Contributors

Sunday, March 06, 2011

No Monopoly

For many years, I refused to go to church. Perhaps it was my youthful and rebellious streak in my younger years or my general distaste for organized religion but I stopped going when I was around 15 years old. I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't Christianity that was turning me off. Rather it was other people's child like interpretations of it that made me ill.

Today, things are a whole lot different. I don't go to church regularly but I do more often than I did in my youth which was never. More importantly, though, I spend more time with the Bible than I ever have and my faith is incredibly strong. In fact, it's so strong that I have to wonder why people get pissed off when they hear about people like John Dominic Crossan and Rob Bell. I don't agree with everything either of them say but I don't consider them any less Christian than me. Others, however, do. Why?

Because their faith is weak

I'm willing to be that the majority of people that are in anaphylactic shock over Crossan and Bell are the same people likely to end up having meth anphetamine fueled gay sex in some video on the internet. Without their strict interpretation of the Bible (most of which is contradictory in and of itself) and it's "code of condcuct," they would succumb to "temptation." In other words, they need the threat of Lake Hellfire in their daily lives or they will be out of control. I don't need that threat and therein lies the problem.

As I have said many times on here, people assume that everyone perceives the world in the same way they do. They don't. People also expect everyone to be as miserable as they are and when they see someone else that is happier, more mature, and has a handle on something as important as spirituality, for example, that's when the tantrums usually erupt and great umbrage is invariably taken. As a side note, these same hyper offended people are often incredibly self involved. One such person recently told me of how "God didn't want him looking at so much porn." My reply to him was, "Do you think that you are that important that God is worried about your porn viewing?" My comment, as you could imagine, didn't go over well.

The fury over Bell's book, which hasn't even been released yet, is hilarious. A simple examination of the Bible shows a mountain of contradictory information regarding the issue of sin and forgiveness. Of course, if one doesn't need to have the "sinners in the hands of an angry God" motif in their lives, it's quite apparent that God has forgiven us of our sins, through Jesus Christ, and we are now in a period of Grace. This is supposed to be a good thing but I guess some people can't take "Yes" for an answer as we see in this example from the Crossan article.

Some critics say he's trying to debunk Christianity. Some question his personal faith. At a college lecture, Crossan says an audience member stood up and asked him if he had "received the Lord Jesus" as his savior. Crossan said he had, but refused to repeat his questioner's evangelical language to describe his conversion.


"I wasn't going to give him the language; it's not my language," Crossan says. "I wasn't trying to denigrate him, but don't think you have the monopoly on the language of Christianity."

Exactly. No one has the monopoly on the language of Christianity. I know I don't. This is where the similarities come in between conservative Christians and conservative Muslims. If you don't believe as I do, they say, you will burn in hell. Never mind the fact that the myth of hell is largely been created by men, twisted in multiple translations and, in reality, simply means a life without Christ.

This overall issue of monopoly plays into other areas as well. In fact, it's illustrative of the giant chasm between liberals and conservatives. Liberals cheer diversity as well as organic and ever changing ideas. Conservatives believe in literal, rigid and strict interpretations of  the issues surrounding religion, government, economics, history, and morality. They completely believe that they have the monopoly on the language. Why?

Because their faith is weak.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

The Generation Question

A friend and I were at a birthday party talking about the problems of our educational system, and he posited that the problem -- apply the cranky old man voice here -- with kids these days was that they'd been brought up by children of baby boomer parents. I disagreed with that -- I'm lumped in with the baby boom and my siblings and same-age friends have kids that are still in grade school or have just barely graduated from college and haven't started their own families yet.

A combination of a warmer-than-usual night and having eaten too much high-calorie food caused me to have some weird dreams and to wake up at 4:30 AM, leaving me to thinking about that conversation.

The whole narrative about the baby-boom generation, Generation X, Gen Y, etc., has always bugged me. For years I've watched commentators on TV talk about "baby boomers," attributing various characteristics and motivations to them as though they were some alien species -- even though these same commentators were totally oblivious to the fact they they themselves were baby boomers.

