I do not envision electricity rates going down or staying flat going forward. Do you? If you do, I'd be curious to know why you think so. Smart Grid? Renewables? Cheaper natural gas? A drop in consumer demand?
SMUD raised rates this year in no small part but to keep our credit rating high, so that our borrowing costs for capital work remains low.
Think about this. We raised rates simply to maintain our credit rating...a rating from the same agencies that four years ago rated all those subprime mortgages "triple A." Aaa. AA+. Aa1. Even though 73% of all securities underwritten as Aaa in 2006 are now considered worthless, SMUD finds it economically advantageous to stroke the dicks of these same credit rating agencies and raise rates to the ratepayers so these agencies will rate us "high grade." This way, others will be enticed to buy our bonds -- just so we can continue to provide power to our own customers.
This is one more reason why you pay more for your electricity, why you are losing just a little bit more of your productive output to the "financial sector," an industry comprised of a whole class of people who produce nothing and who's job it is to fuck you out of just a little bit more of your productive output. They take a slice, commercial bankers take a slice, insurance agents take a slice, brokers take a slice, and investment bankers take a slice.
Didn't realize that when you pay your power bill you are subsidizing all these leeches, too, eh? Yes you are, and you will until the end of time, because we now live in nothing but a service economy. We only take in each other's laundry while we don't actually do the laundry. We outsource that labor to Guatemalans. Half of us make our living selling laundry soap and cling-free fabric softeners, while the other half make our living insuring the workers and selling them housal units they can't afford. While the rest of the world is hard at work producing the garments and the washing machines, they will soon wise up and produce their own soap and their own fabric softeners. We'll wonder why our economy can't recover, wonder "why do they hate us," wonder why we can't find jobs other than retail sales associates or hamburger hut food purveyors, and wonder why gasoline keeps going up in price.
We'll wonder why.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Three Dollars Ten?
Apparently we were off about 500% regarding the quantity of oil being injected into the Gulf of Mexico from the uncapped wellhead left exposed from the blowout from the Deepwater Horizon. Somehow they are able to measure the quantity of leakage from five thousand feet below the surface of the ocean. We can measure it but we can't stop it.
Mass paranoia regarding it being worse than the Valdez, however. That's simply the bias in reporting. While it yet may be worse, yes, it's way too early to assume that. It might be stopped tomorrow for all we know -- there are an awful lot of intelligent people working on this and their efforts have never been more needed than now...their future depends on getting this thing fixed, and they will.
It'll be capped, the seagulls will continue to fly, shrimpers will continue to shrimp, and we'll forget all about this little incident in five months' time.
Think to yourself. Have you ever once heard of any offshore blowout in Nigeria? Nope, not here in Elk Grove. Elk Grovians could care less about what happens in African oil exporting nations...so long as oil is timely and cheaply delivered to our gasoline stations from wherever. The blowout of the #5 Funiwa well off the Nigerian coast, which leaked eight million four hundred thousand gallons of oil (ninety times what the Deepwater Horizon has already), has never entered into the collective minds of our Elk Grovians. Never. Not once.
Funiwa? Only 200,000 barrels into the ocean. A totally insignificant volume against U.S consumption of 19,500,000 barrels each day. We are leaking, at most, 5,000 barrels each day from this latest explosion, which represents 0.026% of our daily consumption. Three one hundredths of one percent.
This is insignificant. We ignore it. Because gas won't rise in price due to this event, we'll just wink and nod it off and go about our business and continue to perpetually motor about. It's Friday, and a non-furlough Friday at that -- off to our relatives' housal units in the Bay Area; out fishing in the delta; camping in Yosemite, dinner in Walnut Creek; shopping at the Galleria; gambling in Placerville at Red Hawk (kree-eh-ahhh). Couldn't hardly give a shit about some poor schlubs in Mississippi trying to shrimp. They are lower class , uneducated people, anyway, and shrimp today is cheap enough because we import 80% of all shrimp from Vietnam and Laos - All I want is cheap shrimp, and I'm gonna get cheap shrimp regardless of all those shrimpers in Louisiana who charge outrageous prices for their catch. Besides, Elk Grove is higher society, and as such it is much more important for us to recreationally use oil than concern ourselves with other lesser people's incessant, bothersome bitching about a little oil on their coastline or in their fisheries. All that oil that washes ashore in Louisiana is free. Free! Didn't cost them a cent! They get it for free, while out here in California we have to pay three dollars ten! Tell me who's really suffering here...it's us, paying so goddamn much, sheesh. Californians are the one's who are really suffering, you know.
Three dollars ten?
Mass paranoia regarding it being worse than the Valdez, however. That's simply the bias in reporting. While it yet may be worse, yes, it's way too early to assume that. It might be stopped tomorrow for all we know -- there are an awful lot of intelligent people working on this and their efforts have never been more needed than now...their future depends on getting this thing fixed, and they will.
It'll be capped, the seagulls will continue to fly, shrimpers will continue to shrimp, and we'll forget all about this little incident in five months' time.
Think to yourself. Have you ever once heard of any offshore blowout in Nigeria? Nope, not here in Elk Grove. Elk Grovians could care less about what happens in African oil exporting nations...so long as oil is timely and cheaply delivered to our gasoline stations from wherever. The blowout of the #5 Funiwa well off the Nigerian coast, which leaked eight million four hundred thousand gallons of oil (ninety times what the Deepwater Horizon has already), has never entered into the collective minds of our Elk Grovians. Never. Not once.
Funiwa? Only 200,000 barrels into the ocean. A totally insignificant volume against U.S consumption of 19,500,000 barrels each day. We are leaking, at most, 5,000 barrels each day from this latest explosion, which represents 0.026% of our daily consumption. Three one hundredths of one percent.
This is insignificant. We ignore it. Because gas won't rise in price due to this event, we'll just wink and nod it off and go about our business and continue to perpetually motor about. It's Friday, and a non-furlough Friday at that -- off to our relatives' housal units in the Bay Area; out fishing in the delta; camping in Yosemite, dinner in Walnut Creek; shopping at the Galleria; gambling in Placerville at Red Hawk (kree-eh-ahhh). Couldn't hardly give a shit about some poor schlubs in Mississippi trying to shrimp. They are lower class , uneducated people, anyway, and shrimp today is cheap enough because we import 80% of all shrimp from Vietnam and Laos - All I want is cheap shrimp, and I'm gonna get cheap shrimp regardless of all those shrimpers in Louisiana who charge outrageous prices for their catch. Besides, Elk Grove is higher society, and as such it is much more important for us to recreationally use oil than concern ourselves with other lesser people's incessant, bothersome bitching about a little oil on their coastline or in their fisheries. All that oil that washes ashore in Louisiana is free. Free! Didn't cost them a cent! They get it for free, while out here in California we have to pay three dollars ten! Tell me who's really suffering here...it's us, paying so goddamn much, sheesh. Californians are the one's who are really suffering, you know.
Three dollars ten?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Dream's For Sale
I believe the American Dream of today requires one to be asleep to believe in it.
We could argue all night long about what the American Dream is, but I like the definition forwarded by its originator, James Adams: the gradual accumulation of modest wealth through work and ability, facilitated through a social structure where each person has the same opportunity as the next.
Today, we've jettisoned that archaic, ridiculous 1930s notion. No! The American Dream of today is of instant wealth/reward, derived in a twinkling both through heedlessness and, occasionally, through dumb luck:
We could argue all night long about what the American Dream is, but I like the definition forwarded by its originator, James Adams: the gradual accumulation of modest wealth through work and ability, facilitated through a social structure where each person has the same opportunity as the next.
Today, we've jettisoned that archaic, ridiculous 1930s notion. No! The American Dream of today is of instant wealth/reward, derived in a twinkling both through heedlessness and, occasionally, through dumb luck:
- The bodies of those 29 Whiskey Victor coal miners who died last week hadn't yet even cooled to room temperature before a widow filed a lawsuit on behalf of her dead husband. Could it perhaps just have been an accident? Don't accidents happen, or is there always someone else to blame?
- Shrimp boaters are just as beholden to their diesel powered engines as the rest of Americans but wasted no time in suing BP over lost revenues due to that wellhead blowout. Suing for future money, for money that hasn't even been lost yet.
- Everyone who bought a housal unit in the last decade. Didn't they just assume unit values could only go up? 20% per annum, ad infinitum, without having to lay out any down payment. Leverage other people's money to gain instant wealth.
- Lawyers on contingency -- if the plaintiff wins, so does the lawyer; if she loses, the lawyer only loses time and effort. It comes as no surprise, then, that we live in the most litigious nation on earth as lawsuits represent the most extreme form of wealth without work. Spilled coffee, medical malpractice, improper labeling on a hammer or on a ladder...
- Indian Gaming -- sprouting up here in Northern California faster than marijuana dispensaries. Triple sevens and that beautiful Mercedes is yours.
- How many of your co-workers also became hot-shit day-traders in the stock market in 1999, running Ameritrade on Netscape? How many of them are still doing trades today, huh? How many?
- There's no shortage of advertisements on conservative talk radio on how to screw everyone who ever lent you money through bankruptcy or other means of debt elimination. That's the Republican mantra: Free-markets, damn-it!...until chapter seven of title eleven becomes your stop gap when you've gone overboard on hookers and blow.
