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.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
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!”
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!”
Sunday, April 09, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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!
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!
Monday, March 20, 2006
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?
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?
Thursday, March 16, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, March 03, 2006
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
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
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
3 Rounds with John Stossel
When did John Stossel become an apologist for Wal-Mart, HP, and every other American corporation that chases cheap labor around the globe like a pit bull in heat? Is Stossel serious – a serious journalist – when he claims that outsourcing jobs to India and Mexico actually benefits Americans, or is he little more than a paid propagandist with a massive bully pulpit?
Frankly, the man strikes me as unhinged, caught up in his own myth. On ABC’s 20/20 last night Stossel was trumpeting the virtues of outsourcing – how it lowers prices for goods and services for American consumers, and even better, how outsourcing creates jobs in America!
What Stossel failed to explore is the sort of jobs that outsourcing creates, how much these jobs pay, or whether or not the jobs come with employee benefits. It seems fairly obvious that many people in America today are cobbling two or more part time jobs together in order to earn what they once made at a single job. And how many part-time jobs come with benefits like health insurance, vacation allowance, or a pension? Now that the biggest players in corporate America are following the Wal-Mart model, I’d guess the answer is very few.
So sure, outsource one decent job and create three low-wage, no benefit, part-time jobs, and the statistics on job creation might look peachy on a chart or graph. A rum-addled dingbat might look at such statistics and get the idea that it’s morning in America, the best of times.
What Stossel the corporate apologist misses is the zero sum nature of the global economy. Except for the economic elite, most Americans are treading water, an accident or a misstep away from destitution. It doesn’t take much insight to see what has happened during the past thirty years: we’ve trapped ourselves in a downward spiral. Corporations export jobs to cheap labor havens and import products. Yes, goods from China and Mexico and Sri Lanka are cheap and plentiful, but if this weren’t the case, how would American consumers – whose wages have been stagnant for years – be able to afford them?
How would average working Americans forced by corporate and government policies to shoulder more and more risk for their own health care and retirement afford anything but the cheapest goods in the world?
We’re screwed because our economy is based on an endless cycle of spending and consumption; we’re screwed because we’ve been conditioned by an endless corporate drumbeat to accept a failed ideology.
I don’t want to debate John Stossel as much as I’d like to get him in the ring for three or four rounds with 14oz. gloves. The only way he’s going to understand my working-class outrage is through a serious ass-whipping.
Frankly, the man strikes me as unhinged, caught up in his own myth. On ABC’s 20/20 last night Stossel was trumpeting the virtues of outsourcing – how it lowers prices for goods and services for American consumers, and even better, how outsourcing creates jobs in America!
What Stossel failed to explore is the sort of jobs that outsourcing creates, how much these jobs pay, or whether or not the jobs come with employee benefits. It seems fairly obvious that many people in America today are cobbling two or more part time jobs together in order to earn what they once made at a single job. And how many part-time jobs come with benefits like health insurance, vacation allowance, or a pension? Now that the biggest players in corporate America are following the Wal-Mart model, I’d guess the answer is very few.
So sure, outsource one decent job and create three low-wage, no benefit, part-time jobs, and the statistics on job creation might look peachy on a chart or graph. A rum-addled dingbat might look at such statistics and get the idea that it’s morning in America, the best of times.
What Stossel the corporate apologist misses is the zero sum nature of the global economy. Except for the economic elite, most Americans are treading water, an accident or a misstep away from destitution. It doesn’t take much insight to see what has happened during the past thirty years: we’ve trapped ourselves in a downward spiral. Corporations export jobs to cheap labor havens and import products. Yes, goods from China and Mexico and Sri Lanka are cheap and plentiful, but if this weren’t the case, how would American consumers – whose wages have been stagnant for years – be able to afford them?
How would average working Americans forced by corporate and government policies to shoulder more and more risk for their own health care and retirement afford anything but the cheapest goods in the world?
We’re screwed because our economy is based on an endless cycle of spending and consumption; we’re screwed because we’ve been conditioned by an endless corporate drumbeat to accept a failed ideology.