The truth is, people in my age cohort (1957) have little in common with people born 10 years earlier. I was too young to be drafted for Viet Nam (I never even had to register for the draft, though a friend born in February did), I completely missed out on the sexual revolution, school integration was a done deal when I hit junior high. I vaguely remember JFK's funeral (because Saturday morning cartoons were preempted). But I was too young for the signal events of the baby boom generation to affect me the way they affected people five or ten years older.

Perhaps as importantly, my parents were not part of the Greatest Generation. My father was 12 when WWII ended; my mother turned nine the day they bombed Hiroshima. They were alive during the Depression, but they were just little kids. Kids remember hard times, but it doesn't affect them in the same way it affects people who actually have to make the hard decisions about who eats and who doesn't. My dad was in the Army during the Korean war, but he served in Germany at the tail end of the occupation and never saw a lick of combat. My wife's dad is a little older. He joined the Navy but the war ended before he shipped out and they just released him. Like his father, my wife's oldest brother was practically on the boat, but the Viet Nam war ended before he had to serve. Yet my wife and I and all but one of our 10 siblings are lumped into the baby boom generation.

Generations are conventionally defined by demographers who care about the numbers for insurance companies and the Social Security Administration. Other people use those definitions to try to describe social trends. What matters more is what events affected you during the formative period of your personality, plus whatever effects your parents' generational cohort might have on your upbringing. The region of the country you're in is also important, because social change does not occur uniformly: school integration, for example, was a big deal in the south and many big cities, but in places like Hawaii and Wyoming it was mostly irrelevant.

And finally, you have to consider social strata and personal experience. Certain segments of society just aren't affected the same way. Black boomers in the south who lived through all that turmoil in the schools and served in Viet Nam learned a completely different set of lessons than rich white boomers who went to private schools and got college deferments to avoid Viet Nam altogether.

The idea of a "generation" is also too long a period of a time. How long is a generation? My mom was 21 when I was born. I have many friends who were 40 when their first child was born. Is a generation 20 or 40 years?

It makes more sense to segment up "generations" into the decade of your adolescence, the formative period of your life when the outside world is most likely to make an impression. The real baby boomers, born of WWII veterans coming home from the war, who went to high school and college during the 60s, had a completely different experience than people who went during the 70s, as I did. Yet I'm counted as a baby boomer, even though my dad wasn't a WWII vet and I never went to a war protest or experienced free love (dang!).

Maybe a better generational classification would use the terms of the presidents during adolescence. This is in the grand old traditions of Japan and Egypt, where the calenders were segmented up by the reigns of emperors and pharaohs.

We often look to presidents as the bellwether of the times. The mood of the country and its problems are often attributed to the president, though they're often as much victims of the times as we are.

People in their adolescence during the Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson years have a different set of experiences than someone who went through the Johnson/Nixon years, or the Nixon/Ford/Carter years. My parents were Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower kids. WWII vets were Roosevelt kids. Reagan/Bush kids grew up with "Just Say No!" while Clinton/Bush kids grew up with discussions of semen-stained dresses.

In the end, though, the concept of generations is as preposterous as the sign of the zodiac you were born under. What common characteristic do Bill Clinton, George Bush, Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Mel Gibson, Jon Stewart, Dennis Miller, and Ann Coulter have that defines them as baby boomers?

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Bril!


WISCONSIN from @pawlmadethis on Vimeo.

A Question Answered

A recent New York Times headline:

Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?

Short Answer: Because the people that are dishing it out waver back and forth between an 8 year old having a temper tantrum and an adolescent power fantasy.

Even Shorter Answer: Because they are assholes.

Uh...guys? We Might Need A Bigger Boat

A recent article from Politico has answered a question I have been mulling over the last few weeks. Why haven't any folks in the GOP announced their candidacy? Aside from enjoying the mouth foaming without any real questions put to them or consequences for their ideas, the answer is obvious: Barack Obama is going to be tough to beat.

He's hovering around 47 percent approval now and that's with a still crappy economy. If it improves or if he bombs someone, his ratings will go above 50 percent and then it's more or less a done deal. With all the trappings of being in office, he has the advantage right now and the other candidates aren't necessarily prepared to go up against him. 2016 is looking mighty inviting with with its wide open arena and all. Who are the Democrats going to put up anyway? Hillary? She actually might be their best bet and if I were Mitt Romney, I'd wait. He has the best chance of being president and if he tries now it might ruin his chances in 2016.

