The Coming Curse

Assume, for a minute, that a depression is coming.

We don't discuss this, do we. All our conversations with friends, family, co-workers, not once is it ever brought up. We ignore it, we discount it. It isn't in our vocabularies. It's the uncle in prison for pedophilia.

Our American entitlements haven't allowed us to go there, to think about this possibility. All of our conversations, listen to them, they all hinge around the fragment "when we get back to..."

Well, suppose we never get back to?

I've been thinking about what sorts of things would get us through an economic implosion, and I'm hardly as prepared for it as most of you, but these are my considerations:

1) Carry no debt.
2) Be able to work for substantially less. Be worth more to your employer than you are paid.
3) Gain some control over your necessities.
4) Operate in cash. Concern yourself with the possibility of bank failures, and how would you manage if there weren't any.
5) Manage your health better than the vast majority of Americans.
6) Own commodities that are fungible and that aren't tied to the economic failures of others.

The way I see a depression unfolding is that everyone, everyone!, with any prior "special" condition or grievance will be no different than anyone else. If you're disabled, unemployed, a minority, poor, bankrupt, overweight -- it won't matter. Your ability to adjust to a new paradigm will determine your fate. To be sure, in addition to my list above, likely the most critical consideration I didn't list--

7) Develop social relationships with others you can help, and with others who can help you.

So to delve into each, I think that having no debt would be the most significant thing, as you have the most flexibility to move if you have to. Trying to sell your house that you owe more than its value would be exceedingly difficult when there are thousands of others doing the same thing. Indeed, trying to sell a house at all would be difficult.

If tomorrow your employer said you have to take a 15% pay cut, could you take it? Yeah, you'd bitch and moan, but could you make it? More importantly, are you more valuable than your co-workers if layoffs are coming? A depression would not be the time to be suing for pay discrimination, to remain being a lazy, entitled, pampered, twentysomething.

Gaining control over necessities, well, that's probably the most difficult thing for any of us. We live in a just-in-time America. Imagine a bank run, or a run on the store...in my opinion, our societal norms would fall apart very quickly. It would likely stabilize, but in the meantime, do you have access to the things you need? Medicine? Soap?

Do you have sufficient cash? Cash reserves? Is all your retirement in equities that might evaporate, might lose their remaining 45%? See, here's the rub. Pull your money out now and you'll seriously regret it "when we get back to." Don't do it, the depression comes and you lose it all, well... I suppose this is an argument for diversification, but don't discount the ability to operate exclusively in cash, especially if there aren't many banks or the banks aren't trustworthy.

If you had to mow your own lawn, or pick up your own wood pellets, are you in shape to do so? Could you even ride your bike or walk to the store instead of driving? Could you manage without your thirteen different prescription medications for high cholesterol, blood pressure, macular degeneration, diabetes, what have you? Can you swing your hammer to fix your fence? Staying fit is critical, but lost on most Americans.

Do you own anything that would be worth bartering in a depression? Do you really think you could sell your computer printer to raise cash, at a time when everyone else is trying to off their own stuff to raise cash? Do you have another skill you could trade? Or perhaps gold? silver? If we enter into a hyperinflationary depression, would your cash be worth anything?

Lastly, think about how to develop social arrangements where the people in your circle can all work together to support each other, each with different abilities, but importantly, with abilities. Not bums, leeches, or others as uselss as chocolate teapots who would be a drain on your resources.


Look, I like to thing about these things. While I still continue to believe that hardships might actually result in a better America, I hold no true belief that a depression is coming, but I indeed want to discuss it. I want to be better prepared if it did happen, and I would hope you would too.

More Housal Units

The difference between someone closing escrow today on a new housal unit and tomorrow, March 1st, is about $18,000.

While there's this glut, an absolute glut of empty units out there, the only way to qualify for this $18k would be to buy a new, never occupied home and so long as you've never owned a unit before.

The building industry association is creaming in their shorts thinking about how many housing starts this will create. I wonder if this is enough money to spur people to buy, or will they still think that housal unit prices will fall further, fall more than $18k? Honestly, I can't believe that modern Americans would hardly think twice about this, considering the $$ in their eyes when they realize they'll have no tax liability for a while. That means new curtains for the new house! And they can off that awful TV, get a new one!

It's like going to a car dealership, seeing row upon row of slightly used cars and the dealer telling you that the new one is the cheapest. He sets a higher price on all his repossessed used cars because the government has been willing to take over his excess inventory losses, and the commissions on the new cars are so much better. He's also willing to accept back your new car purchase if you lose your job anytime in the next 12 months...with certain financial provisions that make it worth his while, not yours.

A fantastic arrangement, eh?

Save The Sea Otters

Wow.

I've been sitting on my $2,686 California state tax refund for a few weeks now, thinking that as soon as our Legislature passed a corrected budget, I'd submit it and get it back. My sister's blog indicates the opposite.

I have never bought into that stupid argument that one should never give the government the use of your money for free, that one should strive for a $0 refund or liability at the end of the year.

What are these cretins talking about? What, you think I would actually save this money over the course of the year? Earning 0.06% in my savings account? A whole four dollars in interest?

Sixteen years ago I had to pay, and I had to pay as a student when I didn't have the money to pay it, and I vowed I'd never do that again. Now I file single zero, I have for fifteen straight years, and I always get a refund. And I never spend that refund ahead of time...it's what's called living within my means. I make do with my reduced monthly check and live within it. VP Biden would call me a hero.

So I guess I'll just have to sit on that two plus grand for a little while longer, but I'll be fine. Won't miss a credit card payment. Won't miss my car payment or car registration or electricity bill or gas bill or OnStar bill or DirectTV bill or Columbia CD Club bill or ISP bill or Cirrius satellite bill or iPhone bill or housekeeper bill or landscaper bill or dry cleaning bill or dog grooming bill or car smog inspection bill or day care bill.

But you know who also won't get my money because of these idiotic legislators? The four substantial contributions I make each year on my CA return to the Alzheimers Disease/Related Disorder Fund, the CA Sea Otter fund, the Municipal Shelter Spay-Neuter Fund and the Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Fund...all of these will just have to fucking wait until I file.

Thriving At Any Wage

My state has now, officially, entered into double digit unemployment.

Truthfully, we've probably been at 10% for a lot longer than anyone is willing to admit, and that's the problem...we ignore the number of people who aren't pulling unemployment (only 60% actually do), the number of people underemployed, and the number of people who simply don't fall into any category.

Here's my problem...I'm what you would call a snobby elitist. I haven't been in the unemployment trenches, ever. I don't remember my last part-time job or minimum wage job. I have been blessed with an ability to engineer, I'm good at it, and I make a very good wage. Honestly, I am completely amazed, completely, at how people find a way to live on 1/40th of what I earn. And I sit here and blog about how bad things are for everyone else. An elitist.

I wouldn't know how to live at the minimum wage level. But this I do know...I would live, and as richly as I do now.

I've often referred back to my dad's statement, now some twenty years ago (I remember the exact conversation), that one way or another, "the money will come." Implicit in his statement, lost on so many of us, is that you have to have full accountability over your actions, you have to be willing to adjust, you have to act. This is the crucial difference between someone who can thrive at any wage vs. someone who founders at any. In our America, more and more of us are losing our accountability, our personal responsibility, our willingness to act, to adjust.

That someone is willing to pay me a boatload of money to perform work I love doing, well, what can I say? If shit hit the fan, I would be willing to work for a quarter of what I make, perhaps a fifth, and still thrive. But this ability only comes from a lifetime of understanding how to live within my means, it isn't something I can just have, like a pizza. It isn't something that I can instantly assume. That doesn't mean I'd like it, far from it, but I would manage.

