Sometimes I need to go Gonzo and get it out of my system. The lies, the BS, the rigged game that is this American life in the time of Bush is simply too much to handle. How did these people gain power and keep it? They lie, they cheat, they steal – and we can’t hold them accountable. Cheney shoots a hunting partner, the media goes into a feeding frenzy, and still that two-faced, side smirking SOB sits in the White House, counting his Halliburton earnings. It’s a sick and twisted nightmare without end.
We pile into the car and drive south to Ventura. Target is our destination, new bedding is our goal. We just finished painting the bedrooms in our apartment, and one thing we discovered while moving the furniture around is that our bedding sucks. It’s old, tired, torn, and ratty. The other thing we discovered lacking in our material existence is the size of our television sets; our big one is 19”, and the small one in our bedroom is 13”. That averages out to 16” per TV – a number that must be well below the national average. Americans dig big TV’s, flat screens, Plasmas, HD ready out of the box. Americans love TV at least as much as we enjoy our military toys. We watch damn near anything the networks and cable giants put before us, the more vapid the program the better. I have to believe my family can do better than a household average of 16”. We are, after all, Americans, and every American family with a decent credit rating deserves a big-ass TV.
The kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes, Miranda is whining, Gabriel wants ice cream, my wife is singing an Irving Berlin song, just another evening here on the farm. There’s a Sponge Bob marathon on the tube. “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” Crazed laughter from an animated salty dog. Where’s my margarita? Where’s my silver spoon? Where’s the Holy Grail? Should I be more afraid of George W. Bush and the arrogant dingbats he surrounds himself with or a bearded Islamic fanatic who hates the way the United States behaves itself around the world? At this point, Bush is the clear winner. Junior has laid a hurt on this country that will take decades to heal. Junior is a Fascist.
Anyway, where the Hell was I, ah yes, driving south on the 101 to Target. Besides new bedding and a respectable TV, we need the following stuff: a vacuum, a Black & Decker dustbuster, a garbage can, towels, window treatments, lamps, and an area rug for the kids’ room. Sweet Jesus, how did it ever get this bad? Maybe I should get a second job, just to pay for the basic material needs most Americans take for granted. How can we call ourselves Americans without the requisite Stuff? Indeed. We are first world rejects.
Salt on the rim, salt on the table, snow on the mountain, snow on the roof. Lucinda sings. She knows a thing or two about sadness and sorrow, wounds of the heart, big lies and small fibs, men that leave, men you wish would leave, pick-up trucks and dirt country roads. Alone again, seeking no distraction, a man sits beside his campfire, watching embers float and die in the night air. He pulls his coat around him as the darkness closes in, thinks of a beautiful girl he courted in Kansas City many years ago. Is there more to all this than flesh and bone, coin and currency, stocks and trust deeds, power and control? The sky gives no answer tonight, never has, probably never will. Dead planets tell no tales.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Saturday, February 11, 2006
3 Rounds with John Stossel
When did John Stossel become an apologist for Wal-Mart, HP, and every other American corporation that chases cheap labor around the globe like a pit bull in heat? Is Stossel serious – a serious journalist – when he claims that outsourcing jobs to India and Mexico actually benefits Americans, or is he little more than a paid propagandist with a massive bully pulpit?
Frankly, the man strikes me as unhinged, caught up in his own myth. On ABC’s 20/20 last night Stossel was trumpeting the virtues of outsourcing – how it lowers prices for goods and services for American consumers, and even better, how outsourcing creates jobs in America!
What Stossel failed to explore is the sort of jobs that outsourcing creates, how much these jobs pay, or whether or not the jobs come with employee benefits. It seems fairly obvious that many people in America today are cobbling two or more part time jobs together in order to earn what they once made at a single job. And how many part-time jobs come with benefits like health insurance, vacation allowance, or a pension? Now that the biggest players in corporate America are following the Wal-Mart model, I’d guess the answer is very few.
So sure, outsource one decent job and create three low-wage, no benefit, part-time jobs, and the statistics on job creation might look peachy on a chart or graph. A rum-addled dingbat might look at such statistics and get the idea that it’s morning in America, the best of times.
What Stossel the corporate apologist misses is the zero sum nature of the global economy. Except for the economic elite, most Americans are treading water, an accident or a misstep away from destitution. It doesn’t take much insight to see what has happened during the past thirty years: we’ve trapped ourselves in a downward spiral. Corporations export jobs to cheap labor havens and import products. Yes, goods from China and Mexico and Sri Lanka are cheap and plentiful, but if this weren’t the case, how would American consumers – whose wages have been stagnant for years – be able to afford them?
How would average working Americans forced by corporate and government policies to shoulder more and more risk for their own health care and retirement afford anything but the cheapest goods in the world?
We’re screwed because our economy is based on an endless cycle of spending and consumption; we’re screwed because we’ve been conditioned by an endless corporate drumbeat to accept a failed ideology.
I don’t want to debate John Stossel as much as I’d like to get him in the ring for three or four rounds with 14oz. gloves. The only way he’s going to understand my working-class outrage is through a serious ass-whipping.
Frankly, the man strikes me as unhinged, caught up in his own myth. On ABC’s 20/20 last night Stossel was trumpeting the virtues of outsourcing – how it lowers prices for goods and services for American consumers, and even better, how outsourcing creates jobs in America!
