Gone too long

Please accept my apologies.  2013 got away from me, and I am quite embarrassed that this is my first post since - July?!

Since July, I have moved, gotten married, my wife and I both started new jobs, and I have continued to help my mother with her fledgling family enterprise while endeavoring to further my own start-up in the evenings.  I am not one for excuses, but I do believe my absence here is most understandably excused.

In 2014, I will strive to not let this blog fall by the wayside every time I get busy, which these days is nearly all the time.  What makes it difficult is that I am responsible for online content for two small businesses and a volunteer association of which I am a member, and I spend most of the rest of my working hours on the computer in other ways.  At the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is look at a screen any more.  And yet here I am again.

I hope that my illustrious return to the screen (the computer screen that is) is appreciated by all four of you who read this blog.  I will do my absolute best not to absent myself any more, and thank you for your undying loyalty.

More breaking news from Britain!

As if you didn't still have the taste of bubble and squeak lingering in your mouth from all the royal baby coverage, Britain keeps the hits coming today!  Now Tory Prime Minister David Cameron wants to censor pornography on the internet.

I realize Britain is a smaller country and not a federation like the United States.  I realize that issues that would be reserved to the states here and could not make it to the federal level in Washington can still be a topic of debate in London.  Still, it leaves me scratching my head over why the leader of the government of a G8 country would actually dedicate time to filtering the beat banks of his constituents.  Sorry.  "Wank banks".

Child pornography as well as pornography depicting rape should of course be outlawed and their producers shut down and arrested.  I wholeheartedly agree with Cameron on that part of his crusade.  However, aside from some bogus Focus on the Family moral argument, there really is no legitimate reason for a national leader to be engaged in a quest to censor sexually explicit content made for adults by adults.

As an American, however, I will say that I am a little relieved.  David Cameron is showing the world the ancestral homeland of American Puritanism and "family values" horse shit: England.

In honor of the Royal Baby

Right now, America and the whole world seem to be paying more attention to Kate Middleton's dilating cervix than even her own personal team of medical professionals. The fixation is disgusting.  For one thing, this is a private moment for Kate and her follicularly challenged prince. For another, the fixation itself is demonstrative of just how out of whack people's news priorities are.

So in honor of the world'st most watched fetus, here is a brief list of real fucking news stories and issues that are of more importance than the birth of a child to a couple thousands of miles away whom you will never ever meet.  None of the following is in any particular order.

International:

• Famine
• AIDS
• Climate change
• Desertification 
• Overpopulation
• Air pollution
• Access to clean drinking water
• Mass fucking starvation

Domestic (US):

• Corporate corruption of the entire political process
• Seizure of private property through eminent domain by private energy corporations
• Healthcare reform (ACA is only a first step)
• Corruption and conflicts of interest on the Supreme Court
• Wholesale purchasing of statehouses by ALEC
• Crumbling infrastructure
• Soaring youth unemployment
• Degradation of workers' rights

Or, if you want to stop thinking about any of these things, or even never begin thinking about them to begin with, enjoy your Royal Baby.

BBC World News

Home sweet home

As if the proposed Keystone XL pipeline across America and the fracking disasters above the Marcellus Shale weren't enough for the people and land of this country to tolerate, there is more bad news.  Large corporations have proposed pipelines and power lines which they would like to extend across the landscape, and even across your yard.

Closest to home here, one company is seeking to use an already laid pipeline, reverse the direction of its flow, and send Canadian tar sands through it from Montreal to Portland, Maine.  Of course the trouble is that while the pipeline already exists, tar sands are full of, well, sands, meaning that the new river of petroleum in the raw would be full of abrasive rock, scratching at the sides of the pipeline, wearing it down and bringing it ever closer to springing a leak.  Of course, while they would love to use the pipeline, the company has not sought to reinforce it.

Equally close to home is again another Canadian company, Hydro-Quebec, which is pursuing a massive land grab across beautiful stretches of northern New England so that it may bring its electricity from Quebec into the New England states.  This unfortunately means dragging high tension wires across family farms and mountain tops.  For those of you not familiar with the region, picture your desktop background or your fall time screen saver, then imagine it carved in two with massive high tension wires across your view.  Not so relaxing now, is it? 

Think I am being melodramatic here my fellow American?  Do a quick Google search of "Hydro-Quebec" AND "Cree Nation". 

At least in the case of Hydro-Quebec, the private corporation in question is offering to buy family farms one by one.  In Vermont, Vermont Gas, another energy company, is looking to extend a gas pipeline through part of the state, under one of the nation's larger lakes, and into New York State.  And how do they propose doing it?   I mean, not the construction, but the legalities, the real estate transactions?  Apparently, they are applying for a "Certificate of Public Good" so that they may use the state's sovereign power of eminent domain to seize people's property interests (namely the right of exclusive possession) and build their pipeline across their farm or their yard. 