Mother Of God

Why is it that every American who drives a new Suburban or Yukon off the dealership lot doesn't give a shit about it being underwater the second they sign the papers? Yet, when it comes to housing, they cry havoc, expect assistance, expect help, expect a tax credit, or expect a bailout. Why the difference?

Another reason I carry such little hope for this nation is summed up in a single quote in this Bloomberg article:

Rina Serrano, 35, an after-school program supervisor for the Merced County Office of Education, may lose her job next year due to budget cuts. The value of her house, built by Calabasas, California-based Ryland Group Inc. in the Bellevue Ranch development, fell by at least a third since she purchased it in 2007. Her husband’s cabinetmaking business is down by half.
“Nobody has given us any options, but my feeling is there should be some assistance,” said Serrano, 35, a mother of four. The couple took out a 30-year fixed loan and aren’t behind on payments but they are underwater by about $70,000.


I had thought that Stockton, to my immediate south, was the epicenter of foreclosures, but I think it now may be Merced, a little farther south. Merced...another bedroom community for thousands of Bay Area commuters.

Rina perfectly sums up this nation's pathetic character, this nation's unwillingness to own up to their decisions. She "feels" there should be some assistance...while she's not behind on her payments.

You and I both know what she's asking for. She's asking that she not be held responsible for her decision, that someone ought to just erase that $70,000 paper loss. Yep, just erase it. No matter that her $33,000 Toyota Sienna is also underwater, used to haul her four kids around Merced, another town sucked into the exact same suburban sprawlish building pattern as every other town, where she has no option but to shuttle her kids around by motor vehicle. No, she doesn't care about her car payments funding a losing proposition, but her house payments? Mother of God. She shouldn't have to pay.

And never mind the fact that if her house price had risen by $70,000 and she and her husband re-fi'ed and spent the proceeds on a family computer, a motorcycle for her husband, a nip and tuck job for her chin and some bigger tits, and a family vacation to Walley World, she'd not think twice about the incremental 30-year payment required to pay for all that stuff. That payment...she could afford. Paying on a house that's underwater...now, suddenly, it's a payment she can't afford.

Such bullshit, folks. You should no longer wonder why I root for our destruction, why I hope this nation falls apart, why I firmly believe, deep down, that a complete societal meltdown would result in the rebuilding of a nation far richer and truly wealthier that anything currently imaginable. But...the realist in me gives a zero probability of that happening.

Zero. So I'll get to sit and enjoy watching your desperate attempts to return our economy and lifestyles back to "normal" -- back to a new car every two years, housal equity gains at 14% per year, free quality medical care and elective surgeries for everyone, jobs that require no work, no sweat, no dirt under the fingernails and no effort, gasoline at a dollar twelve a gallon, forgotten wars fought by forgotten losers and paid for by others, meat at every meal, vacations to Disney World every year, gambling trips to Branson, MO every quarter, a house four times larger than the one you grew up in, fat guaranteed pensions, and a company car to commute home with every night from that finance, insurance, sales, or advertising job.

Damn it, no matter how I might present this, there's a piece of me that wants us to succeed, a piece of me that wants to light a candle instead of curse the darkness, to continue to live rich fulfilling lives in the same way we've been, but that piece has been ripped out by Rina Serrano of Merced and the tens of millions of other Americans who think like her. This is something of a personal paradox I have to deal with, but the more I think about things, the more I hear about what stupid things my neighbors do and want...the more I enjoy blogging about the sorrowful decrepit state of my Merika.

The Man

I want to know...what is America's obsessive, compulsive infatuation with what CEOs make? What celebrities are worth?

I'm pretty sure that at least one monthly lead article per year in Forbes, Money Magazine, SmartMoney Magazine, Kiplinger's...all of them, have an article on what the top dogs are making. My newspaper ranks the top 500 in the US, the top 100 in the world, and the top 50 in the Sacramento region.

Why, exactly, should I care?

Why do I need to spend time understanding the bonus and stock option structure for the CFO of Pfizer? How, exactly, would that make a $50 dollar an hour electrical engineer better able to manage his own finances?

I've often wondered, as well, why ordinary folks, you and I, why we subscribe to Car and Driver, and read about the handling characteristics of a $239,000 Gallardo 850 twin turbo. What the fuck is that all about, huh? You don't even know a guy who knows a guy who has one.

I'll tell you what it's about. It's about our American ethos of fame without effort, luxury without sacrifice, wealth without risk. We drool at the Man's salary and tell ourselves that if we had that much money we wouldn't be working any longer, while claiming that the Man is holding us down. We loudly bawl when we can't get past the first American Idol audition. We put blinkers on and intentionally ignore the true percentages of fraudulent workers compensation claims. All these things, all of them, are part and parcel of why we live in such degrading, unfulfilling environments. We've eliminated the role of what the dignity of work brings to us, what it brings to our society. We drive out our garage doors, past the landscape guys edging our lawns, and don't even bother to acknowledge their presence. Never a kind wave or nod to the lineman or janitor; we're too busy twittering.

Now that there are a few million, a few million and rising, Americans out of work, perhaps we might finally develop some respect for the dignity of employment, that perhaps Homo Consumerensis is not what we should be striving to be, that to struggle and save are worthwhile virtues, that we can be measured by more than our paychecks & our possessions, and that there's no need to escape our own realities and live vicariously through CFOs, NASCAR drivers, and American Idols.

Merikan Express

I'm taken aback by American Express willing to shell out $300 bucks if you walk away as a customer.

First, you gotta pay off your balance like a good debtor, then let your card expire, and presumably three bills show up sometime later in your mailbox.

Think of it this way -- a person who has never once defaulted on their American Express bill is now so likely to do so that they think you're worth three hundred bucks to walk away and offset your potential to default. That is, you are already in default by $300 bucks, according to the company. That's your assigned risk, and they want to eliminate that risk, so see ya.

And oh, without knowing much about these sorts of things, my gut feeling tells me that your FICO score will be lowered by you dropping your credit line with American Express. Therefore, the cost of borrowing money elsewhere will increase. And who knows...maybe the long-term incremental cost of borrowing will be more than, say...300 bucks? Hmmm? A guess, maybe?

What? You say you're done borrowing? Yeah! Ha! Right! We live in an economy that can only function by borrowing, by going into debt. Tell me you're gonna pay cash for that new $51,000 LS460.

No Longer

I might have mentioned how Sacramento lost several dozen manufacturing jobs recently with the shuttering of the Kramer Carton Company, located in the hole of the SMUD campus doughnut. In all likelihood, SMUD will acquire this property (what better way to do it than under a distressed sale) and our forty five year dream of a contiguous property from 59th to 65th will be complete.

The link shows what sorts of manufacturing jobs were lost: offset printing and sheet feed operators, gluing, material handlers...these are the exact sorts of jobs that defined America for decades, that sustained families, that truly created things. We are losing them all to cheap packaging products made in Thailand that'll fall apart if it so much as sprinkles outside, but that's what we wanted. We got what we wanted; cheap merchandise and no jobs.

I make a bold claim that I produce electricity, and by most accounts I can stand by that argument, even though I sit in a cubicle all day...but the truth is, no one runs in hamster wheels to produce power. The protection relays I set are manufactured in Monterrey, Mexico, Markham, Ontario, and Reading, England. No Westinghouse or General Electric relays are manufactured here in our America anymore, where once they were exclusively built here for every U.S. utility and every other utility everywhere else in the world. Total domination.

No longer.

We're too good for that now. We're too busy shuttling our kids off to day care in our Land Rovers (made overseas), to our jobs in sales, finance and insurance (managing the affairs of products produced elsewhere), and back to our private 3,850 sq. ft. starter mansions, to our ribeyes (produced 1,500 miles away in some, some, well, somewhere) on the stainless grill (manufactured elsewhere) by the pool.

