Altered Boy

Today, I consider myself fortunate that my parents weren't terribly religious. As to their beliefs today, I can't exactly say...that's between them and their god(s). That's how it ought to be, frankly, and I'm very happy that I was never an alter altered boy, subjected to the vagrancies of some priest or bishop.

This whole abuse issue in the Catholic church will come to pass, most certainly, but it only further cements my conviction against religion. This was only furthered today by the Hutaree clan, the Christian militia group in Michigan. Religion is the ultimate form of intolerance, which has no place in any civilized society in my opinion, and the only reason I bring it up on the Franklin Monologues is because belief in an afterlife has a direct bearing on the lives we live here today. Our living arrangements today are borne from the beliefs of individuals who think of their arrangements beyond this earth. The reason I have to lose my bicycle tool kit while boarding a plane and the reason our natural environments are ignored-- these are directly related to these beliefs.

Besides, I'm a product of an lifetime's exposure to multi-culturalism. If I were to suddenly ask for God today, which God would/should I choose? That's a tough question, because without blindly having been told which God to follow since childhood, I have the whole pantheon to choose from, and that only makes it that much more impossible for me to choose. Would I choose wisely? Incorrectly? Correctly? And how, exactly could I know? I'd spend the remainder of my life with persistent doubt, wondering if I really, really did make the correct choice.

Which one, huh?

I ask. I question. I have no clue as to what to believe, so I reserve judgement for the time being. Someday something might spur me one way, but for the time being I'm as happy as the next fellow. I don't need much, other than perhaps to live amongst tolerant neighbors, to ask that they behave as citizens rather than consumers; as people. This is up to them, and the more religious they become, the less likely they will behave as citizens, which is really an unfortunate thing.

Elk Grove Terrorists

I most certainly spend the better part of my time on-line blogging about the suburban slum that my Elk Grove has become, but I have to concede that Elk Grove does offer one very significant benefit -- it will never be the location of a terrorist activity.

I am never going to have to worry about some female terrorist blowing herself up on my E-Tran bus. I won't have to worry about any hostage situation on my light rail. There will never be sarin gas on my light rail car, anthrax in my water supply, or any electromagnetic pulse or nuclear detonation over Old Town Elk Grove. No dirty bomb will ever be detonated over North Laguna Creek.

No. These actions are reserved by terrorists for places that US citizens care about, and Elk Grove is most decidedly not on that list. Elk Grove has become a city not worth caring about, and therefore, not worth terrorizing either.

So while the city itself will turn into a suburban slum when it gets older, like Del Paso Heights, Valley Hi, Rosemont, and vast swaths of Carmichael, Rancho Cordova, Florin-Perkins, and Strawberry Manor, it will never have to worry about some religious or political radicals from seeking their virgins, martyrdom, or immortality here. Nope, they won't do it in Elk Grove. Domestic meatheads, on the other hand, are capable of just about anything, but then again, our cities are full of them.

The places most valuable, most worth living in, are also the most targeted. So Elk Grove wins some points for safety...wa-hey!

While we spend trillions (two endless foreign wars, body scanners, counterterrorist departments homeland security, classified activities, etc.) to save a few thousand lives at the hands of "terrorists who hate us" and to make white people feel safer, Elk Grovians will sooner die at the hands of other Elk Grovians who are really bad drivers. Two hundred and seventy nine of us will die in a car wreck on our own streets for every one death from a terrorist attack. The truth is, our own shitty drivers, enabled by our own shitty suburban designs, are the real terrorists.

They Are Transit

I spoke with two of my neighbors last night at a party, whom I've never met before and who both are RT drivers. We had a great exchange about transit and of course I offered all my viewpoints that I broadcast here on my monologues about urban design, how low density sprawl makes it virtually impossible for any viable transit scheme, and how subsidization of transit is perceived by everyone else as something to be eliminated.

One interesting thing is that they have to drive their cars to their buses as they can't take transit (they are transit!).

They didn't have any disagreement with my observations, and indeed, they told me they really didn't even think about such things, anyway. "Why aren't there other people walking around in our neighborhoods?" Perhaps it's because there are no viable destinations, that things are so spread out to buy a pack of gum requires a heroic 4.5 mile round trip, that streets are curvilinear offering nothing of interest to the eye, only a curving strip of the same housal unit after housal unit.

