The Unruly Pedestrian

Life Without a Car

2012-01-26T10:42:00.000-05:00

I know I don't get too personal very often on this blog, and for good reason. My life is often dull. Additionally, I also don't want to burden you with my personal problems. But when something is pertinent to the mission of this blog, I guess I should feel obligated to share. It's also helpful to vent.

I live without a car, in the most heavily car-dependent part of the world. That is, the U.S. of A. Unless you live in a metropolitan area, like Manhattan or San Francisco, getting around via car is pretty much non-negotiable. I live on Long Island, which has public transit, but it usually isn't very good. In fact, it can be downright unreliable, which makes it a real bitch if you are using it to get to and from work. Not only do I not have a car, I also do not have a driver's license. I have some disabilities, that discouraged me from trying to get a license. In hindsight, this was a mistake, perhaps a fatal one.

There are countless ways in which your life is affected without access to a car. I'll share one story with you. After a lengthy period of inactivity in terms of looking for work, I decided to get back on my horse and try to make a real effort once again. A colleague of mine referred me to a state civil exam to be a legal assistant. This was a good fit for me, as I had a certification in paralegal studies that I am hoping will come of some use. So I ponied up the application fee, and began to study.

The day came, and a lot of snow came down. But not enough snow for the state to cancel their exams (I don't think any amount of snow would have been enough; in any event, the state will still hold the exams, and hope that enough people will not show up, that way they can pocket the application fees without people taking the exam). I live with my mom and brother, so those were my only two options to get to the school where the exam was being held (the bus wasn't an option; I would have to walk nearly 2 miles in the snow, and in any event, the stop probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the school). My mom is getting old and does not feel comfortable driving in adverse conditions. That left my brother. Initially, he decided not to take me. Of course, I felt dejected and withdrawn. In the end, he relented and took me. I know that my brother cares for me very much. But in a lot of ways, I don't think that I'm understood very well by either him or my mother.

He told me that he took me, partly because he didn't want me to sulk all day. But it would have went beyond sulking. I would have felt a profound sense of despair, it was already beginning to sink in when I woke up and saw the weather. I want to do things and go places, particularly if it will help me from a career perspective. I also know that a lot of these goals are next to impossible to meet without a car. I have family, but they can only help so much.

A few days later, my mom and father spoke. A few years ago, they split and divorced, so he doesn't live with us anymore. I don't think too highly of him; he never gave us a reason to be proud of him, and he would never sacrifice anything for me or anyone else. Anyway, my mom told him that I took a state exam, and he said (according to Mom), "he wouldn't be able to get a job anyway, he doesn't drive". My mom and brother were fixated on how cruel he was for saying this, and yeah, he does come off as a dick. But I keep asking myself, "dick or not, is he wrong?"

A lot of times, I try to rationalize my ongoing failure in finding work by saying that the job market sucks. That the U.S. economy is in freefall and that even white-collar jobs are moving offshore. All of that is true. But I also know that a key reason of why I haven't been able to find work, is because I don't drive. A weak job market may hurt you, but if you do not drive, it is a death sentence. I am competing with countless graduates who do not have the restrictions that I do. Many times, I would see a job that would be an ideal fit for me, that would at least be worth applying to. But it is either out of my way (also, outside the realm of either bus or train service), or it requires a car, since you have to travel to a courthouse or client's homes and so forth). So I don't apply, and lessen my chances of getting work. In this economy, again, between those two factors, it means career suicide. I'm trying again, but I fear that I'm always going to hit this brick wall.

But it's not just from a career perspective that not having a car hurts me. It's also a huge social stigma. I've told people this, in casual conversation, and I get looks; you'd think that I just told them that I have AIDS. I come off as a third-world man. Also, if I want to go out at night, to have a drink or mingle, again, next to impossible. After 7 PM or so, the public transit stops running.

So, one might say, "why don't you get a car now, if you feel this way?" I answer this, with the mindset that I have to make decisions based on the life that I have, not on the one that I wish I did have. I think this is how people get in trouble. In any case, I don't think I can afford it. I make $12 an hour at Target, and I work around 4 days a week. I have some savings, but it's slowly depleting (I don't make enough to save money, and after rent and student loans, there's not much left). If I buy a car, I have to pay the loan on the car, I have to get insurance, I have to pay for gas (which is inching back up to $4/gal). I would be broke for sure, and I may not even get a job anyway.

Anyway, I might write more on this later. Just had to vent, thanks for reading.

What Even Jon Stewart Won't Tell You

2012-01-19T09:27:00.001-05:00

This is a funny and terrifying clip from "The Daily Show" about the workers at the Chinese factory Foxconn. They make many of the electronic entertainment gadgets that we always use, like the iPhone and the Xbox, among other things (full disclosure: I own an Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, the PC I'm typing on, a laptop, and numerous other things that were made at either Foxconn or a similar Chinese factory). The workers also toil under horrific conditions; as is noted here, the average wage is 35 cents an hour, and union organization is punishable by up to 12 years in prison. Conditions have gotten to where suicides are taking place, and the factory owners have even installed nets in order to prevent them.

Accurately, but predictably, Stewart takes subtle jabs at the many Americans who own these products, and point out that they would cost much more if they were made elsewhere. True enough. But what I found most interesting was the very beginning, in which a series of politicians try to point out the job situation in America, why they think it is the way it is, and what they'd do about it if elected President. They all feel that they need to give endless "incentives" to "the job creators" in order for them to innovate and want to "create jobs" here in America. The incentives are always the same, they take place in the form of tax cuts.

All one needs to do is view this clip to see that the imperatives of the candidates are full of crap; who knows, maybe that's what Stewart was implying, but he couldn't well say it. After seeing this clip, one should come away with the impression that in order to bring the jobs back to America, it won't be via tax cuts (many corporations already don't pay taxes). Jobs will only come back to America, when we are willing to work like the Chinese people work. When we are willing to work for 35 cents an hour, for up to 34 hours (if not more), with no union representation or collective bargaining rights or child labor laws, that is when the jobs will come back. Obviously, no politician seeking office will tell us that, but in my mind, it is the truth. But I do find that they do tell us this, in code. When they say we have to "be more competitive with the Chinese", many would think that this is meant in terms of innovation or education. No, I believe that they mean this in terms of living and working standards.

We will rue the day when our politicians signed our jobs away by exporting them via free-trade agreements.

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Please Call Your Congressman and Senators to Protest SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T12:28:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure many of you have heard, there are bills being proposed in Congress to change the Internet as we know it. Web sites will be regulated to ensure that copyrighted material isn't being transmitted, to the point where a web site can be eradicated out of existence, whether it's linking to copyrighted material or not. Wikipedia, one of the largest web sites in the world (based on visitor traffic), is blacking out their website until Thursday morning to protest and to raise awareness of this issue. Other websites I tried to go to this morning, such as Raw Story and Michael Moore's, are also taking part. Please call your Congressman and Senators to express your opposition. I don't know how effective it will be; many people called Congress to oppose the bailout, and look how that turned out. But I'd still call anyway.

Wikipedia has a great page with a lot of information and a FAQ on the SOPA and PIPA bills.

Grocery Auctions

2012-01-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

This article was actually posted a pretty long time ago (nearly 3 years), but I think as the economy has continued on its course of stagnation (soon to be contraction), it is still somewhat timely. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently, auctions aren't just for selling art and antiques anymore. To fulfill the demand of the downwardly mobile, auctions have expanded to include the everyday necessities of life, including groceries. The savings at these auctions seem to be pretty substantial, and the profit is split between the grocer and the auctioneer. The grocer even sells "scratch 'n dent" items for auction, which is a lot preferable than just throwing away a perfectly good can or box of food that happens to have a small dent in the box.

Being a fan of Jim Kunstler, this picture amused me.

"Most Extreme Configuration of the Jet Stream Ever Recorded"

2012-01-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

This winter has been pretty funky thus far; I'm in New York, and there's nary a snowflake in sight, and most days have been in the 50s. It isn't the first mild winter I've had, and it's been happening more often than not. A possible culprit is a major shift in the jet stream. The Icelandic Low blows a strong flow of air over the eastern U.S., preventing arctic air from hitting the U.S. and Europe. Records are kept of this, of course, and this is said to be the 2nd most extreme December in terms of this, other than 2006. It's too soon to tell whether this is man-made or natural, although I'd guess it was the former. Like Bill Maher, I prefer to think of it as "climate change" rather than "global warming", as every time we do get a snowstorm or unusually cold weather, the idiots come out of the woodwork and say "so much for that darned global warming."

Media Marginalizes Another Candidate

2012-01-10T15:42:00.001-05:00

I usually pay at least some attention to the election season, but as I'm not voting this year (and am not planning to as long as the electoral system is in place), my attention on the primaries has been minimal at best. But there is always one candidate who has a tendency to say what he believes, polls be damned, and would seem to have a capacity to actually shake things up if he were to become president. And then the media ensures that he won't get anywhere near the White House by ignoring or downplaying his chances as much as possible. In this particular election cycle, I am speaking of the Republican candidate, Ron Paul. I know that he also ran in the '08 primaries as well, but his stature and campaign have grown by leaps and bounds since then. In 2008, he was a marginal candidate who was given no coverage by the mainstream media. Now, he regularly polls right up there with the frontrunners, like the billionaire Mitt Romney.

I am not necessarily a Ron Paul supporter, although he does give me the impression that he is an honest man who usually stands behind what he says. His ideas for improving the country are certainly needed. In the end, his campaign platform is essentially getting the federal government out of the way, and letting the states govern themselves. And he is a real conservative in that sense, the other candidates will say similar things, but their actions would show that they love a bigger federal government. And now, even with his popularity growing, the corporate media still continue to marginalize and ignore him. Just look at this video. It flashes back to 2008 news coverage, and the reporters and pundits explaining how important Iowa was in choosing the next president. Then it shows this year's news coverage, and the reporters suddenly deem Iowa irrelevant and not an important state. The difference? In 2008, Paul was polling at the margins; this year, he came close to winning (he finished 3rd in a tight race behind Romney and religious extremist Rick Santorum).

In 2004, I volunteered and ran as a regional delegate for the campaign of Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman who ran for President in that year. Like Paul in 2008, he was a marginal candidate who never made headway in the minds of the media. But the low expectations and high passion of his supporters made his campaign more efficient, so rather than go all-out in one state (like Iowa or New Hampshire), finish 4th or 5th and drop out, he was able to mount a vigorous campaign in all 50 states. My hope is that Dr. Paul will be able to do the same.

An Interview With Another Great Author

2012-01-05T10:35:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I posted a link to an illustrious panel talking about the issues of the day, and today, I found a recently uploaded Youtube video of another of my favorite authors, Chris Hedges. Hedges had been a war reporter for around 20 years, and is now writing editorials for the website Truthout. He wrote a great book, "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" and the last book of his that I read, "Empire of Illusion", is pretty incredible as well. While he does not write about peak oil extensively like Kunstler or Orlov, a key theme of his has become the decline of the American empire. In his words, "the descent is going to be horrifying."

This interview was originally broadcast on C-SPAN's BookTV, and the interview is 3 hours long. I think it'll totally be worth it.

A Panel With Some of my Favorite Writers/Thinkers in One Place

2012-01-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

I just found out about this panel and can't wait to listen to them. It consists of James Howard Kunstler (the man who introduced me to peak oil and economic collapse, via his book "The Long Emergency"), Dimitri Orlov ("Reinventing Collapse", in which he compares and contrasts the collapse of his home country, the Soviet Union, with the pending collapse of that other superpower in which I happen to inhabit, the U.S.A., is one of my favorites), Richard Heinberg (who's written many books on energy issues and economics, including "The Party's Over"), Nicole Foss (who has a very popular blog, The Automatic Earth) and the elder statesman/rock star of the group, Noam Chomsky (I read many of his books when I was in college, and they were a revelation to me).

Orlov wasn't happy with the discussion of the panel (he titled his blog posting in which he discusses it as "A Dismal Public Affair"; ouch!) and blames Chomsky's tendency to "ramble". I'm still looking forward to listening to it, though.

The End of Unions to Come by January 1?

2011-12-22T09:46:00.000-05:00

This is a very striking piece about how corporations and the GOP are fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), over requiring businesses to put up a poster informing workers on what their rights are (to collectively bargain, join a union, etc.) and what actions employers are prohibited from taking against their employees. In this economy, I believe that most employees are scared shitless and wouldn't dare to do many of these things, poster or no poster. But for the top 1% to not even want their employees to know what their rights are... As a coworker of mine would say, "tragic".

Anyway, a potentially larger story is nearly hidden in the closing paragraphs. Several articles linked to in the story report on the fact that the NLRB has been under assault for decades by mainly Republicans, in an attempt to undermine their abilities to enforce labor law and to protect unionization. In the latest development, the Supreme Court ruled last year that the NLRB needed at least 3 members on its board in order to be operational. Due to Republican filibusters in the Senate to prevent voting on new members to the board, Obama has had to make emergency appointments in order to keep the board active. After one member's term is up on December 31, there will not be enough members on the board for its rulings to be valid. The potential of this is huge. As the New York Times points out in an op-ed,

Workers illegally fired for union organizing won’t be reinstated with back pay. Employers will be able to get away with interfering with union elections. Perhaps most important, employers won’t have to recognize unions despite a majority vote by workers. Without the board to enforce labor law, most companies will not voluntarily deal with unions.

Do not take this to mean that I am strictly pro-union. I have my own issues with them, probably the biggest being that their missions to raise wages and benefits for its members, noble as they undoubtedly are, are going to be unrealistic in the new world that we are slowly waking up to. Peak Everything will affect everyone, and a rising standard of living for union members will no longer be possible, like it was in the mid to late 20th century. But they are a bulwark for workers, sometimes a shitty bulwark, but a bulwark nonetheless. I have read and seen countless corporate propaganda over the years, stating that employees don't need unions, that the businesses have an "open-door" policy, that they look out for their workers. And I can tell you that it's bullshit. The only goal for business is to make money. They couldn't give two shits about their employees. Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox now. Anyway, I think the best objective for unions, rather than aiming for a higher standard of living for its members, is to protect them from arbitrary actions by their employers, and to ensure that the upper echelons of management aren't being rewarded with wheelbarrows of cash and company cars while the rank-and-file get nothing.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

I came home yesterday morning to the news that the brilliant essayist Christopher Hitchens had passed from complications from throat cancer, at 62. I have spent the entire morning reading tributes and obits to him; there's a helpful Yahoo! article here that contains links to these, as well as a fine tribute all in itself.

I have not really read a lot of Hitch in recent years, but at the dawn of my political awakening (I have long since fallen back into a proud slumber, hopefully never to re-awaken), I was pretty blown away by a couple of books he had written in the late 90's--early 2000s, dealing with the ethical and moral failings of (then) President Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger. He had an explosive way with words and was never afraid to offend either right or left. That is what I'll take away from him, rather than his proud atheism, which is heavily emphasized in the obits. It's a true gift to possess, when you can write something that polarizes everybody, and can alienate a lot of people, while those same people are still nonetheless impressed by what you are writing and find it worthwhile to read. I felt that way when he presented himself as an ardent supporter of the invasion of Iraq. While I did not agree with his position, I still looked forward to reading his views on the matter; I now remember even reading a very small book that was published, that consisted of his essays on the Iraq invasion (entitled A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq). That would usually be unthinkable, like a staunch leftist reading a tome by Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, or a dyed-in-the-wool rightwinger reading something by Michael Moore, but again, Hitchens had that gift. He was such a gifted, informed writer that you needed to hear his thoughts on a particular topic, even if you came away red in the face and mumbling curses after reading it.

I'm hoping to eventually read more of his works, especially God is Not Great and Hitch-22, his autobiography.

Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Now Legal

2011-12-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

The National Defense Authorization Act is a federal law that has been enacted for the past 48 years to specify the budget of the U.S. Department of Defense. In this year's budget, which is voted on by Congress, comes a nasty provision that allows indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without due process. This budget was just passed by the U.S. Senate. As shown by this list, an overwhelming majority voted "yea" on the bill, including the 2 senators who supposedly represent me as a New York resident, Gillibrand and Schumer. This has received truly bipartisan support, so for those of you who still think that there's a significant difference between the two parties, this evidence should be enough to prove otherwise.

We have officially reached the nadir as a country, now on par with the worst proclivities of totalitarian states. Like in some of these countries, which many of our luminaries still trash regularly for their repression of their own citizens, we too now live in a place where it is possible to be imprisoned indefinitely for little more than your neighbor pointing your finger at you and labeling you as a "terrorist" to the proper authorities. And this is under a President that has a "D" label following his name. Bush/Cheney clamored for years to have something of this nature passed, but it took a Democratic president to make it into law.

I think a key factor behind this being able to get passed now, rather than in the Bush years, is the economy is grinding down to such an extent that there is now noticeable public outcry that can no longer be ignored. I am speaking, of course, of the OWS movement. Under this bill, an OWSer can be swept up in a police sweep and can be sent to some kind of federal facility (or even Gitmo) under the filmsy pretense of having the potential to inflict violence at some point in the future.

Financial Woes Make it to Scripted TV

2011-11-11T20:39:00.000-05:00

I read this article on Newsday.com, and decided to leave a comment on it. I actually do this quite a bit, and I don't usually post what I write here, but after looking it over, I was a little impressed with myself and the points I made (arrogant, I know). So I decided to post my comment on the blog as well. The article is about how the entertainment television industry is finally making shows about working people. But as I point out, I found this more than a little disingenuous.

The thing that really turns me off about these kinds of shows, is that the only way the entertainment media seems to be able to reflect the reality of hard economic times and poverty, is to make light of it, to make it into a joke. It shows how detached from reality the people who greenlight these shows really are. They see things like people losing their jobs to outsourcing, and come up with an idea for a half-hour comedy about it (there was a comedy on last year called, yes, "Outsourced"). Or young people not being able to gain traction in the job market due to the staggering economy and the crippling student loan debt, and they go "hey, let's make something funny out of that", and you get "2 Broke Girls" on CBS.