A Cheap Disease

At first diagnosis, my type I diabetes was a cheap disease. Two $20 vials of over the counter insulin and a couple of dozen 5 cent syringes and a $35 box of test strips would last me all month.

Today I'm on an insulin pump, using insulin I cannot legally buy over the counter (read: expensive), along with real-time glucose monitoring sensors. The total cost, not my share, but what my employer and I pay, is $1,395 per month. This figure is just for supplies, and doesn't include my "mandatory minimum" 5 endocrinologist visits so I can get prescriptions filled.

This cost is already more than the premium SMUD and I pay for medical insurance for my family. That means that every doctor's visit and prescription by any other family member is effectively being paid by other insurance premium payers, and every visit I make for anything else wrong with me is also subsidized by you.

For that, I say thank you. In fact, I am a permanent drain on your finances, one more reason on top of fifty thousand other reasons health care costs are rising at a double digit rate year over year, ad infinitium. My expectation for quality medical services is high and I expect not to have to pay for those services. I haven't yet...why should my expectations change? In fact, my expectation is that my future diabetic care will be even better than today, thrice as expensive, and I expect you, the healthy, to fund all of it.

Thank God, thank our merciful God above, that I've got medical insurance that others are paying for. Thank God I've got a cheap disease.

It Hertz, Don't It?

I'll be traveling to Colorado next month, but when I get there, thank God --thank our merciful God above -- that I won't have to rent a car.

Apparently this tough economy has hit rental car companies especially hard. It was reported today that a lady in Minneapolis rented a vehicle, only to discover that even with her stellar rental history with the company, she was given a vehicle with over 20,000 miles on it.

Horrors!

"You know, I've come to expect that new car smell nearly every time I rent a car, and now, I only get jalopies. It's unbelievable! Stained upholstery, the check engine light is on...these vehicles are used. This isn't me. What do they think I'm paying them for?"

Tricks And Traps

I pulled the napa cabbage from my CSA box this morning, sliced it up, and soaked it in salt water all day long.

After drying it this evening, into the kimchi mixture it went, and at this moment it's just begun its four day fermentation on my kitchen counter.

Homemade kimchi by a white guy is a freakin' gamble; I never know if the temperature is right, if it's too salty, if it will actually ferment, if the garlic and ginger are correct, did I add too much cod gill, will the Korean chili burn too much, etc. So there it sits. Waiting. I might be unpleasantly surprised.

While coating the leaves with my spicy mix I couldn't help this afternoon but to draw comparisons to my attempt at kimchi to our government's attempts at stabilizing the big banks. I'm wondering if the paper in their vaults is nothing more than rotten fermented cabbage, waiting to surprise the taxpayers should we decide to take ownership of the banks. Nationalization is the new "N" word. It wasn't a word uttered at this weekends' cocktail parties in the Hamptons.

How many credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and structured investment vehicles have been sitting there, fermenting away for months now, if not years? Look no further than BofA and their colossally fucked up partnership with Merrill to get an idea of the trap doors lying in wait for the government. We'll be entering the Mad Duke of Duckburg's castle:



Anyone at the treasury, anyone, as kids would have been Uncle Scrooge fans, eh? And they all grew up to become our tax evading and wealth hoarding treasury secretaries and economic advisers. Thing is, they all failed to remember the Mad Duke's catacombs, filled with booby traps at every turn. Tricks and traps might be the only things lining the Citi and BofA bank vaults.

Sidewalk To Nowhere

My wife had a sixth foot surgery Thursday, to correct a hammertoe that was a consequence of having broke her foot a decade ago. Today I wheeled her into the doctor's office.

As we drove north on Franklin Blvd., you can't help but notice all the new construction work tearing out the old fixed corners and adding wheelchair ramp accessible corners. There must be a few hundred thousand of these throughout the Sacramento region, and for the past dozen years crews have been slowly replacing them all.

Sidewalks, where they are used, are not amenities -- they are a fundamental part of our urban transportation system. But they aren't used on Franklin Blvd. I do not know how to say this without sounding like an insensitive prick, but spending money on Franklin Blvd., miles from anywhere, to change a sidewalk that nobody uses is the ultimate in fiscal insanity. You can bitch all day long about how much you pay in taxes, but you're gonna pay to have these installed on a street that not one single wheelchair bound person will ever, ever use.

Why am I so sure? First of all, in fifteen years, I ain't seen one wheelchair on this part of Franklin. Zero. Secondly, if healthy two-legged people won't use the fucking sidewalk to hoof it two and a half miles to the store, why would anyone who's crippled? Thirdly, you can argue that all people have to do is wheel themselves to a bus stop, but the bus stops in the southbound direction aren't at corners:

Note: Bike shown for scale

What, is someone gonna bounce the curb, across two lanes of fifty mile an hour traffic, up the curb into the bushed over median, down the curb, across another two lanes of fifty mile an hour traffic, and back up the curb?

This is one more reason, atop a hundred thousand other reasons, why suburbia is such a colossal waste of our national wealth, why city councils are constantly looking for creative ways to grow their tax bases because suburban property taxes don't come close to paying for all these billions of feet of concrete, reinforcing steel, asphalt, sewer lines, etc., and then to come back a dozen years later to add wheelchair ramps.

The taxes paid don't cover the services provided, so urban core property taxes subsidize suburban sprawl, or else the city has no choice but to continue to grow, to build more houses, and to tax future residents, an unsustainable proposition. Why is it that every, every! suburban city in America is fiscally upside down? Is it possible that because new construction has ground to a halt and every city government was planning on future revenues that have failed to materialize?

Sixty Four

Sixty four, the number of notices of default under a deed of trust, listed just this Friday in the Elk Grove Citizen newspaper.

They, the banks trying to collect, are apparently required to post these defaults a minimum of three times in a legal notice section of any newspaper. The Sacramento Bee doesn't carry any, probably because at $5 a line times 85 lines...well, you get the idea.

Now, more interestingly, take a look at the names of my sixty four defaulting neighbors: Gilda Sajul, Angela Barta, Richard Reyes, Geneveive Barber, Robert Sankey, Garrey Lemonte, Carmen Frey, Mahjabeen Akhtar, Aileen Moun, Cristina Cobain, George Smith, Esperanza Johnson, Sanjani Singh, Kendall Simmons, Salvador Nieves, Tom Donaldson, Rommel Evangelista, Viola Hansen, Carlos Contreras-Gomez, Alberto Gotladera, Edgard Corea, Tarlok Singh, Gloria Sinlao, Rakeshwar Ram, Ariel Obisbo, Sanj Jung, Nikolay Kosachevich, Trina Thi Vina Nguyen, Pagette Aduna, Loanne Nguyen...well, you get the idea.

So that I'm not coined a "coward" by our Attorney General, let me openly discuss race here on the Monologues. Let me be frank...there aren't too many white people defaulting. Why would that be, huh?

Whites comprise 59% of the Elk Grovian population. Actually, a fairly low percentage, compared to, say, Omaha, Nebraska. But looking at these names...they ain't white. Not even close. Well, OK, George Smith is probably as white a name as you can possibly come up with, but you can see my point. My defaulting neighbors are predominately brown.

I can take two viewpoints on this. One, that brown people were taken advantage of, were duped by white bankers, forced into mortgages they knew they couldn't pay but the white underwriter made her commission and that's all that mattered. Or two, these brown people were themselves unscrupulous, flipping houses and buying Mercedes and vacationing in Las Vegas and gambling until sunrise and fucking their relatives out of their life savings and buying designer clothing and binging on Grey Goose and communicating via Blackberry and navigating via OnStar... and...and...and...

If I have no way to determine who's at "fault," how the fuck will the federal government know? Should I bail out each class of clowns? Apparently so. Remember, we need to do everything we can to stop the tide of foreclosures in this nation, and if it means taxing the prudent (me) to support the imprudent (you), well so be it.