- Social security disability for legions who have no problems negotiation their housal unit staircases yet can't seem to climb into their cars for a day's work at the office.
- Something for nothing -- EBT; free emergency room care for your Oxycontin/vodka binges; the bank of mom & pop.
- Huddling around the radio atop the three-legged-dinette each Saturday evening, listening to the weekly powerball drawing...hoping...dreaming...wishing...
- No interest until 2013! Wa-hey! Bring forward your material wants before you've even worked for them, and bring forward your 2013 wants to 2017. Always looking a few years out, but never where you are.
- American Idol hopefuls, looking for instant fame, who've never even considered that trudging from cocktail lounges to open-mics is another option, because that is a form of work...and Americans, apparently, don't have to work anymore with all our outsourcing of real labor to Asia and domestic labor to Salvadorean migrants. We only have to manage, finance, and insure all those laborers to make our living...the dream in action.
- Back-dated stock options. Choose the date, disclose it through poorly-worded and vague language to your shareholders, and wa-hey! Instant wealth!
- Go ahead: ask Charles VanDoren what became of his pursuit of unearned riches.
- Flip tranches of collateralized debts expected to fail, flip them to even bigger suckers, then take out insurance on the short positions -- sit back, and watch the money just roll in. Money for nothin'.
Look to the Kiwi Dream, New Zealand's version with a home on a quarter acre, at least one motorized vehicle, and a second vacation flat -- and see how this mirrors our American dream: the public display of wealth, a total disregard for your natural surroundings, and a total disregard for your fellow human beings.
You may believe that this might be the perfect little housal unit, perhaps somewhere on the North Island -- yet this also demonstrates how New Zealand's dream is utterly dependent on the consumption of ~160,000 barrels of oil per day against a national production of ~ 24,000, all needed to shuttle these housalunitowners to jobs in the city.
Look around your own housal unit, your own neighborhood, your own city. Do you see all of that being powered in the near future by batteries? Do you see your future roads being built from wind-generated synthetic asphalt? Your groceries delivered to your centralized warehoused consumption depot by batterized tractor trailers? Commuting a 90-mile daily round trip on car batteries? Do you have any idea of the social and real costs of generating all that electric power to "fuel" your batteries?
I think you really have to be asleep to live the American dream; a dream world where the service economy provides everything for everyone at all times; where cheap imported Asian manufactured items fill our housal units to the rafters with all sorts of time saving gadgets while bitching that we're always out of time; where energy is too cheap to meter, too cheap to concern ourselves with conserving; where incessant vehicularized motoring is required for every function of daily living, from buying a pack of gum to visiting grandma.
Your American Dream is for sale. Goldman Sachs has been fucking you out of a percentage of your sweat equity via higher borrowing costs and lowered interest on your savings and we just go along and accept it as an unavoidable cost of living the dream. Your dream; wealth without risk, riches without effort, fruits without labor, money for nothin'; these are going to continue for a very long time, yes. Your dream is now dependent on the efforts of foreigners, and on the dependency of energy from elsewheres. Yes, many of you will thrive, and you will thrive well...at least for the moment.
Four Dollars Thirty
I wonder what the California opinion is regarding this recent Gulf oil rig accident-- will we be even more receptive to drilling off our own coast?
The answer is "hell no"...at least, no for now. As long as gasoline is less than three dollars twenty, we'll forever be chanting "Save Our Coasts." Once, however, gas goes to four dollars thirty, Californians will change their tune. I'm sure we won't mind endangering our endangered marine wildlife "just a little bit" to keep commuting to Vegas every other weekend.
We'll, of course, prohibit California coastal drilling, but the Gulf of Mexico? Someone else's coast. Alberta tar sand water pollution? Too far north to care about. Along the West Side Highway near Bakersfield? Deserts are useless. The Nigerian Coast? Are you kidding me? A few oil slicks might actually improve the conditions in Lagos. Indonesia? Too brown. ANWR? Caribou are such useless beasts. Ecuador? Chevron's white lawyers will beat the brown indigents.
I ask this while blogging inside the most car-dominated culture on the face of the earth, a culture that sheds green tears for our coastline while demanding a growing percentage of imported oil from foreign nations and other states while we could care less about where it comes from and how it comes from...just so long as it comes.
The answer is "hell no"...at least, no for now. As long as gasoline is less than three dollars twenty, we'll forever be chanting "Save Our Coasts." Once, however, gas goes to four dollars thirty, Californians will change their tune. I'm sure we won't mind endangering our endangered marine wildlife "just a little bit" to keep commuting to Vegas every other weekend.
We'll, of course, prohibit California coastal drilling, but the Gulf of Mexico? Someone else's coast. Alberta tar sand water pollution? Too far north to care about. Along the West Side Highway near Bakersfield? Deserts are useless. The Nigerian Coast? Are you kidding me? A few oil slicks might actually improve the conditions in Lagos. Indonesia? Too brown. ANWR? Caribou are such useless beasts. Ecuador? Chevron's white lawyers will beat the brown indigents.
I ask this while blogging inside the most car-dominated culture on the face of the earth, a culture that sheds green tears for our coastline while demanding a growing percentage of imported oil from foreign nations and other states while we could care less about where it comes from and how it comes from...just so long as it comes.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A Never Ending Dream
As a teenager my best friend and I sailed sunfish sailboats from Richmond to Angel Island in San Francisco bay. Returning before twilight, the wind died as we were halfway back, and we were stuck in the shipping channel dodging Chevron tankers...with no running lights. We tried in vain to get to Red Rock Island to hole up for the night, but for the ebbing tide we never made it.
Two months ago the same friend and I tried to get to the island but I was again thwarted by currents and wind. Last month, I finally made it to Red Rock on a dingy, some twenty three years after my first attempt. While walking on the shore, I pulled up several pieces of hardened bunker fuel oil off the rocks, remnants from the Cosco Busan oil spill in 2007. I keep two pieces on my desk at work.
That wreck caused $70,000,000 in environmental damages through the release of about 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel (oil). Incidentally, this is about the same amount released each day from the uncapped wellhead left in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion last week. I suppose I shouldn't have assumed that the Gulf of Mexico, as large as it is, could easily absorb such a "small" quantity.
But, as we are so beholden to our BMWs and our Elantras we should expect that these sorts of "mishaps," while tragic, are nothing more than ancillary costs to living the American dream. Yes, we will try to prevent them, but hey, shit happens. Besides, who in Elk Grove really gives a damn about what might happen to a handful of seagulls off Chandeleur Sound, so long as a gallon of gas is a nickle less than it was the month before? Not a single resident. Not one. We go about our perpetual motoring with blissful ignorance regarding the destruction of mangroves in Ogungbe, Nigeria, to fuel our recreational adventures. Elk Grovians would likely vote to station our troops permanently in Iraq if it meant that gasoline would always remain below two-fifty a gallon. Just another cost of living the American dream.
It is a dream, isn't it? Aren't you living in a dream today? As you exit your Elk Grovian housal unit in the morning (although you owe more than it's worth you're still deemed a homeowner), preparing to grind out another solo-occupied vehicular commute 36 miles to Rocklin for work, do you ever stop, take in a deep breath, smell the spring-time wisteria and think, "What a dream this is! A never ending, beautiful dream!"
Two months ago the same friend and I tried to get to the island but I was again thwarted by currents and wind. Last month, I finally made it to Red Rock on a dingy, some twenty three years after my first attempt. While walking on the shore, I pulled up several pieces of hardened bunker fuel oil off the rocks, remnants from the Cosco Busan oil spill in 2007. I keep two pieces on my desk at work.
That wreck caused $70,000,000 in environmental damages through the release of about 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel (oil). Incidentally, this is about the same amount released each day from the uncapped wellhead left in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion last week. I suppose I shouldn't have assumed that the Gulf of Mexico, as large as it is, could easily absorb such a "small" quantity.
But, as we are so beholden to our BMWs and our Elantras we should expect that these sorts of "mishaps," while tragic, are nothing more than ancillary costs to living the American dream. Yes, we will try to prevent them, but hey, shit happens. Besides, who in Elk Grove really gives a damn about what might happen to a handful of seagulls off Chandeleur Sound, so long as a gallon of gas is a nickle less than it was the month before? Not a single resident. Not one. We go about our perpetual motoring with blissful ignorance regarding the destruction of mangroves in Ogungbe, Nigeria, to fuel our recreational adventures. Elk Grovians would likely vote to station our troops permanently in Iraq if it meant that gasoline would always remain below two-fifty a gallon. Just another cost of living the American dream.
It is a dream, isn't it? Aren't you living in a dream today? As you exit your Elk Grovian housal unit in the morning (although you owe more than it's worth you're still deemed a homeowner), preparing to grind out another solo-occupied vehicular commute 36 miles to Rocklin for work, do you ever stop, take in a deep breath, smell the spring-time wisteria and think, "What a dream this is! A never ending, beautiful dream!"
Off The Grid
I mentioned I won't be voting on California propositions any more.
California is probably better off if I simply abstain from voting, as I currently do with signing petitions out in front of the Safeway - I abstain from those, too, to prevent these fucking propositions from ever getting on ballots in the first place.