I don’t want to debate John Stossel as much as I’d like to get him in the ring for three or four rounds with 14oz. gloves. The only way he’s going to understand my working-class outrage is through a serious ass-whipping.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Not In Our Backyard
I don't know if the Libertarian junta at the Santa Barbara News-Press will publish this letter to the editor, so I thought I'd best take matters into my own hands. Viva the 1st Amendment!
February 9, 2006
Letters Editor
Santa Barbara News-Press
PO Box 1359
Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Inre: Funny Business with School District Properties
Mr. Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, which could also be called, “I-Have-My-Piece-of-Paradise-You-Can’t-Have-Yours,” accuses the Santa Barbara School Board of failing basic math.
In fact, Mr. Earle seems to have ditched a remedial semester or two. First of all, Mr. Earle and his NIMBY coalition have every right to protect their neighborhoods from development, sensible or otherwise. On the other hand, it would be refreshing if – instead of employing scare tactics and wild exaggerations of fact – Mr. Earle and his group would get a grip and realize that all the School Board has hired UniDev to do is perform a feasibility study; of the four options being considered, only one involves workforce housing.
Instead of whipping up fear over the prospect of the school district developing workforce housing for its employees – a concept, and at this point only a concept – that could stabilize district revenues and provide a powerful retention tool for teachers and staff, about seventy-five percent of whom earn less than $65,000 a year (juxtapose that with the cost of housing around here, Mr. Earle) – Mr. Earle should be more concerned that the District might instead choose to sell the properties to a greedhead developer. Frankly, that would be the simplest course for the Board to take.
In regards to UniDev’s contract, which was granted after an open, public, competitive bidding process, Mr. Earle might take the time and trouble to go back and read the numerous, public documents detailing the compensation arrangement (which was built into the District’s procurement process before any proposals were submitted); there’s no smoking gun or inherent conflict of interest to be found in the proposal, no density figures, and no guarantee, explicit or implied, that any future contract will be awarded to UniDev.
Sincerely,
Brian Tanguay
President, Chapter 37, California School Employees Association
Santa Barbara
February 9, 2006
Letters Editor
Santa Barbara News-Press
PO Box 1359
Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Inre: Funny Business with School District Properties
Mr. Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, which could also be called, “I-Have-My-Piece-of-Paradise-You-Can’t-Have-Yours,” accuses the Santa Barbara School Board of failing basic math.
In fact, Mr. Earle seems to have ditched a remedial semester or two. First of all, Mr. Earle and his NIMBY coalition have every right to protect their neighborhoods from development, sensible or otherwise. On the other hand, it would be refreshing if – instead of employing scare tactics and wild exaggerations of fact – Mr. Earle and his group would get a grip and realize that all the School Board has hired UniDev to do is perform a feasibility study; of the four options being considered, only one involves workforce housing.
Instead of whipping up fear over the prospect of the school district developing workforce housing for its employees – a concept, and at this point only a concept – that could stabilize district revenues and provide a powerful retention tool for teachers and staff, about seventy-five percent of whom earn less than $65,000 a year (juxtapose that with the cost of housing around here, Mr. Earle) – Mr. Earle should be more concerned that the District might instead choose to sell the properties to a greedhead developer. Frankly, that would be the simplest course for the Board to take.
In regards to UniDev’s contract, which was granted after an open, public, competitive bidding process, Mr. Earle might take the time and trouble to go back and read the numerous, public documents detailing the compensation arrangement (which was built into the District’s procurement process before any proposals were submitted); there’s no smoking gun or inherent conflict of interest to be found in the proposal, no density figures, and no guarantee, explicit or implied, that any future contract will be awarded to UniDev.
Sincerely,
Brian Tanguay
President, Chapter 37, California School Employees Association
Santa Barbara
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
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.
Oink, oink.
Monday, January 16, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
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
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
Thursday, January 05, 2006
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!
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!
Monday, December 26, 2005
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
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
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