Let Them Eat Cake!

That is what Marie Antoinette said when confronted with her people starving, not being able to eat simple bread.  I believe they beheaded her!  Simple solutions for a simpler time.
   There is no shared hard times during this recession.  No shared costs to the wars we are fighting.  In fact there is no cost at all.  It is all on borrowed money!  There is no rationing, no war tax as we have done in the past.  For the most part we can go about our day, live our lives and be blissfully unaware of what is going on.
I wonder if this is done on purpose?  If we were to receive a bill in the mail each month, or if we were only allowed twenty gallons of gasoline each month, if there were long lines at the grocery store and the shelves were mostly empty, maybe we would feel a little different?
   It is comfortable living on my little island that I have created, with my garden, my shop, my welding, my art
but that does not mean that I do not know what is going on in the world, that people are suffering, on the edge of despair as I sit here with my nice cup of coffee in my office.  I read a lot and I read both sides of every issue.  I watch CNN and Fox News.  I listen to Conservative and Progressive Radio.
   You don't really have to do any of this to realize that there is a problem.  You can go to the grocery store and realize that $100 doesn't go very far any more.  In my town 40% of the people buy groceries with food stamps.  On the way to the store I see all the unkempt houses, some occupied by people who have lost interest in mowing their lawns or who can no longer afford the gallon of gas for their mowers, if they have mowers.  Others are clearly abandoned, foreclosed on and now bank owned.  We have hundreds of empty houses in my town and thousands of homeless, people living on the streets!  Each day it seems, both these numbers increase.
   That is so funny, in a sad macabre kind of way, twisted and strange.  People sleeping under a bridge when, a hundred feet away is an empty house!  People hungry when there are eighteen Super-Mega-Grocery Stores so near by.  So much abundance and such a big divide.
   The homeless, the unemployed, the poor have no power.  Can you imagine a Fifty Million March on Washington D.C.?  There is no shared cost to these problems.  If you are lucky to have a good job, are one of the few left to have good health insurance, or, like me and get a check every month, none of this affects you.  We can be amongst the 60% who "have it made"!
   It used to be 90%, over 90%! then 80, then 70, now 60% and tomorrow it will be worse.  At some point you have to realize that they will be coming for you!
   They have done this to Social Security already and we didn't even whimper!  There is no debate on Social Security it has already been destroyed.  There is no rioting in the streets by old people because we are tired and it doesn't effect us today.  Do you even know what has happened to it? or did it just slip by?
   There is no longer a cost of living increase to SS.  It is frozen and will be devalued to nothing within a few short years.  They claim that a letter to your Congressman is worth 30,000 votes.  That is how lazy and complacent we have become.  Yes, we are "sheeple".
   Marie Antoinette did not listen to her people and lost her head!