SMUD, like other public power providers, is going to have to spend a half million dollars, once California's proposition 16 passes, to hold a special county wide ballot measure to allow it to continue to provide electric service in Sacramento county. Once it passes, SMUD will not be able to offer services to new customers in Elk Grove without a 2/3rds vote from existing ratepayers. The addition of one additional customer would require a 2/3rds vote, because SMUD isn't the sole provider of electricity in its service territory.
Of course, this is a fantastical stretch of the vague language in this proposition, but you can already see what the net result will be from the passage of this proposition -- the real meaning of the proposition will only be determined by the court system after several years of litigation, because it will have to be challenged.
Who, exactly, will gain from this proposition? Litigators! And only litigators! A whole cadre of people who truly produce nothing; they only provide lawyering to others who do the producing.
I blog about this as if I want a particular outcome, but truthfully, the war has already been won by PG&E's $35,000,000 to the opposition's $40,000 -- an 875 to 1 spending advantage. Funny, the advertisements state how you the taxpayer should have the right to vote before a public utility spends money to expand service, yet public utilities are forbidden by law from spending money to support or oppose ballot propositions, even if they would seek to eliminate them. Also funny how PG&E only needs a 50% proposition vote to create a supermajority requirement. Brilliant!
Like I said, it might seem that I'm after a particular outcome, but I'm not...I really don't care much about what you are willing to pay for your power. Indeed, the more you pay, the better off I am as an electric service employee. As the owner of a solar array and a shareholder in a solar farm, I am looking forward to future electric rate increases which will make my investments in solar revenue-neutral even earlier, and this proposition can only work to increase rates -- PG&E claims that their shareholders will foot this $35 million bill, but with a guaranteed rate of return the money can only eventually come from ratepayers. SMUD will spend a few hundred grand just to send its own lawyering teams to court to listen to arguments!
If this is what you want, go right on ahead, slick. Keep on signing those petitions outside your supermarkets, offered by paid employees who could care less about what you are signing so long as you just sign. PG&E only had to spend $2,250,000 to get the required signatures for proposition 16, an insignificant blip of corporate money to allow you, the taxpayer, the right to vote! You do want to keep your right to vote, yes? Of course you do! So vote yes on 16, so you keep that right, Mr. Taxpayer!
California is probably better off if I simply abstain from voting, as I currently do with signing petitions out in front of the Safeway - I abstain from those, too, to prevent these fucking propositions from ever getting on ballots in the first place.
SMUD, like other public power providers, is going to have to spend a half million dollars, once California's proposition 16 passes, to hold a special county wide ballot measure to allow it to continue to provide electric service in Sacramento county. Once it passes, SMUD will not be able to offer services to new customers in Elk Grove without a 2/3rds vote from existing ratepayers. The addition of one additional customer would require a 2/3rds vote, because SMUD isn't the sole provider of electricity in its service territory.
Of course, this is a fantastical stretch of the vague language in this proposition, but you can already see what the net result will be from the passage of this proposition -- the real meaning of the proposition will only be determined by the court system after several years of litigation, because it will have to be challenged.
Who, exactly, will gain from this proposition? Litigators! And only litigators! A whole cadre of people who truly produce nothing; they only provide lawyering to others who do the producing.
I blog about this as if I want a particular outcome, but truthfully, the war has already been won by PG&E's $35,000,000 to the opposition's $40,000 -- an 875 to 1 spending advantage. Funny, the advertisements state how you the taxpayer should have the right to vote before a public utility spends money to expand service, yet public utilities are forbidden by law from spending money to support or oppose ballot propositions, even if they would seek to eliminate them. Also funny how PG&E only needs a 50% proposition vote to create a supermajority requirement. Brilliant!
Like I said, it might seem that I'm after a particular outcome, but I'm not...I really don't care much about what you are willing to pay for your power. Indeed, the more you pay, the better off I am as an electric service employee. As the owner of a solar array and a shareholder in a solar farm, I am looking forward to future electric rate increases which will make my investments in solar revenue-neutral even earlier, and this proposition can only work to increase rates -- PG&E claims that their shareholders will foot this $35 million bill, but with a guaranteed rate of return the money can only eventually come from ratepayers. SMUD will spend a few hundred grand just to send its own lawyering teams to court to listen to arguments!
If this is what you want, go right on ahead, slick. Keep on signing those petitions outside your supermarkets, offered by paid employees who could care less about what you are signing so long as you just sign. PG&E only had to spend $2,250,000 to get the required signatures for proposition 16, an insignificant blip of corporate money to allow you, the taxpayer, the right to vote! You do want to keep your right to vote, yes? Of course you do! So vote yes on 16, so you keep that right, Mr. Taxpayer!
Monday, April 26, 2010
My Wasteline
We've got around 1,000 barrels a day leaking from what's left from the Deepwater Horizon explosion last week, leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know if that's a big number. It's presumably leaking from the seabed, some 1,500 meters down. I dunno, seems to me that the ocean could easily absorb this leak, seeing how it's a mile underwater, the Gulf contains 560,000 cubic miles of water and 1,000 barrels is maybe five swimming pools.
This one rig alone highlights what we have to do to get oil these days; drilling through a mile of water, followed by a mile or three of rock with a $600,000,000 rig, all so I can blog using my oil-derived plastic keyboard; so I can burn it up on my motorcycle going 75 down my residential street at 1:33 AM; so I can fill the local landfill with broken Chinese-made plastic housewares and free plastic pens I receive while filling out forms at the insurance broker's office.
By the way, the drilling rig was manufactured by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the same South Korean outfit manufacturing most of SMUDs bulk transformers. All those well paid welders, shop forewomen, design engineers, process control managers...all of them lost from the U.S., lost overseas. Today the only jobs available are all those hot dog vendors in all those little hot dog kiosks outside all our Home Depots across America. No shortage of those high quality jobs, eh?
Let me consider an analogy for a moment. No one currently alive has ever seen a passenger pigeon, the last one dying in 1914. I wonder what it might have been like to see black clouds of hundreds of thousands of these birds overhead. I also wonder: what will people living in the year 2110 and 2210 think of our indiscriminate use of the one time allotment of petroleum humankind has been given? They most surely will have developed their own energy alternatives, yes, but they will still be drilling and will still be accessing petroleum, although at much, much smaller flow rates. It will be a prized commodity, unlike today, where even the lowest paid schlub only needs to work twenty-three minutes at her theater attendant job to buy a gallon of refined crude that contains as much energy as she can produce with 520 hours of hard physical labor. Future peoples will wonder how earlier generations were allowed to burn it up solo-commuting from Elk Grove to Pleasanton, from Hamilton to Dayton, every day, much like I wonder how earlier generations were allowed to kill 50,000 passenger pigeons every day for five straight months in 1878 in Petoskey, Michigan, the site of one of the passenger pigeon's last nesting areas.
We presume that the loss of the passenger pigeon means absolutely nothing to our existence today. I'd be floored if even 7% of our Elk Grovian populace have ever even heard of this bird. The future extinction of the lowland gorilla and bonobo will equally resonate quietly with Elk Grovains, too, as they will be much too busy fighting traffic in their electric cars to concern themselves with the goings-on in the natural world.
This is a tragic condition. I was never one to concern myself with my indiscriminate use of natural resources for many years, either; I never had to. I never understood what it meant to not have them as I've always had them, and in such copious quantities that it meant nothing to waste them. It's tragic that I was never educated about this, that these resources were valued just below my waste-line.
The year after I was born, the U.S. began its inexorable decline in domestic oil production and every year since we've produced less than the year before -- regardless of Deepwater Horizon technology and regardless of how many giant fields we discover. I believe that in my lifetime we will finally begin to realize the value of what we wasted.
Just like a modern depression that will likely never happen, likewise I will never see a true resource shortage in my lifetime. While I might want to see both, particularly for the societal changes that would inevitably occur, I will likely not see either in my lifetime. I have no true interest in living through a depression; however, I do maintain that living in a post-depression America would be better -- where people give a shit about where they live, where people care about their neighbors, where we build better social living arrangements and networks. It has been written, extensively, that our zenith occured in 1958 -- post war/post depression, but before the advent of cheap foreign consumables, before we fuckered away our manufacturing base, before all our discretionary wars for freedom. I didn't live in that era, but I presume many considered it our culture's peak because the generation before it suffered extensively and understood what it was like not to have.
This one rig alone highlights what we have to do to get oil these days; drilling through a mile of water, followed by a mile or three of rock with a $600,000,000 rig, all so I can blog using my oil-derived plastic keyboard; so I can burn it up on my motorcycle going 75 down my residential street at 1:33 AM; so I can fill the local landfill with broken Chinese-made plastic housewares and free plastic pens I receive while filling out forms at the insurance broker's office.
By the way, the drilling rig was manufactured by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the same South Korean outfit manufacturing most of SMUDs bulk transformers. All those well paid welders, shop forewomen, design engineers, process control managers...all of them lost from the U.S., lost overseas. Today the only jobs available are all those hot dog vendors in all those little hot dog kiosks outside all our Home Depots across America. No shortage of those high quality jobs, eh?