I'll tell you, with full sincerity, that every group of arriving immigrants is just as enamored with unearned riches as is white America. While my white America might get away with a hell of a lot more, nonetheless, everyone is rotten to the core. I've got Georgian and Bangladeshi and Iranian and Lebanese co-workers who are every much as starry-eyed about hoarding wealth and owning four luxury cars and living in three houses and growing rich as any native white guy.

Unearned riches is a fundamental tenant of America, regardless of the color of your skin.

The Elk Grove Citizen

My wife recently subscribed to the Elk Grove Citizen, the local newspaper. And I like it a lot. Considering my contempt for the layout of this city and most of its citizens, it's nice to get another perspective on things around me. Now, I largely do not participate in our community. My son isn't into sports, I work outside the city (along with 90% of us), I'm not into quilting, I'm not a horseman, and I'm not terribly interested in Civil War Round Tables. For those who are, great. These are the sorts of things that bind people together, and create meaning in our relationships with others. For the moment, I don't participate, even while I blog about how little sense of community Elk Grove has.

What I like about the paper are the letters to the editor, which this week are all against the new WalMart coming to our burg at Bruceville and Whitelock. Hmmmm....I wonder why.

All the letters suggest, some overtly and others quite subtly, that property values around the store will drop. Of course, all the letter writers are from property owners near the store. Here's my letter I'll submit for next week's edition:

I am a Laguna Vista community resident, and am overjoyed that a new WalMart is coming to Elk Grove. I am, however, at a loss for words to describe my anger towards our city planning department. If I had known a WalMart was coming instead of the Target that was originally proposed, I would have bought closer. Property values in Laguna Vista will plummet because it's not near the only store turning a profit in our tough economy.

Even more disturbing is that this store is no longer considered for 24-hour operations. How will our busy service-sector residents find the time to shop at this outlet if they can't patronize the store at odd hours of the day? Doesn't the city realize that all our community jobs are in retail sales, and that people won't have time off to patronize the WalMart? Considering that all those delivery trucks will now have fewer hours to deliver the essential goods we need, Elk Grove residents may be forced into shopping alongside these trucks, creating unnecessary air pollution and congestion. Spreading out operations over 24 hours would also decrease crime as employees would be better able to monitor the goings-on in their parking lot.

But the proposed parking lot is undersized! I'm concerned for the safety of my twelve year old son around all that consumer vehicular traffic squeezed into just two and a half acres (105,000 sq ft). How will our residents navigate their Tahoes through that?

Fortunately our planners didn't have the audacity to place this store on the outskirts of the city; I'm thankful they put in on the inskirts so we don't have to drive too far for our weekly purchases. I just hope that someday our community could be better informed by our city planners of such important retail considerations before we decide where to live.

Sincerely,

Insania

Myopia

I've worn glasses for distant objects now since 1994 -- fifteen years. It sure seems as if I've been wearing them my entire life. My pre-1994 memory has faded away, I no longer remember a life without glasses, or without a CPAP for sleep apena, or without an insulin pump tethered to me 24 hours a day, or without a night guard to stop nighttime grinding. I go to sleep with tubes, hoses, wires, and a plastic tooth guard. I'm only thirty nine. At this rate, by the time I'm sixty nine I'll have three more degenerative diseases and three more tubes, hoses, or wires keeping me alive at night, so I don't wake up dead.

But you know what? This is now. And now is all that counts. In modern America now is all that has ever counted. Those future diseases, that will be then, and now always wins.

The same applies to Obama's mortgage package, soon to arrive on our doorsteps. The ultimate in myopic vision, the costs of this massive subsidization of residential and commercial mortgages will become apparent during his late administration or with his successors'...but fuck the future. Now is all that's important. Homeowners currently underwater, not homeowners seven years from now, are in despair. A judge in Stockton who, trained in law, will now decide how much someone ought to have paid for a housal unit, not based on credit risk or other valuations. The whim of a few bankruptcy judges will decide how much to cram down, and by proxy, how much taxpayer bailed out banks are forced to write off.

No matter if future homeowners are subjected to insane credit costs, no matter. It's pretty blurry out three years hence.

Ex-Post Pricing

The California ISO has seemingly forever used ex-post pricing to determine the price of electricity after the supply of real-time energy. This, to some, is economic impurity...instantaneous exchange at a contractually determined price is most ideal.

You can perhaps understand why it was so important for me to cleave the whole idea of marketing electricity, to get back to the fundamentals of engineering the delivery. Delivery must occur, regardless of how some group of over educated dolts decide how to market it. You can be assured, 98% assured, that the engineering of market based mechanisms are designed largely to fuck you out of your money, because these people are employed to make themselves and others richer at your expense. Not you.

I was one of them. A big reason my mortgage is nearly paid off is because the electric ratepayers of California unwittingly subsidized my bloated ISO salary for eight years. Rest assured, I didn't give a damn about what rates you paid to support my lifestyle. Thanks to you, I have a boat, three cars, and a quarter acre stuffed with mindless consumer consumption trophies. I can sit here, dry and comfortable, and blog about excessive American lifestyles and the shitty landscapes we've created because of the creature comforts afforded me by my earlier consumer life and that I still reside directly in the middle of suburbia.

It may be impossible for you to brush my own hypocrisy aside. Truth is, I'm a late arrival. I only recently acquired a taste for less, and found it to be so much more rewarding. I am in the significant minority, but that's how I've always found myself, an outsider. I rarely identify with the group. I enjoy the company of many, many individuals, but I don't give a shit about the groups they identify with.

I might enjoy the company of any particular individual, but once lumped into the consumer group, or the mortgage defaultee group, or the Christian group, I take issue. I revolt. My current revulsion is toward the group of people (a growing number) who are financially challenged and whose burden will be eased with Obama's direct bailout subsidies. Remember, those designing the bailouts don't give a shit about the bottom rung schleps. This eighty billion will be used to compensate the lenders, to bribe them into accepting easier financial terms for those millions of distressed "underwater" borrowers. These borrowers, on the other hand, all of them, will now get ex-post mortgage protections. Bad interest rate? We'll change it after the fact. Bad purchase price? We'll negotiate it down. Bad payment? We'll modify it such that it's now "affordable" -- no more than 28% of your take home pay.

We will tax the prudent home buyer (me) to subsidize the imprudent home buyer (you).

Now, keep in mind, I'm very favorable towards many facets of wealth distribution, because I'm becoming convinced that the true wealth of our society can be measured by how well we take care of all citizens. But this is complete horseshit, folks. There is no mandatory requirement that we all be homeowners. I am willing to subsidize the ability of less fortunate people to acquire shelter, health care, and the like...but subsidizing their bad economic decisions and to keep them as homeowners? Fuck that.

This is no different, no different! than propagating the sad American ethos of unearned riches, perpetual leisure, and unearned entitlements.

The American Dream Come True

Another frustrating day for the monologueonian. Today the California state legislature passed a budget, but to garner the last Republican vote they eliminated the $0.12 gasoline tax. They also eliminated environmental review on a number of highway projects. Lastly, construction resumed on the $billion+ expansion of the Cache Creek Casino, expanding Californian's ability to earn money without having to work for it.

Thus I'll still continue to subsidize freeway building, not through gas taxes, but through every other tax I pay. Freeway users get a free ride. They don't even come close to paying a corrected users fee for their use, and instead rely on massive tax inputs from the general fund to pay for all those gold-plated roads. That's right, our state's and our nation's wealth has been squandered in excessive road building, and to fix our budget crisis we'll build some more.