To avoid delving into a lengthy explanation wrought with legalese, I will simply put it in the following terms: if this private company obtains this certificate, wants to extend its property through your home, and you do not consent, tough shit.  They apparently can apply to obtain that "right".

This is a touchy and indeed touching subject.  Anyone who ever took a middle school civics class learned at some point about eminent domain, which is to say, taking for the public good.  If the government needed to build a road for all of us to use, and your land were in the way, they could take what they needed, and pay you the value of what they took.  Of course now even before this Vermont Gas story, the Supreme Court took an extremely broad view of the term "public use" (or was it public good?) when it ruled that the government could take private property and give it to a private corporation, as long as it deemed that seizure and redistribution to be for the greater good.  Apparently your family isn't doing much good, so we'll need to take your land and give it to some real job creators! 

Whether you are young or old, rich or poor, renter or owner, this all should have you very concerned.  We are now living at a time when corporations are once again apparently able to apply for (or buy?) a governmental power, and use it take and destroy one's own family home.  I say again since this all smacks of the rampant abuses of railroad companies some hundred-and-fifty or so years ago.  So regardless of what your living situation is, stay informed and speak up for yourself and for your neighbors.  If we do not work together to litigate in the court of public opinion, we have no hope.  We already know what the Supreme Court has said about taking your home. 

Double our rate today

If you are lucky enough to not have any outstanding student debt, you may have missed today's news and what it means for millions of us.  Even if you are part of our unfortunate lot, you may have missed it.  Today is, however, the day on which student loan rates are set to double if Congress does not act, which in light of the laughable members of which it is comprised, is about as likely as the world ending before dinner.

Two articles are out today worth a quick read, despite their questionable publications of origin.  One is by Joan Walsh of Salon, while the other appeared in USA Today online and was shared via social media by Senator Bernie Sanders' staff.  Both are sobering to say the least, and to be quite frank, I would actually discourage you from reading either one of them if you feel as though your emotional and mental health are anything short of rock solid these days.

The hard truth is that the numbers do not lie, and a college degree - especially an undergraduate degree - may not even be worth it anymore.  This of course flies in the face of the past few decades' conventional wisdom.  Young people have been told for years things like "it will all be worth it in the end" and "it's an investment".  That may have been honest advice when the debt assumed in undertaking one's studies was under five digits and the lifelong benefits were measured by almost exponential gains in income.  Now, and indeed for some years leading up to now, this "investment" argument has become disingenuous, as debt burdens have creeped into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars while the increases in lifelong earning potential have stagnated.  What was sound advice for students of the past became something akin to fraudulent inducement.

I will not launch into a preemptive rebuttal of the obnoxious "personal responsibility" argument today, as I am about as short on time as I am on money.  I will say, however, that if we truly had a meritocratic system of education in America, this would not even be an issue.  Instead, we have a system where the hard workers have to not only work hard, but also go into debt, all while a lucky few are given an education, whether they work for it or not.

Bear in mind also that this is not typical debt.  It can no longer be discharged in bankruptcy, and very often cannot be refinanced.  Your wages can be garnished, you can be harassed, and you have little if any recourse for any injury you suffer.  Your lender can sell your debt away and force you to deal with another party with whom you never had an agreement, but try to tell them you have sold your end of the deal to a third party and see what happens.  This is the the closest thing we have to indenture in the modern era.

If any of this has made you feel compelled to give your Representative on Capitol Hill a piece of your mind, you can find all the contact info you need here.  Best of luck.

Pardon the absence

Well hello there.  Long time no see.

I want to apologize for my absence this past month.  Life has been hectic to put it mildly.  However, perhaps even more important to explain my absence is the fact that I am temporarily living in a place with sporadic access to the internet.  Oh, and the fact that all of my writing time has been devoted to a book I am working on.

Anyhoo, I will still try to write here as much as possible, though it may be with decreased frequency.  After working on a book and going to an actual job, it really can be a struggle to upload content here, especially when it often needs to be from my phone or through one of those dinky wireless internet USB cards.

No worries though.  There will be more to come soon.

The Entitlement Generations

We have all heard candidates and office holders rail against so-called "entitlements".  We have all heard debates about these "entitlements".  We now even hear pundits, moderators, and journalists use this famed GOP buzzword to refer to many programs to which citizens contribute by paying into them money which they earn by working.  Entitlements indeed!

We have also heard the youngest generation of adults - meaning those in their twenties and perhaps a bit older - referred to as an "entitled" generation, one that whines about the lack of opportunities today and one which feels as though it is entitled to something better than a $10/hr job after obtaining a degree or two.  We hear that that same generation moves back in with its parents, has no aspirations, and wants things handed to them.

Really? Is that what is happening?  Let's look at some facts.