Let me consider an analogy for a moment. No one currently alive has ever seen a passenger pigeon, the last one dying in 1914. I wonder what it might have been like to see black clouds of hundreds of thousands of these birds overhead. I also wonder: what will people living in the year 2110 and 2210 think of our indiscriminate use of the one time allotment of petroleum humankind has been given? They most surely will have developed their own energy alternatives, yes, but they will still be drilling and will still be accessing petroleum, although at much, much smaller flow rates. It will be a prized commodity, unlike today, where even the lowest paid schlub only needs to work twenty-three minutes at her theater attendant job to buy a gallon of refined crude that contains as much energy as she can produce with 520 hours of hard physical labor. Future peoples will wonder how earlier generations were allowed to burn it up solo-commuting from Elk Grove to Pleasanton, from Hamilton to Dayton, every day, much like I wonder how earlier generations were allowed to kill 50,000 passenger pigeons every day for five straight months in 1878 in Petoskey, Michigan, the site of one of the passenger pigeon's last nesting areas.
We presume that the loss of the passenger pigeon means absolutely nothing to our existence today. I'd be floored if even 7% of our Elk Grovian populace have ever even heard of this bird. The future extinction of the lowland gorilla and bonobo will equally resonate quietly with Elk Grovains, too, as they will be much too busy fighting traffic in their electric cars to concern themselves with the goings-on in the natural world.
This is a tragic condition. I was never one to concern myself with my indiscriminate use of natural resources for many years, either; I never had to. I never understood what it meant to not have them as I've always had them, and in such copious quantities that it meant nothing to waste them. It's tragic that I was never educated about this, that these resources were valued just below my waste-line.
The year after I was born, the U.S. began its inexorable decline in domestic oil production and every year since we've produced less than the year before -- regardless of Deepwater Horizon technology and regardless of how many giant fields we discover. I believe that in my lifetime we will finally begin to realize the value of what we wasted.
Just like a modern depression that will likely never happen, likewise I will never see a true resource shortage in my lifetime. While I might want to see both, particularly for the societal changes that would inevitably occur, I will likely not see either in my lifetime. I have no true interest in living through a depression; however, I do maintain that living in a post-depression America would be better -- where people give a shit about where they live, where people care about their neighbors, where we build better social living arrangements and networks. It has been written, extensively, that our zenith occured in 1958 -- post war/post depression, but before the advent of cheap foreign consumables, before we fuckered away our manufacturing base, before all our discretionary wars for freedom. I didn't live in that era, but I presume many considered it our culture's peak because the generation before it suffered extensively and understood what it was like not to have.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Ask Anyone
"Suburban sprawl is fine because that's what people want."
This is an interesting argument. I live in sprawl. My entire city of Elk Grove is sprawl. Everyone who lives here, apparently, likes it because they wanted it. The truth is, the only reason I bought in suburban sprawl was because it was cheap. Cheap housal unit prices attracted me in 1997, and I bought based solely on price.
I did not base it, whatsoever, on the cost of energy needed to shuttle me to work, to the store, to recreate...because energy was so damn cheap to concern myself with. Gas at $1.57 a gallon and with a degreed salary the cost of energy was nothing. Nothing. It meant nothing to live 30 miles from work, 2 miles from the grocery, 120 miles from the coast or mountains which I visited regularly. I could easily afford it. I thought nothing of driving through South Sacramentan neighborhoods to do the things I I had to do -- get to the Home Depot, get to work, or cash a check. I incrementally decreased their quality of life by either commuting by their homes or clogging up collector roads near their homes. All the while, I'm living comfortably here in Elk Grove, here in my suburban bunker.
Today, I enjoy hearing about how Wilton fights to prevent the city of Elk Grove from encroaching on their "open space." I enjoy reading about how the city of Franklin wants to exclude itself from Elk Grove's expansion. I enjoy this because I know that the residents of these "communities" have never found the means to provide for themselves locally, and all of them require employment elsewheres to be able to live there. To hear a new acquaintance who lives in the town of Franklin decry his loss of "country living" while commuting to Sacramento to work...talk about hypocrisy. Why should I care about his "loss" of "community?" He commutes daily through neighborhoods and across freeways that enabled him to live in the country to begin with. He has fucked over, along with 174,000 others, all those "in-between" neighborhoods with his incessant motoring. Should his "neighborhood" be spared from the relentless march of sprawl when his own actions contributed to it? Should mine? Tough question.
We need to reset our thinking, our belief that all farmland here in Sacramento county is valued only as land available for suburban sprawl.
I often lament my earlier choice in my living arrangement. I have a picture from 1991 when my housal unit was first manufactured that shows the fields to the east as a vast open space. Buying my housal unit contributed to the loss of land for elderberry beetles, prairie grasses and burrowing owls. At the time, this meant nothing to me, and the "developers" gave even less consideration; they made a pile of money destroying this former open space.
I believe that if/as energy becomes more expensive relative to today, more Elk Grovians will view their living pattern in the same way as I do. More will see sprawl as a terrible allocation of national energies. I don't hold the view, as do most of my neighbors and friends, that energy will be less expensive in the future. Ask yourself, and ask anyone you know: do you believe that energy will be cheaper going forward? If not, then why do you suppose it's in anyone's long term interests to continue to allow the squandering of what energy we do have by building sprawl even farther away from everything?
Do you really think that technology will rescue us from our foreign-oil-dependent living arrangement? Do you really think that somehow our engineers and scientists over the past thirty years have overlooked some profound engineering/technological marvel that will allow us to live in a cheaper energy future? Do you?
I don't know anyone who thinks so. I don't. None of my electrial engineering co-workers do. None of my relatives or my friends think so. Not my mom. Not my sons.
So why the fuck do we continue building farther-away-from-everything suburban sprawl?
This is an interesting argument. I live in sprawl. My entire city of Elk Grove is sprawl. Everyone who lives here, apparently, likes it because they wanted it. The truth is, the only reason I bought in suburban sprawl was because it was cheap. Cheap housal unit prices attracted me in 1997, and I bought based solely on price.
I did not base it, whatsoever, on the cost of energy needed to shuttle me to work, to the store, to recreate...because energy was so damn cheap to concern myself with. Gas at $1.57 a gallon and with a degreed salary the cost of energy was nothing. Nothing. It meant nothing to live 30 miles from work, 2 miles from the grocery, 120 miles from the coast or mountains which I visited regularly. I could easily afford it. I thought nothing of driving through South Sacramentan neighborhoods to do the things I I had to do -- get to the Home Depot, get to work, or cash a check. I incrementally decreased their quality of life by either commuting by their homes or clogging up collector roads near their homes. All the while, I'm living comfortably here in Elk Grove, here in my suburban bunker.
Today, I enjoy hearing about how Wilton fights to prevent the city of Elk Grove from encroaching on their "open space." I enjoy reading about how the city of Franklin wants to exclude itself from Elk Grove's expansion. I enjoy this because I know that the residents of these "communities" have never found the means to provide for themselves locally, and all of them require employment elsewheres to be able to live there. To hear a new acquaintance who lives in the town of Franklin decry his loss of "country living" while commuting to Sacramento to work...talk about hypocrisy. Why should I care about his "loss" of "community?" He commutes daily through neighborhoods and across freeways that enabled him to live in the country to begin with. He has fucked over, along with 174,000 others, all those "in-between" neighborhoods with his incessant motoring. Should his "neighborhood" be spared from the relentless march of sprawl when his own actions contributed to it? Should mine? Tough question.
We need to reset our thinking, our belief that all farmland here in Sacramento county is valued only as land available for suburban sprawl.
I often lament my earlier choice in my living arrangement. I have a picture from 1991 when my housal unit was first manufactured that shows the fields to the east as a vast open space. Buying my housal unit contributed to the loss of land for elderberry beetles, prairie grasses and burrowing owls. At the time, this meant nothing to me, and the "developers" gave even less consideration; they made a pile of money destroying this former open space.
I believe that if/as energy becomes more expensive relative to today, more Elk Grovians will view their living pattern in the same way as I do. More will see sprawl as a terrible allocation of national energies. I don't hold the view, as do most of my neighbors and friends, that energy will be less expensive in the future. Ask yourself, and ask anyone you know: do you believe that energy will be cheaper going forward? If not, then why do you suppose it's in anyone's long term interests to continue to allow the squandering of what energy we do have by building sprawl even farther away from everything?
Do you really think that technology will rescue us from our foreign-oil-dependent living arrangement? Do you really think that somehow our engineers and scientists over the past thirty years have overlooked some profound engineering/technological marvel that will allow us to live in a cheaper energy future? Do you?
I don't know anyone who thinks so. I don't. None of my electrial engineering co-workers do. None of my relatives or my friends think so. Not my mom. Not my sons.
So why the fuck do we continue building farther-away-from-everything suburban sprawl?
Better Off Friday
One question:
If Earth Day is intended to highlight man's responsibilities towards his environment, do you think the earth more appreciated the actions of man this last Thursday, Earth Day, compared to California's Furlough Friday?
I commuted by bicycle yesterday during our Furlough Friday here in Elk Grove/Sacramento, alongside a substantial reduction in vehicular traffic. Shouldn't this have been more appropriate the day before, on Earth Day? A 15% reduction in salary as a result of these Furlough Fridays means that a large swath of California consumers are consuming less; fewer Chinese made imports being imported, fewer plastics being processed, less bunker fuel used to transport fewer items across the Pacific, fewer SUVs driving up the Sierra mountains to snow ski.
Seems to me that the earth, if it indeed is suffering at the hands of human activities, was better off Friday than on Earth Day.