Consider this scenario: A young couple, Clara the graphics designer and Nathan the regional sales manager have just closed on their first house in Lincoln, now that prices are down. Lincoln sure is nice, they think to themselves, nice place to raise our future family, but it sure is too bad that Nathan has to drive nine miles to get to the freeway and another fifteen to get to work in Sacramento. But the roads sure are nice, and with the 65 bypass coming by 2011 it'll be even nicer. Clara realizes that their new family will have absolutely zero tax liability this year, they won't have to pay for any of this new roadbuilding, because they'll get $15,000 in tax credits that they won't have to pay back. They feel a little bad for their neighbors Albert and Claudia who bough in 2008 and will have to pay back their measly $8,000 credit, and who also paid about 10% more because home prices are still falling. But they don't feel bad for long! Nope! In fact, they feel so good, they go out and buy Nathan a new commuter rig, a Durango, just in case they feel like taking the kids up to the snow. They saved a bundle, too, with being able to write off all the California state sales tax they paid thanks to the Obama plan. In fact, they now saved so much, and with gasoline so cheap, they're going to take a few "grown-up" trips this year, across freeways they didn't have to pay for, to the new recently built hotel forty nine miles to the west. You know, the one on former Indian Native American land, the one with the casino inside.

"Isn't life a dream?" Clara asks Nathan as they cruise the freeway to the casino. "It feels like a dream, an absolute, never ending American dream!"

I Saw The Former Passed Away

Someone like me, paying his home dilligently for the last eleven years, getting it nearly paid off and with a payment I can afford...suddenly, today, people like me are fucking clowns according to Obama. I'm a drain on our economy because I'm hoarding my equity. God, I'm such a prick, aren't I? As a reward for my financial stewardship, I'll get to help pay to keep other people's heads above water, through tax credits and the costs of renegotiating.

Those who can't pay, who owe more than their value, who are very nearly about to be evicted, well, they're the heroes of this economy now. They are the worthy ones, worthy of being saved.

Here's a cute scenario -- Clayton and Monica walked away from their mortgage in February of 2006, some of the smarter, earlier evacuees, and after a mild bankruptcy which eliminated all those bothersome consumer debts and endless collections calls, this "fresh start" is really what they needed to get going again. Thankfully, their former debts have passed away. Now they've scrapped and saved and have a goodly pile of cash and are ready to buy another home. Bankruptcy? No problem! Now that they have skin in the game, we'll loan ya....maybe a high rate, but hey, isn't a "home" worth it? And existing homeowners are going to help them, too! by helping to fund their 2009 $15,000 tax credit for buying a new home! And! If their home value drops futher over the next few years, they'll have the rights to cram down, or have the federal goverment help renegotiate their private contracts! What relief.

You remember Barney Frank last summer? I vividly remember him on the floor describing Hope for Homeowners, how last summer's plan would shield 400,000 homeowners from foreclosure. To date, it has renegotiated a total of 25 mortgages.

What is the only possible outcome of staving off foreclosures? Artifically propped up home values, and who, exactly, benefits from that? It isn't buyers.

The Car Czar

Sacramento had a Car Czar for a while -- a local auto shop owner who [used to] have an AM radio show on weekend mornings. I listened to it for years, gleaning bits of home maintenance tips that I've always used.

Just like mowing my own lawn, I've always done my own maintenance on my vehicles. Sometimes I think to myself, "why am I doing this?" Shouldn't I let some $8/an hour schlep do my oil changes, like all my neighbors do? If I make this supposed good wage in electrical engineering, shouldn't I relegate these menial tasks to menial people, like all my co-workers do?

I smash my own aluminum cans for recycling, mow my own lawn, rotate my own tires, build my own furniture, weatherproof my own house...these sorts of service related jobs I've always done. And I will continue to do them myself until I can't get down the stairs anymore.

This, of course, saves a bit of money, but for me it's been more about self sufficiency than anything else. These are the sorts of things that keep me occupied during nights and weekends, and I've come to enjoy them. These are the sorts of things that, during any real economic calamity, are critical for people to do for themselves. Fewer and fewer of my neighbors are even capable of pulling weeds from their lawn anymore, for it's too much bother.

Consider Geithner, our new Car Czar -- someone who most certainly hasn't changed his own oil since high school, if ever. His hands haven't touched an oil filter wrench in decades as they are more important holding Blackberries, cell phones and fountain pens. His hands are as unwilling to use tools as are ours. In my opinion, this is a core value that's being eroded away each day --the dignity of real work is diminishing.

If you're Geithner, or Obama, not dirtying your hands is called elitism. If it's you and me, it's progress. But it's the same fucking thing -- and our never ending quest for perpetual leisure has hit a brick wall.

Consider my own SMUD. If I had started work some fifteen years ago, all I had to do was work for 5 years and at retirement age, I'd receive free medical coverage for the rest of my life. This was unsustainable, so the rules were changed such that if I started work before 2007, I could work for 20 years and receive free medical coverage for the rest of my life. Still unsustainable, so then if I started work after 2007, no matter how long I worked, I'd only get 50% coverage. Looking at this trend, think what a SMUD employee will be "guaranteed" after starting in 2011 -- probably 5% at best, 0% most likely. This pattern is being repeated everywhere. It's clear to everyone that perpetual benefits aren't at all sustainable, but no! the automakers are different. Unwilling to negotiate their UAW contracts, they'd rather destroy every pensioner's guarantee than compromise to save their industry.

SMUD has somewhat faced that day of reckoning, but the domestic autos have yet to. How many new employees are going to willingly pay for all their superior's benefits that they themselves aren't going to get? How many new marginally paid UAW autoworkers are going to willingly pay for all their superior's benefits that they themselves aren't going to get?

The National Flower

The rose was officially declared the American flower, back when I was in high school, in 1986. It's also the national floral emblem, whatever that means. It wasn't enough just to have a flower, we have to have a floral emblem, too. That's how it works here.

The truth, however, is that the rose, native to North America, has taken a backseat to our real national flower -- the cloverleaf:



This one is particularly symmetrical, something I personally value. The thing is, all four corners are abutted by suburban sprawl, which is wholly non-symmetrical. Perhaps that's the real reason I don't like sprawl, that I can't find the center, the edge...maybe if we built symmetrical sprawl I'd better tolerate it.

In fact, I guarantee I'd better tolerate it, because I think it's a far more efficient use of land. Secondly, to enforce symmetry, streets would most certainly remain straight, and if we had more T-intersections we'd have slower moving vehicles. Not to mention a hundred different ways to get from B to A instead of dead 4-lane collector roads and 6-lane expressways.

As we're forcibly evicting people out of these non-symmetrical suburban housal units they are failing to pay for, perhaps they might be able to take up urban gardening in each of those four "leafs" in the highway interchange. Perhaps they might even plant roses on the margins, and further beautify Merika.

Gear Up

I took my son on the train yesterday to go see Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Lance Armstrong et al race in the AMGEN prologue in Sacramento. Talk about cool. I now understand why the French spend a day driving up the side of a hill, park there for several hours and cheer on their rider for the full half-second they see them whoosh by.

Thirty miles an hour, human powered. And interestingly, the race brought out all these Sacramento area bikers, all of whom are conspicuously absent this mild winter. I'm not seeing any uptick in bike commuters, as I might expect in an economic shitstorm. Nonetheless, I'm encouraged that there were so many there, and encouraged that many of these people are the activists for making what I do ride on as good as it is. Without a SABA, or without people trying to make a difference, there would be no bike lanes.

Contrast this with the Daytona 500 this afternoon. Our nation of NASCAR morons gears up to watch the big race, and I'll be one of them. Out comes my bible and barbeque. I spent a coupla hundred bucks on my Jimmie Johnson uniform jacket at the NASCAR on-line superstore, you know, the black twill. I bought my wife one, too, so we can parade through Arden Fair Mall and show our support. Jimmie's an athlete, too, you know. I chirp 2nd as I pull out of the mall, you know, because I can, and pretty much blow everyone else away as I hit the freeway onramp. These on days I don't ride my bicycle.

