THE CTM CHRONICLES - JAN'S HOUSE

Chuck followed Alice through the disaster-area front yard, past General Lee, who seemed very melancholy, and up the steps to the front porch. The dog began howling before Alice knocked. They heard the dead bolt slide, the tinkle of a chain being unlatched, and then the door swung open and a large, mannish woman in a lumberjack shirt and paint-splattered overalls appeared. She was nearly Chuck’s height and at least fifty pounds heavier. The Great Dane was at her side, barking its head off. After taking in the dog’s huge head, Chuck noticed that the animal only had three legs.

“Well, well,” Jan said, her voice a whiskey and cigarette rasp. “Look what the wind blew to my doorstep. What the hell are you doing in South-fucking-Carolina, Alice?”

“Running away from the ruin of my life, sister dear. What happened to Milo?”

Jan slapped the dog on the head to shut it up. “My asswipe neighbor ran him over, on purpose. The SOB thinks I poisoned his precious cat. What he refuses to accept is that his precious cat died of purely natural causes. I had no part in it. If I wanted to kill his cat I would have slit its throat and left it on his doorstep.”

Alice cocked her head at Chuck. “This is Chuck Miller, a fellow runaway. Picked him up in Florida. He’s got a good line, though it sounds like a load of crap to me. Claims he’s running away from the circus, but he’s obviously hiding something. He’s a natural born liar, not unlike my husband. Why are men so terrified of the truth? What have you got to drink, Jan?”

They followed Jan into the house. When the Great Dane bumped into the tattered sofa, and then banged against a floor lamp, Chuck realized the dog was blind as well as crippled. Not that a blind dog could do much damage to a house that looked as if it had been the site of a month-long party for a thousand frat brothers. Chuck was no stranger to sloth, but as he related to me several years later on one of his rare trips through Santa Barbara, Jan’s house was in a league above and beyond anything he’d ever seen.

“Tang, there was dog shit on the rug, empty tuna cans, moldy cottage cheese containers, pizza cartons, newspapers, magazines, cancelled checks, empty beer bottles, cereal boxes – it was like the woman had never seen a friggin’ trash can. The joint smelled like a cesspool. Now you know me, I’m a first-team all-world slob, a pig to the core, but this place stretched my tolerance for filth. No way was I going to sit down. Hell, it was all I could do to keep from stepping in dog shit, particularly when the damn dog comes over and starts sniffing my crotch. He smells like piss and liverwurst, and even worse, he’s got a boner the size of a Dodger dog. If Jan hadn’t been built like Mike Tyson I’d of clocked the dog with a bottle.

“Anyhow, Jan comes out of the kitchen with a bottle of peppermint schnapps, takes a belt and passes it to Alice, who takes an even bigger belt before handing it to me. Alice is already tipsy and it occurs to me that unless I keep my wits we’re going to spend the night in this shithole. I take a wee sip and hand the bottle to Jan. ‘Pussy,’ she says to me, pulling a Sherman from behind her ear and a Zippo from her pocket. She’s eye-balling me as if I’m some kind of alien. Of course I’m thinking that she’s certifiable, a nuthouse refugee. I’m a tolerant guy but I can see why the neighbors want to run Jan out. She’s the classic neighborhood freak, the crazy lady that all the kids avoid. She looks at me through a cloud of smoke and says, ‘You planning on sleeping with my sister?’ I say, I’m just trying to put some distance between myself and a bad situation. ‘Why should you be any different,’ she says. ‘Every last one of us is in a bad situation called life. Death is the only happy ending.’ ‘Oh, Jan,’ Alice says, ‘you’re so dramatic.’”

They polished off the schnapps. Alice passed out on the sofa, her head thrown back, mouth parted. Jan ordered two large pizzas with everything on them and told Chuck to run down to the street when he heard the delivery boy honk. None of the boys would come to her door. Bunch of wimps, she called them, every last one. Piss-ant boys afraid of their own shadows.

It was almost an hour before the pizzas arrived, an hour that passed for Chuck like the last hour of life on Death Row. When she wasn’t ranting about men, her neighbors, her ex-husband, lesbians, white trash, the government, Chinese-Americans, African-Americans, Serbs, Muslims and soccer moms, Jan bitched about Alice and how their father had always favored her.

Milo followed Chuck out the front door and down the walk, much more at home outdoors than in. The pizza man was a young Hindu with dark skin and wary eyes. Chuck handed the kid a $20 in exchange for a ride to the highway. “Ten dollars more for the dog,” the kid said. “I wasn’t planning on bringing him along,” Chuck said, “but what the hell. Let’s go.”

Five minutes after the pizza boy dropped them beside the Interstate, a faith-healer and self-proclaimed mystic driving a Ford station wagon with Kentucky plates picked Chuck and Milo up.

IN THE COMPANY OF SAVAGE CAPITALISM

Working people are getting ass-whipped in this country, losing ground and falling backwards, and unless you happen to subscribe to the Nation or belong to a labor union, you probably don’t even know why or how this mugging has happened.

Productivity rises continuously, but American workers don’t share in the fruits of their production. No matter how much more efficiently we produce and deliver goods and services, our corporate masters parrot the same old line: in order to compete in the global economy we must slash wages and benefits and close plants, blah, blah, blah. Off the working class trots to the salt mines to diligently produce more for lower wages, with nary a complaint about vanishing benefits or government policies that fatten corporate coffers for exporting labor to low-wage countries. The Federal minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted upwards in eight or nine years; rarely a week passes without a news story about another profitable corporation running away from its pension obligations or dumping thousands of workers on the avenue.

“Trickle down” economics gained traction during Reagan’s presidency, and has loomed large ever since “Dutch” read his lines from cue cards. Make the investor and owner class prosperous, the tale goes, and every American will eventually share in that prosperity. Sure, and bet your money on the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series. Trickle down is a suspect idea with a lousy track record. How much extra dough is trickling down into your household? Thanks to corporate-friendly monetary, labor and trade policies, the investor and owner class hasn’t been this pampered in years. They’re running the world, calling the shots, buying Congress and the White House, profiting from war, trashing the planet, living high and large at our expense.

But what of the paradox of France, a nation -- albeit a much smaller nation than the US -- that made the decision long ago to erect a stable social support system, with short work weeks, boucoup vacation time, health benefits, and employment protections. By America’s savage, dominate-at-all-costs capitalist standards, France is a wreck, a decrepit “socialist” state that simply can’t deal in the world economy. Why then does France boast one of the more successful economies in the world? Somehow, the French take care of their people and hold their own in the international marketplace.

Savage capitalism as practiced on this fruited plain works beautifully for the privileged few. For the broad majority, savage capitalism means struggle, uncertainty, and hardship. I’m not arguing here for a cradle to grave welfare state; what I’m advocating is that we grind the sharp edges off the system and restore the balance of power between owners and workers, Business and government, the pursuit of profit, and the pursuit of justice.

And just in case anyone assumes I’m against individual responsibility let me say that I’m not. Individual responsibility and initiative would still be in play in a kindler, gentler capitalist America. The central problem is that the balance of power has shifted grotesquely in favor of corporate interests and the owner class, to the point where the game is rigged in their favor. All the individual responsibility and initiative in the world is for naught when one is playing the game at a rigged table.

Dr. Duke for School Board

Dear Reader: this is a work of fiction. Don't overreact to the content or jump to inane and baseless conclusions.

I was feeling blue over the weekend and figured it was time to pay Dr. Duke a visit. I found him in the late afternoon, sitting on the porch of his rambling, termite-ravaged house, a margarita and a bong on the round table next to him. He was plunking sparrows with ball bearings shot from a homemade slingshot. “These friggin’ birds are disturbing my peace,” he said, taking aim at an oak on the edge of his lot. His pupils were dilated and there was no telling how much tequila he’d consumed. He generally woke around noon, roused himself from bed by one, did two lines of coke, drank six cups of black coffee, ate three Texas grapefruits, read the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times front page to last, checked his stock portfolio and called his eighty-nine-year-old mother, who lived in Florida and was still convinced that the Republicans stole the 2000 presidential election. He meditated two hours every night. He’d once owned a pawn shop.

Duke laid the slingshot down and fixed me with his stoner eyes. “Tell me your troubles, grasshopper.”

“Just fighting the same old shit, Doc. The grind, the rut, the choking routine.”

“Not to mention the fascists running this once great republic. Why isn’t Dick Cheney in a prison cell with a bunch of unwashed homeboys, getting his bell rung every hour on the hour? It’s damn hard to keep the faith with Dick and W running the show. That’s one reason I consume as many illicit drugs as my system can handle. Don’t suppose you want a hit? Good shit, man, guaranteed to clear the BS from your head, get you back to a place of clarity. No? OK, more for me. Hey, what’s the deal with those people you work for?”

“What people?” I asked.

“The school board. The governing body of the local schools, the five duly elected representatives of the people. I caught a few minutes of the last board meeting and couldn’t decide if I was watching a kangaroo court, a freak show, or a farce. I learned more about the Brown Act than I ever wanted to know. Was a crime committed or was it simply an act of pure ego on the part of one board member? Christ, what a waste of time.”

“I read about it in the newspaper,” I said.

Duke pointed a butane-powered BBQ lighter at me and pulled the trigger. A two-inch flame shot out. He laughed and applied the flame to his bong.

“A hundred and one pressing issues and they spend hours yakking about the Brown Act, who said what, who disclosed what, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t it seem like every freak, fanatic and fruitloop in the community came out for two minutes of fame? Sort of proves the case against Democracy, against giving too much say-so to the ignorant masses. No wonder the oligarchs rig elections and pull shenanigans to hold onto power. Public education is all well and good, if the public could only be excluded.”

Duke loaded another bearing and let fly.

“That may have been the impetus behind the exercise,” I said.