I think the motivating factor is that the corporate media does not want people to think too seriously about these things; this might motivate them to get angry and organized. So the assertion the writer makes at the beginning of the article, on how the TV industry is finally making shows about working people rather than about cops and doctors, is more than a little disingenuous. Yes, they are making shows about working people, but these shows aren't seriously addressing the many struggles the working poor face on a daily basis or are carrying a message that many can relate to. It's taking their misery, their failures to pay their bills and raise their kids, and making it into something for people watching their TVs to laugh at. The more I think about it, the more disgusted I get.

Not to say that there aren't serious dramatic works that deal with the subject matter of the economic crisis we're in. Take the new movie "Margin Call" with Kevin Spacey, the docudrama "Too Big to Fail" with William Hurt and Paul Giamatti, the sequel to "Wall Street", etc. But the dramas I mentioned aren't about working people; they're about the ethical and moral travails of the top one percent as they navigate through the crisis. As good as these films are, I can't remotely relate to the characters. What's the worse that will happen to them, they won't be able to buy that yacht they want?

No Country for Old Men

2011-11-09T14:22:00.000-05:00

This is a really, really good post from Bill Hicks about the challenges and perils facing the elderly in the oncoming collapse. As grim as the future may look for the rest of us, it is really going to bite hard for old people. At least most of us have the physical wherewithal and mental well-being to possibly adapt to these changing events, as challenging as that process will undoubtedly be. Plus, we have the advantage of not living our entire lives in a BAU paradigm. Many of our elderly, unless they were born before or around the Great Depression, have lived their lives in relative luxury, expect to retire comfortably (provided they aren't already) and have a mindset in which economic and social collapse are the furthest thing from many of their minds. Bill provides many great reasons for why our elderly are in for a rude awakening. In addition to the reasons you'd expect (insolvency of our few safety nets, especially SS and Medicare), he also points out our decaying transit infrastructure, piss-poor public transit (if it exists at all, and in many parts of the country, it does not), and the atomization of our society (people constantly moving around, and away from their parents).

Another aspect I'd like to add, although it can be strictly abstract, is the potential for intergenerational warfare. I think, as resource constraints really clamp down on us, be it within the next year or two, the next decade, or later, younger generations are going to be really fucking pissed off at the generations before them. We were able to grasp the fruits of these great, energy-rich resources, and pissed them away on structures and activities that had a limited shelf-life, leaving next-to-nothing for the children of tomorrow to hang on to. In turn, currently, there are a lot of old people who simply cannot relate to the struggles that the present-day young are facing. They look at our problems in finding gainful employment, and think "what the fuck is our problem?" This was symbolized perfectly by the presidential candidate Herman Cain, when he was addressing the matter of the Occupy Wall Street movement and remarked that it was "their own fault" that they were not able to succeed. Many of the Baby Boomers aren't able to grasp that their relative success in life wasn't so much a result of their hard work and efforts, but that they lived in a time of massive abundance, and in which there was plenty for everybody. As the pie is shrinking, those at the top are still taking their big slice, but this time, there isn't enough for everybody. And there are a lot more people now than there were then.

So there is a huge potential for this facet of collapse to play out, IMO. The question is whether it'll be limited to cold stares and a few harsh words amongst the generations, or if it'll escalate in a few cases.

"Freemium" Gaming

2011-11-04T15:01:00.000-05:00

Over the past year or so, I've come to appreciate the game of golf, which I never thought I would do. No, I don't literally go to the nearest club and hit the links. I play golf video games. A lot of them are very accessible to the layman, like the Hot Shots Golf series. Another one I really enjoy is a series called "Let's Golf" for mobile devices. I have the 1st one for my iPod and the 2nd one for the Nintendo 3DS. Between them, they were less than $10 and I was impressed by the replay value. The gameplay tends to be more forgiving than the Hot Shots series, and the 2nd one has a cool, RPG-style level-up system.

I had just seen that the 3rd one was now available in the App Store, and even saw that it was FREE! I figured I stumbled into a limited-time offer; BTW, the reason why I love games on the iPod is that they are usually very affordable and their graphics could rival Nintendo's and Sony's offerings (I think gaming on mobile devices like iPod, Android, cell phones, etc. will be the death knell for Nintendo and Sony as far as portable gaming goes). So I was excited and downloaded the game. And then I read the reviews.

Let's Golf 3 has what is called a "freemium" system. "Freemium" means offering the initial game free-of-charge, and then charging for advanced features, or merely to progress further in the game. In "Let's Golf 3", you are given a certain amount of "energy", which you use every time you play a hole. Once you use up the "energy", you either have to wait an hour for it to recharge or pay for more energy using in-game cash (which is utilized either by playing well, or paying for the in-game cash with actual money).

Opinions seem to be mixed, but they're veering towards the negative side of the spectrum. I must hang my hat there as well. I'm a lifelong gamer, and am used to paying for games. When I pay for a game, I am used to having unlimited access to it. In this case, I'd rather pay the $2 or $5 or $10 for the latest Let's Golf and be able to play as many holes as I please, without having to wait an hour for my "energy" to fill up (or having to pay to fill it up). I have not tried it out yet, and now am not sure that I will. I heard that under this model, you can play one hole of golf an hour; that's right, not a round, a hole!

Oh, and to really add insult to injury, Gameloft (the makers of Let's Golf) have removed the first two games in the series from the App Store. These games were not "freemium" games, they were full-featured games that provided hours of fun for a very low price. I'm thankful I have the games, and I don't have to wait an hour to play a hole either.

Life Without Electricity

2011-11-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

I read a comment that someone made once about electricity and how we have come to know it in our lives. He/she referred to electricity as society's "central nervous system". Meaning, that in those rare instances when the grid fails, our collective central nervous systems are hopelessly impaired, to the point where we barely know up from down. For much of history, societies have not known this level of dependency. In fact, energy use as we've come to know it (appliances like washing machines and entertainment devices like televisions) did not really come into fruition until the year 1953, approximately.

There are many converging events that should lead to a discussion on our use of energy, like peak oil and the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. And some people, as evidenced by this Energy Bulletin article, are already pursuing a "non-electric" lifestyle, not by merely living without electricity, but by creating inventions that are variations of appliances that have come to be associated with electricity. A doctor of engineering in Japan has created a refrigerator and a coffee roaster that do not require electricity.

Occupy America

2011-10-31T16:18:00.002-05:00

In the month since my last post, OWS has picked up steam and is now in many cities and towns across the country. I do feel that I should give a bit of a retraction to my last post. I didn't mean to imply that taking part in these protests was futile or a waste of one's time. I guess that was a bit of nervousness in my part, as I'd just seen the videos of NYPD beating down protestors and herding them like cattle. But if you do decide to protest, be very, very careful of the police. If they become violent, do not respond with violence, as that is their stock-in-trade and you will lose.

These are a set of very nice photos, taken at the Occupy Austin (TX) protest. Yes, the Occupy rallies have even spread to Texas. But I do believe that Austin is considered the "liberal" part of Texas, and it's a very small part. After seeing photos and listening to a podcast that took place at the event, I am beginning to become inspired to take part. But I've been working every day lately. I hear that there is a very strong sense of community at these events. So, as I said, this system will collapse under its own weight eventually, with or without OWS. But where OWS might be of use, would be that it would create a stronger sense of community, so that it can be possible for us to weather the collapse. And if there is one thing we are deeply lacking (I know it's many things), it's a sense of community. We're so segregated from each other, between our living arrangements in the burbs and while driving our cars.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

I'm embarrassed that I haven't posted anything on this story already. I've been too tired to blog in the past few days, and was going to post yesterday but dozed off. Anyway, there have been a series of demonstrations called Occupy Wall Street in NYC, and it has started to spread to other parts of America. I wholeheartedly agree with their message. In past days, I'd be very tempted to join them, and probably would. But I've come to believe that nothing short of full-scale collapse will help tame the beasts of governmental and corporate power. I feel that all the protestors, noble as their goals are, are doing is putting a big spotlight on themselves, and all that will accomplish is having all the wrong people take an interest in you. After Gitmo and all this other stuff since 9/11, I believe law enforcement will think nothing of "disappearing" U.S. citizens who make too much a habit of questioning and disobeying them, or being violent and being actively involved in shutting down pieces of the system. As you can see in the videos posted below, you can get in a heap of trouble just by being there and standing peacefully. What I would suggest to those who want to rebel and fight the system, as an alternative, is to try to live outside of it to the extent that you can. Do things like bank at a credit union rather than the big banks, grow a little of your own food and spend less on Big Ag's food, things of that nature.

Anyway, a big concern of mine, and one that I'd meant to post of more often than I have but just never got the chance, was how, especially after 9/11 but maybe before that too, you began to see an increasing militarization of law enforcement. Things like increased involvement of SWAT teams, even in non-violent (drug-related) incidents, searches and seizures of vehicles from things ranging from terrorism alerts to hunting for drunk drivers, herding protestors into certain areas (free-speech zones). There are no shortage of incidents that can be used as examples of this phenomenon. I'm watching a TV series right now, "Battlestar Galactica", and in one episode, Adama (played by Edward James Olmos) makes an astute observation: "the function of the military is to fight the enemies of the state. The function of the police is to protect the people. When you combine the two, the enemies become the people." I feel silly quoting a TV show, but I think that sums up our state of affairs perfectly. In these videos, you are looked at as an enemy of the state for merely standing up and wanting to be heard. And while I do think there are good police officers out there, I think a majority of them, albeit a perhaps slim one, are pretty similar to the ones in these videos. And even the good ones can only be so good. It reminds me of that quote, "You can't expect a man to understand something if his paycheck depends on his not understanding it." So the police are the intermediary between the protestor and the state, and the police are being paid by the state, so whose interests do they think they're looking after?

I'm starting to blabber, which I tend to do sometimes, so I'll end it here. I just wanted to note something interesting. JPMorgan Chase recently donated more than $4.5 million to the New York City Police Foundation, to "strengthen security". I don't think additional comment is necessary. And a group of inactive U.S. Marines are planning to serve as a barrier between the police and the protestors. So I'm very interested to see how this turns out. If nothing else, I think the police will act much more carefully; police attacking military might be so outrageous that even the corporate media won't be able to put a kettle big enough to cover it up.

I Dream of a Recession

2011-09-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

This week, the Internet was abuzz with a BBC interview that took place with a man named Alessio Rastani, a market trader who was brutally candid on the state of the current market, and what you should do next. It's the kind of stuff you'd read on sites like Zero Hedge and on the doomer forums that I visit. There has lately been some news stories on how qualified Mr. Rastani is (like this piece in the Telegraph), but I don't think that many people can argue with the underlying premise of what he's saying. There is an epic shitstorm coming, and it is possible to make money from that. And people exist, in Wall Street and in other inner corridors of power, who do not give a shit about people, governments, nations, the world. All they care about is making profit. And Mr. Rastani gives a very skillful lecture on this, in a mere three minutes. And kudos to the BBC for having this; you'd never see this on CNBC.

Cash Sales of Precious Metals Banned in France

2011-09-27T13:07:00.000-05:00

Soon after discovering the news of our imminent collapse, I was looking to become what they call a "goldbug" (someone who procures and collects gold, or other precious metals, like silver). This was when I still had some money and gold was relatively cheap compared to where it's at now. Alas, things happened, I wasn't able to capitalize on the opportunity, and now it's too late. I have some practical questions as to what the value of gold really is, but that is for another post, if ever.

But I'd say that this is further evidence that the collapse is real and that governments are becoming increasingly concerned and looking to make it more difficult for the average Joe to procure PM's. France has just enacted a law mandating that any purchase of metal (including gold and silver) over 450 Euros ($600 USD) must be paid via credit card or bank wire transfer. It is no longer legal to pay over that amount, in cash.

I know that in tenuous times, the holding of gold becomes increasingly viewed upon by the proper authorities, like in the Great Depression, when FDR signed an Executive Order forbidding the hoarding of gold. This appears to be in the same pattern, although in a more clandestine and preemptive way (the French's primary motivation in passing this law, at least officially, was a result of increased thefts of metals like copper and steel, from phone poles and places of business). As the article closes, "How long before the US Congress, as a result of the rise in metals thefts here in the United States, uses this same excuse as a pretext to follow in the footsteps of the French?"

The End of One of the Best Bands Ever

2011-09-24T08:07:00.000-05:00

As you've probably all heard, the other day, REM broke up after 31 years. Such a great band. I had the pleasure of seeing them live in concert back in '99, when they were playing Jones Beach. I'll never forget it. I sat six rows from the front, and rocked out to every song. I waved a bunch of times, and Michael Stipe always waved back to me, or maybe that's how I liked to have viewed it. Either way, it was an incredible experience, and will rank as the best concert I'd went to.

I can't really say that I'm surprised that they broke up. Creatively and commercially, I'd say that they peaked with "Automatic for the People". Although many of their albums were very good after that, they just weren't able to match that or their earlier offerings. Also, I think Bill Berry's departure was a blow that they were never able to recover from. Above all, I hold the commercialization of music responsible. It has led to acts that appeal to the lowest common denominator (I'm talking to you, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Maroon 5, the list goes on and on) while leaving pioneering rock bands like REM in the dust. I read that their last album only sold around 50,000 copies.

I wanted to close this post out with "Find the River", from "Automatic for the People". I hear it's the last song that Kurt Cobain listened to before he took his life. BTW, "Nevermind" just had its 20 anniversary.

Striking Photographs from Japan, Six Months After the Disaster

2011-09-14T07:09:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic has some great photos of Japan, from shortly after the double whammy of a tsunami & earthquake, and six months later. Did you know that this past Sunday was not only the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, but also the six month anniversary of what happened in Japan? Neither did I. But the Japanese probably did not oversee that day. I am no expert, but I was impressed by how much the Japanese were able to accomplish, judging on the before/after photos. While it's still obvious that a major calamity occurred, this was met with major cleanup efforts, and a lot of the mess and the debris in the "before" photos is not present in the "after" photos. I wonder how these same locales in the pictures will look, say, 10 years from now. It will be interesting to contrast a "10 years after" compilation of photos from northeastern Japan with photos from the WTC site (which still has not been replaced) or photos from post-Katrina New Orleans.

Let the Uninsured Die

2011-09-13T19:34:00.000-05:00

As I've expressed, 2008 was my last election. I have no plans to vote in next year's election, or any beyond that, unless the state of our politics takes a radical paradigm shift (or I may not be able to vote at all, since it's easy to visualize the shit hitting the fan with such force that it won't be possible to have elections, or for them to simply not be allowed). However, let me tell you a brief story behind my reasoning in the last election. I registered to vote in 2000, right before the presidential election of that year. Nader had engaged me on such a level, that it was easy to vote for him. I also voted for him in 2004, as well. But by 2008, it was obvious that our country was undergoing pretty significant changes, and not for the better. I had still planned to vote for Ralph, partly based on what many people simply cannot seem to grasp or think through. I not only believed in his message, but I also live in New York, which is not a so-called "battleground" state. It is a safe Democratic bastion, and so it's easier to vote for a third-party candidate, even if the general election is slated to be close.

I had written off Obama as a corporate-backed bullshit artist, who was admittedly very good at communicating with the masses and saying all the right things. However, I did not realize how radical and bat-shit crazy the Republican Right really were, until I saw a clip of them at a McCain rally. They were saying that if Obama was elected, "they (black people) would take over". Another said that "he looks down on us like we're trash". Several were calling him a "nigger". I was pretty fearful on seeing these people, and really did not want to see them, or anyone like them, near the levers of power. Well, there was also the matter of this election being an especially historical one since it could end up with our first black president. So I caved and voted for Obama. I lived to regret it. I wasn't expecting anything special, but if he was a tad better than Bush, I'd have been partially satisfied. But since then, I've learned about peak oil and economic contraction, and have come to look upon politics and elections as irrelevant. These guys probably couldn't do shit about our problems even if they actually wanted to.

Anyway, I do think it's important to pay scant attention to politics, if only because it offers us a glimpse into the state of things, and how people respond, as we continue our long slide downward. This latest incident also gave me a valuable insight into why I reneged on my political beliefs last time and voted for Obama. It's an easy thing to do when you see how bad the other guys are, at least in comparison.

At the last debate, Wolf Blitzer spoke with Ron Paul about a hypothetical healthy person who suddenly falls ill and is not insured. Blitzer asks Paul, "should that person die", and some in the audience resoundingly shout "YES", with laughter and cheers soon following. A big part of the collapse that is in progress will be more and more moments like this, that show how nasty and vicious people can be. In better times, this behavior would be expressed behind closed doors, or in whispers. But now, this behavior is being expressed more openly. The motto of these people, the Tea Partiers, should be, "I've got mine. Fuck you". That's basically their philosophy, in a nutshell.

Pipeline Expolosion Rocks Kenya

2011-09-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

At least 120 people have burned to death in Kenya, as a result of a fuel pipeline exploding. At the time, the pipeline was leaking fuel, and people were gathering to collect it when the pipeline burst into flames and engulfed at least some of those people, as well as the tin-shack houses in the surrounding area.

What makes this story significant for me is that I often think of peak oil as a calamity that is going to visit the western world. But what I don't often think through is that in many parts of the world, it has long since passed. If anything, there was never any matter of "peak energy" for countries like Kenya, because they have always been poor nations. So scrounging for things that we just take for granted, and buy at a store, or a gas station in the case of fuel, is nothing new to them, unfortunately. Scooping fuel from a leaky pipe is a very dangerous thing to do, but these people were likely going to use any recovered fuel for buying essentials like food and medicine. In any case, in the long run, addiction to oil and other fossil fuels is a global problem, not merely an American or western one, and that tide is not longer to change.

Prince Charles Warns of Extinction Event

2011-09-10T06:05:00.000-05:00

It's always eye-opening when a public figure comes out and speaks of the dire consequences of climate change and other man-made activities and its effects on biodiversity. The latest is Prince Charles. As much as I liked what he had to say, I was about to dismiss him as being in the vein of Al Gore, who has raised a lot of attention to climate change but hasn't seemed to walk the walk in his own life (by using private jets and owning large homes). But I'd read that Charles has done a lot of work in making his palaces and other properties "ecofriendly", and a lot of them are used for farming.

I especially liked this:

“History will not judge us by how much economic growth we achieve in the immediate years ahead, nor by how much we expand material consumption, but by the legacy for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. We are consuming what is rightfully theirs by sacrificing long-term progress on the altar of immediate satisfaction. That is hardly responsible behavior."