I'm betting the 2012 pool from the GOP is pretty weak. We'll see Gingrich, Santorum, Huckabee and maybe even Bachmann. But the guys with the real chance to win like Romney, Daniels or Thune might wait it out. At least, they'd be smart to do so.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Pulling A Palin

I guess I've been too busy lately to grok what Governor Walker is up to in Wisconsin because I feel slow on the up take. It's so fucking obvious. Why didn't I think of it before? He's pulling a Palin.

In order to be recalled, there must be 50 thousand signatures and one year's time passed. Likely, that is what will happen. It remains to be seen whether or not he will be voted out but I don't think he cares. He will not budge an inch regardless of the cost (both personal and financial) to the people of Wisconsin. Seems like political suicide, eh? Not in this day and age. He will be crowed a hero by the Right. His prize?

A lucrative radio show coupled with a Fox News gig will be his for the taking. Within a day of being voted out of office, Scott Walker's career will be set.  Look at how great it worked out for Sarah Palin. More power to both or any of them, I say. They have an army of devoted followers ready to plunk down their hard earned cash for a fear, hate and anger stew.

It's the American Dream and....(wait for it) good capitalism!

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

The Drumbeat of Prison

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."

Charles Ferguson, director of the film "Inside Job," has been saying the same thing over and over again since his film came out: Not a single prosecution related to the financial crisis of 2008. Now, Matt Taibbi (the quote above is from his new article in Rolling Stone) is beating the drum as well. I'm hoping it gets louder.

Taibi's piece is nothing short of brilliant. I'm certain that many of you (the same many of you who hilariously accuse me of falling in to the genetic fallacy trap) won't go and read it so here is an excerpt which sums it up well.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."


I put down my notebook. "Just that?"


"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

If you are curious as to the particulars, read on and you will discover the massive amount of fraud that has gone on for years with a limp noodled government which has either been bought off, is lazy, or is afraid to do anything for fear of being accused of overreach.

Sit back and think about it for a moment. None of these guys have gone to jail. None. Worse, they still have all of their money and are doing everything in their power to convince America that it should stay that way. They've certainly been successful with far too many of my readership.

See, it's not that I want more government power. I want the government to do their fucking job and they can't do it with a bunch of pathological adolescents running around bitching about statism. They have a whole other set of systemic problems to deal with and this just makes it worse. This would be one of the main reasons I am so monumentally frustrated.

The moment Blankfein or Cassano or Fuld goes to pound me in the ass prison for six months that's when we'll see Tea Party groups and Koch backed organizations go to work. The government will be painted as the enemy and nothing will get done. No one will go to jail. Adding insult to injury is the propaganda that they peddle to your average citizen. "Someday, you will eventually make money like me if we join together to stop the government." What a colossal load of bull shit. This needless worship makes me sick to my stomach.

With gas and food prices on the rise, what's left of the middle class is being squeezed out of every last nickel they have. You want to know how corporations are fucking you over? The entire system is set up that way. The people that own oil and food companies know that these are goods that have inelastic demand. Even if the prices go up, people will still buy them in the short run. They may become more elastic in the long run and some behavior may be adjusted but how likely is that considering there are no real substitutes for food and gas. These are but two examples. Throw in prescription drugs and watch your average wallet become empty quickly.

In so many ways, your average consumer is trapped. This, in turn, traps our economy from coming out of the hole and into recovery. The middle class is the engine that drives this economy, not these assholes who have gotten away with fraud. That's why I'm joining the drum circle on prison time for guys like Blankfein, Fuld and Cassano. Put these fuckers in jail. Yesterday.

Our economy simply can't take it anymore.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Divide and Conquer

When I was a kid my dad owned a window cleaning and janitorial company. He hired other guys to do some of the work, but it was basically a one-man show. He often took me to work with him, and at first I was too small to do anything but drink soda from the fountain at the pizza joint he cleaned. Later I was able to do light work like dusting the woodwork in newly constructed houses.

