Already In The Books

My history of poverty is well-documented by the Social Security Administration. Each year they send out a statement  containing my 'Earnings Record', starting in 1983 with my first summer job as a dishwasher and continuing all the way to 2008, a year of typically sporadic income which found me well under the official poverty standard- I even got a tax credit that year, despite claiming no dependents. According to my  SSA statement, my annual income didn't exceed the poverty level until 1999. I was 33 years old in 1999. I understand poor.

I have only exceeded the poverty threshold seven times in my twenty-six years in the labor force. There is a string of zeroes from 1991-1995...zero income? Was I in prison? That decade is hazy.

I realize that many people consider it 'bad form' to openly discuss financial matters, but if you aren't poor now, you probably will be soon, so you might as well get  used to talking about it openly. In fact, open communication may prove crucial to your very survival, because when you get down to it, the only folks who truly look out for the best interests of poor people are other poor people. They need each other.  Poor people tend to develop loose, symbiotic bartering networks; goods and services are exchanged in lieu of cash, neither party having access to the money needed to procure said goods and services from commercial sources.

Anyway, I used to be a bit reticent about my low standard of living, but with poverty on the rise and the Boomer middle-class approaching doddering homelessness, I feel the time is right  to stop considering my financial history as a source of personal shame and start referring to it as my "curricula vitae" and "professional credentials".

I'm a bona-fide expert on being poor without living poorly and I have documentation that backs it up, so it only makes sense that I should become a private consultant, teaching formerly well-to-do ex-professionals how to do simple things like cooking inexpensive, healthy meals and learning how to shop  without buying completely stupid, over-priced shit...one example would an item that caught my eye at market: a pre-packaged hot dog, already tucked inside a bleached, starchy roll and ready to be microwaved. That single-serving monstrosity cost more than an entire package of hot dog buns and almost as much as an entire pound of 'decent' franks.  
(Note:I would never recommend buying hot dogs to anyone. I'll explain why soon)

 Lesson Three in my new course will be how to shop for groceries by doing weight/cost analysis. One example I will use will be cheap hot dogs vs. 'premium' cat food. In most cases, you will find that the cat food is significantly higher in price than those bright pink frankfurters in your basket...and if your life is so harried that you can't stop to eat a better meal than a microwaved hot dog, you aren't doing your already over-stressed heart any favors by feeding it slurried pork snouts.
Consider that advice a freebie- I don't want my potential clients dying prematurely.
(That part comes during the lawsuits)


And, to be honest, I love poor folks. They are my kinda people. They understand  the utilitarian appeal of duct tape and don't mock me for wearing old shoes.

I have also noticed (and this is generalized) that less-affluent friends seem more willing to share physical items of sentimental value with me than their wealthier counterparts;  perhaps  a chronically wealthy person might perceive  a used book- one that was obviously  read many times by the previous owner- as some sort of slight or breach of decorum; but any competent poor person will recognize that they have received something that means something to the giver, and by doing so, their own value as a human being has been affirmed.
On the other hand, a wealthier person might tell you about the same book, but not give it to you- they just assume that you'll be able to drop $20 at the bookshop. I mean, it's only $20, right?

A gift means a lot when it comes from a poor person. It is likely that they had to sacrifice some small but meaningful part of their budget in order to give that gift to you. Perhaps they gave you one of their prized possessions because they knew it would thrill you and  would make you happy.  There is a certain purity in such a gift that can't be purchased, it has to an innate part of the object and has little to do with monetary price. Masters of poverty understand this.

Rich people, on  the other hand, just don't get  it. I am sure that the vast majority of  'socially-aware' charitable persons have only the best of intentions, but they haven't got a clue about what it really means to have a $25 weekly food budget.

At some point, those good intentions took a one-way train to Tartarus, and 'Poverty' is now a trendy fashion statement. Take the example above. Is this the best way to fight poverty?

What I see here is an excuse to ogle a woman's hips that is lamely disguised as enlightened socio-economic commentary. Seriously, I suddenly don't give two moldy figs about the starving kids in North Korafricastan, and am more interested in testing the elasticity of that belt than I am in fighting for the food rights of fifth-world peasants.

I'd have to add  add that despite my low income, I have never been truly homeless, have usually had some sort of 'job', and have never been in danger of starving. I usually have a car, I always have a guitar and I have a PC with amazingly fast Internet...I'm not starving by any means, and probably never will be. America is good that way. For me, anyway.

People with kids, on the other hand...