0.2 Score & Seven Months Ago...

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

My answer is a resounding "Yep."

In 2005 I owed a lot more than I do now. I would have to guess that the typical Merikan owes more now than then. I distinctly remember a dispatcher at WAPA who told me how, sixteen years after he bought his Greenhaven home, he owed more than the day he bought it. I simply cannot imagine that he's atypical. We cashed out refi'ed until rates approached near-zero, and even then we kept on doin' it while housing prices kept climbing. All that money, all that money, all that hallucinated wealth, has been wiped out, either by consumers buying shit they didn't need or by consumers defaulting on their responsibilities to pay back their debts. Those willing to pay off their debts (a diminishing pool by the way), will be paying for the next forty years.

In 2005, I had less savings. Today, my savings is larger and growing, in diversified holdings. I imagine my fellow Americans didn't have shit saved in 2005 (errr...capital gains were savings) and have even less saved today...although, I do hear that we are beginning to reverse that trend...people now are hoarding cash for their inevitable layoffs. So the guy selling movie tickets and popcorn in Elk Grove is saving his $9 an hour instead of buying movie tickets and popcorn himself in Rancho Cordova, so the ticket seller and popcorn maker in Rancho Cordova isn't driving to Elk Grove to buy movie tickets and popcorn because his hours have been slashed. Saving is so wrong, it should be made illegal.

In 2005, a had a well-paying shitty job at the CAISO, fleecing California electricity ratepayers, under the ruse of electric markets. Let the market decide. Free markets are the cure. The free market will save the middle class. Free market capitalism reigns supreme. Today, I've got a job producing electric power rather than marketing power produced elsewhere by others. This isn't a job that's going to disappear when we can no longer flip condos.

In 2005, I had no public transportation options to Folsom, and under the best of conditions I could only commute by bike 5% with absolutely no gasoline savings because the CAISO didn't have bike lockers. The more affluent your workforce, the more Lexus's are in the parking lots who's owners live in Serrano who would rather torch their genitals before riding a bicycle to work. The CAISO didn't give a damn about workforce showering, health and fitness, or commuting options. Today, I'm 95% car-free.

Things are definitely brighter and more beautiful in 2009. Wouldn't you agree?

Wake Up Dead

We've muddled our way through several rounds of stimulus now. The twelfth round is here and I'm wondering...what do we do if this eight hundred thousand million dollar public spending spree doesn't get us Merikans back to our own private spending sprees?

I italicize if, because I'm not quite so bold as to say when, although that's what I think's gonna happen.

The thing is, none of you have even contemplated the end game if this stimulus plan goes south, because it seems that no one, no one!, is gearing themselves up for living in a depression. Not one shred of consideration for the potential of having to live with less.

The way I see it, if a depression materializes, 10% of us will turn into delusional, panic-stricken dolts. 10% of us will have prepared. And 80% of us will stand around with our thumb up our ass, paralyzed by inaction and dumbfoundedness, like this couldn't possibly be happening to us. These are the same percentages that can be applied to virtually any American trial. During a blackout, 10% will completely lose it because they don't know how their $300 dollars worth of frozen meat is going to survive. 10% light their candles, burn propane cooking fuel and wrap up in blankets. And 80% sit in the dark and freeze, wait for two days at Home Depot for the next truckload of generators to magically arrive, or wake up dead from CO poisoning.

No one talks about "depression," much like we spent the better half of 2008 trying to avoid "recession," but it came anyway, didn't it.

Porkulus!

Wondering...do you feel eight hundred billion wealthier today?

To be honest, I'm actually feeling quite disillusioned, not over this stimulus per se, but this in combination with what California is going to do to cover their forty billion shortfall, and in the fact that the Bicycle Advisory Committee hasn't even acknowledged my application.

Remember my mantra: fuck hope. I say this with some degree of sincerity, because I've mostly come to believe that those who hope things are going to change or get better, or whatever they hope for, are actually part of the problem. I think I might go about my life without any expectation for change and just accept my surroundings, and have fun simply describing how things are. I certainly enjoy my monologging!

That said, consider this one item thrown into this Porkulus package -- that the sales tax on all new car purchases will be tax deductible! Fantastic! This is exactly what we should expect of an American stimulus package, right? If 72% of our economy is consumer spending, then subsidize consumers to spend more, and encourage spending in exactly the worst possible way -- more fucking cars!

Why new cars, huh? Why not condoms? Or crayons? I've not yet had a chance to read it all the way through, but it sounds as if you're gonna be able to write off the taxes on a new Kia along with a new Chrysler, so "saving our domestic autos" isn't the main focus. The main focus, apparently, is to keep us buying new cars to combat global warming, buying new cars to keep road builders building, buying new cars to keep Merikans mired in perpetual debt, and buying new cars to wean us off diminishing global petroleum supplies.

Then, couple this asinine subsidy with the state of California today cutting public transit funds by $459 million. We need to cut spending, for sure, and doing away with these transit funds ensures my 2009 prediction that my level of transit service will decrease, because I knew that my "green" California would step up to the plate by cutting transit funds and eliminating environmental reviews for highway building projects. Nothing I didn't expect from the greenest state in the nation.

Give 'em an Inch...

SMUD has long eyed a parcel of dirt owned by a third party in between its headquarters building and its distribution yard. Kramer Carton company owns a chunk of land right in the middle of SMUDland, producing cardboard packaging products for the last few decades. That is, until about three months ago.

The place has shut down, nobody in or out since November. Today, several Canadian tractor trailers pulled up and began loading industrial equipment from the factory. It is dead, as far as I can tell.

Yep, chalk up a few dozen more lost manufacturing jobs to this bad economy. Send those jobs overseas, because we want cheap-ass packaged Walmart products yet we refuse to pay American wages to produce them. Fuck the American manufacturer. Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile....what, they want health benefits, too? 401(k) matching? A day care facility? American manufacturers must be high.

I wonder...what will our economy look like when Obama "turns it around?" My guess? We'll have 5% in manufacturing and 95% in the service sector. Our national debt will approach twenty two trillion. Instead of 70%, 90% of our economy will be based on consumer spending. This will be considered progress.

The Greatest Generation?

My sister, a while back, remarked how we're going to be looking down the barrel of an boomer Alzheimer's epidemic during the next two decades. She referred to it as if the health care system in Lagos will rival that here in the U.S.

We're on the leading edge of a decade of double digit health insurance premium increases. There's only a few prognosticators who think this won't continue. Add to these double digit increases a massive wave of aging baby boomers and all their afflictions that come with age. Furthermore, couple all this with their retirements -- i.e., the deprivation of their productivity and the loss of massive consumer spending...

It doesn't appear we have a whole lot going for us over the next few decades; those of us non-boomers. The boomers themselves; well, they'll have lived comfortably through fifty years of relative peace and economic prosperity, burned through 55% of our oil endowment, and will have enjoyed social security and medicare that will go insolvent just as they all die off.

I've never really explored the issue here on my Monologues, but I have hinted how the boomer generation will have left us with broken and bankrupt social and economic systems, possible global warming consequences, suburban living arrangements requiring heroic quantities of diminishing energy reserves they themselves burned indiscriminately, tens of trillions of dollars of public debts, destroyed natural habitats, unfishable fisheries, and superfund cleanups. They will have signed off this world with a collective "fuck you."

Today, boomers comprise the demographic least interested in our environment. I suppose once you reach a certain age, and having lived in relatively clean surroundings, you don't give a shit how you leave it to others to manage. They have the wealth and influences such that they don't have to give a shit. Fair enough. I'm certain my generation will do the same to the next, perhaps through other mechanisms. It might just be in our nature to trash what we have and pass on the consequences to others.

