Opting Out, One More Time

Holy sheep dip.... I am nearly at a loss for words. I've tried, in the last year, to re-join those of you who read newspapers, and keep an eye on those over-fed fat cats in Washington who blow so much money that is no longer backed by the gold in Fort Knox. I gave money to a presidential campaign. As of today, I'm done.... I'm checking out again.... and, I'm taking my sanity and my money with me. 

It took a brief look at an article on Yahoo, and a longer look at a couple in the New York Times web edition to make me pull my head back in my shell.  On Yahoo, they report that millions of Americans are so far behind on paying utility bills that they face being disconnected. They face this situation because of the high cost of heating their homes this winter. Bet the guys running the oil companies, and the coal companies, and utility providers don't have that problem. They have the golden umbrella of HUGE salaries and stock options. Then, moving on to the Times in disgust, there are two things that jump out from my small screen. The fact that rising global food prices are considered a crisis, and an article talking about how 96 military projects cost 295 BILLION dollars, 26 percent more than originally thought. Ninety-six projects, NINETY-SIX people. I can't comprehend how that few projects can cost that much money. And, then there are these new Naval vessels that were being designed and built at the same time with an equal amount of waste in spending. Here is what the Times writer had to say about these new coastal attack ships......  "The bill for the ship, being built by Lockheed Martin (thought they were airplane builders), has soared to $531 million, more than double the original, and by some calculations could be $100 million more."

When does someone, anyone, in government say STOP! You Lockheed guys are screwing the pooch here! If the project soars to estimations, one little boat will put you, as taxpayers, back a total of $631 million instead of  $265.5 million. If your government paid Lockheed the original bid price, which is how they got the job in the first place, there would be enough leftover to pay all those late utility bills and then some. 365 million dollars could be put to use paying for things that matter, like heating bills and medical bills for the poor. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN DC AND BIG BUSINESS? So, since that question will never have a rational answer, I am taking what little money I have and I am going back to my cave and I am going to live the rest of my life the best way I know how. Ok, I'm not really going off to a cave, but I am going to try really hard to pretend that this un-governable government does not exist. There is a better way to live on this fragile rock we call Earth and I am still going to do my best to live in a way that is less destructive. 

A friend told me yesterday that because the fat cats won't do the right thing, and our inability to change the fucked up foibles in Washington, what did it matter if she "threw her pop can in the garbage instead of recycling it." I agree with her about the apathy and inability, but not the latter. I will still recycle, and compost, and grow some of my own food, and buy used stuff whenever possible, and eat organic, and buy carbon offsets for this trip we are taking. I will leave my little part of the world in a better way than I find it, and I will try and live happily ever after. 

To those of you who still believe in the struggle against the giant, I hope you find a way to defeat it. If you don't the children of this world are in for a hell of a ride as adults.

The Class in Politics...

"The people who are out of touch are doing most of the talking.", said Whoopi Goldberg on 

WOW o WOW, a new website designed for women over 40. She is so dead on. 

This comment was made during an online discussion about elitism, Barack Obama, and politicians, most of which, are upper middle class or rich Americans.  

I've always thought the English have it right..... The House of Lords, and The House of Commons. One chamber for the landed gentry, one for the regular folk. The Senate and The House of Representatives were modeled after the old English institutions, but in this day and age most all of the people who are in Washington are of the landed gentry, in some way. Maybe some of them have been poor or working class at some point in their lives, but I doubt it that they are at present, or when they ran for office. I would suppose that in Great Britain it is quite the same. The poor and working class are not going to be walking into either chamber in the Capitol wearing scruffy jeans and a Harley-Davidson t-shirt to sit and vote like the guys in suits. I doubt they sell PBR in the Senate dining room. 

All of us of the have nots, have put our faith in the haves.... but do they have any idea, besides what is written in position papers and those thick volumes churned out by government and called "studies", of what the average joe or jane goes through to stay afloat in this country on a daily basis? I think not. 

Every member of Congress makes at least a six figure income. Every member of Congress has a paid staff. The members do not have to write checks for their salaries. We, as the taxed, pay them too. Every member of Congress will be wined, and dined, and maybe even get laid at the expense of big business in the form of a lobbyist who wants a vote from them. Every member Congress can eat in the dining rooms, and get their shoes shined, and get a haircut in the Capitol. They have it good, and that makes them less able, in my opinion, to have any idea of what it is like to try and make ends meet on a salary of $12,000 a year. 

That is what I made last year. And, besides the fact that I could not afford vacations until I inherited some money late in the year, I made do. I don't drive a fancy car, in fact I ride my bike and take the bus and I am 52 years old. I bought 98% of the furnishings in my house from garage and estate sales and my clothes on clearance. I dinedat home most of the year. I did not have cable, and I did not have internet access. Can the guys who go to work in the United States Capitol say the same? 