“So, one member violates the law to dramatize the importance of adhering to the law. Sounds like Karl Rove’s playbook.”

“Dramatize might be the key word there. Some people have a Jones for the spotlight, for seeing their byline in the newspaper, for acting as a lone crusader, always holding back the tide of a corrupt system.”

“I’d rather modify my brain chemistry with illicit drugs,” Duke said, “although my regimen isn’t for the faint of heart. According to my personal physician, I should have died twelve years ago. Hey, here’s a thought: perhaps I’ll run for school board, give this fine community the benefit of my experience and hard won wisdom. Dr. Duke for School Board. Has a ring to it.”

“You got some platform in mind?”

“Of course not, but something will come to me, something simple and catchy. It doesn’t take that many votes to win a seat and I can mobilize an army of miscreants, former felons, crooked real estate agents, reformed drug dealers, retired pimps. Hell yes, I can see it now. We’ll scare the bejesus out of the establishment. And if push comes to shove, I can quote the Federalist Papers just as well as the next old goat!”

Where's the Outrage?

“Years ago, there was a theory on the American left that someone – maybe it was me – termed Worsism: the worse things get, the more likely people will be to rise up and demand their rights. But in America, at least, the worse things get, the harder it becomes to even imagine any kind of resistance.”

That’s Barbara Ehrenreich, writing in the May issue of the Progressive. I post it on the Balcony because I have wondered of late why Americans appear so passive these days. Consider what we tolerate. An illegal and costly foreign invasion/occupation, government intrusion into our private communications, tax policies that favor corporations and shareholders over working people, a healthcare system that leaves millions uninsured, stagnant wages, environmental degradation, outright government corruption, and so on and so on with hardly a whimper of protest.

Why are we not in the streets demanding our rights as human beings? Why are we not out there demanding fairness and equity? Why are we not on the avenue demanding that our president be impeached?

The only folks with any fire in their guts are Latinos, immigrants, who flooded the streets and walked off public school campuses to protest a House bill on immigration. Good for them. Perhaps the rest of us can learn something about organizing from our Latino friends and neighbors.

Why are Americans so passive? Is it because we are distracted by consumer culture, the endless accumulation of goods; by the fact that many in the working class need two jobs to stay there; by mass media that rarely report stories that matter to us. I suppose the answer is a combination of all these factors.

In the Labor movement (what remains of it) we are often reminded that power concedes nothing without a demand. Demand implies action, organization, focus. People often ask me why I donate time and energy to my labor union, and I think the simple answer is that I recognize that power in this country has shifted too far in favor of Capital over Labor, of moneyed interests over human interests, of the powerful over the powerless. Working people deserve better, and our country as a whole can do much better.

But until we show the powerful that we are fed up to the point where we refuse to lay down and take it any more, they will continue to drive us down, and out.

PROBING THE JUICERS

So, at long last, Major League Baseball is going to conduct an investigation into illegal steroid use by players such as Barry Bonds. If the book Game of Shadows had not been published it is unlikely MLB would have taken this step.

Game of Shadows details with some precision steroid use by numerous professional athletes, among them Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and the biggest fish of all, Barry Bonds.

It certainly doesn’t take a chemist or a positive drug test to realize that something was up with Barry Bonds. If you look at photographs of the young Bonds next to the Bonds that emerged in 1998, you almost wonder if you are looking at the same man. Bonds transformed himself from lean, even scrawny, to mammoth – at an age when men typically lose muscle mass. Bonds claimed he never “knowingly” touched illegal substances and earned his fabulous physique through hard work in the gym.

Game of Shadows makes Bonds’s claim look ridiculous. In the book Bonds comes across as surly, arrogant, egotistical, petty, jealous, tyrannical, in short, a real asshole, coddled and tolerated his entire life because of his immense talent. His on-field achievements the last several seasons are other-worldly enough to warrant a full-scale probe. How does a player who never hit more than 49 homers in a season suddenly smack 73? How does a player reach a peak of excellence never seen before at a time in his career when most players the same age are slowing down or in outright decline?

Henry Aaron never hit more than 50 homers in a season. Aaron’s remarkable offensive numbers accumulated over the years of his career, never spiking way up or trending way down. With Bonds it’s the opposite. From 1998 on, the year it is suspected he began using steroids, Bonds’s statistics went through the roof, past above average, past great, all the way to immortal.

I love the game of baseball and I want to know if the numbers put up since 1998 – the year Sosa and McGwire dueled for the single season homer record – are the result of talent or talent plus performance enhancing drugs. No single player, no matter how great or how surly, should stand above the rules of the game. Major League Baseball’s steroid testing policy to this point has been laughable, a sham, and Bud Selig and Donald Fehr have acted like wimps. If players are dirty, they should be fined, suspended or banned from the game.

It’s past time for Major League Baseball to step up on the steroid issue.

Monkey-Man

All doubts have been dispelled. The need for debate is over. All that’s left is for some qualified mental health professional to make it official.

George W. Bush, supreme leader of the so-called free world, is a moron. Forget the fact that he looked like a spider monkey amped on meth amphetamine during his press conference yesterday. Bush appears stupid because he is stupid. You can’t fake that.

The press conference format is now so watered down and choreographed that it’s nearly meaningless. Karl Rove and Company give Bush a chart showing which reporters are sitting where, so that when Bush calls on them he can say, all folksy, “Yes, Jim.” The only reporter in the room with any balls is a woman, the venerable Helen Thomas. Thomas asked sharp questions which the president ducked, and when Thomas tried to bring Bush back to reality, Bush said, “Let me finish,” and continued with his inane answer.

“People want to know what’s on my mind,” Bush said at one point. Really? I could care less. What’s on Bush’s mind is pretty clear; continued destruction of America as we know it. How many times did Bush repeat, “We have a plan for victory.” Wow, that’s so reassuring, given that the architects of the plan are the same fools whose lies and exaggerations got us into Iraq in the first place.

Bush was at his lying best when he stated, “They made Iraq the central front in the War on Terror.” No, George, you did that all by yourself. Iraq had little or nothing to do with September 11. You and your cronies saw in Iraq what you wanted to see, and it has cost us dearly.

The Bush communication strategy is simple: repeat the same message over and over and don’t fret if the facts contradict the message. For instance, Bush laid most of the blame for the exploding Federal debt at the doorstep of “mandatory spending” increases, specifically Social Security and Medicaid, two New Deal-style programs that the GOP has tried to gut and kill for decades. Is he daft? The so called War in Iraq is the driving force behind the debt, not social entitlement programs.

What other outrageous, disingenuous things did Monkey-Man say? Well, he refused to characterize the chaos in Iraq as civil war, even though Sunnis are Killing Shiites and vice versa. Bush used the word “sectarian” several times and actually pronounced the word correctly. Obviously, Karl Rove has done some intense tutoring with Monkey-Man on his elocution.

Bush also refused to criticize Donald Rumsfeld, even though it’s abundantly clear that Rumsfeld is a bumbling dingbat who would have had trouble overseeing the invasion and occupation of Fiji. I noted too that Bush made a big deal about going to the UN prior to unleashing the dogs of war; but Monkey-Man forgot to mention that Colin Powell lied through his teeth. In addition, now that I think of it, Bush said Saddam Hussein ruled by Fear and Intimidation. Golly, isn’t that exactly what Bush has done here at home, whipping up our fear of another 9-11 style attack, of anthrax, and of dangerous foreigners crossing our borders? When it comes to playing the role of dictator, Bush is a natural.

Five and a half years of Monkey-Man. Sweet Jesus! And Congress impeached Bill Clinton for a harmless blow-job! What a country!

Three Years In

Three Years In

George and Dick tell us things are fine
(not really, ask Cindy Sheehan)
Democracy is on the march
(though the wrong party won)
The insurgency is on its last legs
(but growing stronger every day)
Average Iraqis are better off
(except they can’t leave their homes for fear of getting killed)
That our sacrifice in youth and blood and money is worth it
(how so?)
And all we need do is resolve to stay the course
(how long, how many dead?)

This is the fog of war
The fog of denial
The fog of fantasy
The fog of arrogance

This is our leaders out of touch
Out of common sense
Out of common decency
Committing folly in our name

I’m not down with that
Are you?

Baste the Hog

I feel like a slacker for not keeping the Balcony updated with new material, but life intervenes, union business intervenes, and my beautiful children intervene. The sun is peeking in the window, though I also hear rain pattering on the roof. Weird weather on the South Coast of late, with snow on the mountains last Saturday, rain and wind, colder temperatures, a full moon at night. No matter, the price of real estate continues to rise and the gilded residents of Fat City are as happy as the proverbial hog in the mud.

Amen. Baste that hog and pickle his ears, eat his feet and spread his liver on saltines.

Listen carefully. Hear those war drums? That’s the Bush Junta, drumming up war fever against those wicked Iranians, who may or may not (probably not) have a nuclear device with which they can level Israel or strike southern Florida. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? It seems we had an opportunity to support moderate elements in Iran, but let that pass because we had our head buried in Iraq’s sand.

And will someone explain the logic of W’s decision to give nuclear know-how to India – a nation that refuses to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty? W agreed to help India advance its nuclear program, and a day or two later denied Pakistan’s request for similar help, even though Pakistan is our staunch ally in the great, open-ended, War on Terror. Huh?

Can anyone remember an American administration as hostile to science and the scientific community as the Bush Junta? Bush and Co. can’t give enough research dough to the military establishment, while at the same time swinging the budget axe and cutting medical and environmental research. Aspects of science that they disagree with, or that get in the way of commerce, are simply ignored. When a country loses its soul it often becomes militaristic, and sees every problem through a military power prism. If America isn’t to that point, we are close, very close. We rampage around the globe, bullying allies, threatening friends, issuing ultimatums; the values that made us a decent nation lay strewn in the dust behind us.

