"Take a Bath and Get a Job"

That is Newt's take on the Occupy Wall Street Protesters and it brings back so many memories.  Our wars now that we have grown to hate and realize that we can no longer afford have cost the lives of over 4,000 Americans, our youth at that.  Our strongest and best.  Imagine Vietnam where we lost over 50,000, sometimes 500 every single week and always on the Nightly News where we could see the battles while eating dinner.  We were tricked then too, told of the "domino theory" and commies taking over the world.
Real History was avoided.  We were seldom told of Vietnam's struggle for National Independence, their 100 year battle with the French nor the hundreds of years of warfare to become independent of the Chinese.
Communist smomunists, they just wanted us out.
   Now they are a major manufacturer of computer parts and Air Jorden Tennis Shoes.  They are a rice exporting nation and our friends.  Funny how when you quit fighting that can happen.
   We had huge protests in those days.  President Nixon called the college kids "bums" and riot squads were called out all accross the country.  Protesters died.  Universities were shut down.  These were serious protests ot the kindly organized and pretty polite ones that we are having today.
   We got out of that war by voting our way out.  We realized we were being lied to and switched to more peaceful political candidates, but it was the protesters that made us think.  They started the ball rolling.
   It is so easy to say "take a bath and get a job,"  especially if you make a couple million a year, but I am not sure they can be dismissed so easily.  Most have grown up in a system that has failed them.  There are no jobs.  They feel as though they have been lied to.
   The 1% will lose.  They will lose their money, their power and their position.  Aristocracies fall and history has proved that time and time again.  It is not necessary but it will happen.  It always does.
The funny thing is that in our democracy we must like them.  In some perverse way we honor them.  The "Super Committee" couldn't reduce our budget 10%.  The Bush Tax Cuts for the Super Wealthy are firmly entrenched.  The committee had a lot of incentive to get this done, now a law will go into effect which will get this money out of Social Security, Medicare and the Military.  You have to get the money somewhere and that is the law!  I could have done a better job on a bad day before breakfast!
   Yes, get a job and take a bath but please don't quit protesting.  Eventually we will learn, maybe read a little more on the issues and finally we will vote.  We will get the government we vote for and finally accept some responsibility and admit we did this to ourslves.  Maybe Nixon got it right after all.  "Throw the bums out!"
But it is still our job to discover who the bums are!

My gallery is coming along but it is like watching paint dry!

Visible Saints

Do you ever wonder why it is so difficult to get money from the Super Rich?  Why can General Electric make over 14 Billion Dollars AND be subsidized to the tune of 3 Billion Dollars (tax payer's money) and still pay No Taxes?  The Top Ten Executives of "Freddie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" split a cool 100,000,000
Dollars in salaries and bonuses!  This is not "earned income", it is tax dollars.
   On a local level, in my little town, the top 1% make as much money as the bottom 87 Thousand People!
Most of us can't count that high and couldn't dream of that kind of money.  There has to be a reason that it is difficult to "tax the rich".  They do not pay into Social Security nor Medicare nor support the local transit system.  The average person might be taxes at close to 30% and their money is stuck at a 15% tax bracket.
This might even work if it weren't for the loopholes and obscure deductions we don't even know about.  Enough deductions that many of them pay nothing.
   The "Super Committee" in Congress made up of Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on a solution to reducing our National Debt.  They didn't do anything so I think they should probably all be fired.  The Republicans are happy to take an axe to the budget and attempt to balance it on the backs of the Middle Class, even thinking to raise the age for Social Security and Medicare to 75! Cuts to the local levels would be massive with no aid to the local police or firefighters.  Libraries, of course would be closed.  This is austerity gone amok, clearly it wouldn't create a single job.  Quite the contrary, with the Republican proposals, hundreds of thousands more would be laid off.
   Democrats might compromise on some of these issues but the "line in the sand" for both parties is the issue of increased revenue.  No one is talking about an equal playing field, nothing that drastic.  The issue is a mere 3% on money after the first million dollars a year!  I would happily pay it.  Heck, I have never seen that kind of money, I would pay 10%!!!  If you win a million dollars on the lottery you pay a lot more!  After taxes that Million becomes $5,00,000 and then if you want cash that is cut in half to $250,000.  Why don't we complain about that?
   I know the answer and will attempt to explain it to you.  The answer lies in our first 100 years of our own History.  We are a country founded by the Puritans and their influence is all around us today.  It is how we got the idea that land can be conquered and resources exploited, used and used up. It is the reason that we attach reverence to wealth.  It is where we get the idea that "blessings from God" can come in the form of material possessions.
   Let me try to explain this a bit more.  Our Puritan Founders and virtually every single person on the street in those days, seriously believed in Predestination over free will.  It is pretty easy to understand the basis of this belief.  If God knows all, the past, present and the future, then He already knows whether you will be going to Heaven or Hell.  He knows this before you are born.  If you believe this, and for a long time in our history most Americans did, then what is the point to anything?  How do you get out of that predicament?
   So, here is the "catch" and the reason that we work so hard.  He Knows!  But we don't!  But we think that there might be an indication?  If some were blessed, some predestined to Heaven, there might be a sign?  Some visible way to determine who might be in His good graces?  Maybe even He would bestow wealth upon them?  "Blessed" we still think of it like that.  "Lucky" now, we are not so religious but we still value wealth and always equate it with success.  It is how we measure things.  Higher up the ladder is closer to God.  This is the single most important reason that nicer houses are always built high up in the hills and Churches have tall steeples.
   Somehow taxing the rich, deep in our subconscious is an affront to the way we think things should be.
It is ingrained.  How quick are we to say "yes sir" and be a bit subservient to the well dressed person in the very nice car?  The guy could be a bank robber for all we know, or steal from the government or one of those people who pay no taxes and our natural predisposition is to say, "yes, Sir" and clear the path for him to step to the front of the line.
   There are books on this idea but now you do not have to read them.  You know.  Think about it.

