Keep Bombing, Our Economy Depends On It

I remember discussing with my co-workers, in 2006, walking on our way to lunch, about how I thought that we'd never once been asked to sacrifice for the wars going on, not once asked to buy a war bond, pay more taxes, conserve rubber, what have you. Nothing. Except, maybe, go buy a car.

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, how can you walk to lunch as an office worker? Aren't your cubicles buried in the bowels of a blank building in an office "park" surrounded by other blank buildings and twelve acres of vehicle parking? Doesn't it take you forty five minutes to walk to the "retail plaza" because it's forbidden to mix the two together? How do you have enough time to eat?

Good questions, for sure.

But no, I was discussing with my co-workers the cost of our wars, and I queried how we'd pay for them. But you know what? Those costs are pocket change relative to the massive, massive deficit spending we're about to incur with all these bailouts. The wars, they don't cost shit, relative to everything domestic we're blowing our wads on.

There's no reason we shouldn't just keep our 160,000 soldiers overseas permanently. Jesus Christ, if we brought them home they'd just suck off the public teat for the next few decades because we don't have any jobs for them here. Better for them to continue to bomb brown people because they stay employed, their families are taken care of, tens of thousands stay employed in ordinance manufacturing, deploying, and disposal, arms companies are arming, security firms are securing, on and on and on. The cost of operating in Afghanistan is nothing compared to the cost of bailing Goldman Sachs. In Afghanistan, all we have to do is spend a few million training soldiers to kill (who want to, by the way), spend another coupla million on various aircraft and ordinance, and bam! We have GDP. Goldman et al are gonna suck up five times what poorly paid E-3's and E-5's are gonna suck up.

We could bomb five new nations and feel good about it for what we paid to keep our banks alive and feel like shit about it.

Bombing is a bright spot in our wretched economy. You keep hearing about X thousand jobs cut from here, Y thousand jobs cut from there, and Z thousand jobs cut here and there...Home Depot, Starbucks, Boeing, Caterpillar, Warner Bros., Pfizer...but tell me...have you heard of Colt Firearms laying off workers? Rathyeon? General Atomics? Lockheed-Martin? Northrup-Grumman?

Actually, I'm a little bit surprised Caterpillar is laying off workers. Apparently the Israelis aren't bulldozing enough Palestinian homes with their marquee D9 model.


Maybe if they did, more American assemblers could keep their jobs. Chalk it up to the bad global economy; yeah, that's it. Israel is suffering too you know, along with China and Japan. Just can't export their products like they used to.

Remember...never confuse me with someone who gives a shit. Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I take great pleasure blogging about how things are...not how they should be.

California Talk

Bicycling over Highway 99 this evening, I noticed that no one gives a shit about the law banning cell phone use while driving.

I'm sure you've noticed, noticed how people now don't put the phone up to their ear anymore:


but now instead they hold it out in front of them like its a two-way radio:



So much for the "no-hands" law. Like the "California stop," where drivers only pretend to stop, this is "California talk," and it will likely be enforced about as much, too.

No More Bikes

One thing I've noticed, as thousands upon thousands of people are losing their jobs in my region, is that none of them are riding their bikes.

Nope. Not one single person. Not one laid off soul has even considered trying to save a little cash by biking. I'm still the only schlimiel riding a bike up and down Franklin Blvd.

On such a nice day, too. Yep. Today I rode my little bike in a T-shirt and shorts, in late January, while thousands in the Midwest drove themselves to Home Depot to wait in line for hours to buy a generator, to run their 1080i's and charge their iPods during this powerful global-warming-driven ice storm and concomitant power outages.

Not only that, I rode to work down Broadway, right past two iconic state "businesses," the DMV and EDD. Not one additional bicyclist going to either of these places. Here in our green, environmentally correct state, things are so fucking sprawled out that everyone is forced to drive to the unemployment office, and that's all these people do, they drive. I find it quite interesting that they will drive their expired cars to the EDD, but not across the street to the DMV to pay their registrations. Hey, with no job, the registration is sacrificed before the cell phone bill. I understand -- really I do. I understand -- I really do. I was amazed at how many expired cars I saw today. Here in my SMUD parking lot a cop could have his weekly quotas filled in just one morning citing all the expired cars. Absolutely phenomenal.

I will continue to sarcastically post about all these lost jobs while having some pangs of sympathy. My cousin and his girlfriend who have now both been laid off or fired are gonna find 2009 a year without a whole hell of a lot of Hope. General assistance to the rescue, at a time when the state is $40,000,000,000 in the hole. My three brother-in-laws, all out of work. And all five of these people, all five, aren't even included in today's news headline of 4.78 million jobless claims, a new record, because none of them are pulling unemployment, either having been denied or because they simply aren't counted anymore.

I suppose I will continue my sarcastic rants, because I personally believe it was our lifestyles, our fiscal recklessness, our idiotic living arrangements, our complete disregard for energy conservation and our sense of entitlement that led to our current predicament. I will stop one letter short of saying that we brought all this upon ourselve

My Green Job

President O today, in his remarks concerning the Merikan Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, provided a hint at what sorts of green jobs will be created.

My job is one of them. Apparently, I'm working in a green field and I didn't even know it.

A piece of this plan is to "lay" 3,000 miles of new electrical transmission lines to market renewable resources to loads. And what must every one of these lines have? Protection!

For the past three years (and if I have my way the next twenty three) I've been working as a protection engineer, whose purpose is to identify faulted high voltage equipment and promptly remove it from service, to ensure we don't burn down transmission lines, transformers, generators, shunt capacitors, and to ensure the entire system remains stable following a fault disturbance. I've said it before, there is no better job out there, it's societally required and economically bombproof. All these 33,000 people laid off yesterday...they'll all be staying at home consuming electricity, won't they. You'd think I'm such an asshole for this remark but I'm required to do so as a social critic. Someone's gotta say it -- these lost jobs are chiefly the result of an unsustainable debt-fueled conspicuously consumptive society having hit its natural limit. It was going to happen, and if you didn't prepare yourself and you kept flipping houses, iPods or 1080p's right up till the end, well, you've no sympathy from me.

Back to the topic at hand. Apparently my job is now green! Well...sort of. Provided the lines to be protected are used to deliver green energy, I guess it is. Problem is, we mix all this up with coal and gas fired generation, too. SMUDs Solano wind is thrown in with Kiefer's "renewable" landfill methane and thrown in with Intermountain coal.


I am and will continue to remain skeptical about Obama's call for reversing our dependence on foreign energy. We've got seven former presidents in a row who all said the same fucking thing, all of whom presided over increased dependence and increased per capita use. To say that this didn't at least contribute to our current predicament would be mendacious.