When There is No Dentist

2011-09-09T10:27:00.000-05:00

This is a good article from a very good site I didn't know existed called Armageddon Medicine (it deals with solutions to diseases and medical aliments when care is scarce), about the lessons learned from the experiences of POWs during the Vietnam War in terms of dental care (hint: there wasn't any). The results are actually mixed, or, not totally awful. On the one hand, for most of the men afflicted by teeth problems, the tragedy was that they were often able to get excellent dental care, but neglected the importance of it until it was too late (being shot down behind enemy lines and captured). Being in solitary conditions, against their will, and adding a bad toothache into the mix was a sure recipe for psychological distress, that would last until their freedom was reclaimed. But on the other, for those whose teeth were relatively healthy upon capture, they overcompensated and took above-average care of their teeth. In addition to the cheap toothbrushes they received, they fashioned toothpicks and floss out of bamboo and bone. Toothpaste was made from charcoal, soap and salt.

This article provided a fascinating glimpse at human ingenuity when people's backs are against the wall. But I shudder to think of a future without ready access to dental care. I knock on wood that I haven't had any serious dental problems, but I have been slacking; my last dental visit was almost a year. I also have no willpower when it comes to staying away from sweets. Anyway, I'd better brush my teeth.

Iraqi Children Shot in Head by U.S. Troops

2011-09-08T05:58:00.000-05:00

First, I've never talked about this, but had been wanting to say, bless Wikileaks. Julian Assange and the others behind this organization have gotten into the sights of very powerful governments and corporations, not the least of which being the U.S. government. And their crime? Releasing information deemed to be "highly classified" by governments and entities everywhere, into the hands of everyday people around the world. If we live here and pay taxes, shouldn't we have the right to know as much as possible about what goes on in our government? I think it's obvious what my answer is.

One of the cables made public by Wikileaks shows evidence that around 10 Iraqi civilians were shot, execution-style, by U.S. troops, then an airstrike was called in to destroy the evidence. This occurred back in 2006, when a civil war was brewing between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. One of the reasons why we should all be thankful for Wikileaks, is that stories like these used to be the domain of the media. Now, the media was never perfect, but during Vietnam, there was some reporting of atrocities committed by our military. The story of the war in general received more coverage than the Gulf War and our current occupation of Iraq. The kind of coverage has also changed, to the point where our media serve as cheerleaders. This was during the initial phase of the invasion, nowadays, it seems like the war/occupation is rarely covered at all, especially in the television news media. The government learned from Vietnam to keep a lid on the media in future conflicts, and that strategy has worked spectacularly well. Hence the need for individuals, such as the ones behind Wikileaks, to endanger their freedoms and lives to access and release the truth behind what's going on for the rest of us.

Quitting Facebook

2011-09-05T11:53:00.000-05:00

I don't remember the day I created my Facebook account, but it was awhile ago, probably shortly after it became a household name. Before that, I had a Myspace account (which is still active, I believe, I just haven't bothered to log in for a very long time, and rightly so, as it's irrelevant at this stage). And somewhere along the line, I came to the realization that social networking just wasn't for me. However, I will say, it is addictive. That's what made me rationalize keeping Facebook for as long as I did, even after I realized that it was counterproductive to stay active in it. Today, I finally gathered the strength to "deactivate" my account (even this is a half-measure, short of deleting it. My account is still there, but it's currently in a deactivated state).

I will try to explain this, and make it sound meaningful, considering I have not slept since getting home from work. Anyway, probably a big part of it was that I had 68 friends, and by the time I deactivated, I had hidden most of their posts from view. I did not "unfriend" them, but this is the next best thing, as I can decide that I don't want to read drivel without hurting other people's feelings. All most of these people talked about were what their kids did or said today, or where they were eating, or their plans to get drunk and party tonight. Worse yet, these posts would get animated reponses, along with "likes". Many of my posts there were similar to the ones I make on this blog, of a "current events" and commentary nature, although much, much shorter, obviously. Due to my newfound interest in cooking, I would share what I made as well. Further down the line, I will admit, I was not above the trivial and largely pointless status update myself (for example, shortly before quitting, I said that I could not sleep and would watch "Curb Your Enthasium" and "Entourage"). But I tried to make my posts thoughtful, with proper grammar. And in response, what I would see is the cyber-version of tumblin' tumbleweeds. Usually zilch in the way of responses, and the only people who might respond half the time would be one of my two sisters.

I don't want to make it seem like I'm a needy person who seeks verification or approval of everything that he says or does, but, I guess that's what it seems like, and that's probably what it is. I've always been socially awkward, and when I have tried to break out of that shell, it's always met with astounding failure. So most of my life has been spent in, for lack of a better term, a kind of obscurity. And when I say or do something and it's met with indifference, yeah, it hurts. It's something that you'd think that I would get used to somewhere along the way, but there are some things you never get used to, and that's probably one of them.

I remember a long time ago, I posted on this blog about taking a break from posting for the same reasons, that no one was commenting back and that I felt like I was in a virtual echo chamber, basically talking to myself. A really cool guy from Indonesia, Adel (I hope you're still reading, Adel), responded and pointed out that just because no one is commenting doesn't mean that they're not reading. So I kept at it, and while I don't have the numbers of eyes that I want starting at my blog (which I have come to realize is next to impossible, considering the numbers of blogs in existence), I get a comment now and then, showing me that people do come by and read it, and feel compelled to respond to what I have to say. I hope that continues.

Anyway, another big reason why I decided to leave Facebook, and this probably hits closer to the heart than my other reason, is that a significant portion of my "friends" are people I went to high school with. Now, I was not what you would call a "popular" kid in high school. Hell, I wasn't even on, what would be called in Hollywood, the C or the D list. Yeah, I socialized and ate lunch with people, I wasn't one of those people who always sat by himself, but that's pretty much where it ended. I didn't have any close relationships. And yet, a lot of people who "friended" me were people I went to high school with, and who, I don't remember us exchanging two sentences. I also wonder how many of these "friends" would recognize me if I walked down the street, or I, them. If I was in a really bad jam, for example, looking for some place to crash, how many of these "friends" would step up to the plate and actually offer a hand? Not one, I'd wager. I remember a co-worker at an old job, this was back when Myspace was the big thing, telling me that the only thing that counted was how many "friends" I had. So their value as people, or their willingness to help you (and you, them) did not really count, it was just being able to say "I have XXXX" number of friends on Myspace/Facebook/Friendster" that counted, and could make the difference between acceptance and failure in whatever social circle, virtual or actual.

What I find very, very depressing, is that a lot of these people (friends on Facebook) have wives (or husbands), families, what seem to be steady positions, some kind of career, they probably own their own houses. I have been stuck in neutral since graduating high school. Yeah, I went to college and got my B.A., but who cares, it didn't translate to any kind of career. I still live at home, I've long given up on meeting someone and starting a family (not that I'm really looking to do these things, especially have kids, but just the fact that it isn't even an option, that pisses me off) and I open boxes for a living. So logging on to Facebook, and seeing how great things are seemingly going for a lot of people, that just got very depressing. I remember one day, this guy I went to school with (he's actually a great guy, we chatted a few times and exchanged emails), posted that he was now a "homeowner". I got into bed and stayed there for almost 2 hours. We went to the same school, I don't think he even went to college, so I ask myself, "where did I go wrong, and these people went right?"

I post a lot of stuff on this blog about the collapse of America, about peak oil and the crumbling economy. So I spend a lot of time frequenting "doomer" websites and forums. I'm convinced that my misfortunes have very little to do with the decisions I made, and are just a product of circumstances in general, like how companies are slashing people left and right, and how we have the worst job market since the Great Depression, things of that nature. On the other hand, I see these "friends" on Facebook, living seemingly normal lives, with the things that I covet. Hard times apparently have not touched them at all. So, I'm wondering, should I trust the former option, in which exterior events are affecting my life in decidedly negative ways, or are things really not as bad as they seem, and the "doom" is just helping me rationalize why I've come up short where it matters? I don't know, and I hope I figure it out. In that respect, I hope that quitting Facebook serves as a start.

Wild Animals in the Long Emergency

2011-09-03T07:56:00.000-05:00

When thinking about the times we live in, and the road that I believe we are heading down on, one of the things I think about most are the fate of my pets. My family has a dog, but I'm really not too attached to him. Not that I don't care for him or love dogs, his personality is just totally at odds with mine. He is very loud, and easily ruffled. But I love my cats though, especially Lucky, who is an American Shorthair. It would kill me if we were faced with not having enough food for them; I couldn't imagine setting them loose, especially since they are declawed and would be defenseless in the outdoors.

Here is a good pair of articles from someone who is a trapper and lives off the land. He believes that when the proverbial shit hits the fan, people in the cities (and I presume the suburbs as well, although he only mentions cities), will let their animals go. These animals will meet up with other animals and form packs of anywhere between 6 to 100. He offers an elaborate and detailed synopsis of animal psychology and pack mentality that is really quite fascinating. His general point, and one that the most squeamish or those who love animals will probably want to avoid, is that these animals will number in the tens of millions and must be dealt with in a collapse scenario.

In this case, a worry of mine would be that a significant portion of these animals would carry rabies. Obviously, vaccinations would be limited or completely unavailable, so rabies would be easy to spread among other animals and humans, until each eventual carrier would die. It's kind of a zombie-lite scenario, although it would be very fitting in an economic/social upheaval.

House Majority Leader Kicks Jobless Out of Town Hall

2011-09-02T17:07:00.000-05:00

These days, I usually do not pay much attention to our political system or its representatives, although otherwise, I do follow current events rather closely. I've decided that 2008 was the last election I will take part in (the only election that I care about at this point is the annual library budget), and that any political activism is futile. However, I do think it's key to pay some attention to our political system, however scant, because its response to events, both in terms of individual representatives and the collective, can give important clues as to how far we are in our path to collapse.

A few nights ago, something called an "Advisory Council Meeting" was called by Eric Cantor, who is the House Majority Leader. A counter-rally was held in the same building by Cantor's constituents, who were not invited to the Council Meeting. This rally was already scheduled with the Holiday Inn. However, due to some bullshit reasoning of there being "conflicting events", the activists holding the counter-rally were asked to leave, and they were forced to rally in the parking lot of a Toys R Us across the street.

The article concerning this is very good, so I'll keep it short today. But I'll say one thing. After the counter-rally was effectively crushed, police officers were summoned to the hotel to check cars and ask if the person was a part of the "advisory committee" or the counter-rally. I find it outrageous that police officers were used in this way, in a purely political endeavor, to "vet" people for this scumbag's committee.

Oh, and here's a clip of him speaking. He comes off as unbearably smug and arrogant. See the shit-eating grin coming out of the side of his mouth as he speaks?

A Tale of Two Hurricanes

2011-09-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

This is a funny article from Forbes about the different reactions to Hurricane Irene in the Bahamas, from people living in the Bahamas and from tourists hailing from the United States. The Bahamas natives were playing it cool, just getting their precautionary measures in order, while Americans were bailing for the taxis to get to the airport. Of course, not every Bahamas native was calm, nor was every American panicky over Irene, but I feel that the author's account is likely accurate. As he also points out, our media certainly does not help matters. They never pass up an opportunity to stir up mass panic and hysteria, or an opportunity to get people to spend money, as the Weather Channel was urging people to get "survival kits" (available for both humans and pets).

Now, I come down on the side of people who are prepared for any disaster; my puzzlement is when people scramble during every event like this for essentials that they should already have (like flashlights, just to give one example). But I think it has become pretty obvious that the media exaggerates the severity of these events, at least just a tad, to get people to panic spend, and thereby help make money for their advertisers. I imagine that Home Depot, Walmart and all the other big-box stores received a nice shot in the arm for the escalated business in their stores in the days preceding Irene.

The ancedotes closing the article, of what some of the news reporters were saying, is also telling. One reporter slipped by referring to the weakening of Irene as a "setback". Another said that if "you have family, friends in the Bahamas, you must tell them this is a very dangerous situation!" The gall and chutzpah of such a statement! That's like me somehow being able to contact a random U.S. soldier serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and telling them, "hey, be careful, an insurgent might be aiming for your head!"

Nuclear Nightmare Continues in Japan and Around the World

2011-08-29T15:51:00.000-05:00

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, it's important to remember that any natural or man-made disaster continues to impact many lives in various ways, long after the clean-up crews and the news vans leave and move on to the next event or the next story. This is a pretty shocking and compelling piece on what is still going on in Japan after the earthquake/tsunami that hit earlier this year. Not only is the nuclear plant still leaking, but estimates are that radioactive cesium that has been leaked from the plant into the atmosphere is equal to 168 of the atomic bombs being dropped on 1945 Japan. That's around one nuclear bomb every day since the initial disaster occurred.

Something that frustrates me about our media is its attention deficit disorder. When a big event, such as the Japan earthquake/tsunami or the Deepwater Horizon explosion/oil rupture, first occurs, we see the "breaking news" graphics and around-the-clock coverage. But in a matter of days, after receiving "assurances" from government and corporate officials that everything is under control, and also due to its ADD, the media moves on to other stories, typically of the "light" variety. And the coverage of the event/disaster doesn't merely decrease, it seems to disappear completely, like it never even happened.

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-28T06:22:00.000-05:00

It is now 20 past 7, the supposed eye of the storm is supposed to hit us soon, but at 1:30 AM, a huge tree in my front yard fell down, and hit part of my house, front of my neighbor's house, it's snagged in phone wires. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

Hurricane Irene: Beware of Scammers

2011-08-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

First, just wanted to express the general and predictable, although necessary, message of "stay safe" in the day or two to come. Do not go out unless you absolutely have to, and try to batten down as best you can. With that said, here is a good article from MSNBC on how these disasters often bring out the worst in humanity along with the best. You might not only be hearing stories of exceptionally brave people, but also stories of pranksters and scammers seeking to benefit from the disaster at the expense of those who believe in giving to the less fortunate. So, just be careful of who you trust.

When the Realm of Celebrity Invades Our Political System

2011-08-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

Bill Hicks talks about the 1995 movie "To Die For", with Nicole Kidman, which I saw a very long time ago, and views it as being a movie ahead of its time. In the movie, she plays a woman who is determined to become a TV newscaster at any cost. As the plot summary says, "what she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles". I thought it was a good movie when I saw it, but I'd really like to see it again, for, as Bill says, this can easily describe people like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.

The deeper trend here is that in this day, in this nation, it is no longer possible to get fame and fortune for engaging in hard work or coming up with an invention or an idea that is really creative (if it ever was possible to start with). The only road to riches left is to become famous, being "talked about" on the news, or better, entertainment programs or blogs. It doesn't matter if you lack talent or engage in questionable moral practices, you just have to get people to notice you. A favorite example of mine is the right-wing author and talking head Ann Coulter, who you see all the time on television and in the print media. She often makes these outrageous, totally out there remarks. And then people take to the blogosphere and talk about how batshit crazy she is, apparently without realizing that they are playing right into her hands. I don't believe that she even believes half of the shit she says, but it gets a response and a lot of attention, so she keeps riding that gravy train.

A lot of our programs and print media are devoted to celebrity worship. I find it funny how the most popular magazines in this area have titles that strongly imply that celebrities are regular people just like us, hence the titles of magazines like "People" and "Us". Just once, I'd like to see a regular working American, who people can look up, on the cover of those magazines. Like a doctor, or even better, a real blue-collar guy like a garbageman. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't sell. A large number of people find hard work depressing.

And now, we are seeing this celebrity worship spill over into the world of politics. Until reading Hicks' column, I did not know that a group of people suggested that Matt Damon run for president. I'm guessing they got that idea from watching "The Adjustment Bureau", where Damon plays a politician running for Senate. In any event, the current crop of people taking front and center on our TV screens, like Palin, Bachmann, and a few others, often say uninformed things on a regular basis (like Bachmann saying that the USSR was a military threat) that should be enough to prove that they are terribly unqualified at running a country. But because they are easy on the eyes and carry that folksy charm, this carries with it some sense of legitimacy.

Social Security Disability on Verge of Bankruptcy

2011-08-25T07:22:00.000-05:00

I was of two minds after reading this story. On the one hand, I do believe in a safety net for those who are in danger of losing it all and totally falling through the cracks. I am. What consists of a safety net in this country, let's face it, was never very sturdy and durable to begin with, and it has been weakened significantly, particularly in the past 10-30 years. But after reading this, it made me think of the cheats that I know of out there, who have made a lifestyle of gaming the system, and as a result, have helped pushed this system to insolvency, and have made it that much more difficult for people who are actually disabled and suffering to get a helping hand.

I think many of us know the type: someone who claims to have a "bad back" to get put on disability, and then he's spotted doing things like picking up large bags or doing roofing. I happen to have a cousin, who I have not seen or spoken to in a very long time, who made several bad choices when he was younger, got hooked on drugs, had some kind of mental breakdown, and then went on SSI (Supplemental Security Income, which means he didn't have a long job history). This was many years ago, and he is still on it, to this day. I know of another person, who I used to work with. She could only work so many days a week (around 2 or 3), and a friend of hers explained to me one day that this was because she was on some kind of state aid (I'm assuming it was SSI) due to some kind of mental problem. My question, unasked to her friend of course, is that she is capable of working, and is working. Why is she being supplemented with a subsidy from the state?

Of course, there are many, many other reasons why Social Security is in big trouble. Probably key among them is that our legislators have been using it as a piggy bank for years to fund other things, while never putting the money back into the program. It's said by many that the Social Security trust fund contains nothing but a vast array of IOU's. But at the same time, there are other systemic problems such as this one. It's even being considered, according to the article, that they will transfer funds from regular Social Security to the disability program to buy some time, meaning that working retirees will get less.