I wondered if my life would change much now that I have a bit of money in the bank. So far, there have only been slight changes. I now have internet access and a computer and a new cell phone that does more than ring. I helped out some of those closest to me. I took tow vacations early this year, something I have not done in almost a decade. I finally bought a shirt that wasn't on clearance and paid more than $15 for a watch. I still don't have cable and I still have used furniture, and I still don't eat out much. So, do the people on the hill have any idea how to represent people like me? Probably not, but I don't see things changing any time soon. 

A true democracy is what we need, but the country has too many folks, and the laws are too complex for some regular guys and gals to understand. Maybe the answer is to make all of the members of congress spend a week living like the poorest people they represent. It could be that if they actually walk a mile or so in a regular person's shoes, folks in power, and their spouses, would have a better understanding of what the masses have to deal with everyday, and they wouldn't be talking about how they can't survive on half a million dollars a year, which is what Michelle Obama said at a function last week. 

I could do more that survive.... I could give half of it away every year and still live "high on the hog". Creepy how they think, isn't it?

Where is Mao?

The China I saw on TV when Nixon went to visit no longer exists. Communism has a new face in China and it looks exactly like capitalism. Check out the National Geographic website to see it with your own eyes. 

No longer will you see those green/grey suits everyone used to wear. No longer will you see those little red books in everyone's hands. No longer will you see some poor schmuck standing in the street with a sign around his neck telling of his "crimes" against the party and the country. China is now a nation full of of cell phones, shopping malls, and a Sam's Club that looks more like a Nordstroms. 

But, what you also see is a country with the some of the most dirty air in the world, and food that some athletes, there for the Olympic Games, won't be eating for fear of getting sick. The United States team members will be eating food brought from the US and cooked by teams chefs. 

Becoming this new commu/capitalist nation has cost the Chinese people and their environment. It's hard to find a picture of people in Beijing who aren't wearing some kind of mask, although it seems less important for the people of Shanghai to cover up. In a survey done by the magazine's staff, most young Chinese say money is more important to them than love. Sad, really. Family used to be the most important thing. Well.... that and the things written in that little red book. 

I wonder what China will look like in twenty years? Will it have moved to being more free? Will this boom make them the most powerful nation in the world, and put us in our place? Time will tell. I saw some guy who runs an investing firm on a CBS news program saying he had over 200 billion dollars to invest in the west, particularly in the United States. We borrow money from them at an alarming rate. Could be that one day this country will be forced, by the weight of its debt, to become the United States of the People's Republic of China. All hail Mao! Do you think they will give us all Little Red Books?

Over and over and over again

Most always, it is the New York Times, or more exactly, something I read in that venerable newspaper, that sets me off on a new entry. Today, it was a front page piece on the stress multiple tours is putting on soldiers that are serving in Iraq. 

Big surprise there, like sending them back, time after time, would leave them feeling all fuzzy and warm and safe and comfortable. The numbers of men and women suffering this form of passive torture are staggering. According to the Times, "out of 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times, according to a separate set of statistics provided this week by Army personnel officers."

EEEEEKKKKK!!!! That's like putting someone in the electric chair every day and then saying, oh, not today...... how inhumane is that?

During WWII, soldiers fought until they had a certain number of "points". During Vietnam, like I stated in the post before this one, it was not a points system. You served 365 days..... one year, then it was back to the states, and usually a discharge. Today, it's go and come home, and go and come home, and go and come home until possibly your term of service has ended. That could mean a person would be in harm's way for longer than WWII lasted. 

I'd love to be one of those people who believes that the personnel of the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force could pull out of Iraq in the middle of the night and quietly let the people there put their country back together. But truth be told, it can't happen like that. And as long as we have a military presence there the attacks against US forces will continue, and Sunni tribesmen will still be killing their Shite countrymen. The later could go on for decades. Whatever you say about Saddam Hussein, he kept the peace, albeit with an over zealous iron fist. Peace between these two tribes could go on for decades. I have no idea how to bring them together, because men who are zelot-like about different beliefs don't come together very easily. Just look at Palestine and Israel. That region of the world has been at war, in some way, for centuries. 

I say, bring back the draft and then whoever is in that big white elephant in Washington will have to think of a way to get US troops out of this mess, and get the two dominate tribes in Iraq to agree on a way to live in peace, or suffer the terrible consequences US forces bring upon them and their land everyday. Oh, wait.... I forgot about the oil men in this country want control of. 

So, scratch the get the troops out sooner thing. Halliburton wants more blood for oil. It keeps those fat cats rich and happy at the expense of the poorer classes of people in this not so great land that is the United States of Amerika. Let's hear it for CEO salaries that resemble the entire budgets of some third-world countries. Don't you love that Lawrence J. Ellison of software giant Oracle got a salary boost of nearly 109 percent. He made a little over 61 million dollars last year. Yep, this war will go on so boys can have all the toys and houses and cars they want.