And, after eleven years of living on adjacent streets together, why did it take me so long to meet them?

Because I have no reason to be walking down their street, and vice versa. We both have front porches, but both are rarely used and rarer still would there be neighbors walking on the sidewalks willing to stop and chat.

Our suburban conditions in our nation, while on the surface appear safe, clean, and wholesome, offer a social pathology underneath their exteriors that aren't often exposed, but they are there. Extreme auto dependency and perpetual motoring and the inability to meet other neighbors due to isolation and lack of a common good, a civic/public realm.

I should hope it won't take another 11 years to meet other good neighbors...

I Ain't Rich Folk

I got into a good exchange with a co-worker at lunch yesterday, who effectively told me how utterly ridiculous it is to be paying down on my mortgage.

He indicated that with falling housal unit values, with interest rates in the dirt, and with interest tax deductible, it makes no sense to pay it down -- leverage it with your down payment, write off the taxes, and invest what extra principal you would be paying into stocks or other equities that earn more than the cost of mortgage interest. He indicated how wasteful my money is locked up into housal unit equity that can't be invested in anything else.

That sounds good on your computer screen, doesn't it? It almost makes sense -- use someone else's money (the bank's) to buy 85% of a house and gain 100% of the housal unit equity increase on your 15%. Borrow cheaply (say, at 4.75%) and write off the interest, while investing all your other monies into Vietnamese and Chinese startups and other emerging companies and earn 25%.

I suppose this is why I ain't rich folk....just someone who in 10 months will have his home paid for...

Green Only When There's Green

Here on the Franklin Monologues I've often gloated about how this mild recession has hardly impacted me, and I've got no moral issue with continuing to gloat, either, because I didn't get caught up flipping houses in 2003, didn't cash in on all my hallucinated 20% per annum housal unit wealth in 2004, didn't refinance to fuel debt based consumer consumption in 2005, or quit my day job to broker real-estate transactions in 2006. All I did during the boom years was to find a recession proof job, quietly pay down my mortgage, ride my little bicycle to work like a dolt, and live within my means.

My lifestyle of frugality and personal fiscal responsibility started with one defining event -- contracting type I diabetes on April 8, 1995. At that moment, realizing that my lifespan was immediately reduced by 15-18 years, I realized that paying into social security was going to be a total loss as I would never live long enough to pull a benefit, and that if I had any intention on retiring, I had better think about doing it in my 50s instead of my 60s. This condition forced me to concern myself with living within my means, paying off my housal unit in my 40s, and saving for the future.

That I didn't have the misfortune of buying a housal unit at the peak, that I didn't have the misfortune to have bought BluRay players, drive Mercedes and dine on Surf & Turf Beef & Reef instead of saving and living within my means, well, because of that I have the right to gloat. So I will.

The truth is, that while I might make the claim that I'm not affected by this slowdown, I indirectly am. SMUD raised rates over the past 18 months, partly because interest rates on income bearing accounts have yielded $18,000,000 less than originally projected because rates are artificially held down by the Fed. This is wrapped up indirectly into higher electricity rates. The same goes for my little money market account. The state of California yesterday approved another $200,000,000, another $200,000,000, to throw at tax credits for new home buyers. This is money this state doesn't have. The California Air Resources Board has decided to delay implementation of diesel emissions standards, AB32 isn't gaining any traction, and cap and trade are all suspended, due to the economy. Yep, California is only green when there's green, and brown without.

Clearly, I've got no power over any of this. You might argue that if this is all that I have to endure and to sacrifice in these tough economic times, that I'm a rather pedantic whiner. OK. I can accept that criticism, but I'm still working, still getting pay raises and a fat 2010 bonus, with a housal unit very nearly paid off with no other debts to speak of. The ability to gloat today only comes from a lifetime of reasonable living yesterday.

I will be forced to drive my motorized vehicle to work more often in the coming year, due to cuts to Elk Grove's e-Tran bus service and Sacramento's RT. The air will be marginally browner. Apparently, it's more valuable to society to extend tax credits for consuming new consumables, to artificially inflate housal unit values, rather than fund transit. Clearly, this isn't as valuable to me, but hey, I'm just a lone wolf out here in my monologues. I'd like to think that we are doing the correct things but I can't believe it. All I see are wasted efforts, wasted time, wasted energies, and wasted bailouts. I've a strong feeling that having taken care of my own finances and my own responsibilities will turn around to bite me in the ass, with higher taxes and lowered services for someone in my bracket.