I want to close with a story, of someone I used to work with, and of why I am so conflicted on this issue. He, supposedly, injured his arm one day and tried to go out on worker's comp. While his claim was working its way through the system, he was still supposed to work. With his arm in a cast, he was next to useless, but at the same time, I guess the state didn't want to give him a total free ride. So he goes to work, he was never very popular to begin with, and no one talked to the guy. Totally shunned him, felt that he was a bullshit artist, a goldbricker, etc. And they were probably right. But that got me to thinking. In this day and age, with good paying jobs with a bright future for people being a thing of the past, and the current slate of jobs in which people are not paid enough to make ends meet, there's next to no chance of advancement (outside of middle or low-level management), no appreciation, everyone's expendable, when I take these things into context, I cannot harbor too much animosity towards the guy. Maybe he worked 20 or so years (this guy was way into his 40s, at least), at these dead-end jobs, saw a way out, and he decided to take it. You can "retire" 15 years earlier or so, on full SS disability, and make more in the end than if you worked until your retirement age. So, on top of that imperative, this powerful motivation that is built into the system for people of questionable character to cash out early and for more money, you also have a meltdown in progress that is slamming working people hard. On top of that, globalization has shifted well-paying jobs to the far east, and has replaced them with dismal service-industry jobs that are low-paying and have questionable working conditions. There is already a segment of Social Security Disability that is suspectible to fraud by lazy people and hucksters. But now, I think you have an additional component of people, who at one time were loyal and hard-working, before their jobs was outsourced or downsized, and who are now well into their 30s, 40s, or 50s, who are saying, "fuck it. Wall Street got theirs, my bosses got theirs, my neighbor went out on SSI and got his, now it's my turn."

Of course, this is my opinion; I could be wrong.

College

2011-08-23T15:34:00.000-05:00

This is a good blog entry from Bill Hicks about the continuing escalating costs of a college education. He sources an article from an Indiana newspaper that actually isn't that bad in listing some of the causes, from reduced state funding to higher raises for administrators and professors. It also gives some knockout statistics, specifically that in the past 22 years, while the Consumer Price Index has risen by 81.9 percent, college tuitions in the state of Indiana have spiked by at least 300 percent. Mr. Hicks then raises an important point that the newspaper excises, and that is the role of the student loan industry. Since they are protected by the federal government, and students with debt typically can't file for bankruptcy, market forces that would push tuition prices down are disabled.

How people are still buying into the dream of a college education, 3 years after the financial collapse (and even before then, it was starting to look more than a little wobbly), I cannot comprehend. I guess that dreams of a better life and a good job die hard, and can persist even in the face of significant events to the contrary. From my own personal experience, a college education has provided diminishing returns over time. I graduated with my B.A. in 2006, and started applying for jobs. Even then, my phone wasn't ringing off the hook, but at least I was picking up interviews now and again. After deciding I needed a more refined vision of what I wanted to do, I went back for a one year program in Paralegal Studies. I got the certificate in 2009, and have not had one job interview in three years. So, with a deeper resume and with an additional certification under my belt, I have seen far less action in terms of job offers or interest than I did with just a Bachelor's Degree in 2006/07.

I think this culture of higher education has had many unintended consequences. A real tragedy is that due to the gutting of our manufacturing industry, most high school graduates have little choice but to go to college, even if they are not cut out for it. I would say that, based on my experiences in school, three-fourths of the students I went to school with should have been nowhere near the place. And I'm not saying that to denigrate them or to question their intelligence. Not everyone is cut out for taking tests and reading long, tedious textbooks. But that's the hole many have been crammed into since good-paying factory jobs are no longer available.

Student loan debt is now higher than credit card debt in this country; assuming that the general economy does not collapse first (and judging from the action on Wall Street and the grim news in the business pages, that is a mighty big "if"), I strongly believe that higher education will be the next bubble to burst. I find it to be in a similar vein to real estate. As a result of the gutting of our manufacturing industry, more & more people applied to colleges, and the budgets of these schools soared to accommodate them all. With no market forces to impede them (thanks to loan programs backed by the protection of the federal government), prices soared out of control, and with no basis in economic reality, far outpacing inflation in other areas.

Postal Service to be Insolvent

2011-08-22T15:45:00.000-05:00

In a matter of weeks, the USPS will have to default on a health benefits payment, after reaching its borrowing limit of $15 billion and after losing over $3 billion in the past quarter. The postal service has asked Congress to make several major changes to the postal system, including eliminating Saturday service.

The USPS has been having problems for years now, and many people are quick to point to the rise of e-mail and the Internet, as well as the growth of UPS and FedEx as primary causes for this. I agree, but I believe there are a couple of other reasons that are at least, just as important. One is rising fuel prices. As peak oil starts to hit us harder, many governmental services (as well as private companies) will be more and more unsustainable, since they were built and organized under the assumption that cheap, accessible fuel would never be an issue. Say what you will about rising stamp prices, but 44 cents to deliver a first-class letter from one end of the country to the other is still a bargain, especially in the age of $4 gallon gasoline.

Another reason brings me to something that, until around a week ago, I never knew. The USPS is a federal service in name only. Their revenue consists of the sales from postage and other products. They receive no federal funds. The Postal Reorganization Act, which turned the USPS from a cabinet department into a quasi-independent agency, was signed in 1970. So, this is an example of free market worship run amok, and you can't blame the usual culprits for this (Reagan), since this goes back even earlier.

I think that postal service is an essential service of the government, right up there with providing defense. It was even written in Article One of the Constitution. But, as we all should know by now, the "free market" surpasses everything, even the Constitution.

Good Video from Jon Stewart on "class warfare"

2011-08-20T08:37:00.000-05:00

I see that from this video, the spokesmen of the elite are doing their "woe is me, being crazy rich" routine in the media, especially Fox News. This is partly due to a statement from Warren Buffet that the top 5 percent should have to pay more in taxes. Stewart calls them out on their ridculous name-calling (of course, anyone who suggests that they give their fair share is a "socialist" and waging "class warfare"), and shows an eye-opening chart on how far down we rank in terms of income equality (we barely pass by Uganda, and finish behind many other countries, including Iran and Cameroon).

What really got me was the end. He shows a segment of spokesmen and talk show hosts, each spouting off about how higher tax rates on the wealthy will not get us out of this fiscal hole that we are in. This is likely true. However, what if higher tax rates on the wealthy get us 10 % out of the hole? Or 20%? That's something, isn't it? Combined with other reforms, like closing corporate tax loopholes, among many, many other things, significant progress might be possible. But many rich do not love their country, the only thing they love is making more money.

Bill Maher had a great closing monologue on his show a couple of months ago. He showed a recent front page photo in The Wall Street Journal that was titled "The Ultimate Sacrifice". It was of a soldier who got gravely injured in combat, with an artificial arm, and he was being presented with a medal (whether it was a Medal of Honor, Purple Heart, etc., I don't know) by Mr. Obama. The irony was that such a photo, and its captain of an "ultimate sacrifice", is so vastly at odds with the people who publish the Wall Street Journal and many who read it. The ultra-wealthy will not budge on tax cuts or anything else. Their way of life is non-negotiable. When the wheels fall off the global economy, and governments begin to unravel, they will continue to eat while we starve.

Someone's Ideas on Managing Our Fiscal Crisis

2011-08-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

I came home from work this morning, opened the paper and saw that the government's credit rating was downgraded by S & P from AAA to AA+. AA+ is still the 2nd best credit rating, and I've been reading more than a few people say that, if anything, S & P did not go far enough. It's clear that our credit rating is more along the lines of an "F", as in total garbage. But this is a major story, and to me, the biggest indicator so far that, to quote Dubya, that "this sucker is going down".

Anyway, I post contributions from people on message boards that I read from time to time, and this is a good entry by someone with the screenname of Nergol from Dan Carlin's website, on how to manage our fiscal crisis.

The "Big Three" of budget items are Social Security, Medicare, and defense. Someone of a libertarian bent might classify all three as "welfare" programs of some kind or another, but the first two fit by virtually any reasonable definition. The problem with them is that they're simultaneously huge such that any talk of serious deficit/debt reduction is utterly moot without serious adjustments to one or all of them, and that all three have been regarded for decades as essentially untouchable for political reasons. We are now at a point where something has to give, and give in some very serious ways. We will now make deep cuts to one or more of these items, or they will bankrupt us, one way or the other.

My preferred approach would start with the following: I would turn the de facto Empire Department back into something that could honestly be called the Defense Department. I would close all military bases not on US soil, scrap the carriers, and send perhaps 2/3 of the active duty military home with honorable discharges and VA benefits. I would raise the Social Security eligibility age to 70, and enact strict means tests so that only the truly needy will receive benefits. I would restrict Medicare to US citizens only - legal aliens will have to be gainfully employed to the extent that they can receive coverage from their employers, and illegal aliens get nothing. Similarly, I would deny any government-funded benefits of any kind to illegals - sorry, we can't even afford to take care of our own. The only exception would be for emergency medical care - meaning roughly that we won't let you bleed to death in the street if you get hit by a bus, but if you get pancreatic cancer that will require half a million dollars worth of treatment, you'd better head back where you came from to get it. Is that harsh? Yes - but again, we can't even afford to take care of our own now, much less taking care of anyone who can power their way across the Rio Grande.

Beyond that are the relative small potatoes - I would, for example, kill agricultural subsidies, foreign aid, public broadcasting, the NEA, and the Departments of Education (which runs no schools and teaches no students) and Housing and Human Services entirely. Grifter "social organizations" like La Raza and Planned Parenthood - who prove without a doubt the validity of what Eric Hoffer said about what big causes degenerate into - would get zip. And no more corporate bailouts - of anyone, ever.

On the revenue side, I'd withdraw from NAFTA, GATT, and most other free-trade agreements, and enact sky-high tariffs against Chinese-made goods. What are they going to do - stop buying legitimate copies of Microsoft Windows? Fuck 'em. And fuck American CEOs who want to save money with labor arbitrage, too - let them open an iPad factory in Ohio instead of Shenzhen. And while I'm on the subject of labor arbitrage - I'd enact a fine of $25,000 per day, per offense, on any business that hired illegals, with half the money going to whoever reported it, and I'd allow unemployed Americans to sue companies that employed illegals in civil court for using illegal means to deny them employment. That should put some more Americans back to work. As for corporate taxes, the problem in America is not the rate (which is relatively high, by world standards), but the loopholes. Big corporations pay slick accountants to find ways to pay zero taxes. What Reagan did for income taxes in the 80s, I'd do for corporate taxes - lower the rates, but close the loopholes so they actually pay what they should. I'd enact an 95% tax on any income (not profit - gross income) made by any credit institution on loans (including credit cards) made at an interest rate over 10%. I'd legalize and tax drugs. I'd enact a modest national sales tax, and make up for it by eliminating capital gains taxes entirely.

Anyhow, that went longer than I intended, but you get the idea.

1 Million New Robots to Enter Global Workforce

2011-08-02T10:16:00.000-05:00

Foxconn has announced a plan to replace a portion of its human workforce with up to 1 million robots. Foxconn is the Chinese company where there has been a spate of employee suicides amidst slave-like conditions; it's also where many iPhones and other electronic devices are manufactured. This is what globalization and "trickle-down" economics consist of. A large portion of Americans used to be employed in manufacturing. When they got too expensive and uppity, they were replaced by Mexican labor, then the cheap Mexican workers were replaced by the even cheaper Chinese, and now, the Chinese are beginning to be replaced by robots. Robots don't need housing or health care or food, and will never complain about rights or take breaks (although it'd make a neat plot for some sci-fi film). I sometimes think that a population shortage is in the offing not just because of resource scarcity, but also because of the marginalization of low-level jobs to the automation.

I will end this with a personal story that will hopefully highlight the potential absurdity of automation. I was with my brother at Lowe's last week; Lowe's is a chain big-box hardware store, like the Home Depot. Lowe's has several "self check-out" counters, which I see is a growing trend in many stores. My brother got a few gloves, and upon seeing the lines at the human check-out lanes, goes to the self-check out counter. He scans and pays for the stuff, and all the while, there is an employee feet away from us, just looking at us to ensure that we aren't stealing. The point of automation is to cut down on labor costs, yet I'm assuming that for every self-check out lane at Lowe's, there is an employee who is detailed to observe the people who are using it. So what's the point of self-check out? Why not just use that employee as an extra hand to check people out?

The Debt Ceiling

2011-07-29T15:33:00.000-05:00

I really wanted to make some post about the debt ceiling, but I feel that this other blogger said a lot of what I wanted to say, so it'd probably be suitable to post that instead. I will say a few things. Ever since reading Kunstler's book and finding out about peak everything, I have obsessively been following the issue of economic collapse through blogs and message boards, and have posted about it almost exclusively. But I always viewed it as something abstract. Don't get me wrong, I'd say that I have felt the effects of a gradually worsening economy. I have not had a job interview in 3 years, I still live at home and do not see any reason for that to change any time soon, at least not a good reason. The degree(s) I have put immense time and money into are worthless. These circumstances, in one way or another, are tied to a collapsing economy and society. But in many ways, I'm pretty comfortable. I eat my three squares a day, I come here to blog, I just cooked a delicious pasta yesterday, I play video games, the bills are getting paid, etc. So, again, "doom" is something that I know exists, and is bound to hit all of us at some point, likely in our lifetimes. But until now, I have not stared down the barrel at it. But this is different.

Many would say that we are already in a state of default, regardless of how this pans out. The act of "QE", restlessly printing money (or typing in a few more digital zeroes), is just one example of this. But the government acknowledging that there is no money to pay its bills, is pretty much making it official, no? I could see the points of both the conservatives and the liberals in Congress; the conservatives that we can't just keep borrowing money, and the liberals that a fast collapse and a default would lead to a mercilessly quick chaotic situation. But as Bill Hicks says, they are either ignoring, or are just completely clueless, that the rules of the game have changed. Economic growth just is not possible where you have hit a wall in energy resources. You may print money, but you cannot print oil, land, water, or any other natural resource. They are applying outdated solutions to this problem, and they are doomed to fail. Hicks knocks down a lot of liberal columnists who are writing misinformed articles on how to fix the debt crisis. Many involve just throwing money at the problem. But to this point, the various stimuluses and QE's we've had have only, at best, kept the economy level and prevented it from going into freefall. No growth has been made as a result of these magic tricks.

To close, I do not know what the final result of this will be. I thought this was just political theater (to an extent, I still do), designed to scare us so that massive cuts would be made to SS and Medicare, but the radical right (in the form of the freshman Tea Party congress) is persistent that there will be no more spending, no matter what. Either way, I think this will damage us further in the eyes of the world, and will hasten our demise.

Jaywalker Faces 3 Years in Prison; Hit-and-Run Murderer Gets 6 Months

2011-07-22T16:29:00.000-05:00

This is a story that struck close to my heart. A mother lost her child to a hit-and-run driver last year. She is now facing charges of reckless endangerment and improperly crossing a roadway, as a result of that incident. The hit-and-run driver who killed her son served six months of a five-year sentence. Now, I imagine most people who have read this story will look at this as yet another example of how broken our judicial system is and how badly it needs to be reformed. I don't disagree, but I think they'd be missing the much larger point of this story. That point, to me, is that in this country, unless you own and drive a vehicle, you are something less than a person, and will be treated accordingly so in our courts, as well as in the eyes of the public.

Raquel Nelson, the mother whose son was killed, does not drive a car. She lives in Marietta, GA, which is located in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Atlanta, like many parts of the country, are nearly uninhabitable to pedestrians or cyclists. Their urban planners designed the entire landscape to center around the motor vehicle. Ms. Nelson uses public transportation so that her and her kids can get around. On April 10, 2010, the day this happened, Ms. Nelson got off the bus with her kids after nightfall, the nearest crosswalk being third of a mile away (why the crosswalk wasn't right by the bus stop shows the obsessive closed-mindedness of Atlanta's urban planners). Her son let go of her hand, thinking it was time to cross, and got plowed by Jerry Guy, the piece-of-shit driver who then fled the scene. (Picture of the street here)

Nelson, a black woman, was convicted by an all-white jury. But, additionally, she was a pedestrian who was convicted by a jury of people who drive cars, and who cannot hope to have any understanding of what someone without a car must go through to live in this country. The mere act of walking, in many places, is akin to putting one's life in their hands. You are struggling to negotiate with traffic who will see you as a nuisance, and who very often will not stop when they see you trying to cross the street. I deal with this regularly in Patchogue's Main Street, where I do use the crosswalk. Even with a big electronic sign above, with big words saying that pedestrians have the right-of-way, and with a sign on the ground, cars just blow by as I am crossing. I live in Long Island, which is similarly unfriendly to walkers and in which the urban planners have also designed the towns around the car. There was just a cover story in Newsday last week about how cyclists face the most accidents here than anywhere else in the state.

This reminds me of a book whose existence I stumbled upon online, and had meant to read. Unfortunately, it's one of those scholarly books that are hard to find at the library. I even forget what it was called, but it was about how when the car first came into existence and started to see sporadic use here and there, it was seen as a menace by most of the populace, who still walked to get to most places. When someone was killed by a car, the person driving the car was blamed. But as the car played a bigger and bigger part in our lives, the blame started to shift from the car to the walker, or the cyclist. You can see this in this case. Not just the fact that she was not judged by a jury of her peers (the jury being white and who all get around by motor vehicle), but that there was an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shortly after the incident, with the headline "Jaywalkers Take Deadly Risks". So when something like this happens, it's not the fault of relentless, impatient drivers, or the fault of urban planners who have a warped, out-of-touch view of how people behave and carry themselves, but the person with no car, who's just trying to cross the street to get home? Yeah, it's their fault, they're taking a "deadly risk" by crossing the street.

So, when this collapse of ours finally plays itself out, assuming I survive it, I will miss a lot of things about our culture. I will miss my newfound love of cooking, I will miss blogging, and many other things. But I will not miss this horrible, abhorrent car culture that was forced on us by our government, Corporate America, and the many short-sighted urban planners across the country. I will be glad to get from Point A to Point B without putting my life into my hands (at least, not from the car). I will be following this case, and hope that Ms. Nelson gets off very lightly, or better yet, completely.

Turnabout is Fair Play

2011-07-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

A Colorado woman was arrested and faced sexual abuse charges after groping a female TSA agent in Phoenix Airport. However, one attorney general felt the facts didn't merit the felony charge, so now it has been downgraded to a misdemeanor. Hopefully, she won't be charged at all.

The TSA has been violating the Fourth Amendment rights of many Americans since 9/11, through their pat downs and their body scanners. This has only been at airports, but I hear it might be coming to train stations and bus depots as well.* I'm sure a lot of people who endure this experience may not like it, but they sure as shit don't do so much as audibly vent in front of TSA agents. This woman went one step further, and gave one of them a taste of their own medicine. I do fear that the TSA will really bear down, since they have stated, in the wake of this incident, that they "won't tolerate assaults on its employees".