Eventually my dad got out of the business. I remember him telling me that it was because of unions, but it really seemed due to large janitorial firms that were snatching up all the business from the small operators. I don't remember the logic behind his anti-union statements, just the sentiment. Maybe he couldn't compete with the big companies on salaries (he also got in trouble with the federal government because he would pay workers cash, in order to avoid paying the corporate part of Medicare and Social Security taxes). But now, thinking back on it, most likely it was that big companies were able to underbid him, or were large enough to provide janitorial services for all the stores in a chain, or they used their high-level business connections to schmooze with company bigwigs to get new work. Big businesses will trounce one-man operations every time.

And so it went with my dad. He folded his janitorial business and went into real estate, working for a small company. During that period I started college and moved out, and eventually got married. Not long after that my dad quit real estate -- big companies with offices city- and nation-wide were crushing him, cutting deals that he couldn't match. He went to work for the metropolitan bus company as a driver. Eventually he wearied of this (he had no patience for old ladies that dawdled as they boarded the bus with all their packages) and became a bus cleaner, working nights in the garage clearing the buses of the detritus from the day. After 20-some years on the job he retired.

My dad only has a high school education. But in retirement he has a decent pension and Social Security, and has full medical benefits -- my mom and dad pay a fraction of what my wife and I do for health insurance every month. And his union medical benefits even paid for the pacemaker they installed a few years ago, probably saving his life. My parents live in a small house in rural Minnesota. Hardly an opulent lifestyle, but they're comfortable enough and even had enough money to buy a fixer-upper in a small town to renovate it for resale.

What made this possible? The union he worked for, the government job he had for the last 20-odd years of his working life, and the Social Security Administration he tried to stiff when he ran his own business.

I've got a college education and have worked in well-paying tech jobs. I've never been a union member, and don't particularly like the tactics that unions have used. I don't like the antagonistic attitude they foster against companies, or the silly work rules and featherbedding they negotiate. But those who complain of the hard-ball tactics unions use neglect to mention the even harsher tactics corporations used to try to crush them, often conspiring with government to use lethal force in the early years of the union movement.

But given all that history my dad is inexplicably a rabid Tea Party conservative, who rants about Obama's socialist policies ruining this country. This is the magic of the conservative spin machine. They are able to make people believe things that are against their best interests again and again. How? It's the oldest game in the political book: divide and conquer.

During the last 15 years the Republican party has been a political monolith. There is only one Republican party line and anyone who strays from it is put down quickly: abortion, tax cuts, the war in Iraq, you name it. Except in one area: immigration reform. On the one hand guys like Bush and McCain wanted to liberalize immigration and allow more immigrant labor in the country. On the other hand the anti-immigrant forces -- like my dad -- blamed every problem in this country on illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly Hispanic ones. These attacks usually have a nasty racist undercurrent.

So, over the last thirty years businesses and country club Republicans have been undermining the earning power of low-income Americans by hiring illegal immigrants, while cracker conservatives have been blaming those illegal immigrants for taking away jobs from low-income Americans. Jobs like picking tomatoes, cleaning hotel rooms and cutting up chickens -- all jobs that are back-breaking and often dangerous, and pay far too little for most Americans to survive on.

Meanwhile, the private-sector unions that my dad blamed for his business's demise have all but disappeared. Corporate union busting tactics -- inspired by Reagan's breakup of the air traffic controllers union and the influx of immigrant labor destroyed them. And now that basically all private sector unions in construction, janitorial services and meat packing are gone, Republicans like McCain have now changed their tune and are adopting the anti-immigrant fervor.

That brings us to the current day. After turning low-income Americans against illegal immigrants, the Republicans are now turning low-income workers against unionized government workers in states like Wisconsin. They are making an all-out attack on the last vestiges of unions in this country, characterizing them as lazy and overpaid.

The New York Times investigated public vs. private sector pay. From the numbers they cite I'm not clear on why people think government employees are so overpaid:

The janitors who buff floors and empty wastebaskets for the State of California earn a median wage of a little over $31,000 a year, which is 45 percent more than janitors in the private sector earn there. Georgia’s janitors, by contrast, earn less than $21,000, about 6 percent below their private sector counterparts.
First, even if you include medical and retirement benefits in those numbers, those salaries are appallingly small, much less than what the average American makes.