Consider our need to access cheap hydrocarbons underneath the world's brown people, if after we spent a third of our wealth to get it we didn't then piss it all away by building all our suburban slums twenty four miles away from everything, consider how much wealth we'd still have! Then we spent another third diamond-plating our freeways and bridges (they're in great shape, aren't they?) We spent the last third waging wars to keep the lubricant of our economy, energy, cheap and plentiful.

I am skeptical. I'm still two steps away from hope.

ElkShares

Out in western Massachusetts lies a small cadre of businesses that long ago realized the benefits of a local economy. They banded together and developed their own currency, BerkShares, as good as dollars, and are traded among local businesses as a sign of their willingness to keep things local. There are $2 million in circulation amongst 350 businesses.

I hadn't visited their website until this evening and noticed their organizers quote Wendell Berry, whom I've long admired as a champion of how things ought to be laid out, how communities ought to organize. Very, very few places follow his advise, and as a consequence, we end up with dead cities like Elk Grove, CA.

Just imagine, imagine! if Elk Grove tried to start an ElkShares program.

The venture would be doomed from the start.

The idea is to keep dollars local. I can probably only find thirty local businesses in all our oceans of strip malls and big box retail. All our strip mall tenants -- our Walgreens, Borders, Circuit Cities, Jamba Juices, Kinkos, Safeways, Subways, Petcos, Hometown Buffets, Omaha Steaks, Fandangos, Round Tables, Blockbusters, Rite Aids, Panda Expresses, Smog N' Goes, Targets, Bank of Americas, Home Depots, Hollywood Videos, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFCs, Chevrons, Jiffy Lubes -- all are decidedly not local, yet comprise (my guess) 84% of all the businesses and 98% of all the revenues. Try buying a tube of toothpaste at the FoodsCo with an ElkShare.

Not one is local. Not one would accept anything other than the dollar, but some would accept their own signature credit card. Not one would give a damn whether or not their outlet fits into the community, so long as merchandise moves off the shelves. Shit manufactured elsewhere, processed elsewhere, packaged elsewhere, warehoused elsewhere and delivered by tractor trailer to Elk Grove. All of the businesses above, comprising the lion's share of all Elk Grovian commerce, hire only low wage retail sales associates and fast food assembly linemen who don't give a shit about their employers and whose employers don't give a shit about them. "Real" Elk Grove "citizens" work elsewhere and commute by private solo automobiling.

The other large revenue source is the Elk Grove Auto Mall. Wa-hey! Try using an ElkShare to get a smog check at the Infinity dealership.

So ElkShares could be used at perhaps only a dozen places. It's too bad, because local businesses could counter the credit charges incurred when we buy with plastic. This is one reason I've been trying to go all cash when I shop at Corti Brothers, get my haircut, or eat at Chada Thai. They get 3.5% more instantly, another 3.5% to circulate (ideally) locally, not to sponsor half-time shows for the NFL broadcasters.

A novel idea that could never work where I live. One more reason to assume that if resource shortages or a major perturbation struck my region, Elk Grove would have absolutely no ability to ride it through. A reason to assume Elk Grovians would turn on each other, dog-eat-dog, because no one has anyone else to lean on.

Automobile Armageddon

I'm one bit closer to declaring a small victory in my 2009 predictions...that the U.S. EPA would overturn Johnson's denial of the California waiver request.

Clearly Obama's comments today only increased the likelihood that a reversal will come soon. It's sorta contradictory, though; I took issue with the old White House interfering with the EPA decision to deny the waiver while I now hope the new White House interferes. To be clear, all he did was direct the EPA to revist the decision. L. Jackson has to make another assessment, but I'd bet she won't take two fucking years to decide.

The proof that this waiver request would benefit me, my lungs, my boy's lungs, and nibble at our domestic energy conundrum can be found in about 20 seconds by looking at the comments by the Center for Automotive Research, the National Automobile Dealers Association, the Heritage Foundation, and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. When they say that these new regulations are going to exterminate Detroit, kill off the industry, and add to their financial woes...well, that's proof enough. It's pure bullshit, because they know America is a fully paved over automobile slum with forced motoring participation by all its inhabitants -- Americans have to drive, that's all they know how to do anymore, alongside running up their cell phone minutes. They've got built in demand. As seat belts and catalytic converters didn't bankrupt them before, more efficient vehicles won't bankrupt them now. They proved they are fully capable of bankrupting themselves with their existing fleets.

When these affluent white pricks speak of Automobile Armageddon, it only means all of us win.

Citizen Consumer

Watching the evening news the other day, I was amazed at how many times we were referred to as consumers.

We are nothing but.

We are no longer citizens. No longer organized for any purpose other than to consume and to mature private enterprise. And the nature of that private enterprise, over the last thirty years, has resulted in the wholesale destruction of community.

In this regard, Loveland, CO and Elk Grove, CA are not all that different. Both cities were developed in the late 19th century more or less as stops on major transportation routes. Both probably looked very similar in the early part of last century -- small, close knit populations, a dense town core, vibrant activity, walkable districts. Agriculture was dominant in all directions out from the center. They had true rural and urban demarcations.

We then decided, just a few decades back, that economies of scale were more important. We wanted the ownership and use of produced goods but we didn't want to pay American wages to make them. We soon determined that the regional glass factory (that made durable, long lasting products, by the way) couldn't compete with the quantities coming from overseas glass manufacturers who had less environmental oversight and a seemingly infinite supply of low wage workers. From glass to toasters, to ball bearings, sour cherries, hair dryers, food processing equipment and textiles -- all have been shipped out. We happily, cheerfully, and gleefully threw parades for the opening of the new K-mart on the fringes of the existing city. After all, these outlets concentrated these foreign manufactured goods into one stop shopping emporiums...and the prices! Man! So much better than the Podunk retail outlet back in the city center.

Nevermind the fact that an American made toaster would last twenty five years if cared for, compared to four or five with a cheap Chinese made piece of shit...but no matter. The price we pay now is the price that counts, period. No matter if we have to buy 4 over those twenty five years...with blinkers on Americans don't care anymore about the future -- only now.

Yep. We opened the K-mart on the edge of town, the first wave of large format retail. This has only been expanded with WalMart, Target, Old Navy, Bed Bath & Beyond, et al. Their ability to buy thirty seven thousand cheaply made toasters at a crack from a factory in Shenzhen, and that all of us only give a shit about cheaply priced goods, well, that's where we went. The Loveland and Elk Grove town centers turned into decrepit wastelands.

City council members then sat and tried to figure out how to "revitalize" their historic districts, after already having approved the widening of Elk Grove Boulevard into a four lane, cross town expressway that utterly destroyed the character of the original city. Loveland threw money to prop up local businesses in the core, now competing with all the big box shit they approved along the 34 towards I-25.