2010 is still young. There is still a lot of year left, a lot of time to develop my forecast for a year of crisis rather than 2009's complacency. I still forecast home values to drop further, for employment to fail to grow, for our states and cities to make draconian cuts to balance themselves.

The Economy Of Scale

I am struck by this Elk Grovian who has been broadcasting his availability for work at the Highway 99 interchange and Elk Grove Blvd.


Photo from ElkGroveNews.net

I don't suppose there's a single Elk Grovian who noticed, noticed that the guy walked drove to the local WalMart to buy a pen and posterboard to broadcast his message to passersby. I don't suppose anyone ever put the two together, that cheap imported posterboard and permanent markers are among the reasons this guy can't find work, that there are no manufacturing jobs left in California. I'm pretty sure that if there were a permanent pen factory at that intersection he'd have already applied to drive a forklift, to operate a stamping machine, to do something.

This article was offered by the Sacramento Bee on the same day a regional economy article showed how some 370,000 California jobs were lost to China over the last decade. This is a small percentage of the total workforce, but Tommy is included in that figure, along with Hank, Sahm, Bill, and Terry. Manufacturing comprised 21% of the 1979 economy, while today it's 11% and falling further.

Of course it can be argued that our service and FIRE economy won't support manufacturing and indeed doesn't need to -- that all we have to do is innovate, design, and market those products made elsewhere. Apparently, that's our role in the global economy: to market shit made elsewhere, back to ourselves.

I really should stop arguing this point. U.S. manufacturing is dead, it won't come back, and apparently it shouldn't come back. Let those Asian nations with their lower labor costs handle that work. While they're at it, they can develop their own supply chains, support firms, engineering services, capital investment, and research and development. These things aren't important to the American economy, either. We only have to worry about selling shit to ourselves (10% of our workforce) and managing the finances of the selling of that shit to ourselves (another 10% of our workforce).

Next week will mark the last automobile manufactured in California. Yeah, there might be a one-off electric model produced here or there, but following the NUMMI closure next week we will have lost the last auto plant in the golden state. Let those Asian nations with their lower labor costs handle that work. While they're at it, they can develop their own supply chains like Modesto's Trim Masters, Tracy's Pacific Coast MS Industries, and Stockton's Kyoho Manufacturing, and their own distribution networks like Manteca's Mountain Valley Express. These support firms aren't important to the American economy, either. Let them die. Let them die so that I can save a few hundred bucks on a Corolla, because that's what I want. I want a nice, cheap imported car without having paid Californian laborers to make it. I, the employed consumer, stand to benefit the most, so why wouldn't I applaud this plant closure, huh?

Turn the plant into a Home Depot anchored strip retail power center. The more these things sprout up, the more the economy of scale will benefit me, the employed consumer. The cost of a piece of ABS pipe in Elk Grove will marginally fall as Home Depot pits Asian manufacturers against one another to see who can produce 6 billion linear feet of pipe the cheapest. And if they can sell 7 billion feet by opening more stores and gaining market share, I stand to take advantage of that comparative advantage.

Yep. From here on out I will no longer decry the evisceration of American manufacturing; I will embrace it and encourage it. I will take advantage of the economy of scale that warehoused retail offers, and I will no longer decry the loss of quality and craftsmanship as I'll make up for it with throwaway volume. Hooray for globalization! And hooray for being an employed consumer in the consumer capital of the world!

I Am Traffic

Truthfully, I can't think of anything more boring that watching a helmetcam of my bike ride along Franklin Blvd. Nonetheless, I am intrigued about doing it for any of a number of reasons. Here's an example of one from Holland:




This is one boring, boring video. But I'll tell you, to helmetcam my ride might prove to be very instrumental in a court of law someday, the day I get plowed over by some alpha-male jackoff or some inattentive driver.