Here in Fat City, at Noon on a Wednesday, the homeless, the disaffected, the mentally disturbed, the lost, the left behind, and yes, the lazy, cluster on State Street near Blenders in the Grass, talking, smoking, panhandling passersby, and generally sending shivers through the spines of the merchant class. The juxtaposition of this group and the well-to-do shoppers who stream along State Street, is a stark reminder that all is not well, even here on the Gilded Coast.

Amen, and now let’s get back to that hog.

Sad State of Affairs

Children show us our limitations and weaknesses, hone in our Achilles Heel and exploit it for all its worth. My pair of offspring get me every time. I can be as calm as a Zen master, right up to the moment they start screaming at one another over something trivial. Miranda, darling daughter, is as cute and as headstrong as they come, and when she gets into a frothing tantrum her endurance is incredible. A week ago she set an American record for an in-the-car tantrum. She was wailing when we left Lake Cachuma and still wailing with the same intensity when we pulled into the driveway here at Hacienda Milpas. By then my nerves were frazzled and my brain felt like it was trapped in a pinball machine, and I had forgotten what got the child so riled up in the first place. My patience was shot, my reservoir of kindness was bone dry, and once again I felt whipped.

Been reading about the mess in Iraq, how the country is teetering on the brink of civil war, and how Bush & Co. continue to declare that things are progressing fine, right on schedule; the fact that Sunnis and Shiites are at each other’s throats is just a blip on the radar screen. Sure, and Dick Cheney is a crack shot and a stand-up guy. Christ, how dumb can our leaders be? Civil war was the only possible outcome of the US invasion/occupation. The genie shot out of the bottle the minute we toppled Saddam. Minus the iron control enforced for decades by Saddam’s thugs, Iraq’s ethnic and religious enmities and hatreds were destined to bubble over. The question was never If – the question was When. A lot of bright people warned Bush & Co. that toppling Saddam would be a cakewalk compared with governing Iraq afterwards. Of course, the warmongers in the White House paid no attention to anyone who knew what they were talking about.

Here’s something to think about: the last time Congress raised the Federal minimum wage was back in 1997. Since then, Congress has raised its own salaries seven or eight times. Who’s working for whom? And Congress members have a cool package of health insurance benefits, too.

And W is in India, inflicting himself on that poor but up and coming nation. And why not, since India is a prime outsourcing spot for American CEO’s determined to improve the corporate bottom line at any cost. Let’s lift poor Indians while pushing American workers to the bottom of the economic heap. At any other time, such national policy would be excoriated, but this is the time of Bush so it makes perfect sense.

I wonder if Americans are suffering from “scandal fatigue.” Iraq, Katrina, rampant cronyism, Cheney’s hunting mishap, and all the rest. As the media brings the sanitized versions to our attention, as the talking heads on Fox spin the truth around on its ear, as the White House spokesperson shrugs and says, “We did nothing wrong,” the American public sighs, shakes its collective head and switches over to Dancing with the Stars or Lost. It’s like, “Oh, Bush and his team lied again, cheated again, rigged the game for their cronies again. So what’s new? Honey, what’s for dinner?”

Sad state of affairs.

Our President Lies, the Constitution Dies

Our President lies
Sons and daughters die
Sacrificed for a senseless Occupation
Our President lies
brothers and sisters drown
forsaken in the storm
Self-righteous fools have a hammer-lock on the wheel

Mountain of lies, mountain of bones

We’re short on truth of the simple variety
The info machine attacks the truth-tellers
Discredits them but not their story
Destroy the messenger
Ignore the message

Mountain of lies, mountain of bones

Where to turn, who to turn to?
God, maybe
Jack Daniels, maybe
Krishnamurti, maybe
Dr. Phil, maybe
L. Ron Hubbard, maybe

Mountain of lies, mountain of bones

Where’s Woody Guthrie? We need his kind now
Where’s Joe Hill and Malcolm X? We need them too
At this point I’d settle for Emma Goldman or FDR
Anyone who can revive our revolutionary memory
We came into this world of nations kicking and screaming
Protesting injustice, the whims and greed of a distant
King

We marched together, fought together, stood up together
One day soon
Before it’s too late
I hope we march again
Up the slope of this mountain of lies
Down the other side, trampling the bones
into
dust

In the Stream (of consciousness)

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.

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.

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

MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD

Depending on your party affiliation, the State of the Union speech is either a highpoint of American political life or a sick joke. I’m not looking forward to W’s rendition tonight, and I’m ninety-five percent sure that I won’t bother watching.

Bush will tell us that the Iraq Occupation is going just great, thank you; that the air and water are cleaner in America than ever, the trees and wildlife flourishing; that the massive tax cuts for the wealthy are spurring an economic recovery that is the envy of the civilized world; that his Medicare drug plan is the best thing to happen to our senior citizens in at least half a century; that the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast is proceeding according to plan; and finally, that we are safer because the government is keeping watch on the bad guys in our ranks.

Morning in America, all’s well, if you don’t believe it just ask Karl Rove.

Bush will spin like a top, and if that means calling white black and black white, well, who’s keeping score? What is truth but spin, and who spins better than the Conservative machine? Bill O and Rush L, and all the rest of the blowhards will echo the president’s assertions across the land, lending credence to the exaggerations and outright falsehoods, but like I said, who’s keeping track except a few powerless Liberals out on the fringes?

George Orwell, wherever he is, will not laugh tonight; Martin Luther King won’t either; Robert F. Kennedy will flop around with angst; Tom Paine will scream. A society that cannot tell truth from fiction is in trouble. A society that is so easily led around by its nose is doomed. A society that allows its laws to be trampled cannot long stand.

Osama bin Laden may chuckle tonight. Osama and perhaps Dick Cheney, sitting in different locations on this spinning planet, chuckling because doing what they do is so damn easy.

Fanfare for Failure

According to reporting in the Los Angeles Times, Ford will slash 30,000 US jobs and close or scale back operations at 14 of its plants. Ford chairman Bill Ford says this scheme will put the once-revered automaker on track for profitability. Wall Street ate the news whole, bidding up Ford’s stock.

As usual, blue-collar workers will bear the brunt of the cuts. Goodbye to decent wages, benefits, and pensions. In his statement to the press Bill Ford said, “We will be making painful sacrifices to protect Ford’s heritage and secure our future. Going forward, we will be able to deliver more innovative products, better returns for our shareholders, and stability in the communities where we operate.”

Not a word in there about the working men and women of Ford. I guess their well-being isn’t worth consideration. Five or six years from now, when this plan, like all of Ford’s previous realignment plans, fails to turn the company’s fortunes around, you’ll hear Bill Ford or some other lavishly compensated chairman declare that what the company needs is more sacrifice from the blue-collar work force: more wage cuts, more health insurance cost-sharing, more pension concessions. Wall Street will swallow that story, too.

What’s amazing to me about these sad tales from once great American companies is how infrequently the lavishly compensated chairmen admit that much of the fault lies in the executive suite, where mediocre designs are approved and green-lighted, where accounting sleight-of-hand is encouraged, and where executive pay and perks rise even when the company is losing money hand over fist. It’s so much easier to blame the United Auto Workers.

It’s all of a piece, when the puzzle is disassembled and put together again, three decades of legislation and regulation favoring capital over labor; three decades of transferring risk from corporations to individual workers without a corresponding increase in the means to cover that risk; three decades of chasing cheap labor around the globe. It won’t be much longer before the average Ford line worker will be unable to buy the cars and trucks he plays a part in building.

///

Ownership society, no thanks. The Bush Medicare plan is an unmitigated disaster, yet another scandal, yet another example of how Bush and his pals serve their corporate constituents to the detriment of average citizens. Democrats didn’t have the numbers to prevent the GOP-controlled Congress from passing this horribly convoluted and unjust plan, so its failure sits at the feet of the GOP.

You're a Pig, Yes, I Am

My wife says to me, “Who the hell do you think you are?” I say, “What are you talking about?” She says, “That garbage you wrote in your last blog, about how stupid the Golden Globes are, about how stupid I am for watching them!” I say, “I never said you were stupid, I said that whole red carpet entertainment parasite feeding frenzy, that inane gushing over the stars is stupid.” She says, “No, you were implicitly calling me and anyone who watches stupid. You sounded like an arrogant snob, a pig, though I noticed you had no trouble pulling yourself away from ‘Literature’ in order to gawk at Scarlett Johanssen’s breasts!” I say, “Well, they were right there, damn near exploding through the TV screen! You said yourself that her breasts arrived thirty minutes before she did!” She says, “You’re a cultural snob, case closed. You think you’re better than me because you read Philip Roth and I watch the Golden Globes. Want to know something? I think Philip Roth is a pig, too! Oh, he may be the greatest living American novelist, a genius, but that doesn’t make him any less of a pig! A smart pig is still a pig!”

Oink, oink.

Martin Luther King and Lab Mice

Behind me my wife is watching the stars and near-stars walk the red carpet to the Golden Globes. This is one of the stupidest rituals in pop culture -- this red carpet stroll, with airhead entertainment parasites asking inane questions that some of the stars seem exasperated to answer. "Who are you wearing?" "What did you eat for lunch?" and so on. It's like a competition to see which talking head can ask the lamest question.

This is particularly difficult for me to take, after lying on the sofa this afternoon, finishing Philip Roth's magnificent novel, I Married a Communist. Roth has written some stunning novels about 20th century America -- the Human Stain, American Pastoral, and I Married a Communist -- novels which detail our contradictions and hyprocrisies, our fear and paranoa, our weakness and confusion. Roth writes about flawed characters -- human beings, in other words, who strive, who fail, who seek revenge, who lie (for all sorts of reasons), who hate, and on and on, the full human panorama. What a pleasure it is to read Roth's sentences, the perfect cadence, the pitch, the blinding intelligence and insight, the powerful narrative drive. I was disappointed when the novel came to an end.