Today, one walks through Old Towne Elk Grove while dodging tens of thousands of thru-commuters. The city core has been completely destroyed. New setback codes require any new businesses to locate on a half acre lot with a frontal moat of parking, and now things are so spread out that everyone is forced to travel by automobile to buy a pack of cigarettes or get a spare key made. Sheldon High School was placed at the edge of town on a two lane rural road where no one in their right fucking mind would allow their kids to walk or ride with no sidewalks or bike lanes. The road has since been "upgraded." It's now a four lane expressway.

We built to encourage consumption, not citizenship.

We are citizen consumers.

I Don't Need Them

Fortunately, blogging is an ideal mental escape mechanism for me where I can archive thoughts that most other live human beings aren't willing to discuss. My observations and opinions are different, for sure, than most Merkians, but I am certain I'm not a raving lunatic. I am simply concerned...and my manner of dealing with all the things going on around us is to be prepared.

I was very serious last month when thinking about disaster preparedness, and actually doing something proactive seems prudent. As an insulin dependent diabetic I have an added layer of concern. Most people, without access to their daily drugs, would only be inconvenienced. I'd die. This idea isn't something most people have to think about, and as well, they also don't think about any other conditions that are equally perilous, such as lack of clean water, heat, or food.

I also believe that because we have failed to build and live in real communities, any resource shortage will immediately demonstrate our inability to cooperate with others. The true nature of my Elk Grovian neighbors would be exposed, and I, seriously, don't think that nature is one of compassion and/or cooperation. "I don't need my neighbors and they don't need me" is the Elk Grovian creed.

Why would it be otherwise? What have we built, developed, or lived in in the past thirty years that would make you think people are better citizens? That people would look out for the common good? The truth is, we've sacrificed every public institution that encourages cooperation for our own private realms.

That said, I am quietly preparing. The vast majority of us will never live through a disaster or anything even close to one, and no one alive has ever had to deal with providing for themselves and their families during a sustained crisis. ISHTF, I want to avoid the normalcy bias that inevitably occurs and be prepared instead of being stunned and incapacitated.

Spend!, Baby!, Spend!

Oil spills. They create gross domestic product. And it's a damn good thing they do, too, because 70% of our economy is consumer spending, and our consumers have halted spending. Oil spills and other environmental cleanup are a bright spot in our quest to return to unending consecutive quarters of ad infinitum economic growth.

I can't get over the fact that two thirds of what makes us tick is buying stuff, while two thirds of us don't produce anything. Two thirds is debt-based consumption. This is our vexing dilemma -- the only way to recover from our financial perils would be to restart that debt-based consumption engine again...or, perhaps, we grow our government spending.

We're gonna do the latter in 2009 and 2010. Spend, baby, spend. Drive trillion dollar deficits in the hope that government spending will stimulate consumer spending. I suppose, as government spending goes, cleaning up our environment is preferred over bombing brown people. I might be facetious concerning oil spills, but the truth is, no matter how hard I might try, I am leaving a trail of residual pollution too, perhaps just not as much as the average Merikan. So in some sense, as I consume little and pollute less, I am a twin blow to our economy.

Green Collars

Reporting from Sacramento -- If swimmers in Santa Monica Bay bump into trash or bacteria this summer, one culprit will be California's budget impasse. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of voter-approved projects have been halted because of the state's financial problems. That includes $12 million that the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission was counting on to prevent dirty storm water and filthy runoff from draining into the bay.

"People expect to be able to enjoy the beach and not come home sick," said state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), chairwoman of the state Senate Water and Natural Resources Committee.


I am particularly insulted by this statement by Mrs. Pavely. What she fails to account for are the several million vehicle miles traveled each year to get to the beach from inland suburbia; the massive stormwater runoff caused by dozens of square miles of roadway asphalt required to service the private transport of each suburban weekender; the hundreds of cubic hectares of trash Angelinos generate through the wasteful packaging of all that heedless consumer junk they buy; and the billions in taxes they fail to pay for the state services they are "expected to enjoy."

The California budget problem is easy to solve; it's as easy as living within your means. The real problem is, we don't want to. We want services such as bacteria-proof recreational venues while we refuse to tax ourselves for that privilege. Or we refuse to charge thirteen bucks per beach visitor. Or, most importantly, we refuse to change our lifestyles so that trash and bacteria never get into the fucking bay to begin with.

These are green jobs at stake, folks. That's what you're being led to believe. Just like calling landfill methane gas a "green energy source" while ignoring the thousands of tons of burnt fossil fuels needed to create the trash and to haul it to the landfill, cleaning up a bay that should have never been polluted to begin with is somehow, now, a green enterprise.

And it produces GDP! Yep, our economy is "stimulated" when a bloom of bacteria chokes off all the oxygen and humans come in to clean it up. Our economy "grows" when a container ship rams the SF Bay Bridge pier, loses 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel, and humans come in to clean it up. Those are green jobs, folks. We need more green jobs according to our administrators...what better way to "stimulate" our economy than to hire thirty million Californians to pollute our environment and hire thirty thousand more to come it to clean up after them.

This is what we're gonna do. Hire several tens of thousands of roadworkers, make believe they're wearing green collars, have them build several hundred HOV lane miles with several hundred thousand tons of concrete and asphalt, employ them as 'high efficiency' lanes and tell ourselves this is gonna save our planet, while hiring another few thousand people to clean up after all the air pollutants, traffic deaths, and automobile disposals those new commuters create.

Real green, eh?

Too Much Month At The End Of The Money

I admit that with all my "environmentalism" and my personal crusade against wanton consumerism, I have every expectation to travel the world once my mortgage is paid off.

I made it a point, years ago, that a minimum of one-half of my monthly take-home income would go towards my mortgage. I am now on the cusp of paying that motherfucker off and I'm salivating like you wouldn't believe. I've spent the better part of fifteen years thinking about living without a mortgage and the closer it gets, the worse it gets. When it's finally over, it might be depressing.

I'll be like an Obama canvasser in 2008...full of hope and promise, on a mission...and when it's over, sorta let down...nothing else to hang my hat on, nothing else quite so important, nothing else quite so inspiring...the letdown after Bush left office...

I enjoy paying bills, I always have. That might be a requisite for anyone interested in staying out of debt, something you'll never hear from Suze Orman or Charles Givens. I have always enjoyed the ritual of figuring out if I'll have too much month at the end of the money. I've routinely overdrawn my checking account because I overpay my mortgage. But my persistence will soon pay off.

I intend on polluting our atmosphere, via jet propulsion, to a very significant extent come 2010 and beyond. I intend to see Santiago, Bremen, Auckland and Palermo before long. I might throw in Dar Es Salaam too, because I've wanted to visit that city since I was eight years old -- although I now chalk that up to irrational childhood exuberance. Nonetheless, I have grand intentions.