*I do believe heightened security measures have been implemented in many other public places as well in the wake of 9/11. I know that when I go to Citifield (and Shea Stadium before it), we must open any bags as well as get patted down by stadium security. I am not even a baseball fan, and do not like going for this very reason, but what we do for family.

Fortress America

2011-07-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

This is a new piece from Chris Hedges, one of America's best journalists and truth-tellers. He has been front and center in sounding the klaxon for the very serious potential of America becoming a real dystopian police state.

I have read many articles like this one before, particularly as Bush II was concerned in his authorization of extreme interrogation methods (torture). What I think made this a different experience for me this time around, was the timing. This debt ceiling debate has instilled a degree of insecurity and maybe even fear among people who otherwise don't really think about current events all that much, other than when it affects their pocketbook, which national debt certainly does. And while an American default probably won't happen (not to say that continuing on our current course is sustainable either), the chances of a default or some other calamity happening is significantly higher than it should be (10% to 20%, maybe).

So many things are happening. I'd say that, for the short term, we'll probably be okay, but in the next 5-10 years? I'm not as enthusiastic. There is an anger among the populace about our economic situation (both individual and collectively) and the extreme wealth disparity that exists. As our economic downturn becomes more and more pronounced, and as bailouts keep happening, that anger will start to carry over into more visible ways, such as protests or riots for example. And then, you are going to see the same system that Hedges describes in his article, the system that is being used as a steamroller to run over Muslims and undocumented immigrants, applied towards more and more Americans who try to stand up to their government. I think that we came pretty close to fascism after 9/11, and some of us think that we did indeed become a fascist country on that day, if not before. But if some disaster, economic or otherwise, came about, I think that we will run off the rails into clear, unmitigated, fascism.

Sadly, I do not think that Bush, his administration, his lawyers or his commanders in the armed forces, will ever be held to account for their crimes. Bringing such powerful people to trial is a huge hurdle in and of itself, but you'd need a working legal system in order for that to even be possible. This, we do not have. Our legal system is fraught with corruption and internal ideology. You'd have to fix that first before having a crack at prosecuting these people, and if that were to occur, they will all likely be dead.

The Google Effect

2011-07-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

There is a new saying around called "the Google Effect". Coined by researchers, the "Google Effect" means that if you do not have the luxury of being easily able to access information at a later time, that you will have a better chance of remembering it when you first learn it. With Google, and technology in general, many of us don't have much of an incentive to make a real effort to tie down the information that reaches our brains for a prolonged length of time. If we forget any piece of information, we can just hit up Google.

I remember that for awhile, I had trouble remembering our home phone number after we had it changed. This wasn't really an issue, only when I called the pizza place to put in an order, and they'd ask for the home number, and I'd stammer or give out the old number. My brother had to step in and give me the correct number. When I initially got the new number, I just put it into my cell phone, and when I need to call home, I just hit a number on my phone and it automatically calls home. But until not too long ago, if someone had asked me for my home phone number, my brain would not be able to access that information. And if I did not have my cell phone, and was in a bad place, I might well have been in some kind of predicament.

So, I think it's possible that The Google Effect can go well beyond not bothering to remember fairly trivial facts or data, but you can forget things as essential as your phone number. If you're not exercising your brain and your memories regularly, the consequences can be unexpected. I can easily imagine a day where people might need a GPS to just remember the rights and lefts of simple trips to the mall, for example.

Casey Anthony

2011-07-16T13:57:00.000-05:00

I have been very reluctant to blog anything regarding the very well-known trial of Casey Anthony and her subsequent acquittal by a jury of her peers on the charges of first-degree murder and assault of a child. It has been the subject of literal 24/7 coverage by our news media (Headline News being the most flagrant offender amongst them) and as you should probably figure out, I abhor coverage of stories like this. Not least because it takes up valuable screen real estate at the expense of much more pressing topics, but I guess that's the corporate media way, isn't it? To keep us ignorant and clueless by engaging in sensationalist, mental and spiritual junk food like this Casey Anthony trial. I tried to make this point to my brother, and he tried telling me that the reason why this case got so much coverage was that it was so "compelling" and that people were so "intrigued" by it that the media was just giving them what they wanted. I think it's the other way around. I believe that the media looks for stories like this (again, to distract us from real issues that do need to be covered and discussed; FYI, my definition of "real issues" includes, but is not limited to, peak oil/peak everything, the economic downturn/collapse, climate change, Middle East/North Africa, stuff of that vein) that can be easily packaged to Americans and that can rake in vast amounts of advertising revenue (something I think the Anthony family deserves a piece of; I know they're deplored, but the media has made shitloads of money off of them). To see how ridculous people have gotten over this case, check out this video (I call it the "stampede"). They are running throughout the court trying to get a seat to observe the trial, at 5 AM, and you won't see a retiree among them.

Anyway, I know much more about the trial than I'd wished to, because my family (mainly, mother and brother) have obsessed over every detail. I could not help but be an unwilling observer to countless discussions over the dinner table, as well as footage on television by such first-class luminaries of journalism as Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell. I have also been subjected to postings by my Facebook buddies about it. But what finally opened my eyes to this case was the verdict. Ms. Anthony was found "not guilty" by a jury of her peers. This flew into the face of the plainly visible bias of the media, for one thing. They had long before declared her guilty in the court of public opinion, and I did not see much in the way of dissenters. So it was, in a way, satisfying to me to hear that "not guilty" verdict, just so I could see these very same talking heads get to eat a big bowl of shit. And after the trial, I decided to read a few articles concerning the case, just to get a feel as to whether justice was served or not. I was surprised to find just what a weak-ass case the state had against this person. It basically consisted of a Google search for "chloroform" on the family computer (note, not even her computer), a "weird smell" coming from her car, and pictures of her partying mere weeks after her kid's death. At most, the latter proves that she wasn't a particularly good parent, but it hardly proves that she murdered her kid.

But, it seems that the only people in this country who felt that Ms. Anthony wasn't guilty of what she was accused of, were those 12 people on that jury. Everyone else is convinced, to the point of lunacy. I have heard talk of hopes that she "gets hers", that someone will take "justice into their own hands" and string her up. Her legal team and the jurors have also received threats. The American people have been whipped up into a frenzy, and for that, I blame the corporate media. These people were only told what the corporate media, and its employees, wanted them to hear. They were not privy to all the evidence and the expert testimony that the jury were. It has reached the point where people who look like Anthony are being attacked for looking like her.

To close, I suggest reading the above linked article as well as this other one from the same blogger. He says many things that I am in full agreement with. To add a little, I have heard that the state has incurred untold costs in providing extra security for the trial, as well as its aftermath. This is obviously due to the media's incursion into the region of Florida where the trial was held, as well as the threats against the jurors and the Anthony family. I imagine that Florida's finances are in dire straits (like most states) and this is an extra cost that they could ill afford. All while the media gets to walk away with the ad revenue that they pocket from the coverage of this case. This is a perfect example, to me, of how corporations privatize their profits while socializing the costs of their actions. In a just world, the media would have to share the costs of providing the extra police and guards in the Florida courtroom where the trial occurred.

Also, I hope this case makes our courts reexamine the issue of whether cameras should be allowed in the courtroom. In theory, it sounds like a great idea. Who doesn't want openness in any statehouse or courthouse? But in practice, it has proven a debacle, due to the reasons above. The media is not going to devote extensive coverage to, say, any modern-day variants of a Scopes Trial or a Sacco & Vanzetti, or any other case where a valid legal question is posed. The coverage will go to cases that scrape the bottom of the barrel, and in which our basest, worst instincts as human beings will come out, and possibly manifest themselves, in violent fashion.

The Power of Suggestion

2011-07-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

This is a fascinating little video from a lecture by science writer Simon Singh. I don't want to divulge too much, so let's just say he takes a very well-known song and uses it as a vehicle through which we are shown just how susceptible many of us are; we can very easily believe something that actually isn't real, just based on our prejudices and expectations. These are emotions that manifest themselves every day in how we feel about things, and I think viewers of cable news programs are especially conditioned via methods similar to that used by Mr. Singh here.

The Latest Jobs Report: A Real Kick in the Balls

2011-07-09T07:56:00.001-05:00

I usually don't keep track of this stuff, only because I don't trust government statistics as far as I can throw 'em, but the media is abuzz with the latest jobs report, which is pretty dismal. I think that they were forecasting around 100 thousand new jobs created or thereabouts; only 18 thousand were actually created according to the report. Unemployment is now up to 9.2% (which is very conservative; the actual number is much higher).

I am confused as to why anyone in the halls of power (be it Washington or Wall Street) would expect that there would be any robust job creation whatsoever. I guess they have such a vested interest in believing their own bullshit or something. Between quantitative easing (creating money from thin air), the stimulus and all this other stuff, it is pathetic to think that this is the best that could have been done. I think that this is a big confidence killer for business, and for the population in general.

More than one person I've read of has compared these economic times to the Five Stages of Grief (the Kubler-Ross Model, which consists of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance). For a long time, most of us have been in the "denial" phase. A lot of people I talk to about this always think that "things will get better"; I'm guessing it's based on the fact that we have had recessions before and have always bounced back, so we will just do the same this time. I see that starting to change, as more and more people begin to see that there will be no "recovery" coming for them, and then the anger phase sets in.

Along with the dismal jobs report, the corporate news media is talking about industries in which there is demand for workers. I strongly believe that this is another scam. Their goal is to trumpet these "growing industries" to the unemployed, get them to go back to school (taking out huge loans in the process), and create a glut of workers in that industry, which lowers the wages in that field.

This also ties in with all the bedlam concerning the "debt ceiling". If the ceiling isn't raised, or some deal is struck to significantly cut the deficit, many jobs in the public sector will be lost, making the unemployment problem much worse. But on the other hand, continued borrowing at the magnitude that we have been borrowing will lead to continued price shocks in energy and food, causing even more pain to the working class. I do think these two issues in tandem (debt ceiling and unemployment) will be a gamechanger.

A Few Notes

2011-07-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

It was my day off, so I spent it in my usual way, by going to the heart of Patchogue and visiting the library, the coffee house and the gym. On my way home, I noticed a couple of things:

The old 112 Video location, which has been abandoned for a few years now, is once again for rent (112 Video is an independent video store; it's still operating but has moved down the road into the next town, Patchogue. It has survived Blockbuster, pay-per-view on demand and appears to have survived Netflix, but will it survive the new form of Netflix, which is streaming video? Only time will tell, I guess.) Anyway, since it vacated its former premises on Route 112 in Medford, it has been rented out by businesses that have come and gone. It was a cabinet company, first, I think it might have lasted a month. Then, it was some kind of Turkish grocer and finally, it was a pool lounge. The latter two did not even open for business before they crumbled. I have seen this in other places, signs saying that a new business would be "COMING SOON", only to not come at all. I'm guessing that it's due to the ramifications of the economic crash of '08. Aspiring small business owners are likely finding it extremely difficult to get financing to open their businesses. They probably get an initial line of credit, enough to rent out the building and to make up signs, but further lines of credit to buy the other essentials peter out and they end up going bust before making their first dollar. It's a shame, especially that the billiards place did not come in. I'm becoming enamored of the game, playing it via video games and would like a place where I could learn it further.

Another thing I noticed as I was walking home on Horseblock Road (a decidedly unfriendly road for pedestrians, with nothing but ugly strip malls and big-boxes lining the landscape) was that there was a fender bender that appeared to be relatively minor. It was the side I was headed home on, so I had to cross. I was looking at it, and saw no less than 2 police cars and 2 emergency vehicles on the scene, for what looked like a typical fender-bender. This disproportionate response to minor accidents is quite the norm in my community. I wonder how we will be able to keep this going as our municipal finances keep circling the shitter and as oil prices continue to soar. I hope that as they do so, our local authorities and safety officers moderate their responses to incidents accordingly, only pulling out the big guns when lives are at stake.

Another Major Taliban Attack

2011-06-29T21:40:00.000-05:00

This time, on a landmark Kabul hotel, in which 21 were killed, including the 9 insurgents. In a previous post, I spoke about how, a decade after the initial invasion of their country, the Taliban are still coordinating these skillful attacks against the coalition forces. While all of the attackers were killed, they left behind a trail of venomous carnage. Stories like this remind me of my reading on the Vietnam War, and lessons that we should have learned from that, such as that you can win virtually every battle and still lose to an opponent via a sheer force of will and a willingness to sacrifice anything and everything.

It also reminded me of something that someone said, I forget where I saw or read this. This person was speaking of 9/11 and said that the total budget for the plotting and implementation of the attack ran something like $500,000. He then contrasted that with U.S. government spending in response to 9/11, which numbers in the trillions. I don't think it requires much imagination to see where repeated instances of this would lead, to a country that spends itself into oblivion. Assuming that Bin Laden was the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, he said that he wanted to engage the U.S. in economic warfare. Well, I think the end result was beyond his wildest dreams, and he might be well on his way to see his wish, albeit posthumously. Just think of how much it cost to train those NATO troops and Afghan soldiers who engaged in combat with the Taliban, as well as the helicopter and the weaponry that was used in this fight.

To close, a quote from one of Hamid Karzai's senior aides brings back memories. He referred to the attackers as "cowards", as Bush and many others did of the 9/11 attackers. As Bill Maher famously pointed out, risking your own life, no matter how fucked up the objectives, is not exactly cowardly. Many other things (depraved, demented, whether synonym you prefer), but not cowardly, in my book.

Crazy Israel Court Sentences Dog to Death by Stoning

2011-06-20T19:26:00.000-05:00

Proof that the Muslims aren't the only crazy religious faction in the Middle East:

A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.

Westboro Baptist to Protest in Joplin

2011-05-28T17:23:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe how long these people have been doing this without getting their teeth knocked down their throats. BTW, the Westboro Baptists are the religious nuts who protest at military funerals and other gatherings, with signs praising the deaths as God's retribution against the relative tolerance of the U.S. towards homosexuals. Now, they are planning to picket in Joplin, where 125 people died in the tornado this past week.

A View Of Our Political Future

2011-05-23T13:52:00.000-05:00

I saw a good video interview with Niall Ferguson, and there were comments. One of these was very good, and the person outlined a series of phases surrounding electoral systems of countries around the world in the wake of austerity measures and bailouts. It ends with the realization amongst the voting masses that their unhappiness at their circumstances is really unrelated to which party happens to be governing. It's a fundamental problem of overpopulation and resource limits that no one in government can hope to solve.

Phase1:
Huge swings in votes, due to the dissatisfaction of the population.
Countries move sharply to opposite political spectrum.

Phase2:
Population discovers that the recently elected political opposite spectrum is unable to solve what makes them dissatisfied at the first place. Most obvious country: USA.

Phase3:
Population will refuse to vote for traditional political parties. Population will search out unusual third parties. Countries: USA: Tea Party, Finland: True Finns.

Phase4:
Population will realize that unusual third party political forces are unable to govern or being hijacked by traditional political parties, as a front.

Phase5:
It becomes obvious, that the fundamental reasons of dissatisfaction is not a matter of which party governs.

No one in politics can solve the collision course of the following trends:

1) Resources are finite - while all the current econo-political systems are based on the assumption of unlimited resources.

2) Population is increasing *globally* - which is on collision course with the fact of limited resources.

3) While population is growing, less and less people are needed to run the economy.
Unemployment goes global, from structural unemployment ("these jobs are not coming back, there there will be new industries, which will provide new jobs to everyone" to "overpopulation unemployment".

But population is declining in many European countries, how come Spain has over 20% unemployment? True, however "Overpopulation unemployment" is a global trend, shifting work to cheaper labor cost centers (Asia currently) does not negate it. This trend is fully exploited by current leaders in economy, to increase profit, while also say to "expensive" US, European labor to take a cue at the Asian wages. None of this is solving the long-term collision course: it is profitable exploitation financially and empty political rhetoric.

4) While wages have been declining, they can never decline fast and deep enough. The solution is stepping up innovation to deploy more and more technology. In the focus of every single innovation is the desire to get something done with less human intervention. This is of course further eroding the need for labor.

Phase6:
After moving from unsuccessful and ever more expensive bailouts to bailouts, from North America, to Europe, then to Asia, there is less and less appetite for austerity measures. It will become obvious that austerity measures and all bailout packages are not designed and they are unable to solve the long term collision course trends, described above.

This realization will lead to complete political and economical collapse.

It will force to find solution how to deal with the growing population, the acknowledgement that we need socio-political economy that is built on resource-based economy, the complete radical re-thinking of how human labor, wealth creation and distribution can be ft in the world, where there are almost unlimited labor, while the need for labor is steadily decreasing - without any sign that the current models of economies and societies can create a balance of supply and demand.

Since this balance can not, will not be restored - society will have to figure out a complete reset, how humans will exist using the resources most efficiently.

It will not be market economy, as the framework of market economy offers labor market as the solution for human participation in creating and distributing goods and services, but free market economy can no longer provide a supply/demand in this field. Without it the entire system is useless, collapsing, as we are experiencing it now.

Funny & Informative Rap/News Video

2011-05-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

There is a site out there called The Juice Media, that is making these rap/news hybrid videos that are both informative and utterly hilarious. I have only seen this latest one, on the killing of Bin Laden, and it is a must-watch. I'll be sure to watch the others, which talk about personalities like the Tea Party and Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks).

Exploding Watermelons

2011-05-18T06:04:00.000-05:00

This sounds like something I'd see in a comic or a video game, but it really happened. In China, farmers applied a chemical called forchlorfenuron, which is a growth accelerator, to their watermelons. The melons ended up exploding. Forchlorfenuron can increase a crop's growth time by up to 2 weeks and can make them bigger, bringing a higher price when it comes time to sell. It doesn't work so well with watermelons though, judging from what happened here.

This should be looked upon as tying in to population growth and the constant pressure to increase food output. I know that the main concern from many reading this article would be "is this safe to eat"*, but it's deeper than that. Byproducts of oil (which is what fertilizer is, and I'm sure this chemical was, at least on some level) are being used to expand food production as the population continues to increase. As oil becomes more expensive and scarce, tricks and shortcuts such as this one designed to grow more food will become tougher and tougher to implement.

* Although, this is a legitimate and fair question. The article also states that many farmers in China (and I'm presuming, many other places) grow their own food seperately from their chemical brethren.