My children tested me today, as only they can do, with their arguments and fights, their screaming and whining, their demands for immediate gratification, their smiling obstinancy. I separate them like a referee stepping between two prizefighters, point them toward neutral rooms, only to hear them going at it again as soon as I turn my back. They know how to push my buttons, and far too often I respond like a mouse in a laboratory experiment; my kids make me perform for bite-sized food pellets. C'mon, Dad, stand on your head, one more time!

As the afternoon turns to evening, I wonder what Martin Luther King would say if he could see America, circa 2006. Would he still express hope for social and economic justice? Would he look at what Bush & Cheney have done to America in less than half a decade and still feel sanguine? Could he listen to leading Democrats without declaring the whole shebang a hopeless mess? We give Martin sainthood, but of course he was merely a man, human, as flawed as any Philip Roth character.

Who's Up, Who's Down

I'm dog tired
from boxing and beer
a shot to the head, one to the gut
Don't care who's up or who's down
which Hollywood star is pregnant
or suffering the pain of betryal or struggling to kick an eating disorder
don't care about the Dow Jones Industrial average
my wife's got a pain in her hip and I worry about that
I'm flying to San Diego in the morning, through friendly skies -- but only after
I remove my shoes for the TSA, take all the stuff from my pockets,
show my boarding pass and ID, just another decent American, boys,
law-abiding, no threat to anyone, you got nothing to fear from me
I got Philip Roth in the bag, an iPod in my ear, clean underwear, pictures of my
family
I can't help but think of these fleeting moments, the pang of mortality
jab, jab, duck and cover

A Bowl of Dead Roses and other Thoughts

75 degrees in January. this is why we live in Fat City, on this Platinum Coast. to the asswipe who read my last poem and hypothesized that I'm just a rich snob who has never worked a day in his life, I say, bite me. for your information I've been working since I was 17 years of age; I was in the Air Force in Japan serving my country at 18; my net worth is a joke, though I live a solid, happy life that is full of love. tell me where your "shop" is and I'll gladly come down and give you a hand with whatever it is you do. in an effort to further educate you, I'm an aging Idealist who still clings to a shred of belief that this tortured world can be made better, that people can set aside their differences and cooperate, that justice is possible, that teachers are heroic souls, that women are the salt of the Earth, that public service is noble, etc. o.k? I'm sure you are a decent person, whoever you are.

Texas didn't win the Rose Bowl game last night, USC lost it. Too many mistakes for the Trojans, from Reggie Bush's inexplicable lateral in the first quarter to a defensive unit that forgot the fundamentals of tackling. It was a terrific contest, and for Vince Young, perhaps the greatest individual performance in college football history. I don't watch football or profess to understand the game particularly well, but when SC failed on fourth and two I knew the Trojans' goose was baked. The only way they could have stopped Vince Young was with an elephant gun loaded with depleted uranium ammo.

Anyway, peace out everybody!

2005, Goodbye

2005, Goodbye

Tsunami
HST R.I.P
George W. Bush, “Stay the Course. We’re Winning!”
Katrina – There are poor in America, who knew?
Gas $3 a gallon
Warning: The NSA might be spying on you
Scandal masters: DeLay, Scooter, Abramoff, et al.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the overreaching Austrian
The price of real estate
Warning: The NSA is spying on you
Milestone – 2,000 killed, and counting
Fact: Global warming is real – someone tell W and Dick
Rent, the movie
Bird flu
Intelligent Design (Translated: ignore science)
Brad & Jen, Splittsville
Chicago White Sox Sweep
Devils & Dust, “Got my finger on the trigger/but I don’t know who to trust”
The delicate soul of a good woman
The lies of a hopelessly flawed man
The unfiltered joy of two healthy children
Thoughts
Dreams
Fantasies
Nightmares
Loss, pain, destruction
Life
Shirtless in December, sky perfect blue
Leaves from the tree of life cut loose and soar

Poem - Apology to Mother Earth

Sorry about the methane gas rising from our
Garbage dumps
The dead and dying coral in the seas
Clear cutting & “Mountain Top Removal”
Sorry about the benzene in the ground water, acid in the rain
The radiation buried near your heart

When the meek inherit they will find a wasteland
A lonely place destroyed by indifference
Collective greed & arrogance
The insane notion that you were ours to subdue
And enslave

Despite clear signs & warnings
We keep slashing & burning, drilling & pumping
Lured, driven, goaded by profit, profit, profit
Our true God
Entitled to waste what we can afford to buy
Or so we think in our twisted way

We can’t leave well enough alone, let it be;
I ask the question I know the answer to:
Are such fools to be forgiven?

One Day Real Soon

One of these days, swear to God, I’m going to write something light and amusing, and stick it on the Balcony, but for now, the best subject in town is G.W. Bush and the Reign of Terror.

Bush is on the PR circuit, trying to persuade Americans that great and magical things are happening in American-occupied Iraq. That’s a tough sell these days if the latest polling numbers are accurate; the majority of Americans aren’t buying the Administration line, no matter how much the Bush people spin.

And those folks must be getting dizzy, their fat heads about to explode, spinning at the rate they are, supersonic speed.

Bush and Co. are also trying to convince Americans that the economy is percolating just fine, with job growth and rosy profit predictions, and plenty of people in the shopping malls, plunking down cash or plastic. That may be true when it comes to the American elite, the ownership class, but it’s absolute fantasy for the rest of Americans. GDP may be up, but workers are staring at stagnant wages and continued erosion of employer-paid health benefits. One segment of our population is happy as pie because everything is going their way – their pal Bush and his enviable Congressional majority gets huge tax cuts passed, so they are keeping even more of what their investments earn.

Lucky buggars.

The majority of us are struggling, sinking, or holding on for dear life, up to our ears in debt, one uninsured illness from ruin. We’re getting by but going nowhere near the hallowed ground where the American elite dwell. They segregate by wealth, buying distance between themselves and the great unwashed, stinking rest of us.

The problem is that Bush’s numbers don’t add up, doomed by an overpowering combination of huge budget and trade deficits, the massive expense of the Iraq Occupation, and the incredibly generous tax cuts for the elite. Bush has maxed out the American charge card. We’re tapped, and the Chinese are raking it in, getting our money front and back, from the purchases of goods and services to the cash we pay them in the form of interest. Does anyone get the funny feeling that we’re sinking while the Chinese are rising?

Yeah, one of these days I’ll get around to writing something optimistic and upbeat.

Sing, a Poem

Our lord
My lord
King of Kings
Prince of peace
Sing for the dead & deformed
Sing for the Last of the Mohicans
Sing for the lost loons
Sing for December
Sing for pale afternoons
Sing for the broken-hearted
Sing for the babies & the old
Sing for this tri-tip sandwich served by a blonde bimbo
Sing for shapely ladies talking on cell phones
Sing for the souls of the Armenians
Sing for the Jews
Sing for the Tibetans
Sing for Saddam & his victims
Sing for Dick Cheney (then crack the whip on his flabby white ass)
Sing for the rain forest & the tundra
Sing in a falsetto, sing in a baritone
Sing over the sound of tolling bells
Sing in protest
Sing in praise
Sing over flag-draped coffins
Sing for the residents of Skid Row
Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing

Bush Lays Out Plan, Sort Of

Stay the course. Vital national interests. The front in the War. Total victory.

George W. Bush must be crazy, delusional, disassociated from reality. All this gibberish spewed to a captive crowd of Naval cadets, some of the best and brightest of our privileged youth, with the blood of more than 2,000 US soldiers on Bush’s hands, and despite a mountain of evidence, the President continues to believe this “war” can be won.

Won, how? First of all, Bush has it wrong – what is happening in Iraq isn’t a war, it’s the back end of an invasion, an occupation of one nation by another of superior military might. Iraq never posed a credible or imminent threat to the US, never attacked the US, and was most certainly not in cahoots with Al Qaeda.

And note to George: Iraq wasn’t the center of the War on Terror until your deluded policies made it so.

As the political winds blow, Bush’s rationale for the Invasion/Occupation changes; in the beginning it was all about WMD, anthrax stockpiles, mustard gas and whatnot. When the WMD failed to turn up on cue, the rationale changed to creating democracy in Iraq, giving the long-suffering Iraqis the magic power of self-determination.

Guaranteeing US oil interests access to Iraq’s reserves never enters into the discussion, though OIL hovers in the background of every purported reason for our spilling blood in Iraq in the first place.

Bush is right to say that a war cannot be won on a timetable, but wrong to make this assertion regarding Iraq. An occupation can most certainly be ended on a predetermined timetable.

As long as the US maintains a military presence on Iraqi soil, there will be fighting, car bombs, suicide missions, and strife. When and if we depart, Iraq may descend into civil war or its various factions will figure out a way to coexist, either in a democratic framework or something else.

W has got to stop channeling LBJ and Nixon. The Occupation is not going well, the American citizenry are fed up with the human and monetary cost, and the longer the US remains the worse this wretched deal gets.

Sometimes the greatest act of leadership is to stare reality in the face, admit error, and call for a retreat. This takes guts and wisdom in equal measure, traits that W doesn’t appear to possess.

GIANT NO MORE

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I saw an editorial cartoon in the Santa Barbara News-Press (often referred to around here as the Snooze-Mess), syndicated from the Orange County Register, that depicted a vehicle emblazoned with the General Motors logo, an engine labeled United Auto Workers, and an exhaust tank which read, Revenues.

The exhaust tank was festooned with cobwebs, clearly rendering the meaning of the cartoon: GM’s money woes are the fault of the United Auto Workers.