Poverty: Now Playing at a Theatre of War Near You

I tried to watch the Vice-Presidential debate last night but I quickly lost interest and soon found myself on my hands and knees, spinning coins on the floor for my cat’s amusement. I read the transcript today and I don't feel like I missed anything that could have changed my mind regarding the election.

I did see bits of it. It struck me that moderator Gwen Ifill was doing a surprisingly lackluster job of making the candidates answer the actual questions. I think the following string of words from Sarah Palin was what triggered my apathy attack- Ifill had just asked Palin if she would like to comment on Biden’s remarks about McCain’s healthcare plan, and this was Palin’s response:

Palin: I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

Not to be overly picky, but how can we expect “straight talk” from a person who refuses to answer the questions that we want to [ask] and who seems incapable of constructing a complete English sentence?

And also you betcha, dontcha know? Darn right! *wink*

Holy fuck. I actually saw a candidate for the second-highest office in the land *wink* during a debate. So proud, I am.

I expected Gwen Ifill to interject, saying something along the lines of: “Governor , this is a formal, structured debate and, as the moderator, I am compelled to inform you that you and your opponent are both expected to respect the rules and format as previously agreed.”

But she didn’t.
A few minutes after Palin’s defiant non-answer, I was dipping into the catnip.

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OTHER NEWS OF NO APPARENT INTEREST

-Does anyone in the current Congress have even a cursory knowledge of American History? It's not exactly classified info- it's actually on the Internet and in books and stuff. Does anyone see a parallel between current events and this description of the economic precursors to the Great Depression?

[In]1929 the top 0.1 percent of American families had a total income equal to that of the bottom 42 percent. This meant that many people who were willing to listen to the advertisers and purchase new products did not have enough money to do so. To get around this difficulty, the 1920s produced another innovation— credit- an attractive name for consumer debt. People were allowed to “buy now, pay later.” But this only put off the day when consumers accumulated so much debt that they could not keep buying up all the products coming off assembly lines.



President Herbert Hoover was certain that the economy was fundamentally strong and that bailing out the banks and lenders would allow the markets to self-correct and solve this problem. He was wrong.

Of course, things are different now. There's nothing wrong with America that can't be solved by throwing money away. The more,the better.

I'm kidding. I am not an economist or an academic but I do like to read about history and I've read enough to notice that events tend to repeat themselves in slightly different but still recognizable ways. Eggheads and bookworms would refer to these repetitions as "patterns" and "cycles", but really, it's just the same-old-shit, over and over again.

Take Empires, for instance. Pick an Empire from history -any Empire- and you'll see the same cycle of influence and expansion, a peak and a plateau followed by decay, corruption, collapse, dissolution and defeat.

There is always war involved.

But that could never happen here. God loves us too much.

Plus, that bail-out bill that just passed is gonna restore prosperity any second now...now all we need is another Hawley-Smoot Act and we are good as gold, right as rain!

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I'd hardly call Pakistan an 'Empire', but they do have nuclear weapons and they do happen to be engaged in a full-scale Civil War with the Taliban inside their own country. Most Americans probably aren't even aware of this, secure as we are in our delusion that the Mission is Accomplished...I mean, didn't we beat the Taliban? Didn't we?

Not since Pakistan forged an alliance with the United States after 9/11 has the Pakistani Army fought its own people on such a scale and at such close quarters to a major city. After years of relative passivity, the army is now engaged in heavy fighting with the militants on at least three fronts.

The sudden engagement of the Pakistani Army comes after months in which the United States has heaped criticism, behind the scenes and in public, on Pakistan for not doing enough to take on the militants, and increasingly took action into its own hands with drone strikes and even a raid by Special Operations forces in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But the army campaign has also unfolded as the Taliban have encroached deeper into Pakistan proper and carried out far bolder terrorist attacks, like the Marriott Hotel bombing on Sept. 20, which have generated fears among the political, business and diplomatic elite that the country is teetering.

Personally, I'm a little alarmed at the idea of the Taliban picking a nuke out of the rubble of Pakistan's crumbled government. I know, as an American, I am supposed to have little or no concern for events in foreign countries, but I just can't help thinking that there is absolutely no context in which the phrase "Pakistani civil war" should carry less weight than the phrase "lipstick on a pig".

I seem to be at odds with the American media on this.

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I'm glad I can cook and that I know how to make meals out of raw ingredients. When the next generation of soup kitchens open, I'll be the guy holding the ladle, muttering "this is better than no job" to himself.

See you in line. Not on-line. In line.