If Earth Day is intended to highlight man's responsibilities towards his environment, do you think the earth more appreciated the actions of man this last Thursday, Earth Day, compared to California's Furlough Friday?
I commuted by bicycle yesterday during our Furlough Friday here in Elk Grove/Sacramento, alongside a substantial reduction in vehicular traffic. Shouldn't this have been more appropriate the day before, on Earth Day? A 15% reduction in salary as a result of these Furlough Fridays means that a large swath of California consumers are consuming less; fewer Chinese made imports being imported, fewer plastics being processed, less bunker fuel used to transport fewer items across the Pacific, fewer SUVs driving up the Sierra mountains to snow ski.
Seems to me that the earth, if it indeed is suffering at the hands of human activities, was better off Friday than on Earth Day.
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Other 364 Days
I felt a lot better over the past two weeks, because I hadn't been riding my bike to work at all. Yesterday for this so-called Earth Day I rode both ways and today I'm doing the same. I will be sore all weekend as a result.
Earth Day. Earth Day?
I don't know what to think of this "holiday," considering the ignorance we maintain for the other 364 days. Even still, I personally didn't see anyone change their daily habit yesterday. Trucks were still trucking, roads were still being constructed, laptop computers and iPods were still being charged, and there certainly was no reduction in traffic that I could see. Not a single additional bicyclist was out there, even considering we finally had some decent weather.
All these fossil fuel based lifestyle choices were thrumming along as if they had no bearing on our climate, our local air quality, our endangered dirt shrimp, on our ocean fish stocks. These are such abstract concepts -- peak oil, climate change, poor living arrangements -- that we all ignore them; they don't have any bearing on our lives in the moment.
All any of us wants is to resume our debt-based hyper-consumptive suburban buildout because our jobs are dependent on it, our 401k's are dependent on it, and our only known livelihoods are dependent on it. Our American economy is dependent on the destruction of all remaining local farmlands, dependent on the consolidation of remote farmlands into mega petrochemical dependent agribusinesses, dependent on the building and maintaining of freeways to transport said food items from industrial scaled farms to warehoused processing facilities to your Chinese made forks, and dependent on an ever increasing quantity of sweet Nigerian and Mexican crude to power it all.
The other 364 days of 2010 will be spent wishing for a return to the heady consumptive days of 2005, back when Earth Day was a hollow conceptual idea alongside record SUV production figures, when batterized cars were only in the wet dreams of all our pseudo-environmentalists, those who trekked to the mountains every weekend in their rigs to climb mountains in techno-gear and earned their paychecks in the Bay Area moving digital money from one computer to the next while taking their requisite slices off the top in our digitized service-only economy.
I find the idea of an earth day somewhat meaningless without also taking substantive actions, which we all are failing to do. The best our California Air Resources Board can do under these tough economic times is mandate cooler paint jobs on our cars. Really? This is the end result of 40 years of earth days?
Earth Day. Earth Day?
I don't know what to think of this "holiday," considering the ignorance we maintain for the other 364 days. Even still, I personally didn't see anyone change their daily habit yesterday. Trucks were still trucking, roads were still being constructed, laptop computers and iPods were still being charged, and there certainly was no reduction in traffic that I could see. Not a single additional bicyclist was out there, even considering we finally had some decent weather.
All these fossil fuel based lifestyle choices were thrumming along as if they had no bearing on our climate, our local air quality, our endangered dirt shrimp, on our ocean fish stocks. These are such abstract concepts -- peak oil, climate change, poor living arrangements -- that we all ignore them; they don't have any bearing on our lives in the moment.
All any of us wants is to resume our debt-based hyper-consumptive suburban buildout because our jobs are dependent on it, our 401k's are dependent on it, and our only known livelihoods are dependent on it. Our American economy is dependent on the destruction of all remaining local farmlands, dependent on the consolidation of remote farmlands into mega petrochemical dependent agribusinesses, dependent on the building and maintaining of freeways to transport said food items from industrial scaled farms to warehoused processing facilities to your Chinese made forks, and dependent on an ever increasing quantity of sweet Nigerian and Mexican crude to power it all.
The other 364 days of 2010 will be spent wishing for a return to the heady consumptive days of 2005, back when Earth Day was a hollow conceptual idea alongside record SUV production figures, when batterized cars were only in the wet dreams of all our pseudo-environmentalists, those who trekked to the mountains every weekend in their rigs to climb mountains in techno-gear and earned their paychecks in the Bay Area moving digital money from one computer to the next while taking their requisite slices off the top in our digitized service-only economy.
I find the idea of an earth day somewhat meaningless without also taking substantive actions, which we all are failing to do. The best our California Air Resources Board can do under these tough economic times is mandate cooler paint jobs on our cars. Really? This is the end result of 40 years of earth days?
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Waggin' Train
Naturally, during a party I was hosting at my house last night, the conversation drifted towards canine health.
My small underfoot dog is given Waggin' Train wholesome chicken jerkey tenders, chicken dog treats that come in a zipper-top stay-fresh bag. Waggin' Train treats are of the highest quality, made from only the best cuts of white chicken brest fillet while only premium vegetable glycerin is used, derived from palm and coconut oil(s). A 1.134 kilogram bag demands a $13 bill.
I emplore you to visit their web site, as I link most things here on my Franklin Monologues. Navigate to every page. Learn about Jesse, Jay-Jay, Matt and Cooper, the bull fighters/riders sponsored by Waggin' Train. Join the Waggin' Trail Posse and learn/share dog information from other dog lovers around our great nation. Learn about the Waggin' Trail team: Jerry the CEO who loves to play with his dogs at the oceanside; Michelle the chief operations officer, Michael, the vice president of national accounts; Craig, the event marketing manager; and Jennifer, the corporate project manager, among others. See if your dog's favorite treat flavor matches those of the Waggin' Train team. Won't you feel extra special if your dog prefers the same flavored jerkey tender as the CEO's dog? Won't you?
While you're visiting their website, try to find out who the factory floor manager is, the manager of the facility where these best cuts of white chicken breast fillets are processed. Try to find out the names of the manufacturing strategist or the production engineers, or the quality control supervisor.
Good luck. Not one single indication, not one fucking word about how these dog treats are made in China.
Their main web pages highlighs a 10-year-old boy with his dog in the back of his father's pickup truck, 8,234 miles from mainland China:
Think his dad works at the Waggin' Train production facility?
The factory floor manager is [my guess] Kai-Laing Leung, the lead production engineer is Rong Tseng, and the quality control supervisor is none other than Shao Tuan, all of whom live in the Zehjiang province. Tell me. You [and I] spent a premium to buy only the best treats for our pets. Do you really, really, believe that only the best chicken breasts are used for your dog treats? From a country that can't even manufacture a fork that won't bend while eating peas and that won't lose it's plating the first time you throw it in the dishwasher?
You'll buy a plastic Chinese water hose storage unit and bitch when the handle breaks two years later (and buy another one), you'll blow bubbles with your little girl with a Chinese bubble blower and bitch because the bubbles are too small, yet you'll believe that only the best Rhode Island Red chicken breasts are hand cut [by 14 year old Chinese virgins], fed only the finest grain, housed in only the finest henhouses, provided the purest drinking water, and given no antibiotics, all to give your dog wholesome goodness. Simple. Natural. Delicious.
What bullshit.
They've got a highly paid executive team there in South Carolina, all paid handsome salaries to manage the marketing, the sales, and the distribution of expensive treats to all their valued retailers, and you, the valued customer. Few of them actually do any real work; most only manage the real output produced by poorly paid Chinese factory workers. None give a rat's ass about how a whole generation of Americans will never find good jobs as they've all been outsourced to Asia...they couldn't care less, only that they have good jobs. I'd bet less than 7% of their US based executive team has ever even seen the conditions that their Chinese factory workers work in, has ever even concerned themselves with the [lack of] environmental controls of the effluents from their warehoused factory chickens, has ever even bothered with knowing how low the lowest Chinese worker is paid as they pit one factory against another to gain the maximum possible profit margin. Do you think they have ever once, even once, concerned themselves with the environmental destruction from their "natural" palm derived vegetable glycerin produced in vast plantations that stripped away all the rainforest in remote Burma or Papua New Guinea? Or of the massive Middle Eastern and Indonesian fossil fuel energy needed to ship these treats from overseas, across the midwest, to a grocery near the ranch in Fairmont Nebraska where that small boy tenderly loves his Golden Lab in the back of a classic 1950's vintage pickup truck?
Waggin' Train is an American Owned Company, as proudly indicated in the smallest possible font on the bottom of their product bags. Yep. American owned. And the Chinese? How long do you think they will stick around with this fucking arrangement, losing a fifth of their productive output to a handful of American managers, vice presidents and corporate executive officers? How long do you think it will take them to educate their own vice president of national accounts, for them to market their own Waggin' Trail treats to compete with Waggin' Train?
Sooner than you'd care to imagine...
My small underfoot dog is given Waggin' Train wholesome chicken jerkey tenders, chicken dog treats that come in a zipper-top stay-fresh bag. Waggin' Train treats are of the highest quality, made from only the best cuts of white chicken brest fillet while only premium vegetable glycerin is used, derived from palm and coconut oil(s). A 1.134 kilogram bag demands a $13 bill.