All I can say to that notion is Bullshit. GM’s problems are bigger than its unionized blue-collar workforce, and to lay the blame for the decline of this American industrial icon at the feet of the men and women who assemble GM cars and trucks is to miss the larger picture.

GM has been lurching into irrelevancy for nearly two decades. Remember Roger & Me, Michael Moore’s 1989 film about the effects of a GM plant closing in Flint, Michigan? From the mid-80’s on GM was struggling to compete with Toyota and Honda, Japanese manufacturers who built high-quality, fuel-efficient, front-wheel drive vehicles. GM still held the title of world’s biggest manufacturing company, but every passing year saw Honda and Toyota chip away at GM’s market dominance.

How did giant GM respond to the threat from abroad? First, CEO Roger Smith pushed through the acquisition of Hughes Aircraft Company, a defense contractor, ostensibly to milk Hughes’s hi-tech expertise. Smith and other GM honchos thought a dose of space-age technology could help GM build more appealing vehicles.

The only problem with this billion dollar experiment was that GM never quite figured out how to harness Hughes’s strengths and marry them with its own.

With great fanfare, GM then announces the creation of a brand new car division called “Saturn” that would not only revolutionize GM but the American auto industry as well. Saturn, Roger Smith assured the Wall Street crowd, would operate completely outside the GM box; in itself, this boast was a backhanded indictment of GM’s bloated processes. Saturn wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, just one that came to fruition too late to halt GM’s slide.

GM’s core problem was never entirely its blue-collar workforce. Bloated and inefficient management lay at the center of GM’s woes. Year after year the giant reorganized and restructured, closing a plant here, shifting production to Canada or Texas, tinkering with its supply chain, but nothing could stem the tide. The cars and trucks coming off the GM drawing board simply paled in quality and style to those imported from abroad.

At one point it got so bad that GM entered into a joint venture with Toyota to build the Corolla, Toyota’s flagship vehicle, in Fremont, California using Japanese manufacturing processes and UAW represented labor. Soon, Honda was building cars in the US using the same framework.

GM was so dominant for so long, with far flung operations so massive and intimately connected to the fortunes of the US economy, that the company – management and labor – grew fat, happy, and complacent. Toyota and Honda were mere upstarts way back when, nothing to worry about.

By the time GM realized it was in a fight for market share with savvy adversaries it was too late for the giant to shake its behemoth mindset and change for the future.

Sure, the blue collar workforce represented by the UAW bears some of the responsibility, but don’t lay the whole enchilada at the feet of working men and women.

Anniversary of the Balcony

As the calendar turns and the crow flies I see that Shouts from the Balcony is a year old this month.

The blogosphere is full of crackpots, and I am certainly one, sitting here week after week – day after day in some instances – writing to a worldwide yet largely invisible audience. This still seems self-indulgent and screwy to me, a loon on a street corner shouting into a gale force wind.

Folks trip across the Balcony by accident, stay for less than a minute, on average, and split in search of something more interesting.

A couple of readers have asked why I write about external things like national politics and very little about my family. Basic privacy is one reason, point of view would be another; sometimes it’s easier to draw a bead on a far off target than one nearby. Another reason for my choice of subjects is that the current national political scene pisses me off and compels me to add my voice to the din. When you look at your country, even from afar, and don’t recognize it, that’s cause for alarm.

Interest in the Balcony spiked after I posted a rant against a local school board member. I had no idea that the piece would be referred to in the Santa Barbara News-Press as an “angry” blog, or that the blog address would be printed in the paper. Lots of people visited after that.

But like I said, now it’s the occasional day-tripper, my in-laws, my mother, Bubba who lives in Arizona, a few colleagues from the school district where I work. I started this thing on a lark and never expected much. Writers are notorious feedback hounds, however, and it’s gratifying when someone posts a comment, reports that something struck them as funny, insightful or even downright pigheaded.

Whether or not the Balcony will see a second anniversary is an open question. Time and events will tell, but for now, I thank all those who have visited.

THE CTM CHRONICLES - On the Road with Alice

Alice DuPont lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of an old one, passed Chuck a bottle of Old Parr scotch, and stomped on the gas, pushing the Corvette up to ninety miles an hour. “That’s good stuff,” she said. “Aged twelve years. My soon-to-be-ex-husband distributes the crap. Go ahead, have a pull. There’s more in the trunk.”

Chuck took a drink and passed the bottle back. He wasn’t sure if Alice DuPont was tipsy or flat-out crazy, but for the moment, his fate was intertwined with hers and there was nothing to be done about it except settle back and watch South Carolina flash past. On the one hand he felt happy. With every passing mile he was putting distance between himself and Patricia. On the other – and that’s the problem with the other hand, it jumps in at inopportune moments – he was nagged by a vision of her lying in the bathtub with her wrists slashed. (Years later when her book came out he would learn that Patricia had indeed tried to do herself in by swallowing forty-seven aspirin tablets.)

Alice looked to be in her early 50’s though it was hard to be certain because her face was puffy from crying. Her hair was reddish-brown and naturally curly. Her eyes were blue, sad, and bloodshot. Even before she started talking about the tangled mess her life had become, Chuck sensed her sadness and pain; the story was etched in the lines around her eyes and in the furrows between her eyebrows.

Alice began by saying, “My husband is a miserable, duplicitous bastard, a liar, a cheat and a thief. He stole the prime of my life from me. Twenty-four years of marriage and only this morning do I discover that the sonofabitch has a second family, in Scotland, where he spends half the year on business. Can you believe that crap? Pretty young wife, two small kids, a house, a dog, the whole nine yards. In Scotland. I’d kill him if I thought I could get away with it, I really would. I’d slice his dick off and feed it to his dog. That stuff about a woman scorned is true, though I suppose you’re too young to understand. But you will and I’d bet my last dollar that one day you’ll do the same damn thing to some poor, unsuspecting girl. Men are no better than pigs! Here, have another drink!”

Chuck had another swig and handed the bottle back.

“What are you running away from?” Alice asked.

“The circus,” Chuck said. “I’m a high-wire man but the gig was getting to be a drag, so I asked the boss if I could try my hand at taming the lion. He said no, so I split.”

“Sounds like a load of crap to me,” Alice said. “Don’t most people run away to join the circus?”

“Not me.”

Alice grunted. “You travel light. Looks like you left in a hurry. Maybe the fire-eater was chasing you?”

“It was the bearded lady, all three hundred and ten pounds of her. She wanted me, I wasn’t into her, it was an awkward situation that affected my concentration and when your job is the high-wire, the last thing you need is a distraction like that. It was time for me to bail.”

“Aren’t you a clever one,” Alice said dryly. “I can see why she was hot for you.”

“What can I say? People who defy death for a living have a certain aura about them.”

“Christ. What a load of crap. You’re a born bullshitter, aren’t you?”

“What’s in New York City?” Chuck asked.

“My brother, Sam, the only sane member of my entire family. He lives in the Village with his wife and daughter, plays the sax for a living. Sweet, big-hearted Sammy, who managed to escape the genetic madness that plagues our family. Now Jan, my sister, who I’m on my way to visit if I can remember where she lives, is as eccentric as the day is long. Even when we were kids she was off. She got married right out of high school, moved to Oregon, decided one day that she wanted to be a lesbian, divorced her husband and moved to Manitoba with her new lover. That lasted four or five years, until Jan decided that being a lesbian wasn’t for her after all. She moved to Seattle and met a Chinese engineer by the name of Hai Le Chang. Chang was about five feet tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds soaking wet, a computer geek who designed software for Boeing. Hai had some sexual issues, liked to be spanked, dressed in a diaper, that sort of thing. Oh, we’re a colorful dysfunctional family all right. You want to jump out?”

“Not yet,” Chuck said. “Where are we?”

They were driving in the suburbs now, in a town called Goose Creek, past modest homes on generous lots, tree-lined streets, all-American, picket fences and bicycles in the yard, RV’s parked alongside the houses.

“Do you know how Jan decided to move here?” Alice asked. “She threw a dart at a map of the United States and without a second thought packed her things in a U-Haul and came here. She keeps a Great Dane for protection. She also has a python named Monty that lives under her bed.”

Chuck spotted Jan’s house before Alice did, not that it was hard to pick out. Sweetwater Street was neat and orderly, spilling over with middle-class pride, until suddenly one house ruined the entire mosaic, Jan’s place, of course. There was a 1962 VW Bug in the driveway, sitting on its rims, dented and splattered with bird droppings, speckled with rust; a life-size bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, saber drawn and ready to defend the Old South against all comers, stood on the front lawn. General Lee was surrounded by the weirdest collection of stuff Chuck had ever seen: wrought-iron birds, clay jaguars, a toilet sunk in a flower bed, a claw-footed bathtub full of bicycle tires, a lamp post, golf clubs, aluminum baseball bats, lobster traps, a full-size trampoline; a male mannequin with a noose around its neck hung from a tree; another mannequin, this one headless, sat in a rocking chair on the porch pointing a toy gun at passers-by.

“She’s a junk collector?” Chuck said as Alice parked.

“No, just a crazy woman. The neighbors have been trying to boot her out of here for years, but Jan won’t budge. Annoying people gives her pleasure. Steel yourself, young man. Have another drink. We’re about to enter the Twilight Zone.”

Mishmash

I was getting the kids ready for school yesterday morning when I overheard Charlie Gibson from ABC ask someone from the White House about President Bush’s trip to Asia. I didn’t catch the entire statement, but would swear on a stack of Bibles that the White House mouthpiece said something close to, “The president is going to China to represent the interests of American workers.”

The interests of American workers! Holy cow! In China, no less, the home of thousands of manufacturing jobs once held by American workers. What “interests” could the president possibly represent? I can see Bush now, standing before a hand-picked, sanitized crowd of average Chinese factory workers, flashing his best monkey sneer while lauding the workers for doing a “heckuva job” as corporate America’s low-wage workshop.

