Raise Taxes, Cut Defense, Create Jobs

I wish the people in the house, and the senate, and moody’s, and Fitch’s, and the S&P would really get their shit together, and get this damnable debt ceiling bullshit taken care of, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.  I’m sick of Boehner, and Moody’s.  I really am.  Screw these load of serene bastards.  Pass the damned debt ceiling increase.  We can work on the details of fixing the debt later.  And if Moody’s and their buddies can’t wait a few minutes before downgrading the U.S. debt, then do it now, the hell with it, let the entire damn thing collapse.  On Moody’s and the S&P’s head be it.

Lift the debt ceiling now, avoid the Christmas rush.

Raise taxes, cut the defense budget.  Work from there.

BTW, I would never normally stand with Tom Coburn on anything, but he put together a plan that had two aspects to it that I really liked.  The first is a $1,000,000,000,000 defense budget cut over the next 10 years, one trillion dollars over 10 years.  Much larger than the chunk the President wants to cut out of defense spending.  Prez says 1 trillion cuts too deeply.  I don’t agree.  Go Tom!

Never thought I’d say that about anything from Tom Coburn, the conservatives conservative.

The second thing I liked was the adding of that same amount to government coffers through changes in the tax code.  Go Tom!  Twice!

I’m sure that, this being Coburn’s plan, has some nutty shit in it, but we can take the useful parts and dump the rest and work from their right?

Right?

______________________________

Frankly I want them to finish this so the house can concentrate on doing something they said they’d do as soon as they got into office, and haven’t touched yet, namely JOBS JOBS JOBS.  I am a temp, woefully underemployed, in need of a break and a full time job, and frankly I have had it with not being employed full time.  I need money coming in to keep a roof over my head, and I would like some health insurance, maybe even some dental insurance, for me and my wife.  Can’t afford either if I don’t have a job.

And these silly bastards have been taking their sweet time, being a truly do nothing house this session, and have not done a single god damned thing to ease the burdens of the current unemployment crisis.

___________________________

At this point in my day, I am getting ready for work in the morning.  The job may be merely a temp job, part-time at that, 30 hours a week, 7.5 hours a day, 4 days a week for 3 weeks at $10.00 per hour, but it’s a job, and with as hard as I have been pushing my body physically the last few weeks with my running, I need extra rest. The food is packed in the fridge, I have some tools packed, an extra shirt, work gloves.  I, after all, promised to be there, and be read for whatever they throw at me.

Sucks that it’s only a temp gig.  Sucks that it’s only part-time.  What can you do though?

I try to look at things like my job situation through as many prisms as possible.  For the employer, who doesn’t have enough money to sign me on permanent, or make me full time, I have deeply conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I need a job to make money so I can pay bills and live my life, and why the hell can’t they just see that, and hire me?  If they didn’t need me I wouldn’t be there, right?  But on the other hand, the owners hands are tied as well.  After all, if they had the resources, would they not pay me to do the job, and make it permanent?  The fact that they don’t makes it abundantly clear that they can’t.

But I do have to look after myself first, so despite the fact that I can see, at least in some small way, what the employer is going through, I can’t think of them first. You don’t see them thinking of me first, do you?  If they did, I’d be permanent right now, not mike the temp.  So I point a finger of blame at them for not bringing me on permanent, while understanding that they have it tough as well.

Plus, I’m unemployed, what choice do I have, if that is all that’s out there, then that’s all I can get.

I went looking for work this afternoon on a few different sites.  Nothing.  Seriously, not one good bite.  The night is not over yet though, and I am not done looking.  Got another hour to search.

____________________________

That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Taxes and Credit Rating Agencies

John Boehner says the Republicans have  a serious plan to deal with the debt ceiling  issue.  It involves, from the perspective of this writer, an extreme stretch of a concept.  A balanced budget amendment to the constitution that would have to be sent to the states for ratification.  Nice concept, really is, except to get that kind of concept through congress would take a LOT more debate than the very limited timetable this debt ceiling debate has been given, seeing how both sides have taken a lot of time to do a lot of political posturing.

Maybe at some point, but not this time.