Goods and Bads

My pal Schlep had a cookout at his house last evening and I stopped in for a visit on my way to the radio station. This (below) is Schlep's block. He lives in a thatched-roof hut behind the shrubs on the left...there used to be more trees on this block, but in 2003 Hurricane Isabel knocked them down and Schlep, practical man that he is, cut them into logs and built a cabin in an unsuspecting neighbor's backyard. He's been squatting there ever since...he even has his own vineyard now!




I met Schlep on Blogger...he googled "Snakefinger" (my all-time guitar hero) and found my blog. After an exchange of comments and/or emails, we established that not only do we both live in the same town, we live exactly one block apart from each other! Small world , eh? Since then, he's turned me onto some cool music, especially a band called Cardiacs, who are simply too good to be well-known.

I, in turn, gifted Schlep with my special recipe for Marinated Possum Kabobs (below). Basically, you catch a possum, fillet it, marinade the strips of flesh in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, cilantro and Clorox, place them on skewers and then grill them over coals until they change color. Any color will do.







At one point, the discussion turned to cameras. Did you know that they sell cameras with the YouTube logo on them? For some reason, that makes me paranoid.
In a cagey attempt to capture Schlep's image in pixels, I took a picture of the aforementioned camera- alas, Schlep reads this blog and knows all too well what happens to the pictures I take, so he turned his face away at the critical moment.

Sadly, I had to engineer a band last night, so I didn't get to stay long enough to eat my fill...if I like a band and have a good time producing them, I will usually blog about it.

I'm not blogging about last night's band.

When the session was finally over, the crowded studio was suddenly empty, leaving just myself and my assistant, Galaxy Girl, to put away the gear and clean up the mess...where did everyone go?

They went downstairs for dinner and beers. As GG and I left the station, we peered through the plate glass window of the restaurant below the studio and saw the band and a gaggle of DJ's yukking it up. Man, I sure was hungry...I really could have used a meal but I am what is known as "dirt-poor" and eating out is not in my playbook.

So I went home and ate this (below). I guess it doesn't look too bad until you consider the fact that I've been eating the same pot of chili for five days and I swear to Godzilla, I'm about fucking sick of it by now. One more day and it will be gone...



My boss isn't here today. I don't know where he is or who to ask...I'm kinda stuck on the project I'm working on and there isn't anyone for me to ask for help. My boss is a responsible-type guy and it's not like him to just not show up- that's more my style- all kidding aside, I'm a little worried.

Oh! An Outlook message! Maybe it's from my boss- I hope he can answer my work questions...oh...nevermind. Tomorrow is "Hot Dog Friday"...hot dogs will provided to the workers tomorrow.
Great.
I don't eat hot dogs unless I am in Chicago, and even then I'm a little picky... I guess I'll bring the last of my chili with me tomorrow.
De-fucking-licious.

Melt The Guns

From the Virginia Declaration of Independence, drafted by George Mason in 1776:

That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms,is the proper, natural,and safe defense of a free state;that standing armies,in time of peace,should be avoided as dangerous to liberty;and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to,and governed by,the civil power.

It is a bleeding shame that this exact wording was not used in the United States Constitution, especially the part about avoiding standing armies during peacetime. This caveat against standing peacetime armies was echoed in Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous White House farewell speech, in which Ike outlined the rise of the "Military-Industrial Complex". He, like Mason, warned of the dangers inherent in maintaining a large, standing military force during times of peace. President Eisenhower feared that such a force would inevitably lead to endless wars, war being neccesary for the care and feeding of the MI Complex and the well-being of the war-profiteers. One need look no further than Iraq to see the consequences of ignoring Mason and Eisenhower.

The United States Constitution is worded thusly, (emphasis added):


A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Five radical Supreme Court Justices recently interpreted the phrase "well regulated Militia" to mean: "people who live in Washington D.C." Sadly, this sets precedent for the overturning of long-established local and regional anti-gun laws currently on the books, such as those in Chicago, San Francisco, New York and even here in Virginia. All of those gun-control laws were passed in response to alarming rises in the incidence of gun-related violence and crime, including an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.


A number of factors play important roles in the data shown in this chart, courtesy of the FBI:

1) The passage of local, municipal and state-wide measures to limit the availability of handguns.

2) The national Brady Bill, requiring a waiting period and a background check when an individual purchases a handgun.

3) The soaring peacetime prosperity of the Clinton era. As our economy sinks, people are becoming increasingly desperate and are turning to crime- robberies in paricular- in a last-ditch, hopeless effort to make ends meet.