As far as George W. Bush is concerned, things are just peachy for American workers. Wages are stagnant, health and retirement benefits have been slashed, what’s not to be happy about? Wal-Mart is always hiring, various shifts in a friendly atmosphere, not to mention that the Gulf Coast will need thousands of carpenters, plumbers, and roofers once the reconstruction effort shifts into full swing; workers can go down there and enjoy the benefits of low wages, now that the president has suspended the Davis-Bacon Act.

Bush wouldn’t recognize an average working American if one walked up and smacked him in the forehead with a rubber mallet. Bush serves one constituency and one only: the wealthy. Look at the record, the lavish tax breaks and corporate giveaways, the fat no-bid contracts given to well-heeled political supporters.

Responding to Charlie Gibson’s question about the president’s plummeting public approval rating and the cloud of scandal hovering over the Administration, the White House mouth said – and again this is a rough paraphrase – that it is irresponsible for Democrats to continually raise questions about the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, the validity of pre-invasion intelligence, or whether or not the Administration tweaked that intelligence to justify the invasion.

Let’s see, the Congress of the United States was duped into supporting an invasion/occupation that has turned up zero WMD, become a rallying point for terrorists, violated the sovereignty of a nation (yes, even a despotic one), and cost over 2,000 American lives and maybe fifty times that many Iraqi lives, and put Iraq on course for a bloody, protracted civil war. It would seem that Congress has an obligation to find out what went wrong and who is responsible so that such folly cannot be repeated anytime soon.

The Administration believes that such questions are irresponsible and give comfort and aid to our enemies, not to mention a terrible inconvenience.

I’m just a simple guy, an average American citizen trying to raise children and get along in this great land of ours, but for the life of me I can’t understand why George W. Bush is not in the midst of an impeachment trial. For lying about Oval Office hanky-panky, Congress went after Bill Clinton hammer and tongs, fangs dripping blood; but when it comes to Bush, a president who plunged the country into a useless and disgraceful invasion/occupation, Congress sits on its hands.

The Day After, and the Day After That

November 8, Election Day, was a great day for unionized public workers in California – we beat back a power grab by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Simple hubris played a big role in Schwarzenegger’s defeat. The fire that eventually engulfed him began with his State of the State speech in January when he essentially boasted that he would play his trump card – popularity – and take his case directly to the voters if the legislature refused to play ball his way.

One can’t completely fault Schwarzenegger for over-confidence. Any pol with a 60% approval rating would likely feel invincible.

Schwarzenegger won the recall election on star power and the fact that the recall campaign was brief. Instead of talking about ideas and vision and mixing it up with voters on bread and butter issues like health care, education and public safety, Schwarzenegger merely smiled and tossed T-shirts to adoring fans. Running for the top office in the state seemed like an easy, pleasant gig.

And it continued to be so until early this year when the Governor ticked off organized nurses. That mistake snowballed until it eventually mobilized a broad coalition of peace officers, firefighters, public workers, school employees and teachers.

Rhetorically, Schwarzenegger suffered from stunted development. His campaign was all sound bites and one-liners and references to action movies rather than solid reasons for his initiatives – initiatives which bore the fingerprint of the Grover Norquist wing of the Republican Party. The idea that the numerous problems facing California could be solved by tinkering with teacher tenure, redistricting along Texas-Tom DeLay lines, granting a sitting governor extraordinary power over the budget, and making it difficult for unions to throw money at Democrats, was at best laughable.

Going to the mat, rhetorically and via ballot initiatives, with a number of public employee unions simultaneously was a tall order, even for a popular Governor, and the decision to plunge ahead exposed Schwarzenegger’s rookie status. More than that, it called into question the wisdom of his inner circle.

Considering the magnitude of Tuesday’s defeat, it’s a sure bet that Schwarzenegger will shake up his team of advisors, with significant input from wifey, Maria Shriver. Look for more moderate figures to join the Governor’s team. After all, Schwarzenegger has a lot of ground to make up in the trust department if he’s going to be re-elected in 2006.

For the moment, the power dynamic in Sacramento is altered. Schwarzenegger has little choice but to moderate his rhetoric and reach across the aisle. No more can he threaten to bypass the legislature. That should make things very interesting in the months ahead.

And what of the victors? Tuesday’s outcome proved that the union movement is alive and kicking in California, and that despite the AFL-CIO fracture, unions can still work together toward common aims. Labor should take a moment to celebrate this success, but then get back to organizing new members and educating current ones.

For those of us fortunate to be members of public employee unions, it’s time to get back to serving the public that pays our wages, proving day after day that unions are not only good for workers, but good for the commonwealth as well.

Judgment Day for the Terminator

It has been a long slog up a steep slope, but here we are, on election day. For many of us, this campaign began in January when the Governor laid out his “Year of Reform” plan during his State of the State speech. Schwarzenegger was riding tall in the saddle then, with an approval rating in the mid-60’s and enough hubris in his tank to mount an assault on California’s caretakers.

Arnold has talked a lot about greedy union bosses in this campaign, but much less about the influence of corporate money. If the Democrats are in the pocket of public employee unions, then it’s fair to say the Republicans are in the same boat with insurance, finance, and drug companies.

All along most level-headed folks have said that this special election is unnecessary, a perversion of the initiative process, a sideshow that does not come close to addressing the real issues facing Californians. Only in Arnold’s (and maybe Petey Wilson’s) mind is this a true “Year of Reform.”

We have talked, telephoned, walked precincts, turned out at the Governor’s invitation-only staged events, survived the barrage of TV and direct mail advertising from both sides, and now it’s time to mark the ballots and tally the votes.

By late tonight or early tomorrow morning, the political landscape in California will be changed, one way or another.

Scooter, We'll Miss You

Scooter’s history, now we need to get the rest of Bush’s posse, starting with Rove, then Cheney and Rumsfeld, all the players who had a hand in duping the country into believing that invading and occupying Iraq was both justified and the next logical step in the “War on Terror.”

It’s about time someone in this criminal administration is sanctioned, called to task, held accountable. Thousands of people have waited a long time for the monkey smirk to be wiped from W’s face. We’d love to see Cheney drop his trademark sneer, but that won’t happen even if the VP is perp-walked down Pennsylvania Avenue at high noon. No, Cheney is too hard-core to change his ways; W is simply too dense.

All in all, this was a banner day for those of us who have felt like we lived in an alternate reality the past four years, Bush-World, a dim and awful place where truth is meaningless and criminal behavior goes unpunished.

Note to CA GOP: Leave Me Alone

October 25, 2005


California Republican Party
1903 West Magnolia Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91506-1727

Inre: BS Mailing for Arnold’s BS Agenda

Dear Republicans:

You miserable bastards.

How did my name get on your freaking mailing list? For your information, I am a registered Democrat with a decidedly Progressive outlook, and a union member active in the political arena. In fact, I just returned home from an Alliance for a Better California phone bank that was calling voters to urge them to reject the Governor’s ridiculous “reform” agenda.

To open my mailbox and see a photograph of our doofus Governor nearly made me keel over -- first with anger, then laughter.

Schwarzenegger is a joke and a disgrace to our state. The man is utterly clueless and his slate of initiatives will do nothing – NOTHING – to address the problems facing California.

I wouldn’t join Arnold for a walk across the street let alone in his misguided effort to screw public school teachers, silence union members, and give the Governor’s office extraordinary powers over our fiscal future.

I don’t know where you bought my name and address, but kindly remove me from your database. I don’t believe I could stand the shock of seeing Arnold’s face on a piece of mail addressed to me again.

Sincerely,



Brian Tanguay
Progressive Union Activist

Land of Wonder

Sometimes you start to wonder what’s happening in this world.

A school principal in some East Coast city cancelled prom night because the kids had a history of getting hammered on booze and drugs, staging orgies, and spending too much money on parties and limos.

Damn, you think, that’s horrible. But then what do we expect. We wean our kids on glitzy celebrity shows, tales of the rich and famous, the Paris Hilton’s, the supermodels, the actors and athletes who make more in a week than the average working stiff in America makes in two or three years. We show kids the glitz and gilt-edged world that some lucky folks inhabit, dangle it in front of them like diamonds hanging from a perfect earlobe.

In LA’s Skid Row, a permanent underclass lives on the streets in the shadow of ongoing gentrification. Thousands of people – some of them mentally ill or physically handicapped or both – make their way through rat and roach infested streets, past dealers and pimps and whores, boarded-up buildings and rusted cars. Maybe it’s one city, but it’s two completely different worlds.

Same in other cities, of course. The past twenty-five years haven’t been easy for the working class, with wages stagnant and jobs leaving for China faster than you can say, “So long manufacturing base.” Call for decent jobs at decent wages with decent benefits and people think you’re crazy or naive.

Capitalism, man, free enterprise, though when the going gets sticky Capital likes a hand from Government, a tax break, a subsidy, a guarantee; Capital likes to steal from the public and then make the public pay the tab.

So you see multi-million dollar condos going up alongside Skid Row, glitz and luxury above and beyond Third World poverty and hurt. Don’t look out the window and you won’t see it. Nobody’s fault, right, just the way it is, there have always been rich and poor, and hey, maybe them folks on the street deserve their sorry lot.

We fashioned this deal by placing capital over labor, profit above people, private gain above public good. It came like a wave that just kept coming, surging, washing away everything in its path. For the fortunate minority, this big wave ushered in the best of times; the rest were left to pick through the waterlogged rubble.

America.

The CTM Chronicles - Orlando

I haven’t written about Chuck T. Miller lately though my old friend has been on my mind. The cell phone number he gave me the last time we talked has been disconnected. He may be in Phoenix still, waist deep in domestic difficulties, though I’d bet he ditched that scene in favor of a quick run to Cabo San Lucas or Cozumel. He’s no doubt hooked up with another woman by now. For years Chuck joked that all he wanted was a young, sexy trust fund baby, preferably a natural blonde with a forty-DD chest and long legs, with limited emotional baggage and free of psychotic ex-boyfriends or overprotective parents. “She’s out there,” Chuck always said, “and someday I’ll find her.”