I emplore you to visit their web site, as I link most things here on my Franklin Monologues. Navigate to every page. Learn about Jesse, Jay-Jay, Matt and Cooper, the bull fighters/riders sponsored by Waggin' Train. Join the Waggin' Trail Posse and learn/share dog information from other dog lovers around our great nation. Learn about the Waggin' Trail team: Jerry the CEO who loves to play with his dogs at the oceanside; Michelle the chief operations officer, Michael, the vice president of national accounts; Craig, the event marketing manager; and Jennifer, the corporate project manager, among others. See if your dog's favorite treat flavor matches those of the Waggin' Train team. Won't you feel extra special if your dog prefers the same flavored jerkey tender as the CEO's dog? Won't you?
While you're visiting their website, try to find out who the factory floor manager is, the manager of the facility where these best cuts of white chicken breast fillets are processed. Try to find out the names of the manufacturing strategist or the production engineers, or the quality control supervisor.
Good luck. Not one single indication, not one fucking word about how these dog treats are made in China.
Their main web pages highlighs a 10-year-old boy with his dog in the back of his father's pickup truck, 8,234 miles from mainland China:
Think his dad works at the Waggin' Train production facility?
The factory floor manager is [my guess] Kai-Laing Leung, the lead production engineer is Rong Tseng, and the quality control supervisor is none other than Shao Tuan, all of whom live in the Zehjiang province. Tell me. You [and I] spent a premium to buy only the best treats for our pets. Do you really, really, believe that only the best chicken breasts are used for your dog treats? From a country that can't even manufacture a fork that won't bend while eating peas and that won't lose it's plating the first time you throw it in the dishwasher?
You'll buy a plastic Chinese water hose storage unit and bitch when the handle breaks two years later (and buy another one), you'll blow bubbles with your little girl with a Chinese bubble blower and bitch because the bubbles are too small, yet you'll believe that only the best Rhode Island Red chicken breasts are hand cut [by 14 year old Chinese virgins], fed only the finest grain, housed in only the finest henhouses, provided the purest drinking water, and given no antibiotics, all to give your dog wholesome goodness. Simple. Natural. Delicious.
What bullshit.
They've got a highly paid executive team there in South Carolina, all paid handsome salaries to manage the marketing, the sales, and the distribution of expensive treats to all their valued retailers, and you, the valued customer. Few of them actually do any real work; most only manage the real output produced by poorly paid Chinese factory workers. None give a rat's ass about how a whole generation of Americans will never find good jobs as they've all been outsourced to Asia...they couldn't care less, only that they have good jobs. I'd bet less than 7% of their US based executive team has ever even seen the conditions that their Chinese factory workers work in, has ever even concerned themselves with the [lack of] environmental controls of the effluents from their warehoused factory chickens, has ever even bothered with knowing how low the lowest Chinese worker is paid as they pit one factory against another to gain the maximum possible profit margin. Do you think they have ever once, even once, concerned themselves with the environmental destruction from their "natural" palm derived vegetable glycerin produced in vast plantations that stripped away all the rainforest in remote Burma or Papua New Guinea? Or of the massive Middle Eastern and Indonesian fossil fuel energy needed to ship these treats from overseas, across the midwest, to a grocery near the ranch in Fairmont Nebraska where that small boy tenderly loves his Golden Lab in the back of a classic 1950's vintage pickup truck?
Waggin' Train is an American Owned Company, as proudly indicated in the smallest possible font on the bottom of their product bags. Yep. American owned. And the Chinese? How long do you think they will stick around with this fucking arrangement, losing a fifth of their productive output to a handful of American managers, vice presidents and corporate executive officers? How long do you think it will take them to educate their own vice president of national accounts, for them to market their own Waggin' Trail treats to compete with Waggin' Train?
Sooner than you'd care to imagine...
The American Way?
I've asked before -- as an electrical engineer 3,371 miles from Wall Street, what do Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Lehman Bros. provide me? That they are able to take a percentage off many hundreds of thousands of banking, real estate and other financial transactions, how exactly does this help me?
Do I have more access to my own money in my own bank as a result? Do I have a lower interest rate on my mortgage as a consequence of what these firms do? Is my credit card issuer providing me access to credit with a lower annual fee because of JP Morgan? Is my interest rate earned on my savings higher due to the in-the-dirt federal funds rate aimed to bail out these firms?
What, exactly, do these firms provide me? Would I not be able to ride my bicycle to work if they didn't exist? Would my employer not be able to process my payroll if they didn't exist? Are there any consumer goods in my housal unit that, on their bottom, are labeled "made by Merrill Lynch?" Is my life insurance premium lower because they aren't there to manage it, invest for it, and hedge against it? Would SMUD not be able to build a new substation if these firms weren't there to issue securities for it, raise capital for it, or broker the deal to manage the bonds to build it?
All these questions, and not one reasonable fucking answer.
All I need, all I really need, is access to my own money. That's the minimum service requirement of my bank. I don't need them to provide me interest on savings through complex derivatives and collateral debt obligations. Look at my interest rate today -- 0.14%. This is what all these actions over the past two decades have provided me? This is my reward for taking on an additional $4,700 in present and future tax liabilities for bailing them out?
I am so, so damn thankful that I'm not going to need a mortgage service provider come 2011. I might just jettison my credit card and learn to live within my monthly means, which without a mortgage I should be able to manage just fine. Without any liabilities I won't need insurance.
I know the argument of the financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) "professionals" -- that without them, without their "lubrication," without their "making money more accessible," that I'd have a harder time acquiring credit, loans would be more difficult to underwrite, and my interest rates would be higher than without them.
A whole rash of people who provide nothing of real value to the economy. They don't build shit, they only market the production of things elsewheres to other producers. 11% of our economy is in FIRE and it ultimately produces nothing. It would not pain me in the least to see that percentage drop to 2%. I would not, in the slightest, feel like my standard of living had been reduced, believe that I'd have to wait twice as long at the checkout counter at the grocery, wouldn't be able to cash my payroll check or pay my bills. By maintaining a good payment history I'd have no problem accessing future credit, that people whether privately or publicly wouldn't lend to me.
But then again, we fuckered away our manufacturing base in this great nation so that we wouldn't have to build anything anymore, and all we had to do from now on was manage the marketing, financial engineering, and the insuring of the building of junk by dumb poorly paid foreigners to other dumb poorly paid foreigners and take our 15% commissions and build our own private rancherias and our own 3,400 sq ft garage mahals with our 3.7 vehicles and our gold plated freeways and fill our housal units to the rafters with cheap foreign mass produced consumables.
This is the American way?
This is what we spent 224 years to develop? A nation where half don't pay income taxes, a nation where one eighth uses food stamps, a nation that imports 53% of its energy? A nation whose "dream" is housal unit ownership without mortgage, wealth without risk, fruits without labor, winning lawsuits against faceless corporations for perceived damages, unfettered moral license, pay without employment, and the ethos of "default, then rent?"
This is the American way? Yes, this is the American way.
Do I have more access to my own money in my own bank as a result? Do I have a lower interest rate on my mortgage as a consequence of what these firms do? Is my credit card issuer providing me access to credit with a lower annual fee because of JP Morgan? Is my interest rate earned on my savings higher due to the in-the-dirt federal funds rate aimed to bail out these firms?
What, exactly, do these firms provide me? Would I not be able to ride my bicycle to work if they didn't exist? Would my employer not be able to process my payroll if they didn't exist? Are there any consumer goods in my housal unit that, on their bottom, are labeled "made by Merrill Lynch?" Is my life insurance premium lower because they aren't there to manage it, invest for it, and hedge against it? Would SMUD not be able to build a new substation if these firms weren't there to issue securities for it, raise capital for it, or broker the deal to manage the bonds to build it?
All these questions, and not one reasonable fucking answer.
All I need, all I really need, is access to my own money. That's the minimum service requirement of my bank. I don't need them to provide me interest on savings through complex derivatives and collateral debt obligations. Look at my interest rate today -- 0.14%. This is what all these actions over the past two decades have provided me? This is my reward for taking on an additional $4,700 in present and future tax liabilities for bailing them out?
I am so, so damn thankful that I'm not going to need a mortgage service provider come 2011. I might just jettison my credit card and learn to live within my monthly means, which without a mortgage I should be able to manage just fine. Without any liabilities I won't need insurance.
I know the argument of the financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) "professionals" -- that without them, without their "lubrication," without their "making money more accessible," that I'd have a harder time acquiring credit, loans would be more difficult to underwrite, and my interest rates would be higher than without them.
A whole rash of people who provide nothing of real value to the economy. They don't build shit, they only market the production of things elsewheres to other producers. 11% of our economy is in FIRE and it ultimately produces nothing. It would not pain me in the least to see that percentage drop to 2%. I would not, in the slightest, feel like my standard of living had been reduced, believe that I'd have to wait twice as long at the checkout counter at the grocery, wouldn't be able to cash my payroll check or pay my bills. By maintaining a good payment history I'd have no problem accessing future credit, that people whether privately or publicly wouldn't lend to me.
But then again, we fuckered away our manufacturing base in this great nation so that we wouldn't have to build anything anymore, and all we had to do from now on was manage the marketing, financial engineering, and the insuring of the building of junk by dumb poorly paid foreigners to other dumb poorly paid foreigners and take our 15% commissions and build our own private rancherias and our own 3,400 sq ft garage mahals with our 3.7 vehicles and our gold plated freeways and fill our housal units to the rafters with cheap foreign mass produced consumables.