When the housing bubble burst and the markets tanked under  George W. Bush, during  the 2008 campaign, and before  the 2009 inauguration, some one who is 25 years old today would have been an undergraduate in college.  Now, if you want to look more at the culture of greed and corruption that lead to this whole mess, another big marker was the Enron scandal of 2001.  At that time, the same 25 year old would have been, at best, 13.  Finally, if you want to look at the advent of the culture of "greed is good" and "government is the problem" which has brought us to this golden era in our political and economic history, you would have to look at the Patron Saint of Specious Arguments and Rewritten History, Ronald Reagan.  Some one who is 25 today would have been born, most likely in the last year of Reagan's two-term presidency.

Add five or even ten years of age to the hypothetical person above to see where a 30 or 35 year old today would have been at these times, and you will see that young adults - and even young-ish adults, had literally nothing to do with the mess we are in today.  They just are in the enviable position of having to enter their theoretically most productive years of life during its aftermath and cleanup.  Suddenly the pessimism and living with the parents has a different context.

Now let's look at the people who caused the mess, sat by and were complacent during the mess making, and/or now get paid to comment on the mess.  While we're at it, let's look at the people who, though private individuals who never have been on television news shows, feel compelled to give unsolicited and condescending advice to those younger than them.  Let's look at them all.  And since no feelings were spared by the individuals at whom we are now looking, none will be spared here.

For those who contributed to - and indeed now professionally comment on the current economic mess - there really is not much to say that has not already been said.  Matt Taibbi has given us more research, analysis, and eloquence in his take downs of the excesses of Wall Street and the culture of corruption than I could ever dream of doing, and for that I am grateful.  What I will say is simply this: these few elite individuals are disgusting, have caused  the citizenry's faith in the federal government and private institutions to fall to the lowest levels in a century, and would be in prison if federal laws were not tailored to their socio-economic class.  Permitting them to continue their reckless behavior in the financial sector and to allow their accomplices to comment on the matter on nationwide news and opinion shows only adds insult to injury.

For the regular people of the two generations preceding the dubiously dubbed "millenials", there are some very simple facts which are all too often ignored and which we can ill afford to forget.  Because of this forgetfulness and/or ignorance, discussions are frequently far off center and miss the point.  To be absolutely clear, these are often individuals who had nothing to do with the creation of this economic mess.  However, they have availed themselves of every possible benefit the economic system and the federal government have to offer, and have then rebuked their children and grandchildren from hoping to do the same.  This begs for a rebuttal. 

First, if we are to use the current definition of "entitled" as enjoying government programs and services meant to better the lives of individuals and families, the people who enjoyed life between the end of World War II and the "Reagan Revolution" have been the absolutely most entitled people in American history.  Period.  No wait, correction: the white people who enjoyed life during that time enjoyed more government benefits than any other generation in American history.  Selective use of the G.I. Bill and discriminatory housing practices made damn sure it was those generations of white people who benefited. The same people who rail against "immigrants" or "the poor" or "these young people" in news site comment sections and on national television opinion shows are the same who had their lives, from birth to retirement, from public education to pension, planned and provided for them.

These are the people who, though employed at a grocery store or public utility, came to own real estate (don't understand the reason for my emphasis? Google the terms "feudalism", "Gilded Age", "Railroad Company" among others to see how land and property had previously been divided and handled)! How did these common citizens come to such great fortune? Hard work?  Well, in part, sure! They showed up and worked every day.  Then again, so did a miner fifty years before then and so does a Wal-Mart employee now.  Neither is a landowner for sure.  So how did the shopkeeper or electrician come to own a house after 1945?  How did little one-family houses pop up by the millions across the country? Answer: government programs like the FHA, the hands-on extensions of an overarching federal policy of homeownership set in place after the Second World War.

Homeownership was not the only government-backed and (at least partially) government-funded policy enacted for the public good after World War II.  Public education was still actually publicly funded, even at the university level and brand-spankin' new superhighways were built across the United States.  What was amazing about all of these was that they were open for everyone to use - and indeed almost everyone did, even those who say they did everything for themselves.

It is against this backdrop that two generations built lives, raised families, and acquired wealth.  It is thanks to this government foundation that they were able to build their personal and professional successes.  And though I am sure millions of people felt like they were given nothing and were going it all alone when they spent weeks pounding the pavement looking for their first job or searching for their big break, they must remember that there was at least fresh, new, even pavement to pound in the first place.  They were not hitting the now-proverbial, once-very-real dusty trail, nor were they tripping over the potholes and frost heaves of our crumbling infrastructure as we would do today.

I write this not to bash an entire generation or two, not do I do it to slam an entire social class.  Far from it.  I write this to expose, in very plain terms, the hypocrisy of certain individuals and groups within the past couple of generations.  They do not comprise the entirety or the majority, however, their numbers are great enough that they attract a great deal of attention.

So the next time you see a harsh comment on a news story, hear an ageist critique on television, or endure a snide remark made in person, do not get angry, and do not dispair.  Rather, just remind yourself that the person making such remarks is in possession of an incredible lack of perspective, and has little to no grasp of modern - or even personal - history.  Take comfort in this fact, and realize that nothing you can say or write will change it. 

Take a deep breath, and move on.