And second, why do public-sector janitors in California make more than private sector janitors? Could it have anything to do with a steady supply of illegal immigrants in the private sector? And third, could the absence of unions have anything to do with the scathingly low pay of public-sector janitors in Georgia?

No matter how you slice it, even the "highly paid" public-sector janitors who make $31,000 in California are living on abysmally low salaries. And the private-sector janitors who are making 45% less are pulling down a scant $21K. How could a guy like my dad, with six kids and a stay-at-home-wife, possibly make it $21K? How could you even afford a place to live in California? Much less buy a house? Or send your kids to college?

But if you dig deeper:

When workers are divided into two groups — those with bachelor’s degrees and higher and those without — a very different pattern emerges. State workers with college degrees earn less, often substantially less, than private sector workers with the same education in all but three states — Montana, Nevada and Wyoming.
This is the core of what unions do: make it possible for regular, red-blooded, high-school-graduated, beef-eating, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching Americans to make enough money to live and retire on. Well-educated people who have more personal leverage with employers can make more money in the private sector than in government, where employers have less latitude to give raises and merit pay. What a surprise.

Republicans like Scott Walker are hell-bent on destroying the unions, making sure that the least-well off in this country have even less power than they already do.

But destroying public sector unions and reducing wages of public sector employees will result in the reduction of wages in the private sector as well. As the incentive for working in government goes away, there'll be more competition for private sector jobs, which will drive wages down. It's Econ 101.

And it's not going to end there. A major problem for many state and local governments is overcommitted pension funds. Republicans are attacking these next, proposing 401(k) style plans instead. But many public pensions are in serious trouble right now, and no doubt Republicans will propose the private-sector response: foist the problem on someone else. Several airlines have already used this trick, intentionally underfunding pension funds and then dumping their obligations on the federal government after declaring bankruptcy.

Will the Republicans succeed at defunding existing public pensions and destroying my father's "cushy" lifestyle before he dies? I hope not. But maybe then my dad will finally get it.

The genius of the Republican propaganda machine is that they are able to take guys like my dad, whose entire life history reflects the propensity of big companies to crush the little guy, and turn them against institutions like unions, Social Security and Medicare that gave them a shot at decent life and retirement.

Because in the end, this is a very rich country. There's more than enough wealth to pay for decent retirements for all Americans like my dad. But corporations and guys like the Koch brothers have used their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us (a good example of this is the recent runup of gas prices because of instability in the Middle East -- no real disruptions in the oil supply have occurred, but it's a great excuse to jack up prices).

The Kochs need American workers more than American workers need the Kochs. The people who actually do the work of the Koch companies are responsible for the vast wealth generated, not the Kochs. We need the people who drill oil, clean floors, drive trucks, build houses, design buildings, pave roads, grow food and cut up meat. Those people need to make a decent living so that they can afford to buy the stuff that makes our economy work. We don't need highly paid corporate execs like the Kochs who do no actual work and inherited their positions through the divine right of kings.

The Republicans are using their divide and conquer strategy on the people in the mean streets, getting the poor and middle class to duke it out over crumbs while they and the other corporate elites eat brie and swill champagne in the penthouse.

Unions ain't perfect. But they're the only shot at a decent life most regular Joes have in an age where Walmart has dismantled every mom-and-pop outfit in the country.

I think this joke my wife just got in an email today after I had written the above pretty much sums it up:
A CEO, a tea party activist and a public union employee are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies laid out before them.
The CEO takes eleven cookies for himself, turns to the Tea Partyer and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

Sunday, February 27, 2011

And The Oscar Goes To...

INSIDE JOB for Best Documentary Feature. Congratulations to Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs for being recognized as making the film of the year...hell...the century!

As Last in Line said after he saw it, "It's "House of Cards" on steroids."

Simply Stunning

And I wonder why I can't seem to get anywhere with people. Scroll down to the fourth question in this poll and take a look.

1 in 5 Americans think that the Health Care Law has been repealed. And another 25 percent don't know or refused to answer the question. Wow.

With this complete lack of involvement, it's amazing to me that our country is still functioning.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Even More "Failure" at GM

General Motors has just posted its first full year profit since 2004.