U.S. Credit Card Maxed Out

2011-05-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

The government has hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit, and a vote on raising our debt ceiling is needed by August 2. In the meantime, Geithner is starting to raid government pension funds in order to keep everyday operations of the government afloat. To make things even more dicey, House Republicans say they won't vote to raise the ceiling unless there are spending cuts that are greater than the debt increase to go along with it. Oh, and I don't think those pension funds involve our congresspeople, either.

Reactions

2011-05-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

I have a new feature on the blog, called 'reactions'. At the bottom of each post, there will be several words you can click on to state how you feel about what I just posted. This is an alternative to having to post a comment. I will add new words when I come up with them, but for now, there are four (funny, interesting, cool, and that's not right).

The Home of the Pussies

2011-05-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

Free we may be (and even that's debatable), but brave? That, we are not. Less than a week after the death of Bin Laden, or "public enemy #1", two imams were pulled off a plane because passengers were uncomfortable, since the men were wearing traditional Muslim dress. It gets better. These men were headed to a conference on prejudice against Muslims. It's one of those things you can't possibly make up.

I will say that, after 9/11 and the various attacks carried out around the world by Islamic extremists, I do support profiling to a certain extent. I don't think bearing an extra layer of scrutiny against men such as the ones on the airplane while going through security is unreasonable (although, they probably wouldn't be wearing Islamic garb if they were about to kill a lot of people, that'd be too obvious). And that's exactly what happened prior to the flight. These men went through security, then through "secondary security" (I guess that means when someone is pulled aside and has a wand run over them or they're frisked), and then were allowed to board. That should have been that.

But no, in the "home of the brave", there were people in the airplane who were pissing themselves when they saw these two guys in dress and wearing turbans. The plane was already taxiing down the runway when the pilot had to come back. They were then re-screened, were again found to be absolutely no threat, and the pilot refused to re-board them and took off.

I hope these guys take Southeast Airlines for a lot of money, they deserve every penny. To me, the bigger story is how we pound our chests with this macho, patriotic bravado (like we did last week) and then get goosebumps and shit ourselves when we are face-to-face with the purported "other", no matter how harmless that person may be. This was nothing but blind, irrational racial fear, and we should all be ashamed of the passengers and the pilot on this flight. What a bunch of pussies.

U.S. Loses Space Fight to Russia

2011-05-06T17:10:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like our Apollo 11 moon landing back in 1969 might have been a case of "winning the battle, but losing the war". There are only two shuttle launches left, and NASA isn't even accepting astronaut applications. These days, American astronauts are spending at least six months out of each year in Russia, training with Russian astronauts. Private companies, such as Virgin, are also getting into the business of space travel. As a "space psychologist" quoted in the article says, "imagine John Glenn or Alan Shepard speaking Russian.

So, many of us have said over the years that the U.S. won the Space Race, but that seems to have been premature. I know next to nothing about the history and the future of space travel, but it looks like the Russians are still going strong, at least compared to us. Obama's cancellation of Constellation, as well as this development, in a way, symbolizes the pending collapse more poignantly to me than most events.

Oil Production Cut Back in Iraq

2011-05-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

Adding a fresh blow to our oil supply problems, Iraq is going to cut its target for oil production in half. Remember when we were at the onset of the invasion of Iraq, and many people were cheering for it since it would lead to ultra-low oil prices? So much for that, I guess. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/iraqi-oil-production-cutback-plan-adds-to-global-supply-fear/story-e6frg8zx-1226050749186

The Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-05T15:58:00.000-05:00

As the world knows, Osama Bin Laden was supposedly killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan last Sunday. I found out about this when I was working. Someone happened to initially misspeak (or was it a Freudian slip?) when she told us that "Obama was shot." We were like "what", and she quickly corrected herself to say that "Osama was shot". Everyone was very happy and uber-patriotic, saying things like "don't fuck with us", shit like that. I kept my feelings to myself; in that crowd, if you say the wrong thing, you might find yourself hanging by your testicles.

Anyway, although I have no solid belief system or empirical evidence to back it up (other than what I read on the net), I think Osama has been dead for awhile, possibly years. The video releases of him have simply been too erratic and disjointed for me to believe that it was anything other than an orchestrated hoax. I also factor in that he had kidney disease, and had a silly time envisioning him evading hordes of U.S. troops in the mountains of Afghan/Pakistan with his dialysis machine and his followers. We've had a powerful interest in keeping him "alive" to serve as an Emmanuel Goldstein type of nemesis (read Orwell's 1984 if you don't understand that reference). Putting a face to the war on terror was the only way Washington was going to get the support of a majority of Americans.

So, assuming that I'm right (and who knows), deciding to "kill" Osama now, to play that card, must mean that things are afoot, and that we need a big distraction, something to placate us. I have several theories. One is that as the rising gas prices undermine what economic "recovery" there is (and which will ultimately kill it), Obama needed something that would buy him some time and appease the public. I think killing Osama would certainly be one thing he could give us. Another thing is that Obama needed a victory, in a big way, politically. I think that he might have seen Donald Trump as a viable threat going forward. So, between releasing his long-form birth certificate and putting Osama's head on the wall, he has marginalized Trump and has gotten a head start towards winning re-election; although, if the economy continues to tank, people might have awfully short memories. Yet another theory is that the shit is about to hit us in a really big way (peak oil, rising food prices, tanking economy, etc.) and our government is trying to paper these over with stories like Bin Laden getting killed.

I didn't watch much of the news footage concerning Bin Laden's death, but the masses seemed to be thrilled. Why? Yeah, it looks like we got him, but at what cost? Starting two wars, hundreds of thousands dead, a bankrupt empire (that being us, BTW). We could have probably easily gotten him and his cohorts by pursuing a "Munich" type strategy. What we did was basically the equalvant of killing an ant with a flamethrower.

"Good Will Hunting" Got It Right

2011-05-04T20:17:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen the movie "Good Will Hunting" in a very long time, and actually did not recall this scene at all, but it's a very good and timely one (or timeless) that echoes many themes that we can relate to today. The only thing is the $2.50/gal. gas comment. Many people wish it were that price. Other than that, wildly accurate. Just look at our last President.

Energy Information Agency Defunded

2011-05-04T10:29:00.000-05:00

On reading Jim Kunstler's latest column, I found out that the Department of Energy has defunded the Energy Information Agency (EIA). The EIA is responsible for collecting oil production data outside the U.S., where two-thirds of our oil comes from. Is the EIA a victim of the budget-cutting that's going on (as I said, the Tea Party faction is going after programs whose portion of government funding is miniscule, although this agency is actually important IMO) or was it a victim of something else? Like, people in Washington being scared that a painful truth can be revealed to the American people?

$10 Million Skyscraper Sells for $1,700

2011-05-03T15:02:00.000-05:00

I believe the headline says it all. Our economic movers-and-shakers desperately want to keep the price of real estate up, but stories like these prove that they are failing miserably at it. I am trying to look for as many stories as I can to prove that this "recovery" is bullshit, and I'll tell ya, I don't have to look very far.

As to Bin Laden, yeah, I have some things to say about that. But I'm going to a ballgame, so that'll have to wait.

Man in Cow Suit Robs Walmart of 26 Gallons of Milk

2011-05-02T13:36:00.000-05:00

LOL. A day after posting an article about Walmart's troubles, and the broader U.S. economy, I find this funny article about a man dressed in a cow suit, who stole 26 gallons of milk from a Virginia Walmart. He then handed out the milk to customers outside the store, and was later apprehended at a nearby McDonalds, with the cow suit in the back seat of his car.

I am not posting this as some kind of connection to what I posted about yesterday, but I just found it funny. You may be amazed that a man can nearly get away with taking 26 gallons of milk, but I actually hear of such things all the time at the place I work at. People walking out with big-screen TVs and things like that.

Wal-Mart Shoppers Running Out of Money

2011-04-28T20:33:00.000-05:00

Our economic collapse continues, talk of "recovery" notwithstanding, judging from this article. What really jumped out at me was this part:

"Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in."

The only people who I know of that get checks at the first of the month are people on welfare and public assistance. I'm guessing even the writer of the article is acknowledging that that makes up most of Walmart's customer base.

Toyota: A Case Against Just-In-Time

2011-04-25T13:19:00.000-05:00

Toyota, the world's currently top auto maker, has stated that due to the massive disaster in Japan which has resulted in parts shortages, that their global car production won't return to normal until the end of the year (November or December). Due to these parts shortages and Japan's problems with keeping the lights on, all their factories are running at half-capacity, and in some, even worse.

In a way, this might be a preview of things to come for many companies. Obviously, it likely won't be due to such natural disasters such as the one that's inflicted so much pain and suffering in Japan. But anyway, I am getting ahead of myself. First, let me explain what "just-in-time" means.

Just-in-time (JIT) is a business strategy in the means of production, that is supposed to reduce onsite inventory and thus save on carrying costs. In order for JIT to work, there must be quick notification from one person/group to another that a certain stock in their inventory is either low or totally gone, so that a new supply of the stock can be ordered. This saves on warehouse space and leaves more space for other things. Although there is much more to it than that (Wikipedia's page is very good, IMO), what I just told you is the general gist of JIT.

Ironically enough, Toyota is known as the pioneer of the JIT system. Which it now seems to be a hostage to. But many, many companies use it, including mine (a big-box chain of stores). Although there are many upsides to such a system, one of the flaws of the JIT philosophy/strategy is that there's an unspoken assumption that things will always run smoothly. That there can never really be a breakdown, somewhere down the line, in the vast supply chain that gets these things from where our natural resources come from, to where they're processed and manufactured, and to where they are sold (of course, this is a very simplified view of a supply chain). Japan is just one event that could throw this strategy on its head, and maybe Toyota is learning something now. But then, maybe not.

Which brings us to the future. As our new oil crisis plays out (okay, not exactly a "crisis" but it's getting there) as a result of global production peak and the rapidly decaying value of the U.S. dollar (among other things), this can pose a serious challenge to JIT. Companies may end up having to pay more for what they order (in contrast to just storing it), as a result of the higher fuel prices (as these rise, many trucking companies put an additional fuel surcharge on the delivery bill) and the higher prices of the items that are being delivered themselves. And this is assuming that this doesn't play out into supply disruptions of oil, where even if money is no object, you still can't get the gas for the truck to deliver its goods. Of course, this would put any company, no matter how prosperous, in a serious bind. By then, corporations may not be merely questioning their delivery strategies, but struggling for their very survival.

Striking Pictures From India

2011-04-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

I stumbled upon this. It's an article by a Chinese tourist on a trip that he took to India. India (and many bordering countries, including China) are filled with people in abject poverty that I will never be able to relate to or understand. None of us will. However, you never think it's really that bad until you read an account such as this. The place is literally full of shit. Many villagers, even people in Indian suburbs, defecate in public areas, including beaches. A lot of this sewage ends up flowing into the Ganges river, where a lot of people wash themselves. Scroll below, you will see corpses floating in the river, and the living just going about things, not even noticing or caring. And yet, the author of this piece (and I'm assuming, also the photographer) stated that he received the most spiritual enlightenment in this country. There are also many expats who have visited often or even made their homes there.

U.S. Corp and the Impending IMF Merger

2011-04-21T20:41:00.000-05:00

This is a great and brief history of the IMF, and how it was born out of the ashes of WWII and became a tool/weapon of the U.S. in the ensuing decades. This blogger ends with the point that the U.S. Dollar is approaching its endgame, and that there is a strong possibility that the IMF will step in and take our debt away. In exchange, the dollar would no longer be tied to commodities, chiefly oil. This means that we can no longer print debt at will. Anyway, the article is excellent. Analogizing the U.S. and other nations as corporations somehow made it a lot easier for me to understand.

New Wave of Brazen Attacks in Afghanistan

2011-04-21T08:27:00.000-05:00

What struck me about this article was the increasing daring and plotting of the Taliban forces in getting close to our soldiers or those allied to us, and then being able to carry out these assassinations. These men are disguising themselves as Afghan troops, down to their uniforms, and once they succeed in bypassing security, either start shooting or detonate the explosive that's strapped to them. These are all recent events, happening in the past week or so. Of course, this is being minimized and shrugged off by U.S. and Afghan officials, with them saying that having to resort to these assassinations is a clear indicator that rebel forces are no longer capable of launching large-scale attacks against our forces. This might be somewhat assuring, if they weren't so successful at it.

Sarah Palin Finally Says Something I Can Agree With

2011-04-20T16:39:00.001-05:00

I find Sarah Palin to be one of those batshit luminaries on the right, in the same company as Michelle Bachmann, Ann Coulter and many others (including a newcomer, hotel tycoon/host of The Apprentice, Donald Trump). She has said many ridculous and outrageous things, although I think it's dangerous to dismiss the impact she can have on the country if she runs next year. However, in this article outlining the potential GOP candidates' stances on marijuana legalization, she finally said something on the topic that makes a lot of sense, and that I can agree with. I do not expect her to maintain this position while formally running for president though, or even holding the office.

"If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society...and not concentrate on such a relatively speaking minimal problem."

U.S. Credit Outlook Cut by S&P on Deficit Fears

2011-04-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

This could be big. S&P have not yet cut our credit rating (which is AAA, the highest) but they have signified that there is a 1-in-3 chance of that happening in around the next two years. For now, they have switched their outlook on our long-term credit outlook from "stable" to "negative". I have a lot of feelings about this. The key reason is, obviously, the growing inability of our "leaders" in Washington to deal with our consistently ballooning deficit. It has become a big political game, with each side having its respective targets. I blame the Republicans more than the Dems, since they have long held the mantle of being "fiscally conservative", although their actions put a lie to that.

I'm reminded of Bill Maher's show on HBO, which I religiously watch every week; in fact, it's the closest thing to a news program on television that I watch regularly. Anyway, he has been talking about the budget lately, due to the government nearly shutting down a few weeks ago. He has a neat way to show his feelings on it. He shows a mock dinner tray, with big helpings of fried chicken, macaroni & cheese, and mashed potatoes. On the margin of the tray, is a little thing of paisley or some kind of vegetable, it's barely visible. The big helpings of chicken, mac & cheese, and potatoes are meant to symbolize the big three government programs: Social Security, military, and Medicare/Medicaid. Maher's point is that the Republican Congress refuse to touch any of these big programs, even consider cutting them. Instead, they go after the little vegetable design on the side of the tray; the little vegetable is supposed to symbolize things like Planned Parenthood, the EPA, the NEA. In short, NPOs and federal agencies that Republicans hate, but yet take up a tiny sliver of federal spending, especially compared to the Big Three programs.

Obviously, a downgrade in our credit rating by S&P would further degrade our status as an economic superpower. I think this news will make it clear to Washington that it is time to get serious and make some real cuts. There is no more time for political bullshit. This brings up two nasty and undesirable choices. First is making deep cuts to the Big Three programs; I expect that the so-called "entitlement" programs (SS & Medicare) will take the brunt of it, with military spending left largely unscathed.* Cutting these benefits will be nothing short of catasphoric; any possibility is on the table, including riots, attacks against the government, you name it. The other alternative is really putting us into uncharted territory and might be even worse: a sovereign superpower defaulting on its debts. The coming attractions in this scenario might include hyperinflation and much-needed resources (yes, I'm looking at you, oil) being withheld by exporting countries. Or...they could just do neither and keep printing. Yeah, I think that's actually more likely than the first two scenarios. I don't think these people know how to do anything else.

Another development listed in this article that gave me pause was that PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund, sold all its U.S. treasuries. Their chief finance officer stated that he feels that the U.S. will eventually lose its AAA credit rating.

What also caught my interest, and makes me rethink the motives of these ratings agencies (albeit slightly) was that just last week, a U.S. congressional report was published that blamed ratings agencies like S&P for triggering the financial crisis by giving inflated credit ratings to places like AIG. This could be a way of payback from S&P but I kinda doubt it.

*I don't intend this statement to mean that I'd welcome a cut in military spending. Don't get me wrong, it's much needed But the outcome would still be undesirable. Closing bases and sending troops home would result in an even larger pool of unemployed people. A large group of disenfranchised, jobless soldiers would be a very dangerous thing, indeed.

New Photo

2011-04-16T09:36:00.000-05:00

I just uploaded a new photo of myself (although you'll hopefully agree that I look nearly the same, my last photo was very old ) that I took with my 3DS portable game system. Although it isn't an ideal camera, it is something, and better than the one on my phone, so I'm hoping to take more pictures in the future. I also moved it to the top right of the page, whereas before it was mired in the middle.

Typically Uninformed Comment Made in Newsday

2011-04-16T09:32:00.000-05:00

I just got up and was glancing through the Newsday newspaper we have delivered. I get most of my news online, but this is good for local stuff, since it's a Long Island newspaper. Anyway, I read an article on how the spike in gas and food prices is raising inflation. The last paragraph, which a lot of people probably wouldn't read, was kind of a whopper, and really typical of most people's opinions on energy, as well as in their hypocritical nature (even if it's unconscious).

It was a quote from a carpenter filling up his vehicle at a gas station. Since this article had quotes from people at think tanks, I guess the reporter felt that it needed one from the man on the street as well. The man said, in response to the rising prices, "the oil companies are gouging us." The vehicle he was filling up? A Ford-F150 pickup truck. This is a prime reason of why we are where we are: a series of increasingly poor decisions on the part of our government (starting with the building of the interstate highway system, leading us to become a society utterly dependent on car travel) as well as individuals (like the gentleman quoted in the article, who buy these vehicles that quickly bleed gas and then rage at the oil companies).

New Look (And an Autobiography Page)

2011-04-13T21:53:00.000-05:00

I figured it was time for a new look for the blog, so I picked one of Blogger's preset templates. I really like it, it gives it a more basic look and it's easier to read, at least from my eyes. I'm looking to custom-make something that looks even better, as well as add new features to the blog, but this is a good start. According to the Wikipedia page on blogs, there are over 156 million blogs in existence. Wow. One of my goals as creator of this particular blog is to have more eyes on this blog rather than on someone else's, or some company's. I guess we'll see if that comes to fruition or not, I know a large part of that depends on me.

I also have a new "autobiography" page. It's a brief (but not too brief) look at yours truly, in my own words. I've never done this before, so I tended to ramble and forget some things. But it's something, and I hope to update and add to it as I see fit. You can find it directly on the home page.