This is the American way?
This is what we spent 224 years to develop? A nation where half don't pay income taxes, a nation where one eighth uses food stamps, a nation that imports 53% of its energy? A nation whose "dream" is housal unit ownership without mortgage, wealth without risk, fruits without labor, winning lawsuits against faceless corporations for perceived damages, unfettered moral license, pay without employment, and the ethos of "default, then rent?"
This is the American way? Yes, this is the American way.
Friday, April 16, 2010
All I See
Mr. Obama yesterday signed into law the extension of another two months of federal unemployment benefits. This will cost another $20,000,000,000 and will be funded through another round of borrowing.
We could argue all day long about whether we should continue these extensions, both sides have merit, but all I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely high unemployment.
I see serious consequences for loan modifications and the like, if only because we are artificially trying to keep the housing market elevated above where it would be if we hadn't done anything, and where I see it going to go regardless. All I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely the housing bubble.
Tell me...what's going to happen on June 15th if the next re-re-re-re-re-re-extension of unemployment benefits doesn't come to pass? What's going to happen to all that effort, time, and expense in processing thousands of loan modifications if housal unit values drop by another 10%? Will people be looking to re-re-modify their loans? All I see is that we are borrowing to forestall the symptom of previous borrowing, namely a depression.
On the radio yesterday I heard an economic commentator saying that the threat of a double dip (or any ongoing) recession is already behind us and that we are emerging from a V-shaped recession. We are on the / instead of the \, he says.
You could perhaps understand my contemptuous longing for a depression not because of the pain and hardship it would bring. I know it would suck, and it would suck even for those who are themselves employed and who carry low debts, but I want it for the prospect of what it would provide afterwards. We might become a stronger nation IMO. We might not sacrifice the future for the present. We might build places to live worth caring about, unlike my Elk Grove whose future expansion southward is predicated on the continuation of cheap foreign energy and the prosecution of foreign wars to support that importation. My feeling is that after a depression we'd likely jettison many of the habits and the conditioning that led to such piss-poor, anti-social, energy intensive living arrangements. If we are indeed on the backwards slope of that V, then we will have learned absolutely nothing, we will resume our southward blowout here in Elk Grove, and we will stick around waiting for the next bubble(s) and government bailout(s) while remaining in perpetual debt servitude.
We could argue all day long about whether we should continue these extensions, both sides have merit, but all I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely high unemployment.
I see serious consequences for loan modifications and the like, if only because we are artificially trying to keep the housing market elevated above where it would be if we hadn't done anything, and where I see it going to go regardless. All I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely the housing bubble.
Tell me...what's going to happen on June 15th if the next re-re-re-re-re-re-extension of unemployment benefits doesn't come to pass? What's going to happen to all that effort, time, and expense in processing thousands of loan modifications if housal unit values drop by another 10%? Will people be looking to re-re-modify their loans? All I see is that we are borrowing to forestall the symptom of previous borrowing, namely a depression.
On the radio yesterday I heard an economic commentator saying that the threat of a double dip (or any ongoing) recession is already behind us and that we are emerging from a V-shaped recession. We are on the / instead of the \, he says.
You could perhaps understand my contemptuous longing for a depression not because of the pain and hardship it would bring. I know it would suck, and it would suck even for those who are themselves employed and who carry low debts, but I want it for the prospect of what it would provide afterwards. We might become a stronger nation IMO. We might not sacrifice the future for the present. We might build places to live worth caring about, unlike my Elk Grove whose future expansion southward is predicated on the continuation of cheap foreign energy and the prosecution of foreign wars to support that importation. My feeling is that after a depression we'd likely jettison many of the habits and the conditioning that led to such piss-poor, anti-social, energy intensive living arrangements. If we are indeed on the backwards slope of that V, then we will have learned absolutely nothing, we will resume our southward blowout here in Elk Grove, and we will stick around waiting for the next bubble(s) and government bailout(s) while remaining in perpetual debt servitude.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
What Of?
Something I won't soon forget: my sister told me last year, in 2009, than she believes the next generation will have a lower standard of living than the generation that preceded it.
Is this possible?
Historically, I don't know if there's been any modern generation that's been worse off than the one before it. Perhaps an argument could be made that the generation of the early 1920's had it better than the generation of the mid 1940's, but I doubt it...even with a major world war they had penicillin, insulin, rural electricity, access to ever greater amounts of ore, timber, coal, and oil...they would most certainly had believed themselves much better off than the last generation, although I am only speculating.
Today I found myself walking through a regional mall and was disillusioned with the heroic number of shoe stores, women's wear and cell phone kiosks. Dozens and dozens of them. These are only available because of the earlier massive investments in groundwater filtration, in the electrical grid, in our gold-plated interstate highways, in our sewage and drainage networks. These are the things overlooked by all those well-to-do housewives spending their afternoons shopping at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday in a mall. These women couldn't give a rat's ass about what it took to develop the infrastructure needed to allow them to go about their lives of leisure.
I'm most certainly biased and harsh regarding their "lifestyles." If indeed, some woman in 2021 strolls the future mall of america (lower italics mine), will she have access to even more consumer shit than a woman today? Will she be able to buy an Abercrombie and Fitch sweater cheaper than today? Will she be able to choose from five Coach handbags to carry around instead of just two?
Will the next generation of women be able to remain ignorant of our infrastructure, like those of today, and be able to stroll comfortably among three malls instead of just one?
When I say this, I mean not to disrespect women who are and who will be engaged in developing our infrastructure of tomorrow. Infrastructure is a male dominated "industry." I only highlight women particularly because this afternoon that's all I saw at the mall -- some with strollers, most without, but the vast, vast majority were either solo or with another female friend, all presumably living without the need for dual family incomes. These women are entitled. I see the same thing every day I'm off work in Elk Grove and go to the store or to the park. A whole class of women living lives of leisure.
Assume for a moment that my sister is correct, that the next generation will have a lower standard of living. She is really saying that people of the future will have less ability to satisfy their wants.
What are American people's wants today? Health care. Cheap foreign consumables. Annual vacations. Indoor jobs that don't require exertion. Life in a clean, comfortable environment.
If the next generation is entitled to an even better standard of living, what does that really mean? Access to even cheaper health care? Access to even more foreign consumables? Vacations twice or three times a year? Jobs in finance, insurance, marketing and real estate that never require the lifting of a single fucking finger? Waking up to bluebirds singing and flying in clean blue skies?
What of retirement? I today (as a gen Y-er) don't have it better than the boomer generation. A boomer who began work for SMUD in 1975 or 1985 could count on full retiree medical after 5 years of employment. I can count on full retiree medical only after 20 years of employment. Anyone hired at SMUD today can count on never more than 50% after 20 years. This one facet -- government benefits -- have been declining over time. So in this one realm, future public servants can expect less benefit. Regardless of your point of view on public pensions, I only offer here than the benefits of the next generation are less than those of prior generations. That is, the standard of living for the next generation of public employees will be lower than those earlier.
What of medical? Yes, we have far greater access to a wider range of treatments and therapies, but for a fewer number of people and at a far greater cost. Can we really expect that our access to medical services will be greater when they've been rising at 2X inflation for the past two decades?
What of infrastructure? The boomers of the 1970's and '80s had their bay bridges, their electric services, their water services...and they paid for them. But we've not kept pace with population growth and we've simply been relying on aging infrastructure to carry us along. This cannot last. Will we really expect that electricity will be even more reliable, that our freeways will have fewer potholes, that our water will have even less particulate matter?
What of the environment? If the so-called climate change trends continue, we have no one to thank but the previous generations who lived their entire lives beholden to fossil-fuels. Even if climate change isn't an issue, the next generation will still most certainly have to deal with an increased reliance on foreign sources of energy, to include shouldering the burden of an ever increasing military cost of securing said sources. The previous generations, totally beholden to the motor vehicle, have left us with a legacy of zero options for light rail, walkable communities, or local food and employment. Landfills from previous generations have already been filled and condemned, are no longer accessible, while our waste will require ever more heroic quantities of energy to dispose of.
I am of the opinion, along with my sister, that our next generation will indeed live lives of less prosperity than ours today. I am a natural pessimist and doomer, but damn, I see all these things and I don't assume that future technological marvels will somehow save us from these future calamities, from the future expenses of mitigation.
What of the future?
Is this possible?
Historically, I don't know if there's been any modern generation that's been worse off than the one before it. Perhaps an argument could be made that the generation of the early 1920's had it better than the generation of the mid 1940's, but I doubt it...even with a major world war they had penicillin, insulin, rural electricity, access to ever greater amounts of ore, timber, coal, and oil...they would most certainly had believed themselves much better off than the last generation, although I am only speculating.
Today I found myself walking through a regional mall and was disillusioned with the heroic number of shoe stores, women's wear and cell phone kiosks. Dozens and dozens of them. These are only available because of the earlier massive investments in groundwater filtration, in the electrical grid, in our gold-plated interstate highways, in our sewage and drainage networks. These are the things overlooked by all those well-to-do housewives spending their afternoons shopping at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday in a mall. These women couldn't give a rat's ass about what it took to develop the infrastructure needed to allow them to go about their lives of leisure.