I've been thinking about what it would take to gear up for a helmetcam. It probably won't take much to do, but it would be yet another thing to set up each morning as I don my leggings, my sweater, my shell, my gloves, my helmet, my glasses, and my iPod. While it might seem trivial to a non-biker, to gear up each morning takes a lot of time. I have to load my wallet, insulin pump, eye drops, Chapstick, cell phone, bike locker key, work badge, work clothes, yoga shorts, prescription drugs, shoes, underwear, shaving kit, toothbrush, towel, and then anything else like lunch, insulin infusion sets, or paperwork. This alongside checking for water in the water bottle, air in the tyres, lube on the chain, zeroing the odometer, and making any seat, pedal, brake or fender adjustments.

Yep, a helmetcam would be a pain to set up each day, but I think it would go a long, long way to show all the bullshit I have to deal with like this rider:

658304 from Bikesafer on Vimeo.

And, of course, to show in a court of law that I was following the law. I am a courteous, but assertive, bike rider who follows the rules of the road. I know the laws in California and I follow them and I am not shy about asserting my right to the road alongside cars. I would not, and will not, hesitate to assert my position on the roadway; I always take the left turn lane, the center lane, and any lane I deem appropriate to the extent that I can. I know the boundary between the legal right to taking a lane and the moral right to not do so when not needed. That's actually sorta fun for me. I enjoy biking along slow moving and stalled traffic -- I enjoy watching the misery of all those people stuck in it while I pedal alongside them. That's why I ride. I hate being stuck in traffic myself, knowing that I am traffic. I don't often get to beat cars home, but on some days I can, and that is pure adrenaline to this biker.

A helmetcam might be an appropriate use of technology for someone who abhorrs technology. Something to consider...

Promenade Parking

One thing of interest about our Elk Grovian Promenade Mall is that the parking lots are about 98% complete, while the buildings themselves remain years away from completion. Therefore, tomorrow I will offer an economic proposal to the city council, asking them to spend money they don't have to finish the parking lots. This should breathe new life into our city.

Parking at the mall takes up more space than the whole array of buildings at the mall. In fact, if you were to take the surface area of just the mall's parking lots you'd easily fit all of Old Town Elk Grove into it. Something of that size and something so close to completion should be allowed to be used by today's public and would 'jump start' our ailing economy.

My new start-up company, Insania Paving, will submit a bid to get the parking lots finished, which will give our misguided citizens a place from which to admire all that Elk Grove could have offered. 123,000 square feet of hot-mix asphalt and beautiful thermoplastic white line markings, and a correctly scaled chain link fence instead of that existing cheap-looking rent-a-fence, perhaps with two layers of concertina wire on top to keep out trespassers. Of course, Insania Parking Management Corp, the wholly owned subsidiary of Insania Enterprises, will provide for the security and the staffing necessary to maintain the parking lots and to service the self-pay kiosks needed to charge people to park there. It will cost $3.50 for unlimited parking, a bargain compared to other regional surface parking lots.

"A parking lot like the one I propose will be perfect for Elk Grove, a city whose citizens are 100% beholden to their vehicles, and to give people who decide to come to Elk Grove from elsewheres an exquisite acre of asphalt to admire," says Insania, who has owned and operated Insania Paving for the past fourteen minutes.

Elk Grovian mayor Sherman praised the parking lot development idea as a "giant step forward," noting that the development of more surface parking will ensure that part of Elk Grove does not take any giant steps forward.

The proposed white markings will be laid out in a unique diagonal pattern. Although the parking schedule calls for 5,125 stalls, it is not expected to reach more than 15 percent capacity, "guaranteeing everyone close access to the historic and numerous missed opportunities of Elk Grove," adds Insania.

Notes Insania: "I know that the Elk Grove Promenade Mall was possibly the last economic straw, that the city might have actually landed a project that would have helped revitalize that part of the city and the city's image. But thankfully, with GGP having fallen apart, with Barnes & Noble, Macy's, Cinemark and the six national restaurants pulling up stakes, and with my parking lot proposal on the table, I can help ensure that Elk Grove remains a run-down, wind-swept, weed-choked, washed-up shit hole for many years to come."

Hallucinated Prosperity

Is it a good thing, a good thing at all, that the all-American ideal of fakery be extended to other nations? In Britain there's an interesting idea that I guarantee will be emulated here sooner than later -- put up a fake shopfront to cover the blight behind it, to provide the illusion that there's no recession going on:

From this:

To this:



This is pretty amazing! I assumed such fakery, such hallucinated prosperity was strictly an American ethos. I was wrong! Here in the U.S. we are adept at using the U3 unemployment figure, which is less than double digits, to describe a real unemployment picture well into the high teens/low twenties. We spin 32,000 job losses in March as "not as bad as we had expected," as if that's a good thing. But it ain't just here, no sir. Britons are "painting" over abandoned storefronts to give the illusion of prosperity.