These intentions will be buffeted by my biking to work, taking the bus to work, and every other measure I take to make my local environment more liveable. This is my dillema -- how do I reconcile global recreational travel with a "tread-lightly" mandate?

The Pound Down

I think it's time to take another trip to Londontown.

I saw Carnal Forge at the Underworld, a London nightclub right off the Kings Cross tube station in 2005. What a place that was...in such a fantastic city, and everything was available within walking distance and/or a subway station.

There was one huge problem, a problem common with every walkable, human scaled city...London is the most expensive city you'll ever find, alongside Dublin and Tokyo. At the time, my exchange rate was about $1.65 to the pound and a beer cost 4 pounds. I never once got drunk in England, I couldn't afford it. All was not lost, however...I did find enough money to try a number of different English ales -- just not in the quantities I would have liked...

But now! Wa-hey! Sterling is falling fast!

A consequence of the English financial implosion is a much, much better exchange rate, now at $1.35. I had better arrange another visit soon, before the dollar follows the pound down.

Door Number None

I'm still doomerish. That was more or less confirmed supported today with the inauguration of the Pope of Hope while our markets fell 4% and the Royal Bank of Scotland lost 69.31%. I blogged yesterday that when the champagne goes flat, when the Washington thoroughfares are re-opened to traffic, and when the last cocoanut shrimp skewer is polished off, the revelers will board their busses and return to eight percent and rising unemployment, return to jobs that disappeared over the weekend, and return to crushing personal and public debts in the face of a deflationary implosion that will eat all debt-holders alive.

Come on, I'm cognizant of the lunacy of trying to correlate an inauguration with the daily action of the Dow...but damn, you'd think, you'd really, really think, that if there were any heartbeats left in our flat-lined financial corpse it would have been resuscitated by the Obama defibrillator today. Clear!.........Clear! Our financial system is based on Hope. Hope that when you lend out money, them sons-of-bitches will pay you back with interest.

Today, Hope lost. Everyone thinks everyone else won't pay them back, and rightfully so. Bank of America shareholders are staring down the public trough, hopeful that Mr. Taxpayer will absolve their company's asinine decision to buy Merrill Lynch without any fucking idea what sorts of bad debts are in their vaults. They picked the wrong door, but all doors were the wrong door. The only right door was door number none.



The chained goat is staring us down behind every door: door number one -- the mountains of debt in every bank vault; door number 2 -- the mountains of debt piled upon every individual Merikan; door number three -- the looming insolvency of our domestic automakers and industrial capacity.

If I didn't think about such things, if I didn't think they mattered, I wouldn't be wasting my time blogging about them. I do think all this matters, and I think the whole drama of our imploding economy is part and parcel of an America that could be so much better, but one that chooses to run itself into the ground.

I do not (personally) have any hope that we will be able to set things right. I'm not talking about the economy, necessarily, but rather, all the things I take issue with on the Franklin Monologues. I have rarely expressed much optimism, with all my sarcastic blogging about window shutters and "mix used" urban design, that we will ever do anything about them. I may sound like a cheerleader for specific, wished-for outcomes, but don't mistake the fact that ultimately I root for our destruction.

I think the only way I would be able to live in my own Monologueonian world would be through self-destruction. This isn't a cynical viewpoint -- the real cynics are all those who pray that things are going to get better and we end up with more of the same shit. I know that they only way I'm ever going to be able to bike to work without 4,500 pound steel projectiles at my back would be if thousands of you decided to ride alongside, decided to demand better urban environments that supported non-automotive transport, decided you wanted live communities instead of dead cul-de-sacs, decided you wanted cleaner air instead of Chuck E. Cheeses on every corner. But, thousands of you don't, and I know and accept this.

Nonetheless, I am, personally, satisfied. I have a great family, a fantastic job they don't even have to pay me to do, and overall, I'm quite joyful. I show the utmost contempt on this blog but don't mistake it for anger, because really, I enjoy my commentary on our sad and pitiful human habitats and conditions.

Blog on.

One Day Removed

For all my negativity and sarcasm I might present regarding our new administration, I am really looking forward to Lisa Jackson taking over as EPA chief. Actually, I care less who Obama chose than as much as I'm looking forward to Stephen Johnson's ousting, now only one day removed.

Good Riddance.

Now is also a good time, in my humble little opinion, to stop having to use these ridiculous phrases like "the first African American to head the EPA," or the "fourth woman," or the "second New Jerseyan." I don't give a shit, and neither should you, about the race, gender, home state, favorite hockey team, or whether the EPA administrator spits or swallows. What we should care about is whether or not Jackson will do the correct thing as administrator, to protect human health and the environment. Not to play political hackey sack with Obama. I am personally interested in how she will handle California's AB32.

The correct thing would be to side with the unanimous recommendations of EPA scientific staff and legal experts and grant California the waiver so that we, along with the 16 other states that have committed alongside, can take more forceful action towards climate change. Personally, I care much, much less about climate change as I do about the myriad ancillary effects that a reduction in moble source pollutants would have on my local environment. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- take care of your local environment, and the global environment will follow.

Seeing how we are incapable of anything other than squandering all our national wealth on building more freeways, overpasses and tunnels, the least we could do would be to better manage our tailpipe pollutants. Indeed, there is no doubt that AB 32 will categorically increase fuel economy, lower accelerations, result in less expensive vehicles, will require less imported energy, and will result in lowered localized pollution.

Hope And Change

Looks like the installment of Hope and Change will cost about seventy million dollars tomorrow.

I find it odd that when my state is forty billion upside down, and when my federal government is 1.2 million million upside down, we somehow find the way to throw 70 million+ on top of it to inaugurate another president. Odd that a couple of million people can comfortably fill up their tanks on cheap gas to drive cross country to participate.

It doesn't matter that these are private funds. Private funds come from the public nowadays, what with our government "owning" large swaths of Wall Street where these funds originate. It makes perfect sense for AIG to throw inaugural money at Obama -- and when the lights dim, when the band plays their last note, when the podiums and grandstands are dismantled, and when the millions return home to rising unemployment and punishing deflation, AIG will be first in line for the second round of your TARP monies.

I live in a state where, on the first of February, Change and Hope will come first to the blind and disabled who will lose state disability payments and/or caregivers because the California legislature can't govern. They'll be sorta pissed about the Change part. Maybe they'll lose some of that Hope part, too.

I suppose I'm quite unreasonable to use the blind in my post, to hang them up as victimized poster children in a morally fiscally bankrupt society. Quite unreasonable to assume the state can't pass a balanced budget sometime in the next twelve days to avert this scenario. And...quite unreasonable to assume that any of us will have to sacrifice or give up anything, ever, to get us to [collectively] stop spending 3 times what we earn.