They posted a 4.7 billion dollar profit for 2010.

"I'm not sure anyone would have predicted a year ago that GM will deliver net income of $4.7 billion," Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said Thursday. The annual profit, fueled by strong sales in China and the U.S. as the global auto market began to recover, gave GM its best year since 1999, when it made $6 billion at the height of the pickup truck and sport utility vehicle boom.

Pretty great considering where they were. So...are we still sticking to the story that "Government Motors" is a failure?

Friday, February 25, 2011

Stripping Away The Douche

According to David Cay Johnston, the general public has been done a great disservice in terms of the the reporting of FACTS regarding the situation in Wisconsin.After reading his article, it's clear to me that language of douche (spoken frequently in comments here on the subject of Wisconsin) has hijacked this issue and, with the help of Mr. Johnston, needs a little translating.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

Kindly take a moment and ask the nearest friend to clean up your exploded head.

Done? Now let's continue.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

So, they take less money in order to get the better benefits. Since I don't speak douche, this seems reasonable to me. But why are they all pissed off about Governor Walker's plan then?

State workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

Perhaps if Governor Walker hadn't cut taxes or reduced audits the budget might be in a better place right now. The article goes on to detail exactly how every reporter (and some of my commenters) are factually wrong when they say, "the state workers are being asked to contribute more." Johnston makes a great argument and is quite detailed in the rest of the piece as to why this is the case. The state is paying their pensions. THE WORKERS ARE!!

And that brings us to the collective bargaining part of the equation. Why is this so important?

The fact is that all of the money going into these plans belongs to the workers because it is part of the compensation of the state workers. The fact is that the state workers negotiate their total compensation, which they then divvy up between cash wages, paid vacations, health insurance and, yes, pensions. Since the Wisconsin government workers collectively bargained for their compensation, all of the compensation they have bargained for is part of their pay and thus only the workers contribute to the pension plan. This is an indisputable fact.

Part of their fee for their service is the collective bargaining for all the benefits. Taking this away diminishes their value of their service...which is EXACTLY  the point. The message is clear once you see it. The people that stand against the state workers don't value public employees. It's just that simple.

Witness a fine and shining example of the pathological war on all the things public sector by a group of pissed off and frightened bullies blaming the completely wrong people. It's like I said yesterday...misery loves company. And if you aren't miserable, there's a whole bunch of people that want you right down in the sewage with them.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

When The Tide Goes Out, I Want To Make Sure That I Drag You Down With Me

Whether he knew it or not, Stephen Colbert (in the video I posted yesterday) summed up exactly how the conservative movement of this country has as many followers as it does. I also now understand the motivations of some of my posters.

If you take a look at most conservatives these days, they are pissed off about something. Abortion, gay marriage, the debt, unions...whatever...and each of these things are demonized to such a point of irrationality that it's quite befuddling. For years, I thought they were just dicks. Recently, I have to come think that they are mostly just bullies and adolescents but I didn't take that extra step until reading this article in the Times and hearing Colbert two days ago.

I was so blind.

What do most bullies have in common? They all have a bunch of crappy things going on in their personal lives so they act out when they are at school. Or, in this case since they are "adults," the act like creeps when they are out with people and/or posting on blogs. Take the example of Rick Hahan from the Times article.

“Something needs to be done,” he said, “and quickly.”

Across Wisconsin, residents like Mr. Hahan have fumed in recent years as tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished, and as some of the state’s best-known corporations have pressured workers to accept benefit cuts.

 
Fumed...there's the anger that they tap into as easy as pie which is why something needs to be done "quickly," I wonder if Mr. Hahan understands that this problem could have been easily remedied by not cutting taxes as the Governor did upon taking office. Taxes that were cut,  I might add, to favor the people that are (in reality) the reason why Mr. Hahan is out of a job.

And see how easily anger becomes resentment in the case of Mary Kay Horter.

Ms. Horter said she was forced to work more hours as an occupational therapist, but had not seen a raise or any retirement contributions from her employer for the last two years. All told, her family’s income has dropped by about a third.

“I don’t get to bargain in my job, either,” she said.

