floods that destroy crops and kill livestock. Latest administration denies problem, has withdrawn from Paris Accord, ridicules efforts to deal proactively with its effects, and sacrifices family farms, a large segment of small business employment, when serious savings could be had by ending pork barrel contracts to defense suppliers and subsidies to gas and oil giants setting record profits. Why not demand repayment of this corporate welfare? Or seize state control of refineries and utilities? Furthermore, NOAA and USDA layoffs make foods less safe from bacteria, fungi, parasites, poisons, pollutants, toxins, viruses, and weather cataclysm. Roadkill Robbie advises gleaning whatever you can from auto collisions and ignoring taboo against cannibalism.
Since every act so far by new regime destabilizes law enforcement, expect criminals to test degree of lawlessness with which they can get away, greater for them every day, until rioters loot small businesses, as did Pretoria’s political protesters in 2005, 2016, and 2023. Tsk, tsk, when a party acts unilaterally and attacks majority trouble occurs for which guiltless survivors pay. Homeboy Lumberjack Muskrat is still a South African citizen, having emigrated temporarily to Canada in 1988 from Jacaranda City to dodge military draft. Along with co-president, he figures military service is for losers and suckers. Indigenous residents with motto, “We are the same,” put such apartheid racists and presumed betters behind them by renaming Pretoria, but Afrikaners still refuse to adopt official handle Tshwane over one imposed by colonialists. By the way, kudos for your bike lanes, biodiesel initiatives, criterium races, fondo events, and wastewater processing.
Only a majority vote warrants a capitol city or international gulf rename, not an egomaniacal fiat from a fat fart self fêted führer. How pathetic and petty is that? It’s a ploy to pander to supporters while planting butt on throne, plotting chaos and revenge, and putting enemies in charge. Flooding zone with outrageous decrees tries to hide their demonic atrocities. What does he care for tax cuts? His crime syndicate evaded taxes for decades. Root “trompe” literally means “trick”, while Maga is the fifth and highest level of Satanic clergy. To the core Taco de Trompo is corn and pig al pastor, a crooked wolf who leads sheep to slaughter. Conspiracy theories evidence a special form of psychopathy, but sociopathy on top warrants resisting relentlessly. What did you expect from an insane crime lord and reality TV celebrity for whom only money, popularity and power hold relevancy? Having already danced and golfed across rubicon, his Ides of March approach.
Finney (Mason Thames) and younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, shown) have enough heartache with an abusive drunken widowed father. The Grabber (Ethan Hawk), part time magician and persistent prowler of Denver suburbs, looks for teen boys to abduct and torture in his brother’s basement. After a terrorizing string of disappearances, he grabs Finney. Gwen won’t give up her sibling search, crisscrossing side streets by banana bicycle, reacting to clues from clairvoyant dreams, just like her deceased mother had. In this supernatural thriller, The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, dir., 2021) supposedly broken hangs on cellar wall, but Finney gets calls from the beyond he needs to survive. Bicycling easter eggs scattered throughout include Gwen after being spanked tearfully watching a scene about a broken bike from Christian tolerance cartoon Davey and Goliath, previous abductees who also rode bikes into danger, and screen door barring Finney’s escape secured by one’s bicycle combination lock. Will cycling newsboys, door-to-door sales-kids, or state’s constituents ever be safe from these monsters?
NR 24 (John Andreas Andersen, dir., 2024) was code name for agent Gunnar Sønsteby (Sjur Vatne Brean), who during early 1940’s Nazi occupation of Norway earned a reputation among the best allied assassins, forgers, and saboteurs in Europe. He resourcefully conducted clandestine missions by bicycle; indeed, his memorial statue at Solli Plass in Oslo depicts him straddling one. In many occupied countries during WWII, bicycles were confiscated to suppress resistance. Sønsteby was awarded the British Distinguished Service Order and US Medal of Freedom. Democracy dies if everyday heroes don’t stand in solidarity and undermine this autocracy. May robber barons forever fall to robin hoods.
This year’s Academy Award Best Actor Adrien Brody (shown) stars in The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, dir., 2024) as Hungarian-Jew László Tóth, a Bauhaus trained architect who emigrated to Pennsylvania after being forcibly separated from his child and wife by Nazis and surviving Buchenwald death camp, only to be abused and exploited by a rich industrialist patron. Daniel Blumberg’s Best Original Score for this film includes beautiful piano instrumental Bicycle covering Tóth’s rides on steel steed to proposed sites to sketch ideas. Release couldn’t be better timed to remind Americans how eager despots, kleptocrats, and oligarchs are to mistreat victims and strip them of their human dignity, individual wealth, and personal freedoms. He who says everything will be alright, as if it ever has, does you no favors.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
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