A Clusterfucked Clean-Up Effort in Fukushima

2011-04-06T09:31:00.000-05:00

This is an excellent piece in the German periodical Spiegel, about the clusterfuck that is the response to the nuclear disaster in Japan by TEPCO and the Japanese government. The beginning of the article is especially striking, in which it's mentioned that a French nuclear company has made robots available. These robots can be sent into highly radioactive areas that are simply too dangerous for humans to venture into. However, the robots are still wrapped up and waiting for shipment at a French airport. Why? Because they're coming from a private company, whereas the Japanese government feel that the French government should have offered them instead. These bureaucrats in Japan are causing many people to go into harm's way by interfering with acts of generosity and kindness like this. Who cares where it comes from? This is like Katrina, where Bush was turning down offers of aid from nations like Cuba, and all the while, our government was proving itself to be incompetent on a massive scale.

This article contains many other interesting bits of information, most notably the abominable working conditions of the people tasked with saving Japan's collective asses. They are sleeping on the floor, and are going without radiation suits and clean underwear.

Just Added a "Search" Feature

2011-04-05T19:09:00.002-05:00

I just installed a Search Feature, at the upper right corner of the page. If you're interested, you can search for any word or term, and the engine should punch up any blogs I wrote with said word instantly.

Radioactive Water to be Released Into the Pacific!!

2011-04-05T09:06:00.001-05:00

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has announced that they will soon dump 11,500 tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean. This is to clean out the damaged nuclear plants. Representatives and talking heads claim that these tons of radioactive water will be easily diluted, but I'm skeptical, to say the least. Dumping radioactive waste onto the global food chain is crazy, regardless of the reason.

It's also interesting how this incident is starting to mirror the Gulf Spill of last year in some ways. Now, Tepco workers are trying to plug the Fukushima leak with things like cement and shredded paper; while last year, BP was using things like golf balls to plug their spill (this was termed "junk shot"). This gives me an idea. Has anyone heard of Katamari Damacy? It's a game series where you roll this ball that picks up increasingly larger objects until it becomes big enough to be a star. Well, instead of launching the ball into space (as is done in the games), we can take a ball, roll up enough stuff (be it mountains, people, phone lines, etc.), and use that to plug their leak.

Blowing Green Smoke

2011-04-04T20:17:00.000-05:00

The central idea in Mr. Obama's speech is that we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a decade. This is a gross distortion of reality. The truth is that our oil imports will be reduced automatically, whether we like it or not.

--Jim Kunstler

I used to read Jim Kunstler's blog religiously every week, along with many of the reader comments. I recently stopped, because a lot of his columns read the same, and the reader discourse veers wildly off-topic, into subjects of race, and well, race. It also took up too much time. But I found his latest blog via a link, and it's a great summation of the mistaken assumptions that many of us have about alternative fuels or so-called "green energy." The problem isn't so much that they don't work, but do they scale? What's meant by that is that while it may work well as a "science project" (to steal from Mr. Kunstler), would it work as well on a larger scale, like with millions of consumers using the fuel? That's where it gets muddy. The fact is all the alt-fuels that people usually think of just do not pack the punch that a barrel of oil does. They might work to provide energy, but not on the scale that we're used to. Anyone thinking that we can have Walmart and Disney World in a green energy economy will likely be sorely disappointed.

He also brings up what is known as the "export land model". What that means is that the countries that export oil to us are using much more of their own supply, even as their production is peaking and entering depletion. As the lowering production rate becomes more clear to these nations, do you think they'll still export oil to us and tell their own populace to go screw off? I doubt it.

RIP Joe Bageant

2011-03-29T19:08:00.000-05:00

Joe Bageant was a writer whose main topic was the marginalization of poor white people (in his own words, "rednecks"), but I actually first discovered his blog while reading elsewhere about collapse and peak oil. He was quite the wordsmith, and I've been meaning to read his book "Dear Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches From the Class War", but have not gotten around to it. He passed away a few days ago from cancer. I suggest visiting his blog and reading a few of his pieces, they struck quite a chord with me.

Poll: Most Living American Dream

2011-03-28T15:19:00.000-05:00

This article about a survey in which nearly 60 percent of people state that they are living "the American Dream" reminds me of that George Carlin quote, "they call it the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it". With home values continuing to drop, millions still out of work or stuck in part-time jobs, and food and energy prices climbing (I just found out the other day, I didn't know this, that our government doesn't count food or oil prices in their inflation statistics. So, an alien from another planet who happens to read these inflation numbers would have to think that humans don't have to eat or drive cars), how can anyone but the ultra-rich say that they're living the American Dream? Were those the 60 percent listed in the survey?

New URL for "Life After the Oil Crash"

2011-03-24T08:23:00.000-05:00

Images From the Nuclear Age

2011-03-17T14:42:00.000-05:00

It's funny how when something like the Japan disaster happens, the world as we know it seems to stop spinning. All the many other important events and developments, like the growing unrest in the Middle East, the war on public workers in Wisconsin, as well as other domestic and international problems, seem to take a back seat. This is a good article on NPR that shows images from the 1940s and onward of our nuclear age. Other than this, I don't have much in the way of memories of nuclear occurances. I was 7 when Chernobyl happened, and current events weren't exactly the first thing on my mind when I was that age. As far as pop culture goes, the only show or movie dealing with nuclear warfare or radiation that resonated with me was the show "Jericho". I've really wanted to play the "Fallout" series of games, but have not gotten around to it.

As to whether I think nuclear energy is a viable option for our country moving forward, even after Japan, I have to give a hearty "yes". Out of all the alternatives to using fossil fuels to power electricity, I think that nuclear energy is the only way to keep the lights on once we really start feeling the energy crunch of declining fossil fuel production. I think that wind and solar, as well as other alternatives, are years away from being profitable and being able to show a significant return, as well as being able to be produced on a significant scale.

Probably the Best Source of the Latest Japan News

2011-03-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

This is a live, streaming feed from NHK World, the international outlet of the only Japanese public broadcasting station. So, this is pretty much devoted 24/7 to the effects of the earthquake/tsunami on Japan, as well as the unfolding nuclear situation. No lifestyle segments or the latest hijinks of Mr. Sheen or Ms. Lohan like you still see in American media. My cable provider has a temporary free feed of NHK, but that's of the actual Japanese station, so it's not in English. This has English translation.

The Tragedy in Japan

2011-03-14T16:10:00.000-05:00

My condolences to the people of Japan following the earthquake and tsunami that hit it the other day. The footage on the news is staggering, and on top of that, there is the nuclear crisis to contend with. The latest I've read is that the U.S. military ships sent to Japan are moving away from their coastline to distance themselves from a possible nuclear meltdown. If the radioactive fallout blows far enough (across the Pacific), it can hit us as well. This could be far worse than Chernobyl. Russia could afford to lose a few acres, whereas Japan cannot. Also, it could affect Tokyo, one of the largest, most busy cities in the world. Chernobyl was a single-reactor meltdown, whereas in Japan, 3 possible reactors are in states of meltdown. Eh, it makes me dizzy just to think about it.

If the footage on television and on the Internet isn't enough to convince you that Japan is in a really bad way, here are aerial photos from NASA satellites. You can use the slider below to contrast the before/after footage. It looks like a completely different country.

High Gas Prices Affecting Restaurant Business

2011-03-11T18:41:00.000-05:00

The difference between higher gas prices in America and in say, Europe, is that Europe has an infrastructure that is designed partially around high energy prices. Gas may cost more there, since it's more heavily taxed, but the tax goes to subsidize forms of public transportation. Additionally, European cities are much more walkable than what we have here; in some towns, it's almost inpractical to drive since they aren't designed for cars. So, if you're a car driver in Europe and gas prices go up to a level that you're not comfortable with paying, you can always switch to public transit, or even bike or walk if your job is close enough.

Not so here. Since America's infrastructure was centered around the automobile, and public transportation is often neglected (if not outright eliminated in some parts of the nation), and people often live long distances away from where they work, they have no choice but to drive, no matter how high the price of gas goes. So, since they can't find work-arounds around their driving dilemma, they'll just have less disposable income for other things, like eating out. This will have a ripple effect on the economy, since it affects consumer spending, which drives most of our economy. Unless gas prices drop soon, I don't think we have long to wait before a repeat of '08.

BTW, although I usually dismiss speculation as a large part of our soaring energy prices (and I might be wrong to do so), I do think it is playing a big part in why our energy prices are rising right now. Long-term, I think we face a dire situation when it comes to energy, but this current situation is being driven by speculation that there will be further unrest in other oil-exporting countries, specifically the largest, Saudi Arabia. There doesn't seem to be a shortfall in production, and demand seems to be being met. As one peak oil proponent has put it, this time in history won't be defined by continually rising energy prices, but voliatile prices, in which they will continually either rise or drop, and often dramatically.

Law School Lament

2011-03-10T08:03:00.000-05:00

This is a raging screed from a law school graduate that I found on a peak oil forum that I visit. While I can somewhat relate to what he is talking about (I graduated from a paralegal program nearly 2 years ago and cannot find a job in that field; not even a return call for an interview), he is in a far worse hole than me. While I do owe significant amounts in student loans, it is not in the six figures, thankfully. I am very thankful that I did not go to law school, despite being recommended to by a relative and a few people in my program, including a professor/lawyer. However, my family is starting to give me a hard time (I have been working at a big-box store for three years, and my brother is starting to ask me, "do you want to work in ------ for the rest of your life?"). Like this man, I have no illusions about the value of my Bachelor's Degree and my paralegal certificate. They are worthless. A lot of people still think that this American economy is viable in the long-term. I don't. I talk to people about it, and they think that the economy will be coming back, albeit a while, like 10 or even 20 years. Never mind that a recovery (I mean, a real recovery, not the bullshit, jobless "recovery" that the media keeps talking about) in 10 or 20 years will be far too late for many people, including yours truly, but what new industries will grow in that time, that would enable the employment of large masses of people? I don't see any on the horizon.

Warning: the following post contains very strong language.

I am sick to fucking death hearing that idiotic "only 4% of college grads are unemployed" hogwash spouted by buffoons like Thomas Friedmen & others in bed with the education racket. Sure they may be employed: in dead end temp jobs sans health bennies, in retail, waiting tables, etc. Hell, why wouldn't the temp agencies want college grads when you can get 'em for $9 an hour?

Of course, the college grads have to deduct 4 years of lost earnings AND student loans from the shitpay they're making, so in reality most are doing far worse than their uneducated counterparts. I hold what's supposed to be one of the most "elite" degrees out there and got an email alert this morning for a WHOPPING $25 an hour temp job (of course with no benefits) and also no overtime since lawyers are exempt from the overtime regs. Think about that: 4 years of college, the LSAT, the late nights studying until your eyes bleed, the expensive books, the bar exam, and 120 K in debt all to get offered jobs at a rate most high school dropouts would be ashamed to earn in their mid-30s. And from that $25 an hour I have to pay (with after tax income mind you) $865 a month in student loans. After taxes are deducted, I'd have to work 50 hours at $25/hr just to pay my loans. Think about that: 50 fucking hours in a grungy, windowless basement staring at corporate legal docs until my eyes bleed JUST TO HAND IT ALL TO THE BANKERS! Pathetic, isn't it? Hence my name: Lawis4Losers.

Most everyone in my family who recently graduated college is/are working shitjobs at restaurants or temping in cubicle farms for $9 an hour. I inquired about a job as an SAT tutor yesterday and was told the pay is $20 an hour non-negotiable. And feature this: one needs a score in the 90% percentile to even be eligible for the job! That's well south of what a waiter, truck driver or garbageman makes. How anyone can argue for education's "benefits" with a straight face anymore is beyond me. Unlike most, I'm not in denial that my degrees are valuable or that they serve any purpose whatsoever, and I'm the first to admit I was a giant sucker and loser for falling prey to the edu-scam. Sad to say that I'd be in 1000% better shape right now if I'd quit high school in 9th grade. Student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy, not subject to fair debt laws, usury laws, or any laws whatsoever. It's a lifelong death sentence unless (as me & my lady are now working hard at) you plan to say bon voyage forever to the open sewer called the United States.

The post about the H1-B visa serfs is exactly right. Whatever decent professional jobs can't be outsourced will be filled by immigrant visa slaves.I've seen this in law for years- the temp jobs are packed with Nigerians, Indians, and anyone else who will work for peanuts and not "rock the boat." I'm forever blacklisted from working in law thanks to my blogging and rabble rousing, and couldn't care less. Our legal system is the laughingstock of the world and I feel sorry for anyone who spends their life pushing bales of makework, nonsensical cut n' pasted shitpaper across a table as a lifelong career. Like Bartleby the Screivener, I simply "prefer not to."

Worst of all is the humiliation of being educated yet earning a shitty non-living that would embarrass a fucking homeless person. Knowing that nearly every miserable dime you earn goes to the bankster pigs who loan-sharked the $$$ for this scam. Don't even get me started on the lavish salaries of the deans, admins and other pigs who feast at the bottomless troughs of student loan cash. Some of these pricks earn north of 7 figures. I had the pleasure of exposing my law school dean as the lowlife scumbag he is on the front page of NJ's flagship newspaper. The edu-scammers grin and lie thru their teeth telling the lemmings how "precious an education is" and "how lucky you all are to be here" blah blah etc. Education was yesterday's tomorrow, folks. The idea of Dad leaving for work in a suit & tie, owning a home, having a family: all of that is long past. Understand that a "global economy" like that of which Tom Friedman praises drags us down to 3rd world standards. It guts our country, lowers our wages, and enriches a select few while royally screwing everyone else. Outsourcing and H1-B are the NAFTA of the professional class. Really, how dare anyone with an advanced degree ask for health benefits, a permanent job, and a penny over $25 an hour! Funniest of all is how "education" was the cure for NAFTA: the brown people would do the factory work while we all got "educated" and pushed shitpaper around all day with our degrees. Now those jobs too are being sucked offshore never to return. Hell, I dated a girl a few months ago who graduated with honors from Georgetown Law (a top school) and was/is working as a paralegal for $17 an hour & no benefits. Never in history have the youth of a country been buried alive before their lives even begin. It's truly unprecedented. There's no escape and no "do-overs": the debts are NEVER going away, and penalties and interest accrue FOREVER. Those who try to better themselves literally get their teeth kicked down their throat and then handed a few bones to gnaw on.

As George Carlin said, they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. Again, if anyone on this board has teenage kids, please BEG them not to go to college. Once you sign that loan paperwork you may as well stick a gun in your mouth or start packing your bags for the expat life. Thankfully I have re-united with a college GF and we are gonna stick together and get the FUCK out of the US as soon as possible. Her family are insane and she has nothing holding her here either, so we might start a cafe/restaurant in some other land. She's even willing to work as a stripper if need be to get us the $$$ to get the hell outta the US. More & more friends I talk to feel the same way- there is no incentive to remain in country that literally has no future. To wake up each day with the jackboot of debt on your throat, slaving away to pay back these lowlife loan sharks. It just ain't worth it. Sadder still is that it is the educated who are being driven out the door, so the future of the US will be one of an even more violent & ignorant populace (if that's possible LOL). Perhaps some other country will actually appreciate our skills, contributions, and talents because God knows this ruthless banker-cartel shithole never will.

edit: It sounds like you're signing (or already signed) the loans for your daughter's vet school Grower. I really wish we could've talked you out of it. I hope you don't end up like my folks stuck with a fucking embarrassment of a child who can't earn anything close to a decent living and is now going to give them the surprise of their life when I vanish overseas and stick them with the bill for my education mistake. As the others on here have said, I have no choice. Either all 3 of us go down or one of us leaves the country (me) and tries to rebuild their life elsewhere. There simply are no other options besides suicide. Those loans are NEVER going away. Ever. I hope you don't find this out the hard way, but it seems likely you will. Kiss your home, your preps, and everything else you've worked for goodbye once your name's on those Sallie Mae and Access Group loans. You made a deal with the devil, and the devil always wins.

Don't think it can't happen to you. If anyone told me when I was 19 years old how bad my life would've turned out, I would've laughed in their face. When I think about law school graduation, walking down the aisle and how proud everyone was.....all to end up piss broke, structurally unemployed, and stuck with "bills that no honest man can pay." It makes me physically fucking sick.

Slam of the Media From an Unexpected Source

2011-03-04T18:43:00.000-05:00

This is what someone recently said about the international media outlet Al-Jazeera:

“You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."

Who said this? None other than former First Lady/one-time Senator/former front-running presidential candidate/current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to her, we are losing an international "information war" to outlets like Al-Jazeera. I have heard a lot of the same criticisms of American media over the years, I have voiced those same criticisms, but never has one come from such a powerful, high-ranking source in the government.

This is a very hard problem to fix. A long time ago (around 1950s to the 1970s), the businesses that ran the major networks looked at the news as a "loss leader". What that basically means, is that they looked to their programs (like Beverly Hillbillies, All in the Family, etc.) to provide the profits, while the news was allowed to run at a loss. This allowed our news programs to report on more issues of genuine importance, even if people didn't find them especially entertaining.

Somewhere along the way, media companies started to believe that their news organizations should start to carry their weight, and become profit centers as well. So, "hard news" (foreign affairs, politics, etc.) started to become deemphasized, and "soft news" (lifestyle, Hollywood celebrities, beauty and health, etc.) saw more and more time on the news. It has steadily gotten worse and worse over time, to the point where the average American TV watcher is almost zombie-like, and has a terribly poor grasp of the issues.

I know people, some of whom I care about, whose sole outlet of news and information is the nightly news on television, or cable news like CNN and Fox. Those same people, are usually the most ignorant that you will ever meet. For example, we are all afraid nowadays with the rising oil prices, the resultant inflation of essential goods, etc. The news on television does talk about these things, but it usually only gives us the most cursory glance, with no significant time being devoted to discussion or trying to explain to the people the nitty-gritty behind resource extraction or monetary policy. So, maybe a couple of minutes or so is devoted to an issue like that, which affects virtually everybody, but yet, significant parts of time are devoted to celebrities like Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga, and their "problems". This results in people who are informed about the most trivial, inconsequential things, while at the same time, being scared shitless and having an acute grasp that something is terribly wrong, but not being able to articulate what that is, let alone possessing the tools to actually try to do something about it.