If I remember right, the U.S. needs to create about 92,000 jobs each month, in perpetuity, just to keep up with all the new 18-year-olds and college graduates entering the workforce. For every month we don't gain at all, we fall behind a tenth of a million jobs. At the height of the tech boom around here (actually, centered about 120 miles southwest from here) we created something like 150,000 jobs per month. At the peak. At the peak of the largest boom we ever had. Read: We won't be creating jobs anywhere near fast enough to get the real unemployment figure below double digits anytime soon.

Of course, consider that we build fifteen years of housal unit inventory in the span of about three, from 2003-2006. So, when the jobs do come, they ain't gonna be in construction. Consider that we consumed a decade's worth of junk in the span of about three. So, when the jobs do come, they ain't gonna be in retail sales. All those boomers who got caught up in all that housal unit mania, well, they ain't gonna let go of their jobs as quickly as anticipated. So, when the jobs do come, they won't be to backfill the aging workforce. We've got a ton of vacant commercial strip retail. Combine that with more than enough Targets and WalMarts and Asian Foot Massage Parlors and Joke T-Shirt Shops and Cell Phone Kiosks and Cigarette Shops, we won't need anything new for a solid decade. So, when the jobs do come, they still won't be in retail sales.

We've fuckered away all our manufacturing capability along with engineering support over the past two decades under the ruse of global wage arbitrage (i.e., so we could buy a toaster at a price that we didn't have to pay an American worker to make). So, when the jobs do come, they won't be in manufacturing.

Forget about the Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) economy. That ship already left port, and was last sighted somewhere at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef. They're not gonna come back. All those former florists-turned-housal-unit-flippers and real estate "professionals?" They're back to flipping flowers. So, when the jobs do come, they won't be underwriting credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations.

I think the best job to have, here in our post recession, in our recoveryless recovery, in our the-bottom-is-in economy, would be to mount fake storefront veneers throughout Cleveland, Nashville, Spokane, Ft. Collins, and Birmingham. You'd be comfortably employed for a long time to come.

I Could Have Been A Hero

"Americans braved blizzards to propel retail sales in February, pointing to a broadening in growth that will help sustain the expansion."

Makes your eyes well up, doesn't it? I'm wiping away the tears as I write, I'm so touched. We are well into the recovery phase as the last vestiges of that economic slowdown fade away behind us.

I thank all of you on the east coast for braving those blizzards and driving out to our malls and power centers to shop. You are the real heroes. I didn't have the chance to become a hero like y'all, because my Elk Grovian mall sits unfinished:

I could have been a hero, too...but I wasn't given the chance. I don't have a mall to drive to, a mall to shop at, a mall to meet friends at, a mall to power walk through. I didn't have the same opportunities you all did, and I'm ashamed. I could have been a hero in some child's eyes, too, but instead, I sit here a broken, dejected man.

I get to sit here at home, by my lonesome, on a Sunday night because I don't have the Elk Grovian Promenade to drive to, to spend my weekend evening. I'm not gassing up my Pacer, not stimulating our economy by driving and buying tyres and motor oil because I'm not driving to our mall. What a waste! If only our city council had acted sooner and permitted the mall just 16 months earlier, man!, what a difference that would have made! Sure, the Elk Grove Hard Rock Cafe still might have abandoned the mall but we probably would still have had all sorts of other fantastic restaurants and retail emporiums remain.

But that's water under the bridge. I didn't get that chance to shop, yes, but even so I wouldn't have had to face driving through all those dangerous and life threatening blizzards to get there, so I wouldn't really have been a hero like those millions in the east.

Walking Away From The Mortgage

I'm quite confused about how someone just walks away from their mortgage. Here in Elk Grove, while I've seen the guy behind me, two others on my street, and about 12,000 others in the city proper default on their mortgages, I've not seen one, not a one, actually walk away from their mortgage.

They drove away.

They drove away from all that underwater debt, and in one bold move each of them created instant household wealth. They might not be out of debt, but they certainly owe less altogether.