Below is a chart of America's budget deficits and surpluses. Note that the annual number of gun crimes rises and falls in tandem with the national budget- during prosperity, the incidence of gun crimes falls...as the deficits grows larger, so do the number of gun-related crimes. It's what an expert would refer to as a "no-brainer".

As of this writing, America is in dire financial straits. For many citizens, jobs are scarce, gas is a luxury and healthcare is non-existant. Violent crime- especially robberies- is on the rise. The Supreme Court believes that throwing guns at the problem will solve it, if every citizen is packing heat, everyone will be afraid of everyone else and our shared fear of death by shoot-out will magically protect us all. There is nothing in the statistical or historical record tos support that assertion- but the link to poverty and violence is well-documented. Offhand, I'd say that the best way to protect ourselves from gun-weilding maniacs and thieves is to eliminate the causes of crime- raising the national standard of living would be a good start.



Have you ever been cut-off in traffic by a careless driver who neglects to use their turn signal? Has anyone ever pulled out in front of you without looking both ways?
This is where the Virginian wording comes into play- "trained to arms". The Supreme ruling allows untrained laypersons to keep guns lying around their home. If you don't know how to use a weapon, it can't protect you, it can only harm you. I'd wager that by this time next year, we will see a marked increase in people who are killed by their own guns, either by accident or after said gun is taken away by a thief and used against the owner. And, of course, there are children. Children shouldn't play with guns, but they will if they can.

Why not just issue a snub-nosed .38 with every Social Security Number, retroactive to at least 1966 ?
(I want my free gun. It will help me with my road rage issues.)


What could possibly go wrong ?

War Money

What happened in 2003 that caused Exxon- Mobil's profits to double?

Was it Super Bowl XXXVII?
No.

Was it Great White?
No.

What else happened that year?

We invaded Iraq.

Exxon-Mobil has managed to quadruple it's profits in the five years that have passed since BushCo started the Iraq War. This trend shows no sign of change, in fact E-M just posted the highest-ever annual profit by an American company, beating the record that was set by themselves last year.

One would think that such an announcement would be celebrated, but Exxon is trying to down- play it; there are currently quite a few apologists trying to explain how this boom is actually very good for America. They point to the enormous taxes that Exxon pays on those profits ; on the surface this sounds almost reasonable:

"Millions of people benefit financially, as either individual shareholders, or through their pension, insurance and mutual funds that hold Exxon Mobil shares," [E-M public affairs VP] Mr. Cohen said. "We have over 2.5 million individual shareholders alone, and for every dollar we earn, we contribute US$2.50 in taxes the governments use to provide schools, roads, hospitals, and other essential services. In the U.S. alone, our total tax expenses over the past five years were about US$65-billion, exceeding our U.S. earnings during that period by more than US$18-billion."

The only problem with this is that it isn't exactly true. I mean, with all that moola rolling into "essential services", you'd think we'd be living in a Golden Age. Instead, the federal deficit is threatening to break BushCo's 2004 record of $413 billion dollars.
One year, Exxon breaks records, the very next year the federal deficit hits an all-time high. Interesting.
It happened in 2003-2004 and it's happening again right now.
Does this feel like a Golden Age?

The man that gave Exxon their 2003 cash cow is doing his best to make sure that as little money goes to social services and programs as possible. BushCo's recent budget proposal includes large increases for defense spending and drastic cuts in social programs:

The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.

The tax dollars are funneled to the Pentagon, which awards contracts to corporations like Exxon, who return a portion as "taxes", which are given back to the companies in the form of more government contracts and so on, all at the expense of the average citizen. It's an amazingly efficient mechanism for the upward re-distribution of wealth but it requires an endless war in order to maintain itself.

That is why we invaded Iraq.

To BushCo, the Iraq War is not a failure, it's a huge success. That infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner was true- the Mission was to make money, which obviously has been done. Peace would break the money cycle, which is why the Bushies have been so hot to invade Iran as well...we'd be at war forever if they did. Profits would continue to rise and a new generation of impoverished, jobless Americans would make excellent fodder a volunteer army.

Desperate economic times at home would prevent the need to re-instate the military draft- if there are no jobs or opportunities, then the poor kids will have little choice but to enlist; a draft would be inevitable in prosperous times as few people would be willing to give up good jobs for a bad war, so it's unlikely that we'll see prosperity while the war profiteers are calling the shots in D.C.- BushCo knows the best way to avoid a draft is to limit the educational and career opportunities of America's youth, forcing enlistment up.

Actually, the best way too prevent a draft would be to not start wars in the first place but it's a little late for that now.