I just saw that Sirius XM (which I subscribe to) has just launched a 24-hour channel devoted to keeping track of Charlie Sheen and his every movement. This is an example (perhaps the most extreme one) of the insanity that I am talking about.

As for me, I have not watched a newscast, in full, in many years, or read a magazine devoted to current events. The Internet really is a beautiful thing, the outlets of information here, there is just no comparsion between this and the old media. However, I haven't watched Al-Jazeera since the early days of the Iraq war. In order for America to turn the tide and have a respectable reputation in the global news industry again, our media must be willing to have their news centers become "loss leaders" again and be willing to let them report "hard news", even if it means that their zombie viewers tune out. But this is highly unlikely to happen, as corporations have gotten larger and larger, and profit has become even more key.

On-the-ground account of doom

2011-03-03T17:20:00.000-05:00

I spend a lot of time online on websites like LATOC (now defunct), and a few new ones like The Oil Age and Hubbert's Arms. These are forums where people discuss peak oil, economic collapse, inflation v. deflation, cheery stuff like that. I also post a lot on those kinds of topics, as visitors (if there are any among you, hopefully), know. But there is nothing quite like seeing an example with your own eyes, and which affects you personally.

I saw one yesterday. There is a restaurant in my town, that has been in business for 30 years. We've been going there for years, I go at least once a week. Anyway, yesterday, the owner was complaining to a customer, quite vocally, about the rising costs of business. Lettuce is now at $60 or so a head, and the food distributors who deliver the food to businesses want to add a fuel surcharge due to the rising fuel prices (this was done 3 years ago as well, the last time gas was at $4 a gallon). He has also been advertising in local papers and circulars, with no noticeable uptick in business. "Everyone is staying home", were his words.

I've never owned a business, but in my eyes at least, I don't think a business owner would want to let customers know that his business is suffering. Unless, he knows that he's hitting rock bottom and that going out of business is only a matter of time, anyway. I don't want to believe that, this place has been here as long as I have. But if it closes its doors at the end of the year, I would not be surprised.

I also wanted to share a video link with you. I didn't see the video myself, but I did read the transcript. It's a series by The Nation with a few luminaries talking about peak oil. This is the one of Dimitry Orlov, author of "Reinventing Collapse". This is an excerpt I especially liked:

"The way collapse unfolds is actually very interesting, because a lot of it has to do with people’s faith in the status quo. As long as people think that there’s something in it for them, they will cooperate. As soon as they decide that there is nothing in it for them, they will cease to cooperate and the system starts to crumble, cave in on itself. So what we saw in the Soviet Union was political dysfunction where basically the communist regime was so endemically corrupt, and so out to steal as much as they could at the very end, that they really didn’t even bother paying attention to whether they kept the system going. The system was basically on autopilot until it crashed."

Libya

2011-02-25T13:17:00.000-05:00

This is a good on-the-ground account of what's been happening in Libya. These revolutions spreading throughout the Middle East are, needless to say, very significant. However, I cannot say that I'm among the many cheerleaders who are applauding them due to the people finally becoming free. Historically, revolutions end up going in directions that very few can antipicate, and oftentimes, a regime that is just as oppressive as the one that was just overthrown can end up taking the reins of power. I think that there are other reasons at play here behind these insurrections, things that have little to do with a sudden, unquenchable yearning for democracy. As I'd noted previously, food prices are on the rise around the world. We got a sneak preview of these events in 2008, when the initial wave of commidities spikes led to food riots in several countries. Now, we are on to the feature presentation, where entire governments in what is called "the developing world" are being overthrown. Regardless of what kind of government they are replaced with, it is questionable the impact it will have on these runaway food prices. Democracy and freedom may be grand, but you can't eat it.

Even more uncertain is the lasting effect the revolution in Libya will have on the world's economy. Libya's daily oil output has been reduced by 50 to 60 percent since the uprising. Although Libya's oil production is tiny (1.6 million bpd, compared to the approx. 85 million bpd globally), this has raised fears that similar unrest could spread to more significant oil-producing nations. Some say that if Libya's oil production were to cease completely, the price of a barrel of oil could pass $200 a barrel. We may not have to even officially reach peak before the bottom falls out of the global economy.

Egypt

2011-01-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Haven't been able to keep up with the events in Egypt in-depth, but I am wondering this: I am guessing that the consequences of the fall of Muburak, should it take place, would be incalculable and very difficult to determine. Could his overthrow and presumably, the replacement of his pro-western government with a hard-line Islamic theocracy lead to a domino effect throughout the Middle East? This could very easily be a big lead-in to the doomsday energy crisis I have long been dreading.

A "Conversation" I had about Peak Oil

2011-01-27T16:12:00.000-05:00

The other night at work, on break, I was reading a book called "The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is and What It Means to You", by Robert Hirsch and two other energy experts. Hirsch is known as the author of the Hirsch Report, a report requested from the U.S. Department of Energy and published in 2005; this was one of the first official documents pertaining to peak oil and energy. Anyway, I want to try to go more in-depth with the book when I'm done, but so far, I highly recommend it. Although it's written by scientists, it's very accessible to the layman, and there are plenty of charts and graphs.

Anyway, when I was on break, a co-worker asked me what I was reading; I told him, and then said something like "if you think gas prices are bad now..." What happened next is why I am no longer enthused in trying to relate to people the problems with our energy supplies and our structure. The overwhelming majority of people are profoundly ignorant in the basics of energy (I am no great shakes myself, BTW, I stumbled upon this issue nearly by accident) and trying to educate them on the basics of PO is a monumental task.

The co-worker (who is a very nice guy) then said that we wouldn't have problems with gas prices if we simply switched to electric. Admittedly, my response was errenous, as I got into how the production of a car takes up roughly 20 barrels of oil, leaving us still dependent on oil. I should have talked about the "scale" problem; what I mean by "scale" is that while it may not be terribly difficult to roll out electric cars for a few people with the means to buy them, or to retrofit a few cars running on the internal conbustion engine to an electric one, it is more difficult, by leaps and bounds, to get the vast majority of drivers to buy electric cars (for the reason, again, of high costs) or to retrofit the existing fleet of cars and trucks to run on electric power. Also, although I am clueless on how our electric grid works, I'd imagine that charging up a large volume of vehicles in people's homes and businesses would take up a monstrous amount of energy, on top of what is already being consumed via AC, television, stereos, iPod chargers, microwaves, and all the rest.

So, although I did not mention most of these things to this gentleman, chances are he would be overwhelmed nonetheless. I had a similar experience with another person who was convinced that alternative energy would save the day, and she became very heated when I tried telling her that it probably wouldn't be that simple.

Anyway, the guy across from me jumped into the fray. He said that we wouldn't have oil problems if we were just able to recover the oil that we'd lost in the Gulf of Mexico. This brought up what could have been an interesting retort from me, as I wanted to ask, "but why were we there to begin with?" If oil is so easy to obtain, why are we in remote, underwater enviroments like GOM? The easy-to-obtain stuff, the "low lying fruit on the tree", as it were, has already been plucked, and in order to get more, our oil companies are having to build stations in close-to-uninhabitable spots like GOM and the Arctic.

But on top of that, he gave another whopper. He said that the U.S. has high reserves of oil, but yet we import most of our oil from overseas. The fact is that our oil production (the lower 48) peaked in the early 1970s and has been declining ever since. That is why we are a net importer of oil. But, maybe he was talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is an emergency fuel store of oil that's run by the DOE. Let's look at the facts concerning the SPR. The SPR holds 724 million barrels of oil (as of August, 2009). The world consumes, roughly, around 85 barrels a day; the U.S. makes up around one-fourth of that amount, or 21 million barrels. So, we would have a 34 day supply of oil, at current levels, if we were cut out of the remainder of the world's oil supply. But, of course, if there was a cut-off, there'd be huge sanctions and crash programs imposed on the U.S. populace, as going about business-as-usual would be insane. In any event, the maximum withdrawal capability from the SPR only amounts to 4.4 million barrels a day, a little more than one-fifth of our current daily oil usage.

Unfortunately, I did not have some of these facts (particularly concerning the SPR) on hand while talking to these gentlemen, but I doubt it would have made a difference. Someone had once told me that there are two responses that you get when you try to discuss PO and its implications with somebody. They will either laugh at you (which I imagine is the more common response) and talk about alternative energy or technology, or they will be filled with an irrecovable sense of doom, like being told that they have cancer and will die in six months. Our politicians and mass media do not help in this, as they simply do not talk about it, and instead blame the once again rising energy prices on arcane figures like "speculators". All we could hope for is that more people will wake up when the economy crashes again, due to energy becoming too expensive, and rest assured, it will.

(BTW, I should start linking to this in every PO-related post; this is probably the best, easiest online primer on peak oil to read, for those of you who don't quite understand some of the topics I'm covering on these posts: Life After the Oil Crash homepage.)

Good Video on the Price of Food (From Fox News, of all places!)

2011-01-14T17:22:00.001-05:00

This is a very good news segment from Fox News on the soaring costs of food worldwide. Although brief, the reporters do a very good job of explaining it, and even connect it to the rising cost of energy. We didn't really start feeling the last pinch in the cost of food, in 2008, until the price of a barrel of oil passed $140. Compare that to the present day, in which a barrel of oil is a little over $90, and you are already starting to see the beginning of more riots and social disturbances. As I think I said, that's because we were riding the peak of global prosperity (for lack of a better term) back in '08, and now we are just emerging from a financial collapse; of course, the resultant rises in the cost of energy and food as the economy recovers will crash the economy anew and set us back even further. I think that this is one of the central themes of peak oil/energy decline: that we will struggle, at least for a time, to get our economy back to where it was, and the unavoidable rising costs of energy (due to peak production) will crash the economy, preventing a sustainable, lasting recovery. I also believe that devaluation of the U.S. Dollar is playing a key role in food price inflation, but advanced economics is out of my depth.

U.S. Congresswoman Shot

2011-01-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Regardless of your politics, this is a fucked up situation. Political disagreements should never come to this. I'd rather not point fingers, but I sense that it's some Tea Party type of nonsense. Rep. Giffords' office was vandalized last year, and she was also on Sarah Palin's "target list" (see below). There are conflicting reports on whether she's alive or dead; hopefully, it's the former. I'd expect a new round of gun restrictions at the least, as a result of this.

Funny Bit from South Park

2011-01-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

I caught this bit from South Park somewhere on the net. It's from an episode they did concerning the bailout, and it deals with Stan going to a bank to invest $100 in a new savings account. Watch what happens.

I haven't watched South Park in many years, and always mean to catch up due to seeing the odd bit, like this one, that makes me laugh. My gripe with the banking system isn't so much a fear of my losing my money (although that is certainly within the realm of possibility), but with the fact that due to interest rates being so low (one of our economic wizards' tools to boost the economy), you are punished by choosing to save. The higher the interest rate, the more interest your savings accumulate. The lower the rate, your savings are at a standstill, and with inflation always rearing its head, the only way you can save is by investing your money elsewherel, and that "elsewhere" doesn't carry the security and peace-of-mind that traditional saving would.

China in a Real Estate Bubble Similar to Ours

2010-12-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

I know I probably don't have much company, but I don't think China is as powerful as a growing number of people seem to think that they are. Yes, they are, for all intents and purposes, our banker. We also are very dependent on their many exported goods, as our manufacturing sector is dead and buried. But at the same time, they also share a few of our problems in adjusting to this new economic world. A big one is that they must import a great deal of their oil for domestic consumption, as we also do. So, they are just as vulnerable to the peak oil bug as the United States. Another problem we have in common is the subject of real estate. Many contend that a main reason for our economic collapse in 2008 was the ponzi scheme model of our real estate bubble, in that mortgage companies and banks signed off on home loans for people who simply could not afford them. This raised prices into the stratosphere and we all know what happened.

As this article states, China is in the same bubble that we were as it pertains to real estate. There is an oversupply of real estate, and many people simply cannot afford them. One couple mentioned in the article says that they'd need to save their entire salaries for 15 years just to make a down payment on a 3-bedroom house. Over 40 percent of recently built real estate is standing empty, either in the hands of the developer or rich people who just want to flip them in hopes of making a profit.

It's a matter of when, not if, this bubble pops. And when China hurts, there's no question we will be too, as they wouldn't be as willing to keep buying our debt.

The Flu

2010-12-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

The death rate in Britain has increased by over 20 percent from a week ago, and it's felt that the flu, specifically the H1N1 virus, is to blame. It is also said to have spread to other parts of the world, like Ukraine and India. It's funny, because just this morning, I was mulling over whether to get a flu shot. This was only due to being able to shave some money off my insurance premiums for the upcoming year. In the end, I decided against it, as I have read too much stuff on the questionable effectiveness of these vaccines.

I'm no scientist or doctor, so all I can do is give my opinions and the reader can judge them accordingly. The day I decide to get a flu shot will probably be the day when people in peak physical condition start dropping dead from the flu. Not to say that I'm Superman, but I try to keep in shape and watch what I eat. I'm also only a few months shy of my 32nd birthday. Which, I guess, isn't that old. I think a lot of flu avoidance is just common sense; on top of what I mentioned (taking care of yourself), things like washing your hands frequently and avoiding people who look ill will probably be effective as well.

I don't mean to minimize the potential dangers of these numerous visues that keep cropping up. History is rich with them, and I suspect that we are past due for some kind of a major outbreak. I guess my gripe is that the news media is rich in the business of selling fear, and it seems to always emphasize the things we shouldn't fear (a lot) while deemphasizing what we should fear.

Song of the Day

2010-12-21T07:42:00.000-05:00

While I'm here, I might as well put up a Song of the Day. I was thinking of this song, and happened to find it on Youtube. It plays over the end credits of one of my favorite movies, "Do The Right Thing". It's "Never Explain Love" by Al Jarreau. While I'm not a big Al Jarreau fan, it's a great song, and fits the ending like a glove.

The Cost of Food

2010-12-21T07:40:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't been blogging too much lately, sorry about that. Just too much going on, not to mention the holidays. I will try to post more after the new year, if not sooner. Just wanted to remind you all that I'm still here. Anyways, this is a noteworthy post to Jim Kunstler's blog Clusterfuck Nation, from two weeks ago, in which the writer, C.Cruz, ruminates on America's relationship with food. I'm hoping that he (or she) doesn't mind that I'm lifting this. I hate it by the way, it makes me feel very lazy. Speaking of food, if you want to build on what you read here, I highly recommend the documentary Food Inc.

It is a commonly accepted fact that people today actually spend much less income on food than people did in the past eras. Historically, the economists tell us that the percent of our incomes spent on foodstuffs has been consistently falling throughout the twentieth century. Economists tell us that this is due to much more efficient agriculture. This is code for kicking all the farmers and land workers out of their jobs and replacing them with fossil fuels. This was good news to economists, since the money that we weren't spending on foodstuffs we could spend on other stuff, which was mainly cars, houses, electronic doodads from the Pacific Rim, and cheap plastic crud imported from China. Economists proclaimed we were all getting richer by this development, and out economy was expanding. What was also expanding was our waistlines.

This is extremely deceptive, however, as what they bought before World War 2 was food, whereas what we buy is "food". People used to buy free-range chicken and eggs, grass-fed beef, fresh, seasonal vegetables, artisan cheese, fruits, milk, whole wheat bakery-produced bread etc. Before the Interstate highway system went in , most of these were relatively local. Today we buy waxy fruits and vegetables grown especially not to decay, thus devoid of flavor and nutrients, genetically modified crops, mass-produced loaves of processed white bread, antibiotic laden corn-fed CFO meat, pasteurized BGH processed milk, chicken and eggs from overcrowded dungeons, cheez, and of course massive amounts of corn-syrup drenched "processed" foods. To an economist there is no distinction however, eggs are eggs, beef is beef, and a head of lettuce is a head of lettuce. My guess is if you actually made an apples-to-apples comparison between the quality of food then, and food of comparable quality today which can be purchased at local co-ops and high-end groceries like Whole Foods you find the cost of food (not "food") to be as high as it has ever been, if not much higher. I'm amazed when people complain that healthy food costs too much while they have plenty to spend on cable television and World of Warcraft subscriptions.

The "cheapness" of food thanks to oil has masked and legitimized the thirty-plus years of falling actual wages. Food is cheap, so why pay extra? After all, no one in America is starving - the poor are even overweight! What a great country! Sadly, even the cheap food is getting unaffordable due to unemployment and falling incomes. People are turning to food banks to make ends meet in unprecedented numbers, but what food banks sell are mainly donated "nonperishable" items, meaning processed to the point of unrecognizability. This "food" is guaranteed to lead to all sorts of health problems and morbidity, leading to an increasingly unhealthy population. With healthcare already unaffordable, however, the new poor have no other option but a lifetime of ill-health, drug dependence, and hospital debt, that is, if they're not dying on the streets. The next time you hear about the cost of food, ponder that.

U.S. Military Prepares for Economic Collapse

2010-12-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

Do you think we're really in an "economic recovery?" I don't either, and neither, apprently, does the U.S. military. The Pentagon is planning simulated "war games" that are centered on a potential collapse of the U.S. economy, due to a variety of factors. I was reminded of this Tom Clancy book I read not too long ago, "Debt of Honor", in which a powerful Japanese busiessman, seeking revenge for the deaths of his family during WWII, comes very close to sinking the U.S. economy through various forms of corporate and stock market manuipulation. Although, from what I've been reading, this wounded U.S. economy seems more like a self-inflicted gunshot wound than anything.

Also, in the past few years, the U.S. government has been the leading buyer of freeze-dried foods. In addition, Russia is building thousands of underground bunkers, and the EU's seed depository (which is also known as the Doomsday Vault) is fully stocked, only years after coming into formation. As this collapse becomes more pronounced, it won't only be individuals hoarding whatever they can, but entire governments as well.

In addition, notice the price of gas going up? This is to be expected, but for this time of year, it's interesting. I wonder how this is going to affect the holiday shopping season, which is the most important time of year for retailers, big and small. There was a front-page story about it yesterday in my local fish rag, Newsday, in which the usual suspects were mentioned ("speculation", falling dollar) but no mention of peak oil or anything related to it. Just portrayed as being a temporary hassle for the sheeple.