Since the inception of this blog I've punched up the national debt clock at the bottom of the page and over time I asked rhetorical questions about it -- does it matter? Is it debt our grandchildren will have to pay? What does it mean to you? Do you care about it?

If I stood on the corner and asked random Elk Grovians what the national debt was, I'd bet that only about 1 in 12 would even be within plus or minus $1,000,000,000,000. It doesn't mean anything to them. It can't mean anything to you if you don't even know how much it is.

I'm pretty sure my original thoughts on our national debt remain true -- the debt doesn't mean shit. My parents in the 1970s surely thought that rising debts then would straddle us kids today, which didn't happen. My grandparents in the 1950s must have thought that excessive debts then would have grave implications for my parents. It didn't. And it won't for my children, and it won't for my grandchildren.

So, while I will continue to allow some random number that doesn't mean shit to whirl at the bottom of my blog, I will go out on a limb and say this does not represent any debt to future generations, nor to my generation. It does not have to be repaid. Indeed, I believe it will never be repaid and therefore, it's not really a debt. It can't be considered a debt if we ain't gonna pay it back, right? Just like driving away from a mortgage, it's not a real debt if it doesn't get paid back. We've been, with the exception of about six short periods, increasing our debt since 1774.

OK, it might be considered a loss. Well, I think I live just fine, thank you very much. I have unfettered access to all our beautiful interstate highways thanks to that debt. I allow my government to wage foreign wars for continued access to the world's cheap energy supplies and for freedom, thanks to that debt. And because the government is willing to take on that debt that will never have to get paid back, I don't have to carry as much personal debt. I really won't ever have to pay for all that shit the goverment bought. Even if the consequences of national debt forfeiture is higher inflation, meh, I'll do just fine. I've planned for that; I'm a doomer.

Food Subsidy Pyramid

I just paid my yearly dues to my CSA, Full Belly Farm. Paying for food a year in advance in stunningly expensive. Doing it all at once highlights how much money we swallow every year.

Well, it only seems stunningly expensive because that check is written all at once, and, importantly, makes one aware of the cost of local, sustainable organic. I would gather that more people might like to join a CSA, but to shell out a check once a quarter or once a year is too painful an experience, and the cost per box seems out of line with going to the WINCO.

My endocrinologist informed me that low hematocrit levels (low iron) are common in type I diabetics, and that food today provides much less iron than it used to. An apple today has less iron than an apple harvested in 1846, primarily due to the industrialized processes we currently use. Full Belly Farm's practices, if I understand them correctly, should provide more per unit nutrition than from an industrial agriculture operation in central Mexico, along with a significant reduction in residual pesticides.

And, for what it's worth, eating locally reduces the burden on freeways and reduces gasoline/diesel prices, so you can drive farther and cheaper than you otherwise might. I'm such a nice guy.

In a sense, cheaper Mexican eggplant is more heavily subsidized by the taxpayer than Full Belly would ever be because the cost of trucking is not fully borne by the consumer. And following this argument comes this food subsidy pyramid:

showing how the foods that are the most heavily subsidized by our government are the foods that should be eaten most sparingly. There is no reason to wonder why this nation leads the world in preventable diseases and morbidity, when we so heavily subsidize relatively unhealthy food. There is no reason to wonder why health care costs keep going up faster than inflation, to treat such chronic diet related illnesses -- diverticulitis, gallstones, hemorrhoids, acid reflux, and...low iron.

Now. I have no idea, not one, about the origins of this pyramid, whether or not it's factual, even if it's accurate...but I have a very pronounced gut feeling that it is. Most everyone is aware that there is an American Cattlemen's Association and a National Dairy Council, but have you ever heard of the Alabama Asparagus Administration? Or the Colorado Cabbage Council? Probably not, and even if such existed they'd have virtually no lobbying power in Congress over the meat and dairy industries.

I eat 35-50 grams of fiber each day, above the 20 recommended and well above the national population's average of 10 grams. I'm forcing myself, somewhat, to eat my vegetables because I paid for them up front and I'm not about to waste them. I eat more veggies now than I ever have in my entire life, during which the first thirty five years I lived on a diet of hamburgers, pizza, fish sticks and Jimboy's tacos -- and about 5 grams of fiber a day. I still eat all that, oh yeah, but the ratio has decidedly changed.