My "gallery" is coming along.  My shop and garden are HERE

We Will Decide

   It is looking more and more as if the Super Committee in charge of decisions concerning the National Debt have just wasted their salaries.  I hate hiring people who can't get a job done!  I think to myself, if they worked for me I would fire the lot of them.  Then it occurs to me that these people are working for me and I cringe!
   The scary part of all of this is Congress can't accomplish anything because it is representative of the American people!  We voted them in.  We are a severely divided Nation and I can imagine Lincoln turning over in his grave.  We won't admit it but the problem is not with Congress.  We are the problem.
We have voted our emotions too many times.  We have voted without knowing the issues, without realizing the consequences, and sometimes we have voted without even realizing what we have voted for.
   In "the old days" we had barbershop conversations, talked on our front  porches, even might have gone to town hall meetings.  In the old days people read newspapers and we had more reliable news on the television.
   For some reason in the past twenty years we have become afraid of political discussions!  Is this because we feel like rats in a maze and there is no cheese?  that we have lost a sense of power?  I don't think so.  I think it is there for the taking.  It would be easier now than ever before to pack a City Hall meeting.  I think we have become lazy.  We don't read.  We don't investigate.  We have lost the art of pondering.  No one made us sheep.  There is no conspiracy.  It is just easier to graze on the grass and go about our day without giving it a thought.  We take the easy way out.
   They are calling this a "do nothing Congress" when they are just doing what we are doing:  nothing.
There will be another election in one year.  We have time to read, to discover, to educate ourselves on the issues.  Time to decide what kind of world we want this to be.
   There are other issues but the Economy will clearly be the biggest one we talk about in the coming year.
The National Debt wouldn't be an issue at all in a good economy.  Do we still believe in the "Trickle Down"
theory?  We get our jobs from rich people so we have to be nice to them?  Yasum Boss Sir kind of mentality?  What is the roll of Government?  Should we really wait until the bridges fall down before we repair them?  Where can we cut money with the least amount of pain?
   I am a bit disappointed with the art community.  I thought we might have a deeper understanding, more insight, more empathy, a clearer vision, a different view.  We are as isolated and lazy as the rest and our "do nothing Congress" is representing of us.  You get what you pay for and you get what you vote for.  How could anyone vote for someone who couldn't find Lybia on a map?
   The future is going to be more of the same because we seem to like it like that.

Cut and Paste

We have a Super Committee, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators who have been charged with the impossible task of reducing our National Deficit and their time is running out.  It is an interesting problem and they are in a "do or die" situation.  If they fail to reach agreement then the reductions will automatically come out of Social Security, Medicare and the Military.  Even if they reached agreement it is still not final.  There would be a vote in Congress and whatever was decided still needs to be signed by the President.
   All of this is of importance to Artists because we are people too.  We get old, we get sick, we pay taxes.
We have been in this recession for over four years.  Schnitzer Steel Stock is less than $50 from it's high of $117 four years ago.  Not all but most of the stock market is this way.   Housing has taken a beating and we have lost much of our equity there too.  We are unemployed, uninsured and soon to be hungry.  More people are on food assistance than ever before.  This "new normal" is pretty sad.
   To fix it you have to be a betting person, a bit of a gambler.  You could have the attitude of despair, that it is all going to come down crashing upon us like a house of cards.  We must hunker down and pay the piper,
take what suffering that will occur, pay down the National Debt and suffer the consequences.  This same reasoning will want the creation of jobs at any cost.  The cost could be dear indeed.  Get rid of Government rules and regulations, abandon the clean air policies and pollute our waterways, fracture the Earth in the name of industry.
   One could have a more optimistic attitude.  We could bet that there will be a  future, that these are not the "last days on earth", not Armageddon.  We will continue and decide what kind of world we want to live in.
It seems to me that the biggest difference in these decisions between the Republicans and the Democrats
come down to tax revenues, environmental concerns and who would be more able to stimulate the economy,
private enterprise or the government?
   I am sure cuts will be made and they will be more political than economic.  They won't be about fairness but about power.  Why 99% of us can't get the richest 1% to pay an additional 3% in taxes OVER a million a year is all about power.
   It wouldn't be easy to be on that committee, someone will hate you.  One third of Medicare's budget is spent on the last one year of a person's life.  I am not sure that is a good investment.  I think I miss the days when a person could just die in peace and not be carted back and forth to the emergency room and suffer heroic efforts.  Personally I like an Eskimo tradition of being placed on an iceberg or in a small canoe paddling after that last sunset.  The isolation of our society says to put old people in nursing homes and our guilt for this requires huge investments in last days medical care.
   I am sure there is tons of waste that could be cut, probably easily 10% across the board.  We have a country of Government Workers who all have pensions supported by tax dollars.  Pensions that we do not have.
  Our military is huge.  Much bigger than all the rest of the world combined!  Can you even imagine this?
   As a businessman cutting a budget can be a dangerous thing to do.  Some expenditures make money and are necessary.  Rebuilding our Nation's infrastructure is one of these.  We need roads, bridges, trains or commerce will come to a grinding halt.  To invest money there seems like a good idea to me.
   It is all pretty complicated.  First the banks were bailed out and as expensive as that was it was necessary. They represent "the system", our faith in money, our belief that when we get a check it will be cashable, and when we write a check or use a credit card, it will be honored.  This "system" is not perfect and there is a lot of abuse but it is easier to fix it than tear it down.  I think.
   Now it is "Main Streets" time and the question is what to do?

What I do is HERE