Nope. We expect certain things from our governments and refuse to pay for them. Just like underwater mortgages or crushing consumer debt burdens -- we buy, then default. Let's just continue the Merikan ethos of unearned riches, shall we? Defaulting on debts, pissing away money at Indian casino tables, let's not change a thing, no. Fuck Change. Let's just print more money and make the problems all just go away.

All the policemen, all their overtime, all those oboe players and violinists, the grandstand carpenters and the blue room caretakers, the formal ballroom waitresses, the high priced call girls...will any permanent job come from this inauguration? Does security detail time-and-a-half count towards our national GDP? Is this seventy million ever expected to trickle down, or is it only expected to just grease the palms of the influential, of those who donated? No Change here, folks.

I must just be facetious, you say. Surely, within weeks our new president will have things turned around...home prices will start anew at renewed 20% per annum growth, incomes will rise, Change will spring eternal, we'll each be driving electric cars powered by the wind on roads paved with our new found wealth and Hope. Within weeks, everyone will find a job they love, racial repressions will evaporate, the foreign wars will end, and the drunken buzz of the inauguration will linger for years to come.

Our Sacrifices

I've been a critic of our [total lack of] Merikan sacrifices we made for our wars -- with heavy hearts we climbed into our new cars (cars we bought at 0% after 9/11) to belt out some more shopping (between 9/12 and 7/07) -- that is, until our economy collapsed.

We collectively didn't do anything, we weren't asked to do anything, and we didn't have to pay for anything. We borrowed money to pay for our wars. No sacrifices. Now, with the $700,000,000,000 TARP I, we are again not asked to do anything. Nope. We borrowed and borrowed and became more and more indebted, and poof! suddenly there appeared seven hundred thousand million more dollars and we still didn't have to do a thing. "Please continue as before," we're asked. Please continue to borrow to buy, please continue to buy overvalued housal units (if you do we'll throw in a $7,500 federal tax credit) and please wish for values to again rise by 20% per year so we might continue to borrow equity to buy more goods.

I am wondering if a day of reckoning will come soon. Apparently we've been spared financial collapse. If AIG would have gone under, man, we'd have lost everything! Thank God in Heaven our government set them straight. And shit! If GMAC would have gone under, man, we'd have lost everything as well! We've been spared our day of reckoning!

And I didn't have to do a thing. Not a single sacrifice. My job's secure, I'm rolling in cash, my taxes haven't been raised, I can fill up my gas tank for about 18 minutes of work, and come Monday I can buy a new Dodge Durango at 0% for sixty months even with tarnished credit! Sure...I might receive an I.O.U. from California for my tax refund, but apparently I'm entitled to 5% interest...I couldn't find that good a rate anywhere else! Life is good!

Indian Made

I don't like Chinese manufactured goods. The reason is much more about poor quality than the fact that raw materials travel 9,000 miles to get there, are manufactured by some of the poorest wage slaves citizens in the world, then travel 12,000 to the U.S. to immediately break and then get deposited into our landfills.

However...I don't hold Indian manufacturing goods in the same light. The Indians make good stuff; they just don't make a lot of it.

My dad grew some hops this year in Colorado, and I used some of his whole hop flowers in my beer brew last week. I needed a strainer, I bought it on-line, and it was...made in India:


This strainer will last the rest of my life. It's build correctly, uses good materials so it won't fall apart in a few years; it's a fine tool.

I'm wondering...twenty five years ago, why didn't India grow a huge wage slave manufacturing base? Why did the Chinese dominate this sector with such poorly produced shit? Why couldn't China have turned to services rather than industry? I asked this question of both my Bangladeshi and northern Indian co-worker. It has much to do with a lack of liberalization they say. I don't know how to interpret this, other than to say India has cultural limitations on how they organize themselves. They aren't geared towards globalization.

For whatever all that means, I still think my Indian fid, strainer, and punches are far superior to any Chinese made item I own, and I wish there were more Indian products. Seeing how the U.S. is dumping all of our manufacturing jobs overseas, let us parse our future wealth to India.

The Onion II

Still gotta love the Onion:


Survivors Of Gas Station Explosion Mourn Tragic Loss Of Gasoline

Dolphin Safe

Preparing a tuna sandwich for my son this evening, I noticed two things on the Hy-Top tuna can: dolphin safe, and made in China.

It appears my tuna took a 16,000 mile detour from trawlers in the Pacific out to mainland China, for processing, before loaded on container ship to be consumed in Elk Grove, California.

I asked my wife where she bought the fish, and she wasn't sure...."WINCO?" The thing is, I will never expect her to care where the food comes from, 'cause that's something she doesn't give a shit about. Indeed, it's what most of you don't give a shit about, so I don't hold it against her. I can wine and bitch and blog about this all I want, but in the end, all she and every other Merikan cares about is price -- so long as it's cheap, it's thrown in the basket. Food is Food.

Let me ask you: with all this melamine, with all the supposed lax Chinese environmental regulations...do you think for a minute my son's tuna is dolphin safe? Because it says so on the can? Do you think for a minute that Chinese factory workers, with their fantastic command of the English language, didn't mistake the labeling between "cat food with tuna" and "tuna food with cat?"

Ha!

Emergency Roadside Transfusions

The safest thing I could do while riding my bike on Franklin Blvd. would be to ditch the helmet, shave my legs, put on a wig and throw on a dress.

Researchers in New England found that women bicyclists without helmets are afforded more space by passing vehicles. Why? Presumably, they are more vulnerable, while male cyclists with helmets can "take it like men." I don't know whether male or female motorists are responsible for giving more space...perhaps it's both.

Perhaps men, thinking that women make terrible drivers, also think they make terrible bicyclists...so they give them space for their sudden direction changes, unannounced stops, failure to signal, and their generally incoherent, unpredictable, and chaotic nature as vehicle operators, motored or otherwise.

Crossdressing, I think my calves would give me away, shaven or not. Perhaps I ought to keep my helmet on. Besides, as I'm unconscious and bleeding out following my future bike/bus accident, the information stenciled on my helmet might just afford me a second chance:


With an A- blood type, I think I can only take O- and A-, which are 7.7% and 6.5% of the population, respectively. Thus, I'm not likely to survive an emergency roadside transfusion from a motoring Samaritan as I only have a 14% chance of her/him having the right blood type.

Bailout, Schmailout

I defend the use of solar subsidies, yet excoriate the bailout programs. Is this consistent?

• Hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks I don't need. Banks you don't need. You and I only need access to our money. Period.



• Programs to prevent more foreclosures, to prevent those who fiscally fucked up from taking responsibility for their inept decision making. Yep, can't bother bailing out all those who already foreclosed, it's too late. The Foreclosure Roulette.