But...Jimboy's tacos is God -- totally fantastic in my opinion; great, greasy, quick, tasty, and slathered with jalapenos. Man! And my waistline shows it. I struggle every day with food, struggle with eating right and with eating the right proportions. I am glad there are CSAs, glad there is a Full Belly Farm to keep me on the level.

Gas Up The Pacer

The northern winds these last few days have made the bike ride rather unpleasant, if only because I can't make it with just a sweater; I need the shell, but it's just not cold enough for both, so I sweat like a pig. It's just the worst temperature, 42 degrees -- the first two miles are cold as hell while I'm roasting for the remaining ten.

Yet, there are other bicyclists out there, and I'm impressed. They usually aren't moving quite so fast so the wind chill is lower, probably making their rides more comfortable. I am wondering -- are they out there because gasoline is $3 a gallon?

This was the price point that would destroy the American economy, remember? Eighty dollars a barrel and the airlines would implode, trucks would be idled, that sorta thing. Yet, because the price has only slowly climbed, apparently we don't complain about it, and the silver birds are still airborne, and the silver trucks are still motoring. $3? Meh...just suck it up and continue to gas up the pacer. It's just the price we have to pay in America.

I find this interesting, the public perception/reaction to gasoline. I love to watch news clips of complaining Americans. I would love to be a reporter at a gas station, asking random people their thoughts on the price. How many of them would share my view that it should be tripled? Not-a-one. It's all those wicked oil companies and their wicked Arabian co-conspirators, they'd say, while never lowering their own consumption.

As my SMUD raises electricity rates by 13%, as the cable bill rises, as water and sewer definitely rise, and as gasoline and diesel hover around three bucks we are reducing the average American ability to go out and buy real shit, you know, consumables and cyclicals, the things that make our economy go-run.

I should know. I got a raise at the beginning of the year but my health insurance premium rose more than the raise, so I'm making less. For all those still employed who didn't get a raise, I'm pretty sure their health insurance costs also rose. Granted, at least these dollars are funneled into that 16% slice of our our economy represented by health care. But it doesn't stimulate the remaining 70% that's based on us buying stuff. We are all buying less because we are making [relatively] less.

But...we're paying more for gasoline and we aren't hiring more American drill crews or refiners these days, and we aren't about to back off on that consumption and ride the bicycle one day a month or horrors! ride the bus one day a quarter. That's money that mostly goes overseas, never to return. Sure, some of it is recycled back to us via exports, but not all of it.

Will gasoline stay at $3? No idea. It'll stagger around a while, but I forecast it to continue to go up, while our economy sputters and falters.

Opportunities For Growth

An opportunity for growth -- that's what our Elk Grove Promenade has been recently labeled. Not by me, but by General Growth Properties spin-off company, "General Growth Opportunities."

I'll bet that there were a half dozen $186,000 GGP employees in Chicago who spent the better part of six months coming up with that new name. A name that represents optimism, hopefulness, and resourcefulness.

Oh, how our Elk Grovian Mall embodies the promise of economic prosperity!


Thousands of high paying retail jobs await the conclusion of this lost opportunity, while hundreds of ancillary strip services await re-locating near the mall to take advantage of the coming vehicular volume, all those potential hits.

Yep, the opportunities are boundless. Once all this business of our economic slowdown has subsided in a few months, Elk Grove will show the world just what a world-class city it truly is with its outdoor outlet mall -- how Elk Grove is the premiere place not just to live, but to shop.

Stay Indebeted, Our Economy Depends On It

Fantastic News!

In an encouraging sign for our economy, consumer debt increased last month for the first time in a year. Household demand may be on the rise. Wa-hey!

I love how taking on more debt is taken as a positive when the cause of the recession slowdown was the taking on of too much debt.

I wonder -- is it not possible to consume without taking on more debt? Can't we cash our paycheck, salt away some of it, and then pay for our purchases with savings instead of financing it? Apparently, we can't. Even with a supposed marked increase in our national savings rate we are still increasing our personal debt load.

On Monday, SMUD raised electricity rates 5.5%, part of an overall 13% rate increase shed-joooled over 18 months. I wonder -- is paying for electricity part of consumer spending? Does spending on utilities count in all these statistics, or only the buying of torchiere lamps, bath towels, wristwatches and Tupperware? I'm going to assume that it isn't. Thus, the five additional monthly dollars each SMUD ratepayer now has to fork over for power can't be used to grow our economy, to buy shower curtains, scotch guard, nail polish remover or chrome tire stem caps.