Ah, I see. Since Ms. Horter and Mr. Hahan don't have the same benefits, why should anyone else? Everyone, I guess, should be as miserable as them regardless of how hard they have worked to get to where they are today.

Misery does indeed love company. In American today there a fuck load of people, like Ms. Horter and Mr. Hahan, who are miserable and don't really like themselves very much. It's become increasingly obvious that these folks are ripe fruit for the pickins.

Guess who are the produce collectors?

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

So Brilliant I Can Hardly Contain Myself...

This is a nice front load to my post tomorrow which will contain an epiphany I had recently. In fact, Colbert says it in this segment.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
A Less Perfect Union - Randi Weingarten
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogVideo Archive

So That's Where That Came From

A while back, someone linked a pajamas TV video in comments which essentially said the city was in ruins because of liberal policies. Stuff like this always makes me scratch my head...what fucking planet do they live on? At least now we have an explanation as to the origin of the story.

THIS.

Not simply a lie but a Pants on Fire lie. Wow. And a chain email source to boot. Those are always reliable.

Let's take a look at some of the facts.

Since 1950, Detroit has lost more than 80 percent of its jobs because manufacturers embraced new technologies and moved their businesses to the suburbs.That destroyed retail  businesses and led to a drastic drop in the city’s population; from the 1950 peak of 1.85 million, the population had fallen to about 900,000 by 2009.

So, no one is really to blame. This is what happened when we shifted from an agrarian culture to a manufacturing society. Further...

Detroit’s decline began shortly after World War II, he said, for the same reasons Dewar cited.
If welfare were the problem, Sugrue said, then one could expect to see hollowed out sections of Stockholm or Paris, cities in nations with generous welfare programs.

Yes, they are very generous. And we don't see the issues there that we see here. I wonder why that is?


Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Corporate Takeover in Wisconsin

Tucked away on page 24 of the bill to strip some government employee unions (the ones that didn't support Walker's election) of collective bargaining rights is an interesting provision. It allows the state of Wisconsin to sell power plants without a competitive bidding process to whomever the department feels like, defining "public interest" as whatever the governor's lackey department head says it is.

Now, who would be interested in buying power plants in Wisconsin? Could it be the Koch brothers, who bought Governor Walker's election?

Why does corporate America always have its hand out, begging for government money and special deals? Why does every pro football team in the country need the government to build their stadiums for them? Why do oil companies need special tax breaks for finding new oil when the price of oil is so high and they're making money hand over fist? Why do conservatives love "privatization," where the government does all the heavy lifting (building freeways that become private tollways, privatized prisons in North Carolina, the state office buildings in Arizona, the power plants in Wisconsin), and then companies move in and take all the profit?

And then when corporations have obligations they no longer feel like living up to, they just declare bankruptcy and get out of jail free. Which several airlines did, foisting their employee pension obligations off on the federal government.

The shakedown of America by the financiers of the Tea Party has begun. The real agenda is now laid bare. They bought their elected officials; it's time to cash in.

Only Themselves to Blame

While there is no doubt in my mind that most of the people protesting in Madison right now turned out to vote last November, had the other half of eligible voters in Wisconsin actually participated in choosing a new governor, Scott Walker would not be in power.

I find it sad that the "record" was 52 percent back in 1962 and it speaks volumes about our pathetically apathetic culture. The simple fact is that lower voter turnout favors the GOP. This would be why they use the tactics they use (ACORN, Scare the Old, White Person etc.). They work. Many young people didn't turn out and vote and it's their future on the line. I'm certain as well that there were many people that were too busy with work and their lives so they just skipped the 15 minutes it would take to vote.

Now they have to live with it and they have only themselves to blame. Regardless of how this ends in Wisconsin, it's not going to go well for the individual. I use this word because I am attempting (in what I'm sure will result in failure) to get through to some of the thick skulls who read this blog (who laughingly champion individualism) that they are doing the bidding of corporate fascists. YOU (yes, you) are going to be affected adversely by this.

It's only a matter of time...

Most Excellent














I don't think I've seen a more accurate cartoon in my entire life.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Presidents Day Pageant (5)

The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

--Harry Truman, 1947

Presidents Day Pageant (4)

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

--Jimmy Carter, 1979