What Stossel failed to explore is the sort of jobs that outsourcing creates, how much these jobs pay, or whether or not the jobs come with employee benefits. It seems fairly obvious that many people in America today are cobbling two or more part time jobs together in order to earn what they once made at a single job. And how many part-time jobs come with benefits like health insurance, vacation allowance, or a pension? Now that the biggest players in corporate America are following the Wal-Mart model, I’d guess the answer is very few.
So sure, outsource one decent job and create three low-wage, no benefit, part-time jobs, and the statistics on job creation might look peachy on a chart or graph. A rum-addled dingbat might look at such statistics and get the idea that it’s morning in America, the best of times.
What Stossel the corporate apologist misses is the zero sum nature of the global economy. Except for the economic elite, most Americans are treading water, an accident or a misstep away from destitution. It doesn’t take much insight to see what has happened during the past thirty years: we’ve trapped ourselves in a downward spiral. Corporations export jobs to cheap labor havens and import products. Yes, goods from China and Mexico and Sri Lanka are cheap and plentiful, but if this weren’t the case, how would American consumers – whose wages have been stagnant for years – be able to afford them?
How would average working Americans forced by corporate and government policies to shoulder more and more risk for their own health care and retirement afford anything but the cheapest goods in the world?
We’re screwed because our economy is based on an endless cycle of spending and consumption; we’re screwed because we’ve been conditioned by an endless corporate drumbeat to accept a failed ideology.
I don’t want to debate John Stossel as much as I’d like to get him in the ring for three or four rounds with 14oz. gloves. The only way he’s going to understand my working-class outrage is through a serious ass-whipping.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Not In Our Backyard
I don't know if the Libertarian junta at the Santa Barbara News-Press will publish this letter to the editor, so I thought I'd best take matters into my own hands. Viva the 1st Amendment!
February 9, 2006
Letters Editor
Santa Barbara News-Press
PO Box 1359
Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Inre: Funny Business with School District Properties
Mr. Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, which could also be called, “I-Have-My-Piece-of-Paradise-You-Can’t-Have-Yours,” accuses the Santa Barbara School Board of failing basic math.
In fact, Mr. Earle seems to have ditched a remedial semester or two. First of all, Mr. Earle and his NIMBY coalition have every right to protect their neighborhoods from development, sensible or otherwise. On the other hand, it would be refreshing if – instead of employing scare tactics and wild exaggerations of fact – Mr. Earle and his group would get a grip and realize that all the School Board has hired UniDev to do is perform a feasibility study; of the four options being considered, only one involves workforce housing.
Instead of whipping up fear over the prospect of the school district developing workforce housing for its employees – a concept, and at this point only a concept – that could stabilize district revenues and provide a powerful retention tool for teachers and staff, about seventy-five percent of whom earn less than $65,000 a year (juxtapose that with the cost of housing around here, Mr. Earle) – Mr. Earle should be more concerned that the District might instead choose to sell the properties to a greedhead developer. Frankly, that would be the simplest course for the Board to take.
In regards to UniDev’s contract, which was granted after an open, public, competitive bidding process, Mr. Earle might take the time and trouble to go back and read the numerous, public documents detailing the compensation arrangement (which was built into the District’s procurement process before any proposals were submitted); there’s no smoking gun or inherent conflict of interest to be found in the proposal, no density figures, and no guarantee, explicit or implied, that any future contract will be awarded to UniDev.
Sincerely,
Brian Tanguay
President, Chapter 37, California School Employees Association
Santa Barbara
February 9, 2006
Letters Editor
Santa Barbara News-Press
PO Box 1359
Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Inre: Funny Business with School District Properties
Mr. Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, which could also be called, “I-Have-My-Piece-of-Paradise-You-Can’t-Have-Yours,” accuses the Santa Barbara School Board of failing basic math.
In fact, Mr. Earle seems to have ditched a remedial semester or two. First of all, Mr. Earle and his NIMBY coalition have every right to protect their neighborhoods from development, sensible or otherwise. On the other hand, it would be refreshing if – instead of employing scare tactics and wild exaggerations of fact – Mr. Earle and his group would get a grip and realize that all the School Board has hired UniDev to do is perform a feasibility study; of the four options being considered, only one involves workforce housing.
Instead of whipping up fear over the prospect of the school district developing workforce housing for its employees – a concept, and at this point only a concept – that could stabilize district revenues and provide a powerful retention tool for teachers and staff, about seventy-five percent of whom earn less than $65,000 a year (juxtapose that with the cost of housing around here, Mr. Earle) – Mr. Earle should be more concerned that the District might instead choose to sell the properties to a greedhead developer. Frankly, that would be the simplest course for the Board to take.
In regards to UniDev’s contract, which was granted after an open, public, competitive bidding process, Mr. Earle might take the time and trouble to go back and read the numerous, public documents detailing the compensation arrangement (which was built into the District’s procurement process before any proposals were submitted); there’s no smoking gun or inherent conflict of interest to be found in the proposal, no density figures, and no guarantee, explicit or implied, that any future contract will be awarded to UniDev.
Sincerely,
Brian Tanguay
President, Chapter 37, California School Employees Association
Santa Barbara
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)