I am always HERE

Customers Wanted, Apply Within

   I saw this sign on a marquis of a local business and that tells the whole story, doesn't it?
The factory where I get my metal pieces powder coated only works three days a week.  They used to paint five days a week, three shifts, around the clock, all the time.
   No amount of government incentives could induce them to hire more people without additional sales.  Unless they needed a fifth person for a hand of Bridge!  They are working pretty slow as it is.  You could set up a program where they paid zero taxes and it wouldn't help at all.  They need customers.
   If powder coating of steel is down then so are steel sales, and so are the truck drivers who deliver the steel.  So are the sales of computers which keep tract of all this and the bookkeepers who keep track of them.  It is the wing flap of the butterfly felt everywhere!
   I can't imagine anybody in their right mind wanting to be President!  I mean, really, could you solve this problem?  It is not just us; it is the same everywhere, all over the world!  Germany might be the strongest in the Eurozone but there is a good chance the problems in Greece, Ireland, Spain and other's might bring them down.  Those countries have tried the austerity measures for over two years and their situation is just getting worse!  Can we look to another country to see what they are doing, maybe see what works and what doesn't, one step in the right direction to get out of this mess?
   Steps it is going to be too.  It will not be a fast process.  We are in this mess for the long haul, maybe deeper before we start to see some light.  When I was a lad unemployment payments were for 20 weeks and then you were expected to find a job.  Now it is 99 weeks!  That is almost two damn whole years!!!
You could get a degree from a Junior College in that amount of time!
   Hey, that is not a bad idea off the top of my head!  How about making that a requirement for unemployment!  You can collect unemployment for two years AND we'll pick up the tuition, but you got to go to school!  It would take a few million people out of the unemployment cycle, give some work to the bus drivers, the school staff and lots of others down the line.
   It is not easy to create work, oh lots needs to be done but someone has to pay for it.  More important someone has to want it done.  We need customers.  We need customers who pay!
   Have you thought what happens if we get rid of Medicare?  What would happen if there were no "Obamacare"?  We have a brand new hospital in our town and they just published their annual report.
Big article in the newspaper this morning.  25% of their customers do not pay!  Up from 18% and an up and onward trend!  Cool, huh?  The working poor without insurance, the down and outers, those that have nothing.  That is an ever increasing circle and it wants to envelope us.  Hospitals go out of business every day, just like any other business they cannot work for nothing for any length of time.  Medicare and other government programs pay about a third and private insurances pay the other third.  What happens if we take the government third out of this equation?  Quite simply they would shut their doors.
   Dollars and programs for the under insured provide jobs and keep the hospitals open for all of us.  That is pretty simple math too.  If you want to bring down the cost of medicine, create more doctors and nurses and all the people who help us when we so need their help.
   Hey, this is easy!  If I were President I could create more jobs by extending Obamacare!  I might offer "free" tuition to medical schools and nurses training programs?
   "Free" is in quotes because nothing is really free.  Maybe some kind of internship, some kind of return for my investment?  There are ideas here that could be explored.
   It is a tough job to be President.  I wouldn't want that job.  There are things I wouldn't do though.  I think they should have to take the Hippocratic Oath, like doctors used to do, (they don't do it any more!).
   "First do no harm"!  We may not know exactly the right answers, know the consequences of what seems like a simple solution, but we do know when harm is done.  Everyone knows that.
   In the name of progress and recovery we are abandoning our pollution standards, allowing more dirty air into what God has given us to breathe.  Really, we did this and it is crazy.  A cave in to Republicans and prosperity at any costs.
   I would not drill willy nilly, here and there, in my backyard or the beach I love.  The Gulf Oil spill taught me a lesson and it was there for all to learn.  It can be dangerous and deadly, black gold that blinds us.  Do you ever wonder what happens at night when the lights are off?  Power still surges, going its way along the wires.
The first person to develop a battery and incentive for this night time energy will be very rich indeed.
   There is an idea!  I might offer a reward?  Save me a billion bucks and I will give you a million!  Why not, we need it?
   Oh, I might come up with a few more ways to create a job or two, but I wouldn't want to be President, 
no siree bob, not me.
   But what would YOU do?  We have until Thursday when the President will give his speech, and then it won't be about jobs at all but bickering and infighting, name calling and endless drilling.
   Seriously, if you had to create just five jobs and figure out a way to fund them, what would you do?
If you could solve that problem, maybe you could be President of the United States!

London's Burning!

   The Title could have been "London's Bridge is Falling Down," except I believe that has been relocated to Arizona!  What is really happening and could it happen here?

   The Ladder to Success only works if you can see the first rung.  The London Riots are not about the death of a black man being shot by he police.  He is no martyr, we don't even know his name.  That is not the issue at all.

   I am reminded of the movie, "A Clockwork Orange".  Tons of violence in a post industrial age where identity is lost.  There is a problem with gated communities and block after block, row after row of apartment dwellings. It creates a "them Vs us" atmosphere.  The greater this divide the more occasion for trouble.