An advertisement in the Independent about Patricia Simmons is what made me think of Chuck. Patricia Simmons, renowned psychotherapist and author, frequent guest on Oprah, and a hit on the lecture circuit, was appearing at UC Santa Barbara to promote her new book, The Canine Prophecy: A Field Guide to Training Men. Patricia’s first book, the one that made her reputation, was called, Breaking Chains: A Woman’s Guide to Escaping Bondage. Years ago, before fame and fortune, when she was known as Patricia Capriati, Patricia was Chuck’s main squeeze.

He met her in Orlando, Florida, where he was managing the Gypsy Rose Funeral Parlor and Family Fun Center, an oxymoronic combination of enterprises that fit Chuck perfectly. Out back of the funeral parlor was a nine-hole golf course and water park, both owned by a mysterious woman from New Orleans – a bonafide “voodoo witch” in Chuck’s words – whose motto was, “The dead can’t hurt you. It’s the living you have to watch out for.” You could bury your dead at Gypsy Rose’s, then go out back and improve your short game. Chuck handled the grieving customers, sold them deluxe coffins and overpriced flower arrangements, mowed the fairways and greens, repaired the water slides, while Patricia, only a few months out of high school, answered the phones and kept the books.

Patricia was a refugee from a sadistic German-born mother and an ex-GI father who walked out with a fishing pole on his shoulder and never came back, never wrote, never called, just vanished from her world, leaving her with unanswered questions and misplaced guilt that his disappearance was her fault. How we battle the wounds of childhood! We heal, but the scars remain, reminders of unhappy times. Breaking Chains was a stunningly specific account of a life gone off the rails, of abuse, neglect and sadism. Chuck figured prominently in the book as well, the portrayal less than flattering: “In the heart of this man, as in all men, lurks an evil streak.” Chuck’s version of his time with Patricia was very different -- the moment he hooked up with her he knew he had made a grave mistake, and then his problem became how to cut her loose without sending her over the edge. She was his “beautiful psycho” and the “barnacle on my back.” Unhinged, unpredictable, and possessive to the extreme, Patricia rarely let Chuck out of her sight and stuck by his side like a seeing-eye dog, going so far as to follow him into the Men’s room of the McDonald’s down the street from the funeral home. She talked about them being one spirit and destined to be inseparable forever. She showered with Chuck and insisted that they hold hands during meals. One day Chuck was fixing a busted lawn mower in the maintenance shed and accidentally sliced his finger open. There was Patricia, not with hydrogen peroxide and band aids, but with her tongue, lapping up his blood, ecstasy on her face and a drop of blood on her lovely chin.

Over the years Chuck has had more than his share of violent episodes with women. They’ve thrown plates and butter knives and bottles, stabbed him with keys, forks and safety pins; they’ve threatened him with Mace and pepper spray, burned his clothes, slashed his tires. Patricia added her own chapter in Chuck’s tortured relationship history. When Chuck insisted that Patricia give him some breathing room and privacy, allow him to pee and poop in peace, take a few links out of his chain, she wigged out, took it to mean that he no longer loved her. Then, to prove how much she loved him, she tried to run him down with a golf cart.

Chuck never loved Patricia, but he was fond of her and cared for her and worried about her. The more he struggled to get away, the tighter Patricia clung to him. Chuck became a prisoner in his own life. Whatever he did, wherever he went, Patricia was right there. She was a preternaturally light sleeper who woke at the slightest sound. Chuck said Patricia slept with her eyes open. They fought constantly and even got themselves banned from McDonald’s.

In the end, Chuck did what Patricia’s father had done, picked a spot and made a break for it. He slipped away from Gypsy Rose’s in the owner’s decrepit Datsun pick-up, with $50 to his name, a change of clothes, a harmonica and a Bible, and a pint bottle of whisky. The Datsun died in South Carolina. Chuck stuck out his thumb, headed nowhere in particular as long as it was away from Patricia. He wasn’t on the highway ten minutes before a woman in a red Corvette slowed down to give him a look. Her name was Alice DuPont and she was traveling to New York City.

When Arnold came to Town

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger came to town yesterday, ostensibly for a “town hall” meeting, held, strangely or perhaps appropriately enough, in a huge garbage processing facility. The peculiarity about this “town hall” gig was that you had to be “invited” to attend -- invited and presumably screened for ideological purity. In my imagination I see a humorless man in a black suit asking questions like, “Do you hate unions and think they should be banished from the face of Kahlifornia?” “Do you like Governor Schwarzenegger’s style?” “How about his tan?” “Do you think Arnold should run for President, if the Constitution can be amended to allow it?” And so on down the line.

Like George W. Bush, and perhaps more so given his background, Arnold specializes in these staged, controlled events. Heaven forbid that he engage in an honest back-and-forth with real workaday folk, members of the lower classes, the great unwashed; much better to see the adoring white faces of well-to-do Chamber of Commerce types, not an apparent freak among them; no risk of citizen outrage or brash acts of civil disobedience inside the cavernous garbage facility.

And all that noise outside, the whistling, the chants, the drums, pounded by college kids and off-duty firefighters, union members, students, a few elderly souls, well, according to Arnold, that’s just the braying of the status quo that is strangling the Golden State.

Shades of the surreal, shades of George Orwell, shades of make-believe.

Arnold blames “union bosses” for California’s ills. Union bosses? What do these men or women look like, Jimmy Hoffa? The character Kathy Bates played in Misery? Who is Arnold talking about, exactly? He makes it sound as if union members have absolutely no say-so in how their dues are used; that’s a fabrication. Or maybe it’s just politics, twenty-first century style, the age where unfortunate truths are ignored or twisted until they no longer resemble a truth at all.

We made noise the day Arnold came to town. The man and his people figured they could take on all the state’s caretakers at one time and succeed. They misjudged, then they mismanaged, and now they’ve got Arnold running east and west to sell a skeptical public on his pet initiatives.

Arnold is running hard and hoping an apathetic public will stay home on November 8th.

A Letter to Yankee Owner George Steinbrenner

Dear George:

Well, I’m sitting here on October 10, 2005, watching your Yankees choke in another postseason contest. They trail the Angels 5-2 in the sixth, and there’s no hope for the boys now because the Angels bullpen is tougher than a foot thick cement wall. Your guys had their chance in the top of the fifth, but took a powder with two on and nobody out. What is the team hitting with runners in scoring position? .220? .190? I don’t know and looking the stat up now would be a waste of energy.

It’s the same tired story with the Yanks – a dearth of clutch hitting from some of the highest paid players in the game. This garbage happened in 2003 when the Marlins took the Yanks down in six games, and it happened last year in games four through seven of the ALCS. Remember that, George? Of course you do because it was the most complete collapse in MLB history, a smudge on the ledger of the greatest franchise in professional sports.

And while we’re speaking of Yankee futility, let’s not forget that in the 2001 World Series the Yanks scored a total of fourteen runs. In seven games.

But I could live with that defeat because Clemens pitched a strong seventh game and Mariano Rivera had the ball in the ninth with the lead. You can’t whine when you lose with your best guy.

That was the last high water mark. Ever since 2001 the boys have stumbled around like blind badgers on a frozen lake. A-Rod is hitting a dazzling .143 this series. Mike Mussina lasted a whopping 2 2/3 innings after his much ballyhooed West Coast stay. Face it, George, Mussina is a pampered wimp, an embarrassment to professional athletes everywhere. My four-year-old daughter has more guts.

And as if more proof was required, how about Hideki Matsui, who through seven innings has stranded six base runners. The Yanks have had chance after chance after chance to score runs and put the Angels away, but can they manage a squib single, a bloop double, or even a lazy pop-up that drops between fielders when it really counts?

Hell no. Do you ever sit back in your luxury box and think that a lot of these boys are vastly overpaid? Like by $8-10 million a year? Jesus, it must just get your goat to pay all that cash for such dismal results. Maybe you should ask A-Rod and Matsui and Bernie Williams for a sub-par performance refund.

If nothing else, at least Randy Johnson pitched some strong innings tonight, partially redeeming his horrible outing in Game 3

K-Rod is about to punch out Ruben Sierra…no, ol’ Ruben actually tapped out to short. Inning over, Yanks on the sad end of a 5-3 score. They’re toast, George, blackened, inedible, wasted. This must be killing you. Watching the boys lose these big games is excruciating. So many Yankee fans nearly passed out last year watching the Red Sox roll to four straight victories.

Damn. The nimrod announcers on Fox, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, just asked this rhetorical question: Who in our listening audience didn’t give the Yankees a huge advantage when Bartolo Colon had to exit the game in the second inning? Ah, I didn’t. I know better. For the past four or five seasons the Angels have had New York’s number, beating the Bombers like a gong at home and in the Bronx. In fact, before this series began I predicted that the Angels would prevail in five.

I hate being right all the time, but it didn’t take a baseball genius to figure the outcome. The Angels have more ways to beat the Yankees than the Yankees have to beat the Angels. Take note, George, it’s not just about big money and home runs – it’s about speed, defense, and timely hitting; it’s about moving runners into scoring position by laying down a bunt or hitting behind a runner; it's about moving from first to third on a single.

For the record: Matsui stranded eight base runners tonight. A-Rod killed a potential ninth inning rally by hitting into a double play. A-Rod had a marvelous regular season, but when it comes to these pivotal do or die contests, he never comes through. In this series, A-Rod, Sheffield and Matsui were a combined 13 for 57, a .228 average. Three RBI’s between them.