Tax increases are still off the table for the Republicans.  Which is stupid.  I don’t know if anyone told these repubs this, but taxes are how government makes money, it is called revenue.  It is impossible to expect the middle and working classes of this nation, along with the elderly, to entirely shoulder this burden.  Taxes must go up, they must go up on the wealthy, they must go up for large corporations, and they must go up NOW.  The cautionary tales of companies that paid much less than the rate that you and I pay are legion, and they are more than tales, they are true stories, and they are wrong in the extreme, when you and I MUST pay more than they do.

The tax base of this nation has been so completely eroded, by dropping taxes for corporations and the wealthy, that no matter how you slice it, any long-term fix for this nations deficit (which never matters to the Republicans until a Democrat is in office) means that tax increases are a must.

_______________________________

The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising.

David Levy

_______________________________

Viddy of the day:  S&P warns of Downgrade to U.S. Credit Rating

_______________________________

And is anyone else annoyed at how pompous these credit rating agencies are getting over this?  They are now saying even if a smaller agreement is put in place, they will move to drop America’s credit rating anyway.

These are the same credit rating agencies that read the 2008/09 recession so badly that they actually exacerbated the issue and made the recession worse. They are the same credit rating agencies that gave subprime mortgage companies AAA ratings right until they fell off the damn cliff.

You remember that, right? All the companies they said were OK?  All those companies that Moody’s and the other two credit rating companies read so completely wrong that it actually made the recession significantly worse?

Or the damage they did to the Portuguese economy?(among other economies?) Or that they let the Enron fiasco burn far longer than they should have?

These are the guys we are going to listen to about fiscal responsibility?  You can if you like, but you’d be a damned fool if you did.  They have skin in the game, being not only private companies that are paid by companies that they issue ratings for, but they are companies that want to show they don’t themselves need to be regulated, and are at times unnecessarily critical (ask the British, Portuguese, or Irish about that.)

We need to regulate these people. They are, after all, important to us all, and they have too much power, and are clearly not good enough to do the job they have to do, given their track record.

________________________________

That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Thursday on Friday

Earlier today after reading an article by Jeff Jarvis on Google+ and a few other articles on the subject of Rupert Murdoch and the ever enlarging phone hacking scandal, which now includes phone hacks on Americans, victims of 9/11 or their families, or some such, I went running.

During that run, I began to think about the implications of the article, about the corporate culture created underneath Mr. Murdoch’s feet, with his tacit permission.  I thought that maybe the problem is one which is born and bred into all humans.  I was putting pieces of the article by Mr. Jarvis, which was about the corporate culture within News Corp, with thoughts that had danced around my head for a while.

It created wonderful patterns of thought, or maybe the jack-hammer pounding I gave the ground under my feet did.

I do not remember all of them, to be honest.  Here’s a few of them, in no particular order.

People act in ways that they perceive others will like, we being a social species, because we want to be liked.  We pick our friends, create our personal surroundings, from our choices of music and clothes and even people we prefer to socialize with based on how we want to be seen, based in not just on our earlier experiences in life but by how we understand the world.  People in authority, those with real authority in our lives, have the capacity to alter the way we think and act, alter the way we interact with the world, alter that understanding on a very real level.

Mr. Murdoch is very much, from what I hear, the gung-ho type, a very take charge type of character.  That in turn is impressed into those directly beneath him(existing in them before they get to him, but amplified by his example) and everyone he interacts with.  Normally a very good thing, aggressiveness in business is always a good thing.  It has imbued News Corp with an incredibly large amount of successful undertakings.  They make more money than God, but with that success comes a price.

Over-aggressiveness that is so unthinking as to step on the wants, the needs and the rights of the people who they should be looking after is what this is about.  Deeds have an impact.  When you go after the story so hard that you begin to step on the lives of the people who you are writing about, you have crossed a line that should never be crossed.

Over-aggressiveness they learned in part from Rupert Murdoch.

______________________________

Viddy of the day: “The Man Who Was Thursday” by the Mercury Theatre, 1 of 6

______________________________

Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and death.