   I thought of titling this post, "I have to water my tomatoes", that simple sentence would explain all I am trying to say.  It contains responsibility and ownership, something to be conservative about.  Youth today are feeling left out, an isolation finding comfort in gangs and street violence, the darkness of drugs and despair.  If they see the rungs of the ladder at all they see them as broken or a ladder meant for someone else.

   The difference between what is happening in London and other "hot spots" in the world is a matter of degree.  The London Rioters are lucky.  Lucky to be in a civilized country of law with a custom and culture

admonishing violence, a country where very few of its policemen even carry guns.  A country that, so far, has

never used tear gas, water cannons or rubber bullets or other efforts at crowd control.

   But they want a piece of the pie too, these rioters who have lost an ability or ambition to actually earn their possessions see this an an opportunity, an "easy money" opportunity of theft and destruction of what is not theirs.  They see it as a destruction of things they cannot have.  Toppling a broken ladder.

   A part of this problem, in an attempt at appeasement, in a type of bribery in return for non-violence, we have given them too much.  Or too little?  What used to be a small segment of society, the "down and outers"

the unemployed, underemployed, those struggling with minimum wage and minimal jobs is now a larger percentage of the population.  "They" have become "us"!

   England has a National Debt problem also and for the past two years has attempted to balance their budget on the backs of the poor with various austerity measures.  Basically less for the poor and less for the police who protect us from them.  This is clearly NOT working in England and why anyone would want to do this here is beyond me.

   Jobs.  Whether in England or Egypt or here, this is really what it comes down to.  Given a chance people would rather be good.  Life is easier with a solid footing on one rung of the ladder and the next rung within reach.

   This is a serious issue and I don't know how to solve it.  We could be next.

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My Neighbor on Unemployment...

You might think she was on vacation.  It has been a year and her benefits have been extended another 20 weeks.  Five more months of paid holiday.  She is enjoying this time and has made great use of it.

    She has painted her entire house, got new curtains and a new dish washer.  She recently got a dog to keep her company.  I once asked her about going back to school, maybe learn a new skill, brush up on this or that.  She is just so busy that she can't find the time, she says!  Only two or three more months and she will have to start looking for work!  Well, unless her unemployment checks get extended again!

   It must be a good deal.  She makes more on unemployment than I do on Social Security!  She does have expenses that I do not have.  She has a brand new car!

   I can only think there must be a reason for this that I do not understand.

   I know there is no unemployment fund.  When I was an employer what was paid into this fund was minimal, less than $15 dollars a week.  That has to be long gone by now.  Every unemployment check is borrowed money!

   I don't think much happens in this world because it is "nice", the right think to do or even earned.

I think of our economy as one big machine that needs a lot of grease, a lot of maintenance.  Stopping this food chain at any place has a huge effect down the line.

   I suppose she buys milk and I know she buys beer with her unemployment check.  That helps support the local store, the delivery drivers, the oil industry, some more benefits for someone else, the bottle industry and lots more.  The automobile industry and bankers are happy with monthly check for her new car.

   The source of the money is not the critical thing.  It is important that it gets spent.  It is grease to this monstrous machine.

   Truthfully, I don't understand this.  I don't really understand a damned thing.

   We have lost our pride and maybe America isn't necessary anymore?  We don't make anything anymore.

Our manufacturing plants are shuttered all across the country.  The Space Shuttle is grounded and we now have to rent space from the Russians.  Cuba has a better medical system than we do.  Everything that we have worked for is being whittled away.

   Much of it is our own fault.  We did this to ourselves.  Every purchase from Walmart is a statement that we want cheap things for cheap.  We have no concept of working hard for something good.

   This is one of the reasons the art world is collapsing around us.

   We have no sense of unity at all.  We want ours and we want it now!

   I think we are rats caught in a maze.  We tear and claw at each other in our struggle to get to the top.

We subtract from the least of us because it is the easiest meal.  We destroy living wage jobs, union benefits and pensions.  We steal from Social Security and without CODA are out to destroy it.  We want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.

   There is money out there.  There are fewer rats at the top but they have accumulated most of it.  Why there is a fear of wanting 3% of them is beyond me?