• A federal tax credit, a $7,500 credit! for first time home buyers last year. Wa-hey! All those who had the reckoning to wait until homes were affordable, or to wait until they could front their own down payment. Nope, a house they could afford just wasn't enough. Reward those who happened to buy after April 9th, while the 93.27% who bought before then get to pay for the credit.



• A debt-fueled HOV freeway lane building spree, coming to former farmland near you, sparked by Obama's trillion-dollar-stimulus. While we're at it, build some more tunnels. Yeah, encourage the movement of a few thousand more cars each day through new holes in rock, just the thing we need to reach our energy independence and air quality goals.



• While we're still at it, bail out Detroit to provide 0% financing so debt-laden Merikans can drive new cars instead of used cars through those holes in the rock, and across those single occupant lanes.

Dafficits

The latest forecasted deficits for 2009:

The Federal Gov'ment: $1,186,000,000,000 (My share, $3,765)
The State of California: $16,000,000,000 (My share, $441)
The County of Sacramento: $123,000,000 (My share, $89)
The City of Elk Grove: $1,396,630 (My share, $12)
Your Monologueonian's Relatives: $13,735
Your Monologueonian: $0.00

Can you see why I'm thinking about buying shotshells, rifle ammunition, 70 lbs. of propane and several 50lb sacks of flour, beans, rice and barley? Hoarding Krugerrands? Cash stuffed in coffee cans? 50 vials of insulin? Twenty bottles of synthroid?

These are the just debts for 2009, on top of any other debts that might exist...like our $10,000,000,000,000 public debt, our unfunded future social security liabilities, or our unfunded future medicare liabilities.

I did my taxes this weekend. $401 back from the feds, $2,359 from the state...but I can't file yet without my real W-2, and the later I file, the more likely I'll just get an I.O.U. from California. "Thanks, sucker!" will be stamped on the back.

Here's another thought experiment: if Obama somehow shoehorns in his $150 billion "tax cut" to middle Merika, as he's been suggesting lately, but instead of consuming more we just pay down personal debt because we're leveraged up to our eyeballs in mortgage, vehicle, and MasterCard debt...doesn't that just create $150 billion in federal debt? The burden of which falls to the taxpayer? What's the sense in that?

Solar Subsidies

The biggest concern for anyone who installs a solar system is, "will the price drop right after I buy mine?"

I suppose you can't time the market. One may never get in at the bottom, or the 'right' time. Investments in alternative energies are fraught with uncertainty. This partially explains why they comprise less than 0.3% of our total energy needs.

Late last year I read that Spain announced they'd be ditching their subsidy programs. I am a fan of European feed-in tariffs, which, unlike the U.S., provides for a fixed rate of return for your solar energy. This is the reason solar is so much more widely accepted in Europe, because it removes risk and uncertainty. Sure...solar panels might drop by 85% within two years of your installation, but if you are receiving a fixed rate for your energy, it matters less. What you've done by installing early is assume some risk for leading the curve, which is acceptable, but to shoulder all the risk? I ask all, because the social benefits of widescale PV production are immense; everyone gains by incremental PV generation, but not everyone has a stake in losing.

That's what I've done by building my own PV, and what everyone else will face if they install their own system: if prices drop, we'll have eaten 100% of the risk. And why, unless you're some ardent environmentalist or imbecilic capitalist, would anyone do that?

Your typical Hannitzed conservative would instruct that alternative subsidies are inherently bad and free markets should dictate the pricing of alternatives and the pricing of delivered energy. When the market determines that its prudent to install PV, then that's when you ought to do it. If the market fails to provide those signals, all the while we wage multi-front wars to secure foreign energy, while we produce less and less domestic energy each year, while we face a possible future climate calamity, while we deal with thousands of asthma attacks and pollution related premature deaths, while we turn our cities into autocentric suburban shitholes not worth caring about...well, you shouldn't do it.

I heard today, that due in part to Spain's subsidy reduction, the price of U.S. PV systems is falling because there is less demand. Will I take it in the shorts for having installed mine in 2007?

The Highest Bidder

I earlier blogged how, in our "tough economy," there would be more drivers only pretending to have valid registrations, only pretending to have valid licenses, only pretending to have insurance.

I sold my 1979 Ford truck to a couple (Bill and Roz) who stayed with us for several months last year. We provided them a room downstairs until they rented their own house. For a thousand bucks I parted ways with a truck that mostly sat in my driveway, but that I took care of.

Selling the truck was an extension of my 2007 cleansing of material goods, the year I really began living with less and feeling a lot better about it. I have not once felt any regret about selling any possession, any regrets about selling that truck...until this last weekend.

Roz was pulled over by the CHP on Friday for driving the truck with expired registration. They hadn't paid the $78 bucks to the DMV since I sold it. She then 'discovered' that her license had been suspended. The truck was towed to an Elk Grove impound yard. Bill 'discovered' that his license was also suspended; now neither one of them can legally get the car out of impound for 30 days, and at $45 a day...you can see where this is going...

For a matter of seventy eight dollars the truck is gone, to be sold to the highest bidder come February. It would have been better off rusting in my driveway.

Two Fridays

Some depressing Sacramento/State news: State offices to shut down two Fridays a month. Depressing, because I was hoping for two Tuesdays a month. Or even two Thursdays.

On Friday morning, our region's roadways are utilized to capacity, not over capacity. Now all we've done is to shoehorn in all these state workers into using the roads on fewer days, and shoehorn in all the users of state services into using the roads on fewer days.

This is wonderful. How about increased traffic to drive to the DMV office (because we refuse other transportation options) to wait in longer DMV lines.

We get what we [didn't] pay for.

Stimulus II

I think all our stimulus monies, at the end of all this financial drama, will only have provided us with new road building. So much for Obama's plan for a "21st century overhaul" of our infrastructure. We're gonna get more relics of the 1950's. Faster, yes, and improved upon, yet fundamentally a worn out paradigm.

Smart electric grids...have you heard that one? Even I don't know what that really entails, and neither does anyone else. So if we can't understand it, we won't build it. One more reason to build new highways, 'cause everyone understands them.

California Delta Waterway -- Something else that needs to be addressed but no consensus has ever been formed on what to do. A peripheral canal? Remove/relocate the Tracy pumps? New levees, or removal of delta island tracts? If we can't agree, we won't build it. One more reason to build new highways, 'cause everyone understands them.

Sacramento light rail is begging for expansion, yet RT recently received a $15,800,000 cut in funding from the state, forcing an increase in fares. This is before we've even dealt with the $40,000,000,000 state deficit, so more cuts are sure to come. Think about this; the poorest residents we have who can't afford to participate in our perpetual motoring utopia are now called upon to pay more in fares and to work for companies whose taxes are paid to build more fucking roads. Rail (and transit in general) creates 20% more jobs than road building. But we don't see it fit within our autocentric shithole we've built, we find it to be extremely expensive to shoehorn it in through existing suburban sprawl. If it costs too much, we can't build it. One more reason to build new highways, 'cause everyone understands them.