Game, series and season over. Start rebuilding, George.

The Crack in the Edifice

You can see the cracks forming in the GOP edifice. Everywhere you look another scandal or example of glaring incompetence and outright indifference. They were on an amazing run, in control of all branches of the federal government, most, if not all, of the corporate media, a majority of statehouses; their corporate allies and benefactors were pleased with the services they received in exchange for beefy campaign contributions.

They could do no wrong it seemed. George W. Bush won reelection despite a record of failure and deceit unrivaled in American history. Bush told us that white was black and black white, and if we couldn’t see it, well, that meant we were unpatriotic or anti-American, against free enterprise and individual initiative. Bush gave us his monkey sneer and cowboy strut while Karl Rove stood behind the velvet curtain pulling on the strings.

They mastered the political game with message discipline, quick retribution against those that wavered, and slick spin. When the news refused to fit their vision they created their own. “It’s hard work,” Dubya said during one of his debates against John Kerry, but Dubya never worked that hard, preferring the solitude of his Texas ranch instead, hunkering down with Laura while Iraq burned and New Orleans flooded.

Calling oneself a Liberal or Progressive hasn’t been easy during the Bush/Cheney/Rove regime. The thunderous right-wing media machine ridicules everything we believe in, and the Democratic Party stumbles around like a blind man in a dark room, looking for its soul and passion in all the wrong places. Sorry, folks, but Hillary won’t get us where we want to go. She’s part of the ruling apparatus. Ditto Joe Biden. Those folks play the center and tinker around the margins.

But all along our values were right. We knew the Iraq invasion was a disaster before it happened; we knew that tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only make the gulf between rich and poor even more grotesque, concentrating wealth and power in so few hands that even our democracy would be threatened; we knew that the crony capitalism practiced by the Bush junta would lead to wide-scale corruption; and we never bought into the failed lie that government is inherently incompetent and therefore incapable of playing a moderating role in society.

There are millions of us, and we’re fed up. We look around the country and wonder where we are. Is this America? Is the almighty greenback and what it can buy the only thing that matters anymore? What about justice, equality, widespread prosperity, and social responsibility? Don’t those things matter?

We believe they do. There’s a crack in the ruling edifice. This is our chance.

Dubya's Erector Set

I didn’t watch Dubya’s speech the other night because his vocal cadence and facial expressions make me crazy. I read about it instead, detecting in the text the hand of Herr Karl Rove. For the first time in his presidency, Dubya admitted responsibility for failure. What a moment, what a concept, what a breakthrough for our man-child president. He’s human! He even mentioned poverty and racism, although he failed to note how the hard-hearted policies of his administration have contributed to the perpetuation of both.

I saw on the TV news a day later footage of Dubya with a bullhorn, exhorting rescue workers or was it a small crowd of hand-picked supporters, thoroughly screened for ideological purity? Hard to say with Rove & Co. They’ve elevated political spin and fakery to an art form during the past five years. Anyway, Dubya promises a massive rebuilding effort on the ravaged Gulf Coast, all to be accomplished without raising taxes or revoking his tax cuts for the wealthy.

In other words, more of the same “starve the beast” policy. How in the hell can the federal government lead a massive reconstruction effort on the cheap? Dubya says wasteful or unnecessary government spending will be cut in order to fund reconstruction. Is he serious? Does he think people believe that crap? He’s already slashed millions of dollars from public health, environmental protection, education; the list goes on for a mile or more. I didn’t hear Dubya pledge to end our disastrous and money-sucking occupation of Iraq.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times calls Dubya “Incurious George.” Dubya claims not to read newspapers or watch Fox News, and he frowns on his staff bringing him unpleasant news, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he’s unaware of the massive federal budget deficit, debt which is currently being financed by China and Saudi Arabia. Note to Dubya: Get Over Your Failed Ideology and Raise Taxes so all Americans share the reconstruction sacrifice.

Considering how badly Dubya and his cronies fared in the reconstruction of Iraq, it’s difficult to imagine them succeeding on the Gulf Coast. This administration is good at corruption and cronyism, not so good at construction.

Wake Up, Dems

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina offers the Democratic Party a historic opportunity to show the country what makes it different from the Republican Party, and not just in terms of capping on George W. Bush's piss-poor leadership. Bashing W. isn't enough. What the Dems must do is offer Americans a sweeping vision of what this nation might become if we adopt different political principles.

This is the time for the Dems to step forward with a vision of a nation dedicated to promoting the welfare of all its citizens, not just those who can afford to pay; a nation dedicated to fairness and equality of opportunity, civil rights, and a prudent, cooperative foreign policy; a nation that understands that we're all in this together.

Unfortunately, I suspect the Dems will only offer the usual platitudes. The party is cowed, wimpy, unsure of what it stands for, alienated from its traditional base, afraid of Karl Rove and the Republican PR machine. Kerry, Clinton, Biden, none of them have the vision or the language to move beyond business as usual or mount an ideological challenge to the GOP.

Democrats onced believed that Government had a role to play in the everyday lives of citizens, that Government could be a factor in achieving greater good for more people. But that ideology has been discredited by a savvy conservative apparatus which tells us that Government in almost all its guises is bad -- bad for the economy, bad for individuals, bad for entire classes of people. Paradoxically, conservatives are quick to use Government to further their own agenda, lavishing subsidies on their corporate allies, fat contracts to political cronies, and tax "reform" for the wealthiest citizens.

Freedom, opportunity, equality, fairness, a sense for the collective welfare that can only be achieved through Government investment in roads, highways, bridges, schools, public safety and public health, these are all traditional Democratic values that should be revived in the face of a horrible tragedy that was made worse by the ideology of, "You're on your own, man."

Oh, Bob, The Only Disconnect is in Your Head

Bob Noel has made his share of inane, outrageous and self-serving statements during his tenure as a school board trustee, but to claim that the school board was out of the loop when critical decisions were made about Measure V projects is classic Noel gibberish.

Who was really in control? Bob asks in a long op-ed piece in the September 4, 2005 News-Press. A better question to ask is: where the hell was Bob Noel when all those projects came before the board for approval? Surely he was on the dais with his fellow trustees, scowling his trademark scowl as he pored over charts and graphs and tables and other minutiae of the public education game; surely he realizes that the district has a bond oversight committee whose membership includes at least one trustee. If Bob was so concerned about the morality of using Measure V money for softball scoreboards and swimming pools, why didn’t he raise his hand and sound the alarm before significant dough was spent?

It might be informative to dig into the record and see how old Bob voted on the many projects that came before the board. Being the contrarian voice on the board gives him a thrill, not to mention a photo and byline in the News-Press from time to time, but I’d bet the record shows that more often than not he voted with the district administration.

Even with state matching funds, the amount of the Measure V bond was never going to be sufficient to fund all the needs of the high school district. Unless he was sleeping through board meetings, Bob had to grasp this essential fact. Did he expect the chronically understaffed district administration to make all the decisions about Measure V projects without consulting principals, parents, and other interested parties? If they had, Bob would now be bitching about the lack of “input” from stakeholders.

Maybe the reason Bob sees a “disconnect” between plans and reality is that many school board meetings run long into the night, into and beyond the Letterman and Leno hours, testing the endurance and attention span of men and women much younger than Bob. Perhaps old Bob was simply too pooped to pay attention when important issues came up for vote. All I know is that the man is definitely a head trip, the kind of dude who participates in a decision and then claims amnesia when the deal goes awry.

That’s the definition of a weenie in my book.

The Stench

If there was ever a doubt that George W. Bush is an incompetent completely out of his depth, it has been dispelled by his lack of leadership in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Where’s the cowboy swagger now, W? I guess mobilizing resources to save American citizens – many of them poor and African-American – is different from duping the nation into a deadly invasion and occupation of a country that posed a limited threat to the United States. I guess it’s different from landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and prematurely and inappropriately proclaiming, “Mission Accomplished!” I guess it’s different from crowing, “Bring ‘em on.”

W should go down as one of the lamest Presidents in American history, right up there with Hoover and Nixon. He was a peabrain when the Supreme Court placed him in office, a peabrain up until 9/11, a peabrain while he was lying about the need to invade Iraq. He has slavishly served his wealthy base and the religious sots who think he’s their Messiah. He’s cynical and corrupt, a blithering idiot clueless to the concerns of average Americans, those not born with gold-plated political connections and silver spoons sticking out of their assholes. The stench of failure and death hovers over this White House.

Katrina, Color Blind?

People of color, that's mainly what we see when we look at the images of devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Nobody in the media, as far as I know, has mentioned it yet, but sooner or later some columnist or reporter or public official is going to wonder if the slow response by the Federal government has anything to do with the fact that the majority of victims are African-American, poor and working-class.

I don't want to believe that race has anything to do with the Fed's failure to mobilize, but with the Bush regime in power, you never know. If Katrina had slammed into a largely white, Republican community in Florida or Texas, I wonder if aid would have arrived on the scene faster. It's well-known that the Bush regime values American lives more than Iraqi lives, so much so that we don't even bother to count Iraqi killed or wounded, so it stands to reason that Bush and his people might place a higher value on white Republicans than poor African-Americans.

But perhaps the real culprit here is our foolish Occupation of Iraq and the billions of dollars we've poured down that gopher hole -- money that might have been used for myriad other purposes, like homeland security, adequate funding for FEMA, public health programs and public works, like flood control. And wouldn't it be beneficial to have fully staffed and equipped National Guard units on the scene to lend assistance to our citizens, rather than deployed in Iraq? Bush's lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans haven't helped either. Those cuts come at the expense of public investment, and now, at the time when Government can make the biggest difference in people's lives, we find ourselves short of resources.

Sooner or later people are going to wake up and realize how much damage Bush & Co. have done to our vital public infrastructure. The people devastated by Katrina already get it.