   Frankly, I think all of this gives us a bad attitude.  I think my neighbor knows she is grease in a machine.

I think she knows that any job she might get will pay less than she had.  The old job was destroyed along with the "American Dream".  She is discouraged and on vacation from it all.  Maybe we are too?

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Me or the Area Around Me?

We move from one neighborhood to another, even across State Lines, because we want to improve our circumstances, get a better job, that nicer house, a better life style, be around more comfortable, nicer people.  Americans move more than any other people on this planet.
   Something is happening now that is different.  More adult children are moving back home.  It is not uncommon to find three generations living together in a single house.  There is nothing better out there, no where to move, no jobs to find.  Is this a generational failure? A  Societal failure?  or do we have an official 9.1% unemployment and an unofficial rate much higher because these people themselves are failures?
How does one really analyse this and come up with honest answers?  Until we discover what has caused these problems the situation will only get worse.
   We are like rats in a cage, eating and tearing at each other because we can't figure out how to open the door!  It is going to get worse.  We chip away at pension funds and that was okay because I don't have a pension.  We cut back and curtail unemployment benefits, and that is okay, I am retired!  We are union bashing now, against those that made the coal mines less dangerous and industry safer, with better wages for all.  I am not in a union.  We are cutting back on woman's health and children advocacy and that has nothing to do with me.  "I'm all right, Jack," is the attitude we assume, all of this has nothing to do with me!
   Eventually this attitude will bring us all down and they will come for us!  Now they are after Social Security and Medicare and I am wondering whether it is too late to complain?  Maybe I should have remembered what they do to the least of us they will do to all of us?
   America is rapidly becoming a "third world country" and we are doing it to ourselves.  We are to blame!
   Here is ONE incident, but there are many, all across America, in every little town.
   The Swedish furniture company, IKEA, pays their workers in Sweden $19 an hour and offers a huge benefit package including five weeks paid vacation a year!  It is unionized in Sweden.
   They have a plant in Dannville, Virginia, non-unionized with wages just above $8. an hour, no benefits, no vacations!  Needless to say they do not want a union here! ...and the profit that is made goes back to Sweden!
   How is any of this our fault?  We don't have to buy non-union.  We don't have to buy foreign stuff.  When we do there are results, there are consequences.
   There is no way we can get ahead, better ourselves in this life, by destroying and pulling down those who may have more than we do.  We are just removing that rung from the ladder that we too could use.

The American Experience

There is something etched into our National Psyche, our less than three hundred years as a Nation, that has become part of the DNA of  "The American Experience".  We began as boatloads of mismatched immigrants seeking something better.  Leaving tyranny, poverty and oppression behind, we came here with an entrepreneurial spirit, thinking that if we started from scratch we could make something better.
   "Pack up our bags and go" is a particularly American expression and we conquered as we went.  Unlike the Canadian experience where they created pockets of civilization in a sea of wilderness, we cut huge swaths and brought civilization with us.  "Go West young man" became the American dream and "manifest destiny" our license.
   Not to argue here the good and bad to all of this, I am just saying the idea of moving, working hard, starting "from scratch" and conquering the elements is particularly American.  It is how the railroads were built and the West was won and how people became wealthy.  It is how common people became land owners and could have a place of their own.  It is a part of "the American Dream".
   And it is over.  No longer a common experience it is the realm of rock stars, entrepreneurial digital geniuses, the famous and the few.  We are soon becoming a nation of renters, unemployed or under employed, struggling without land or ownership and there is no more West to go to.
   "Change and Hope" is an admission that we are in a place, some kind of circumstance where we do not want to be.  Without the study of literature and art and theater and history we can not discover where we are and we will never get to "that other place", a place we can't move to because there is no more room, a place we must bring to us.
   Law and Order is an agreement that I won't steal from you.  It is an agreeable circumstance when a person has something to lose.  Tha "American Experience" is rapidly changing.

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