G.K.  Chesterton, The Man who was Thursday

______________________________

Journalism is rarely fair.  It is after all about stories, and stories are rarely fair because the world is rarely fair.  They show the world for what it is, and this latest issue with phone hacking is, they showed just what happens when people take that “world isn’t fair” thought to it’s logical conclusion by proving it with a stunning lack of fairness in action towards the people they wrote about.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

When writing, you are trying to reach people with words to have an impact, but when Murdoch’s people were overstepping their bounds, they were just taking after their boss, following his lead.  Doing his bidding.  Acting in his name, as his willing proxies.  Making him as much responsible for the actions of his underlings as if he had done the deed himself.  They were all guilty, and the only way real justice can be done is if all the guilty are punished.

Which is kind of sad, as Rupert will be untouched by this in all likelihood, nothing will happen to the man.

Except no one with any brains in their heads will be able to trust his stories, or anything that comes from his News Corp.  How can you trust him and his organization after a breech of trust so extreme and utter as this?  How can you watch or read anything from anything Murdoch now, knowing what his people are capable of, in the search for a story?

I can’t, and if you have any scruples you would have real trouble watching and reading his stuff too.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

That’s it from here, America.

My Shortest Article Ever

MLB All Star game sucks.  When the home run derby is better than the game itself, it’s time to think about ditching the game.

Republicans suck.  They don’t damn care about us.  Assholes.

The hot weather sucks.  Someone really needs to figure out how to arrest mother nature for this bullshit.

Rupert Murdoch sucks.  Rat bastard should go back to Australia, and leave the rest of the planet alone.  We didn’t ask for this idiot.

________________________________

Viddy of the day:  sod Fuck The Middle East

________________________________

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Julius Caeser

________________________________

That’s it from here, America.  G’night!

The Immediate Future

In 12 hours I will be on the way to a temp job.  That job doesn’t pay much, but something is better than nothing.  I’ve worked stuff similar to it, but never have I done this particular work.  It isn’t difficult though, I’ll be packing textiles.  Individual pieces, and a fair number of them, making sure that no moisture gets into them, and that they are protected from UV light.  The first is entirely on me, and I have a handle on, very basic stuff, the second is dependent on resources not under my control.

The job will last for only a few weeks, the latest date I will be there is August 5th, but I expect I’ll be out of there by the end of July.  It doesn’t look like there is enough work to keep me there the extra week, even if I milk the job. I hope there is overtime involved.  I would not mind putting in a few 60 hour weeks, just to make enough extra money during the short time I’m there so I can pay some bills.

I am temporarily halting the job search until the 22nd of July.  I don’t want to send in resumes to people, then not be able to go to an interview because of an obligation I have during these few weeks.  But usually resumes sent take about a week to 10 days to generate an interview, so I think the 22nd is a safe date for me to begin again.

______________________________________

In one hour I will be getting ready to go to bed.   I will probably not be close to tired.  The sleep I get before the  first day of a new job is always somewhat restive and hard to come by.  It’s always a big day, that first day at a new job.  You’d think that I would be over ti by now, 43 years old, having started no less than half a dozen temp jobs, a half dozen first days in the 2 plus years since I got the boot from DPW.  But no, it’s always hard.

I try to get myself into a sleep cycle that accommodates the job and the hours I am going to work before I get to it.  But no matter what that first night is all nerves, twisting and turning, unable to get comfortable.  So I do what I can to be as relaxed and happy as is possible beforehand.  I listen to calm music, don’t really read the news as that gets my dander up.  I try to lose myself somewhere, doing something.

Tonight for example I’m listening to classical music, J.S. Bach.  But I can’t sit still, I do have things to do, I have to go pack food, make sure I have everything read for tomorrow.  I do not want to be running around tomorrow doing last minute stuff before I have to leave.  That is a good way to forget stuff, and not be 100% ready for that first day working.

_____________________________________

About 1 hour after I get home from work tomorrow, unless I get my wish and get some overtime, I will be out running.  Running helps clear my head, makes me forget the day, helps me wind down in my head, by pushing my body to the point that I cannot focus on anything else but my body.

I can guarantee that there will be stuff thrown at me tomorrow that I am not ready for, so I will need that stress reducer to make life just that much easier to handle.

The runs will be shorter than what I have been doing lately, there just isn’t enough time in the day for me to run 11.4 miles after traveling for nearly 3 hours and working 8 or 9 hours.

_____________________________________

In about 5 minutes this article will be finished. Oh, wait… I’m done now. 🙂

Later.

_____________________________________

That’s it from here America. G’night.