California's wish list for "shovel ready" spending is 61% loaded with road spending. You'd think that would be excessive until you realize that Florida's stimulus wish list is 98.9% road, most of which is new construction.

We will emerge from our economic hibernation having spent a winter growing more emaciated by squandering all our wealth and energy on roads. All it will do is perpetuate poor land use and automobile use. We are building ourselves into a poorer nation.

Stimulus

Do you even remember how you spent your 2008 stimulus check?

I can't recall. I can't even remember the amount. It came, I cashed it, and I have no recollection of where it went. To pay bills? To buy shit? I honestly can't remember.

And so the same will occur with our national seven hundred billion dollar stimulus check to the financial sector. They won't recall how they spent it. Won't remember the exact amount lended. It came, they cashed it, and they have no recollection of where it went. To pay off debtors? To lend to new debtors? They won't remember.

The Joy of Food

I have two cookbooks in my bookcase that get me by-- Rombauer's Joy of Cooking and Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine. I thank my sister for gifting me the latter, now some twelve or thirteen years ago. A gem.

Sure, I have other cookbooks, but if deserted these are the two I'd keep. Going through Irma's book the other day while making muffins I was struck by a passage: "everyone who runs a kitchen can, in the choice and preparation of food, decisively influence family health and happiness."

This is as powerful a statement as there can be for dealing with our 'tough economic times." The bottom line, we can live simply, we can live happily with less. Food is essential, and around it we build all the things that bring us happiness. We almost don't need anything else.

One reason I subscribe to a Community Supported Agriculture program. Farmers who are re-establishing our connections to the earth, and eaters who recognize the value of doing so. This is depression-proof. We have to coax food out of the ground regardless of how Wall Street is doing. Very few of us recognize how and where our food comes from; yet those of us who do, I believe, are much wealthier.

When visiting my dad, a fair degree of our interaction for the short time we have revolves around what to eat, the preparation of it, and the eating of it. This is substantially different from how we've [collectively] approached food in the last few decades. Nowadays we're told that canning, salting, smoking, brewing, or cooking should be subordinate to finding a job that earns a better wage than producing food that could be bought cheaply at the WalMart Supercenter. We focus on other things instead...

Well. There's no reason that in a depression recession we can't fall back on such simple things.

Sacramento County Bicycle Advisory Committee

I am finally going to do something more proactive than throwing up a few PV panels then sit back and blog about shit that's wrong with Elk Grove, with my region, or with you. (there's nothing wrong with me...) I applied for the vacant seat on the Sacramento County Bicycle Advisory Committee.

I'm terrified at the prospect, because I like the anonymity of Gonesolar and because I've never participated at any level of government. That is, until about three weeks ago, when I finished serving my first jury duty. That was the first and only time I've ever been inside a courtroom and the experience was rewarding enough that I think I ought do more as a civil servant. My outlet would be to shape transportation policy where I live, if I'm posted.

The BAC oversees matters relating to the implementation to the 2010 Sacramento City/County Bicycle Master Plan, and the vacant seat is open for a three year term. I was made aware of this position by an anonymous co-worker who saw my ideas published on the SMUD internal forum boards (thoughts/ideas that are mirrored on Gonesolar), and suggested I'd be a good fit.

"Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers -- those people ride a bike." Wolfgang Sachs -- For the Love of the Automobile

Priora

One thing I should have tried to predict, what with my commanding view of the Merikan economy, is how many U.S. car sales will materialize in 2009.

2007 saw over 16.1 million sold domestically, while last year's totals dropped to 13.2 million. Do either of those two numbers sound staggeringly high to you? Perhaps not. I heard today that the Big Three need 15 million total sales to remain viable, and there's not a whole lot of prognosticators prognosticating anything above last year.

I mean, who's gonna buy those 15 million cars? Huh? Who? The 2.7 million people laid off since the start of this 'recession?' The 500,000 more each passing month? The 10 odd million or so others who think they might be laid off? Me?

My U.S. car sales guess, snatched from the cold smoggy Elk Grovian air, is a total 10.08 million for 2009. I'm as likely to be as close to reality as any Nobel Economic Laureate. This is a level which the autos say is unprofitable, but I still predict they'll hang on because we're only getting better at propping up faltering companies and sectors with billions and billions of borrowed dollars.

Fewer Priora are being sold these days, too, both numerically and as a percentage of total. Prius is the neuter singular form of prior, and the plural form is priora, right? I predict no more than 110,000 Priora will be sold in the U.S. in 2009.

The loss of share of the Prius disturbs me, as it shows we came nowhere close to effecting any real change in our behavior. A quick return to complacency and cheap gas brings an almost 50% sales drop. Just think how many Volts are gonna be sold in 2010. Six hundred and twenty two? Two thousand, perhaps? And this is gonna save GM, a few thousand wealthy white guilty pseudo-environmentalists looking to buy one to add to their car collections? Hooray for the gasoline powered internal combustion engine!

Poster Children

Pretty amazing that GM sold more cars in 1959 than they did last year; amazing because I'ven't seen a corresponding drop in driving.

Tomorrow I will mount the bike no earlier than 07:24. I won't risk my life riding Franklin Blvd. in the dark, alongside drivers who haven't woken up and who navigate through small defroster holes because they can't spare a few minutes to wake up or wait until their windows are clear. This stupid lady, last Friday morning, drove up Franklin Blvd. in the #1 lane at about 20-22 miles an hour and stalled it in an on-coming left turn lane while she waited for her windows to defrost. She's a poster child for irresponsibility and reckless driving, and there are hundreds more like her in Elk Grove. I'm not going to bike in the dark alongside these poster children.

Although the winter solstice has come and gone, the latest sunrise always occurs two to three weeks afterwards, and tomorrow marks the day that sunlight finally comes earlier in the morning, at 07:23. A minute earlier than the latest possible time, 07:24. The solar cycle begins anew.

And tomorrow, 07:23 is roughly the start of peak Elk Grovian traffic, which lasts until about 08:20 as every parent is forced by law to drive their kids to school. Everyone is back to work and back to school after our annual binge borrowing spending spree holiday, and traffic is back, and it will be as strong as ever. Monday traffic is almost always lighter because Elk Grove is a haven for suburbanized state workers and their typical 4-nine work schedule. Tuesdays are peak traffic days, and are the days I am most likely to bike. However, with the state in fiscal Armageddon, furloughed state workers will be commuting two days less each month, providing an estimated ~2% reduction in my chances of dying on Franklin Blvd. Bad news for them, great news for me.