Smart Grid

We're primed to build ourselves a new, improved electricity grid. Obama mentioned this today in the same speech he mentioned our need to turn our economy around...back to the same debt-based consumer consumption economy?

I can't possibly imagine Mr. Obama has any idea what a smart grid is, because my co-workers and I, all electric provider professionals in bulk transmission, have no idea what a smart grid is.

A smart grid, apparently, will allow the seamless integration of millions of rooftop solar installations, all working in concert with the several hundred thousand wind generators, biomass, and wood pulp burning power plants, with several million smart consumers who will program their smart dishwashers and smart heat pumps to cycle on and off based on demand patterns and price signals and allow their millions of plug-in hybrid cars to power the grid when demand is high and absorb power when demand wanes. A smart grid will also switch power where it's needed, when it's needed, without bothersome and time intensive human interventions. A trillion bits of customer usage data will stream into the control center, all managed by a smart, trillion dollar WOPR, controlling your solar PV output, adjusting the pitch on your wind turbines, turning off and on your iPod charging stations...

Really.

Like we don't already route electricity where it's needed, when it's needed. Like we have integration issues with our forty seven grid-tied rooftop solar PV systems. Like we have these millions of Chevy volts in driveways across America. Like we have time of use metering installed in every house, all of which have installed appliances ready to turn on once the phantom price signals from their utilities reach a designated pricing point.

Such bullshit. You are made to believe that the grid is teetering on the edge of collapse, built in the 1920's, archaic, decrepit, rusting away and outdated.

First of all, the smartest grid in the world won't stop your tree (which you failed to keep properly trimmed) from shedding a branch in a windstorm, taking out your connection. The smartest grid in the world won't somehow be impervious to lightning strikes, flying squirrels, or failed insulators. Underground residential distribution cables, at times, fail. They simply fail. The notion that you will be 100% immune from widespread blackouts or localized service interruptions is completely flawed.

The notion that a lattice steel tower built in the nineteen sixties is outdated & archaic doesn't recognize the fact that these towers are probably only a fifth the way through their service life. They will still be standing when my great-grandchildren are invalids.

Smart grid is not a substitute for smart consumption...which costs almost nothing to implement. All it takes are smart people, smart consumers, something chronically in short supply in this nation. To get a sense of where the smart grid is going, look to the California ISO, charged with implementing market efficiencies into the electric supply. Tell me that the ISO has decreased costs to electricty consumers by developing such innovations as forward markets and real time nodal pricing. Tell me that the ISO hasn't increased the complexity of power delivery thirty seven-fold while reigning over market meltdowns, 200% rate increases for San Diegans and duplicating energy control functions the utilites already have.

Smart grid?

Play On

I wonder why Elk Grove, Sacramento, or anywhere in the U.S. has consistently failed to build places worth a damn:



What's fascinating to me is that there isn't a single American who would object to a city whose streets look like this. Not one. And if we did build one of these places, shit, the demand would so outstrip supply that the rents would immediately become out of reach for ordinary people. It tells us how much we humans want and need human scaled environments. It's really unfortunate that only those with exceptional, exceptional means can afford to live in such places here in the U.S. that were all built prior to our sad suburban wasteland experiment.

These Parisian businesses don't look like they are in trouble. Probably wouldn't suffer much in a consumer recession, either. They have consumer volume, too, by nature of the 4 stories above them. Not likely one will ever be boarded up, dilapidated, pigeon shit on the overhangs, or a rolled up steel security screen needed to prevent theft. There are so many eyes out here that theft is likely non-existent.

They also have consumer volume from passing vehicular traffic. Please, never confuse my hatred of the automobile with some notion that they should be banned...far from it. My point has only ever been that we ought to build realms where humans and vehicles are cohabitants. The civic designers only had to install a few black posts to provide for a marginal degree of pedestrian safety -- they didn't need a fourteen foot high sound wall. Vehicles ought to be secondary in our daily interactions, not primary.

Now imagine sitting at a table in the breakdown lane on this American road:



Sounds pleasant, doesn't it? Dining and socializing in the median would be a rewarding experience, no? Dining next to people commuting from their office parks to their strip malls and back to their suburbs. No human interaction in their neighborhoods, in their office cubicles, in their Targets, or in their cars. It is not surprising to me, at all, that my nation is so full of drugged up, undereducated and underinsured NASCAR morons. It's a direct result, a direct consequence, of our bad living environments. It's why we can't drink alcohol after the third period at sporting events, because we don't know how to socialize responsibly. It's why we need to pass through metal detectors to see a comedy show.

Perhaps you might understand why I root for our destruction, why I root for systemic collapse. There might be no other way for us to reconsider how badly we've built things, and to finally start to build better places, and build better relationships with others. Only through sustained hardships would we finally look to our neighbors as neighbors, not as roadway competitors or as people in front of us in line at the large format retailer.

I would embrace a depression. I think I not only would survive it, I would thrive in it. I certainly enjoy blogging about how fucked up our environments are, and I think I'm better prepared than most of our hundreds of millions of debt-addled consumers. I think America could potentially become a better place. Only a major, painful event could possibly shake us away from unending suburban sprawl and unsustainable debt-based consumer growth.

So if this is just the start to a real depression...play on.

Change Never Comes

So much for change.

Steve Detrick votes in favor of a new Elk Grovian Wal-Mart! Horray! Let's throw a fucking parade, shall we, and celebrate the opening of yet another big box retail center! Run a parade down Elk Grove Blvd., celebrating the opening of another cheaply built warehouse, celebrating the destruction of any sense of community within a six thousand yard radius because of the oceans of asphalt and concrete needed to service the store, its consumers, and their parking needs, and celebrating the continued destruction of our local environment.

This new WalMart will be less than 100,000 square feet, on the corner of Bruceville and Poppy Ridge -- actually pretty far south of me. And all the new ancillary retailers are eagerly awaiting it's installation so volume can move through the strip mall, consumer volume. These little satellite retailers will be cellularized telephone retail, bible books, Asian foot parlors and take-n'-bake pizza shacks. The usual suburban shit. Nothing with any redeeming value.

Mr. Detrick, I gave him the moniker "the Sarah Palin of Elk Grove," how he led a grass roots effort to prevent a WalMart supercenter near his home. Now look at this fucking meathead -- he claimed there was a problem with one WalMart over 250,000 sq. ft., near his home, but there's no problem with two WalMarts each less than 100,000 sq. ft. a few miles away from his home. What's the difference, huh?

There isn't any difference, and he's no different than Mike Leary. He'll bring jobs to Elk Grove, yeah, so said his campaign promises. Good paying, community supporting jobs, too. And he did! Scores of nine dollar an hour retail associates! Wa-hey! Two of them could easily, easily! afford the median income suburban shitbox here in town, right? And the two cars they'll need to drive themselves to work, because E-tran doesn't run there yet.

Yep, the retail associates can live and work here in town. No longer will homeowners have to drive north to Sacramento, Ranch Cordova, or Folsom for jobs, and no longer will poor South Sacramentans have to drive south to work at the WalMart...because of the massive wages selling all that Chinese shit will bring.


This city is going to get what it deserves. It will someday run out of cheap land to "develop," run out of new strip malls, neighborhoods will turn into the suburban shitholes that Del Paso Heights and Valley Hi have become, and still have no sustainable job core. It will carve out a four lane expressway through the east side, destroying the character of the original agri-based culture of the region, all in an effort to shuttle commuters back and forth to northern job centers. When Elk Grove and the rest of this wretchedly sad social experiment fails, I will be the one throwing a parade.

Impact Is Imminent

Fire mission.

You know all that horseshit about how "today, a woman in her fifties is now the new forties?" Well, a trillion is now the new billion. We are looking down the barrel of a trillion dollar stimulus cannon, and we're preparing to load a #7 bag charge and fire it for effect in the hopes it will salvage our cratering economy.