Of course, if you decided to salt away 40% of your paycheck for future needs, you could be tried for high crimes and treason -- you'd become an economic terrorist. As 72% of our economy is tied to how much you spend and how indebted you stay, saving your money is like planting a roadside IED on our road to recovery.

You insurgent, you!

The Next Call To Consume

The Sacramento Bee's editorial this morning -- it argued that as Toyota closes the NUMMI plant in Fremont on April 1, Toyota Motor Corporation shouldn't be shocked if Californians don't show up in their showrooms in the future.

What? Are you kidding me?

California is no longer a place to make stuff -- its role in the global economy is to consume stuff. We are exceptional enough such that we don't have to actually perform work anymore. Our job, under globalization, is to manage, finance, leverage, and insure other nation's manufacturing efforts. We want cheap merchandise and we don't want to pay the high wages to other Californians to have them manufacture it...so off to Vietnam, South Korea, and Bangladesh our manufacturing jobs go. They are educating their own engineers, their own production managers, they offer economic and tax advantages and they have a massive resource pool. So goodbye to the last auto manufacturer in the most autocentric state in the nation.

The NUMMI plant will represent the single largest loss of employment in California during this mild recession; 4,700 jobs and several thousand "ancillary" jobs that support the plant. And if the pattern for all former auto plants in California is followed, in its place will sprout a new mega-consumption-depot-complex with thousands of great paying retail sales associate jobs -- each one paying more than enough to buy that median Fremont home at $531,861. This will be just fine with me. We'll need even more consumption depots when our next president announces the next call to consume. It'll come. In the wake of some future national trauma the future president will compel us to go buy stuff -- a car, a tent trailer, a new wardrobe, electronic gadgets, a drum set, knitting needles, new shoes for Billy, you name it. Buy For America!

Tell me that we've laid out our Californian living arrangements such that our populace can live without a new Toyota every six years. Tell me that our autocentric state will voluntarily boycott Toyotas because of some plant closure. Right. Like our loss of HDVT manufacturing has somehow led to fewer people plying HDTV showrooms in the U.S.

The plant closure will eliminate 2,000 daily round trips across 580 through the Altamont pass because 48% of the plant workers live in the Central Valley. 70 million fewer miles will be driven annually and 75,000 fewer barrels of sweet Nigerian gold will be burnt. Closing NUMMI will get California back on the green track. Once it gets converted into that mega-shopping-complex and once "local" Fremont workers staff it, well, the green-ness of a local economy will shine through. All those Tracy, Ceres, and Stockton plant workers will have to find work in Tracy, in Ceres, or in Turlock, where unemployment hovers around 22%. They can do it. They are resilient Californians. They are exceptional.

Fuel For The Fire

I am interested in this tea bag party movement. Interested because one of the benefits of a depression as I pointed out some time ago was that our nation's over-indulged and overly complacent populace will no longer be able to sit idly by -- we'd have the courage to rally, to protest, to force reform. In this respect I see these teabaggers, not as the founders, but as the followers of a better national ethic towards reform. Look -- we can't force action on anything in this nation - not on our wars, our taxes, our energy dependence, nothing, and then we make the bold faced claim that our government is impotent and can't get anything done. Isn't impotence what these tea baggers want?

Not that I agree with the tea party. Not at all. They might be protesting specific taxation but they are totally and completely willing to enjoy the federal subsidies on their gold-plated sixteen lane freeways and cash their social security checks while ignoring how taxes pay for those. A national health care system? No way! Freeways? OK. They support a laissez-faire free-market system...free of governmental controls -- while ignoring the inevitable destruction of their "communities" as the only thing left in their cities will be a single 3.6 million sq ft consumption repository as it destroyed everything else in the last-one-standing economy of scale.

I also doubt, seriously doubt, that you will see a California tea party rally on the steps of the state Capitol holding a big bonfire rally burning all their newly extended federal unemployment checks using borrowed and newly printed dollars....Nope. Not gonna see that. But you might, just might, see a bonfire rally burning copies of that 2,000 page health care proposal. That, apparently, is an acceptable fuel for the fire.