When Elk Grove emerges into an economic recovery sometime this year, (as some predict, ha!) or 2010, then won't there be a hundred thousand car owners looking for new rides? I mean, Elk Grove was founded on the principle of perpetual entitlement to new roads, new homes, and new cars, and all these people shut out of that proposition since 2007 will be rebounding in 2010. Elk Grovians are not buying cars now because they will be buying them then, as they've come to expect such entitlements. We'll soon be seeing a 30% increase in motor vehicle sales.

The Bike Chef

It's no stretch of my imagination to assume that we will have learned precisely dick about building companies too big to fail, and that public bailing will again be required in yet another fifteen or twenty years. Take a look at the only two corporations who've posted positive in 2008 -- WalMart and McDonalds. As gigantic as they come. And with that gigantism comes massive resources for lobbying and political influence necessary to keep them large and keep them growing.

I had mentioned months ago that during a recession, Merikans are apt to grow fatter and less healthy. I can't imagine that as McDonalds gains this nation is eating better food, and I can't imagine that as WalMart gains this nation is buying better shit. WalMart is taking off, building supercenters that now dispense groceries in addition to cheap Chinese toothpaste and socks. Warehouse grocery shopping leads to massive sales of processed foods. What three member family can't do without that five gallon tub of mayonnaise? Not very many...just store it in the spare refrigerator in the garage.

There have been legal/legislative attempts by many localities to limit the size of retail establishments to something under, say, 225,000 sq. ft., in desperate attempts to specifically forbid supercenter-style stores. Elk Grove's latest city council member was elected, in part, based on his efforts to ward off a supercenter near his own home. But these efforts are lost every day in other localities, as large format retail has tremendous legal assets at their disposal to limit local efforts to stop them. His efforts simply mean he doesn't have to live near one but other people will, because that's all we're capable of building these days.


An anecdote regarding WalMart: My cousin Jim's roommate James is a bicycle assembler at the Florin Rd. WalMart. This mean he pulls them from shipping boxes, pumps air in tires, mounts wheels on frames, attaches seats...and lines them up a hundred wide for display inside the warehouse. You know the bikes; $69 dollar chrome-moly models that Kimmy will tear up in 5 months' time, whose rubber tire sidewalls will shred long before the tread is worn through, whose brakes seize up after Kimmy leaves it outside.

James is paid eight dollars an hour. He makes more than enough to throw down two large for rent each month, more than enough to buy enough Popov vodka to be drunk an hour after work and stay drunk all night, and more than enough to keep up his pack and a half day habit. Life is good. On my bike ride home I often stop by, and sometimes I'm there adjusting my derailleurs, my brake cables, the things I'm seemingly always trying to get right. James doesn't know shit about fixing bikes -- he knows how to steal them (his job before WalMart) and how to assemble them.

There's something else to be said about James' personal habits/ambitions, but right here, right now, he's employed. And with WalMart gaining, he will stay employed and WalMart will likely hire more; more eight dollar an hour assemblers. I asked him what was to become of his store once they move into the new supercenter -- "it don't matter," he said. He has no interest where he works, in the place he works.

Contrast this with the owner of the Bike Chef on 32nd street in Sacramento. Someone skilled. Someone who has a vested interest in the building he's occupying. Someone gainfully employed, and employs other skilled people, or has the capacity to train them to be skilled. WalMart will never be able to offer anything remotely similar to what this store can offer, never. It doesn't matter that they can sell bikes three times cheaper than the Bike Chef, because the costs of the destruction of community and the loss of dignity of work is many times more.

Passive Squalor

When most of us drive through this new shopping plaza, we see a fresh unspoiled marketplace, an inviting, luring destination:


All right, it's neither inviting nor alluring to most people. Most just simply accept it as it is. It just is. I, on the other hand, see an architectural abortion with zero redeeming value, and I might go so far as to say it has negative value.

This is about a half mile away from Franklin Blvd. on Florin Rd., one of the entrances to the WalMart Supercenter. The Supercenter isn't yet finished, but the stores on its periphery are awaiting tenants, and some like this Sleep Train have already set roots.

The most disturbing thing in my opinion, far and away, are those fucking windows on the second floor. What's disturbing to me is that all of us, every one of us, including the developer, the builder, and the city planner -- we all want a place that is worth visiting, a place that looks like a real towne center, a place where we'd stroll about, with lots of people at the margins, going in, coming out, a place that's vibrant, with human scaled activity, with at least one second story that encloses us, that makes the outdoor area a "room."

But our building codes! It's illegal to build anything like a mixed use community but it's not illegal to build a fake one.

But we want them. We want them. This building is screaming out to us that our three hundred year old tradition of town buildings has been thrown in the garbage and we're content to live with incorrectly scaled usless replicas. I just can't believe that we'd go to any expense to build such fakery.


Not one person will use this sidewalk and in any event, there aren't even any doors to walk in fro the street front. This whole corner says "drive your fucking car" to buy one of our cell phones and park it in the 24x7 illuminated forty acres we've provided in the back. The cell phone advertisements in the lower windows are sized to be seen by 56mph speeding vehicles, not by pedestrians. The excessive cost of your Verizon cell phone subsidizes all this, too.

Most people just don't care about any of this. Just don't. Too many other things to think about. And I'm OK with this because we all can't be advocates for everything. But this is our public realm, folks. Everyone is affected. We passively accept living in squalor. This is the only thing we are allowed to live in anymore, and I think it ought to change.

Standard Deviants

Here's the distribution of credit scores across this great land:



I have no idea where I fall into this curve, although I'm confident I'm not in that bottom 2%. I mentioned before that when I asked my only credit card company to lower my limit from $22k to $4k, that action likely put me in a lower tranche. OK. Someday it will be revealed to me where I lie, but I don't think I'll really ever need to know what others think about my ability to repay.

According to GMAC, our GMAC bailing money is going to help those in the 621-700 range, and they said this tranche represents about 40% of all who want/need motor vehicle financing. But as I see it, this segment represents something less than 27% of all people. The two don't mesh.

What's compelling is that our bailing money will be used to assist some who are at least a full standard deviation below the mean. These are the standard deviants -- one missed paycheck away from financial disaster; absolutely no savings, and likely, negative savings; no ability to weather any financial perturbation.

Damn, I have to admit I haven't been in that sorta position in a very long time...but I do remember many times when I'd have to borrow $5 bucks from someone, deposit it into my ATM account that had $16 bucks in it just to get the balance above $20 because that's the only denomination the ATM spits out. Then I'd end up paying back that borrowed $5. I always paid it back. And I found a way to live beneath my means even then, as I do today.

My financial decisions in the past have led to where I'm at today, and to be sure I have contempt for many, many people who fail to keep their own financial houses in order. So I'm just a little bit pissed that I get to bail out a company to help lend freshly printed dollars to standard deviants so they can drive new motor vehicles.