Shot, over.



Obama yesterday referenced the need to get our economy turned around...but what exactly does that mean? A return to the heady days of 2003? 20% annual increases in home values ad infinitum? New his and hers SUVs in every driveway? Relentless suburban sprawl with its repertoire of strip malls, fast food huts, smog shops and office parks? The destruction of 'community?' Office parks filled with mortgage brokers, refinance specialists, title insurers, real-estate professionals, and a thousand other people in line to take their cut in your housal transactions? Turn it around, back to the old economy of debt leveraging and negative savings?

Shot, out.

Bringing out the big guns might just make a bigger cratered economy. Yet, it might be just what I've been looking for. All my pessimism regarding our shitty American landscapes and architecture, our entitlement attitudes, our wasteful attitudes towards water, energy, and fisheries...our disconnectedness to our land, where our food comes from, and the wholesale destruction of our ability to produce anything for ourselves anymore...much of these things I decry might actually be rectified by the shelling of our old habits. The stimulus shell is already headed down range.

Splash, over.

As we look up to observe the impact, we think, what if this doesn't work? What if it don't work? Can we really salvage a battle scarred economy by shelling it some more, shelling it with more of the same shit that got us into this mess? More freeway and bridge building? Continued hollowing out of our manufacturing capability?

Splash, out.

Impact is imminent. We will soon witness the firepower of the Obama administration, wondering what the shelling of a trillion dollars will do for us.

Two Parts Hydrogen, One Part Oxygen

On the 'morrow I need to depart in the semi-dark, starting my bike ride to work at 6:45 to beat the coming rain.

Rain. Something we haven't seen much of this year, or over the past two. If you were to plot the annual averages for the Sacramento Valley or the Sierra since they started recording such things (about 1870 by Central Pacific railroad employees) it's on a downward slide. Particularly the April snow pack at lower elevations, it's (on average) less each year, and it's not compensated by more snow at higher elevations. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter, what's to blame for this. In another 40 or 50 years we will have run out of scapegoats and we will have to address our profligate water waste.

Lack of water will contribute to SMUD's looming rate increase. Water is free fuel, and the free lunch has been suspended for a few years. Perfect timing with our cratering economy, eh?

But hey! Great news! Squaw Valley is now offering a Furlough Friday Program! State workers, laid off on all the 1st and 3rd Fridays of the month are offered $30 dollar lift tickets. Come enjoy the lack of snow on your long weekends, and now that your paycheck is reduced 10%, spend the money you now don't have on a recreational splurge you don't need!

Gas up the Yukon -- you know, the one you bought in 2006 that you're still paying on until 2012, specifically to handle the "conditions" of the high Sierra. Buy another set of binders and boots with those Furlough Friday savings you'll enjoy, complements of the Squaw.

Gas is cheap, and thank god for that, because all the Sierra resorts are much, much more dependent on gas and fossil fuels than they are snow. After all, they can make snow. They just plug into the Sierra Pacific Grid, utilize all that fossil fuel generated electricity and bam, man-made snow. The resorts then hope that the few hundred thousand gallons of gasoline their customers burn to get them to their slopes is cheap. Cheap gas means more snowboarders. Imagine what would happen to the snow economy if gas costs $4 bucks! Oh, the debauchery! The humanity!

Slumdog Millionaires

Now that I know a car costs about $700 bucks more than it should to pay for all their advertising, I am wondering about all the other things we also pay these premiums on.

I found this a few weeks ago in the Sacramento Bee:



This is called the Claremont. Probably a reference to the uber-expensive Los Angeles Claremont. At least, I think it's expensive there, along the 15 right underneath the San Gabriel mountains, along with Monrovia, La Canada, Arcadia. (hmmm...sound's like some good names for other "signature" home models or subdivisions, eh? Live the Good Life At The Monrovians.)

But Rocklin ain't got no mountain range snuggled up to it, so the builder decides to create some with all these fantastic peaks and valleys on this "signature" home. Some roof goes that way, other roof goes this way...mountains without all the snow, black ice, or bothersome coniferous vegetation. The roof is PV ready, isn't it? In twenty years when PV is cheap the owner can have a laborer install a little on this roof, a little on that roof...that is, provided the homeowners association or CC&Rs allow it, which is highly doubtful. Solar panels would fuck up the pretty mountain views.

Speaking of bothersome vegetation, none here to clutter up the view of the mountains. Someday of course, those little trees will grow up to be bigger trees, with icky, icky leavey messes. Good thing there are Mexican or Vietnamese immigrants hangin' around these days, ready to mow and blow so the owners can sit back and enjoy the mountain view. And it's a good thing they don't have to live next to these lower income wage slaves, Christ, they would bring down the half a million dollar property values. Can't have that. Let the house laborers and maids drive from their slums, because out here things are so laid out that the nearest transit stop is a mile and a half away at the Taco Bell.

Yep, the owners can sit back and relax on that huge, covered front porch and chat with passers-by; you know, the neighbors who will be walking to all those award winning parks. Yeah, a full sized porch swing, barbecue set, wet bar and six chairs could easily fit on that porch, so much better than the owner's last home whose front porch was too narrow to even store a bicycle.

No bicycles will be needed here, though, and thank God, too... imagine the expense of having to maintain two vehicles and a pair of bikes. Besides, bikes are forbidden anyway on all those "close" freeways, and only those with a deathwish would consider riding to those "close" major employment centers, what with the danger of riding on those four lane collector roads. Jobs in those major employment centers in Rocklin are in education, technology services, commercial, and retail.

Yep, I'm sure a Rocklin unified teacher and her husband the retail associate could easily afford to live the million dollar lifestyle there in Rocklin. Why would they even need to access those "close" freeways? Everything they need is accessible via a short, pleasant walk.


In my little humble opinion, we shouldn't be spending a half a million to live like a millionaire (another example of our continuing Merkian ethos of unearned riches). But people do, which is their prerogative, but all this does is lead to more suburban slumification. Fifteen miles from everywhere, miles of ribbons of concrete and asphalt, four thousand square feet and five bedrooms for two people and a springer spaniel. They are the real slumdog millionaires.

Borrow. Spend. Repeat.

I thought the opening line on the Chrysler Financial website was just a little too bold -- "We've got $1.5 billion to finance vehicles."

They've got? Well, I suppose they do now, now that we've bailed them. But man, to announce it like that, it's like a housewife telling a party full of unemployed people how great it is not to have to go to work. Completely without class.

Nonetheless, we aren't looking forward, are we...looking to the day where we don't have to borrow money to spend money and lock ourselves into another debt chain and then have to do it all over again. Exactly why would now be the perfect time to finance a new Charger?



Seems that it's always the perfect time to finance a new vehicle. Most certainly, the Super Bowl tomorrow will highlight sixteen different makes and models during the five hour telecast, each of which probably carries a $4,800 dollar premium per vehicle to pay for all that advertising.

That's just a guess, but I'd bet I'm pretty close. Knowing that the U.S. has the highest number of vehicles per person (845 per 1,000 people), and knowing that a certain percentage are replaced each year (10 to 16 million), you'd think that there would be no need to spend money to advertise something that Merikans take as their birthright, multiple vehicle ownership. How much of your newspaper is nothing but full-page dealership ads? 5%? Web advertising, billboard advertising, radio advertising, TV advertising, direct mailer advertising, sporting event banner advertising, magazine advertising...and I'm sure I'm missing many other ways they advertise. "The official SUV of the 2004 Olympic team." That's usually my favorite.

Edit: According to the 2003 Automotive News Market Data Book, automakers spent $508 on average to advertise each vehicle sold in 2002. So I was wrong, wrong by a factor of ten.