I'm most certainly biased and harsh regarding their "lifestyles." If indeed, some woman in 2021 strolls the future mall of america (lower italics mine), will she have access to even more consumer shit than a woman today? Will she be able to buy an Abercrombie and Fitch sweater cheaper than today? Will she be able to choose from five Coach handbags to carry around instead of just two?
Will the next generation of women be able to remain ignorant of our infrastructure, like those of today, and be able to stroll comfortably among three malls instead of just one?
When I say this, I mean not to disrespect women who are and who will be engaged in developing our infrastructure of tomorrow. Infrastructure is a male dominated "industry." I only highlight women particularly because this afternoon that's all I saw at the mall -- some with strollers, most without, but the vast, vast majority were either solo or with another female friend, all presumably living without the need for dual family incomes. These women are entitled. I see the same thing every day I'm off work in Elk Grove and go to the store or to the park. A whole class of women living lives of leisure.
Assume for a moment that my sister is correct, that the next generation will have a lower standard of living. She is really saying that people of the future will have less ability to satisfy their wants.
What are American people's wants today? Health care. Cheap foreign consumables. Annual vacations. Indoor jobs that don't require exertion. Life in a clean, comfortable environment.
If the next generation is entitled to an even better standard of living, what does that really mean? Access to even cheaper health care? Access to even more foreign consumables? Vacations twice or three times a year? Jobs in finance, insurance, marketing and real estate that never require the lifting of a single fucking finger? Waking up to bluebirds singing and flying in clean blue skies?
What of retirement? I today (as a gen Y-er) don't have it better than the boomer generation. A boomer who began work for SMUD in 1975 or 1985 could count on full retiree medical after 5 years of employment. I can count on full retiree medical only after 20 years of employment. Anyone hired at SMUD today can count on never more than 50% after 20 years. This one facet -- government benefits -- have been declining over time. So in this one realm, future public servants can expect less benefit. Regardless of your point of view on public pensions, I only offer here than the benefits of the next generation are less than those of prior generations. That is, the standard of living for the next generation of public employees will be lower than those earlier.
What of medical? Yes, we have far greater access to a wider range of treatments and therapies, but for a fewer number of people and at a far greater cost. Can we really expect that our access to medical services will be greater when they've been rising at 2X inflation for the past two decades?
What of infrastructure? The boomers of the 1970's and '80s had their bay bridges, their electric services, their water services...and they paid for them. But we've not kept pace with population growth and we've simply been relying on aging infrastructure to carry us along. This cannot last. Will we really expect that electricity will be even more reliable, that our freeways will have fewer potholes, that our water will have even less particulate matter?
What of the environment? If the so-called climate change trends continue, we have no one to thank but the previous generations who lived their entire lives beholden to fossil-fuels. Even if climate change isn't an issue, the next generation will still most certainly have to deal with an increased reliance on foreign sources of energy, to include shouldering the burden of an ever increasing military cost of securing said sources. The previous generations, totally beholden to the motor vehicle, have left us with a legacy of zero options for light rail, walkable communities, or local food and employment. Landfills from previous generations have already been filled and condemned, are no longer accessible, while our waste will require ever more heroic quantities of energy to dispose of.
I am of the opinion, along with my sister, that our next generation will indeed live lives of less prosperity than ours today. I am a natural pessimist and doomer, but damn, I see all these things and I don't assume that future technological marvels will somehow save us from these future calamities, from the future expenses of mitigation.
What of the future?
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Shangri-La
47% of all U.S. households pay no income taxes.
In my cousin's South Sacramento enclave, 100% of these households pay no income taxes. To them it's Shangri-La, an earthly paradise where no one needs to work, no one pays any taxes, and everyone wakes at 11 and is drunk and loaded by 5.
Technically, I'm wrong. They do pay taxes -- taxes on cigarettes, malt liquor, cheap Tamiroff vodka (which tastes like gasoline)...and gasoline. By paying these taxes, they are all enjoying the benefits of two foreign wars for energy, infrastructure developments like gold-plated freeways, and a top-notch education system. We are paying 48,000 people a federal wage to ensure that we count them in the census so that they are eligible for all the federal, state, and local subsidized programs to which they are so entitled.
They most certainly deserve it. They are the "impoverished" and the "disadvantaged." I most certainly feel I should be paying more, more in taxes to help them recover from their chronic Vicodin binges, alcoholic domestic rampages, double murder suicides, and fungal infections. They deserve our help and damn it, they're gonna get it, too -- for all the contributions to society that they've performed.
America, the greatest nation in the history of human existence, is only great because of how we treat our "needy and disadvantaged." I only wish I could do more to help them...I feel so unworthy...
In my cousin's South Sacramento enclave, 100% of these households pay no income taxes. To them it's Shangri-La, an earthly paradise where no one needs to work, no one pays any taxes, and everyone wakes at 11 and is drunk and loaded by 5.
Technically, I'm wrong. They do pay taxes -- taxes on cigarettes, malt liquor, cheap Tamiroff vodka (which tastes like gasoline)...and gasoline. By paying these taxes, they are all enjoying the benefits of two foreign wars for energy, infrastructure developments like gold-plated freeways, and a top-notch education system. We are paying 48,000 people a federal wage to ensure that we count them in the census so that they are eligible for all the federal, state, and local subsidized programs to which they are so entitled.
They most certainly deserve it. They are the "impoverished" and the "disadvantaged." I most certainly feel I should be paying more, more in taxes to help them recover from their chronic Vicodin binges, alcoholic domestic rampages, double murder suicides, and fungal infections. They deserve our help and damn it, they're gonna get it, too -- for all the contributions to society that they've performed.
America, the greatest nation in the history of human existence, is only great because of how we treat our "needy and disadvantaged." I only wish I could do more to help them...I feel so unworthy...
Friday, April 9, 2010
Clueless
What is it going to take to get us to collectively go out and spend more, huh?
I'm thinking Stimulus II, and then Stimulus III...each more stimulating than the last. Yesterday we sold cars for clunkers and just tomorrow we'll have some sort of stimulati regarding energy smart appliances. Then what?
What will it take to get women out of their housal units and blow another $800 on the credit card at Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor? Come on! We need you!
What will it take? Well, perhaps if we had just a 10% rise in housal unit values we'd get another 1% bump in consumer spending, just like we used to routinely do in this great country, during the boom years, where hallucinated housal prices created a fake wealth effect.
There's a couple we've recently became acquainted with who bought their housal unit maybe fifteen/twenty years ago and today owe 2.1 times more on it than the day the bought it. 2.1 times. I don't think they leveraged that cashed-out hallucinated wealth to buy equities or invest in other productive endeavors. I'm pretty sure they were just like Alecia Silverstone above, happily blowing all those surplus dollars on consumables, happily assuming that they'd just re-fi again when rates dropped or when their unit value rose another 20%.
We were a nation of clueless dolts in 2003-2006, happily cheering on two wars we didn't give a shit about, building ten years worth of commercial and residential property in the span of three, and enjoyed lifestyles hinged upon a negative savings rate (i.e., borrowing from today) and an exploding national deficit. I think we deserved every bit of this recession, and I hope to see it get worse for a very long time, so that perhaps we'll have a whole new generation of people who won't follow their parent's ethos of something for nothing. Although I don't believe it, if we are emerging from recession today then we will have learned nothing, because we'll get back on that same turnip truck, motor down the same road, and we'll be off to our next fiscal crisis.
I'm thinking Stimulus II, and then Stimulus III...each more stimulating than the last. Yesterday we sold cars for clunkers and just tomorrow we'll have some sort of stimulati regarding energy smart appliances. Then what?
What will it take to get women out of their housal units and blow another $800 on the credit card at Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor? Come on! We need you!
What will it take? Well, perhaps if we had just a 10% rise in housal unit values we'd get another 1% bump in consumer spending, just like we used to routinely do in this great country, during the boom years, where hallucinated housal prices created a fake wealth effect.
There's a couple we've recently became acquainted with who bought their housal unit maybe fifteen/twenty years ago and today owe 2.1 times more on it than the day the bought it. 2.1 times. I don't think they leveraged that cashed-out hallucinated wealth to buy equities or invest in other productive endeavors. I'm pretty sure they were just like Alecia Silverstone above, happily blowing all those surplus dollars on consumables, happily assuming that they'd just re-fi again when rates dropped or when their unit value rose another 20%.
We were a nation of clueless dolts in 2003-2006, happily cheering on two wars we didn't give a shit about, building ten years worth of commercial and residential property in the span of three, and enjoyed lifestyles hinged upon a negative savings rate (i.e., borrowing from today) and an exploding national deficit. I think we deserved every bit of this recession, and I hope to see it get worse for a very long time, so that perhaps we'll have a whole new generation of people who won't follow their parent's ethos of something for nothing. Although I don't believe it, if we are emerging from recession today then we will have learned nothing, because we'll get back on that same turnip truck, motor down the same road, and we'll be off to our next fiscal crisis.
Spending Their Mortgages
I sold a rental home in 2006 at the peak of the market. The only way the buyer was able to "qualify" was for me to carry back a portion of the mortgage on a second deed of trust. The buyer was the epitome of a subprime borrower.
He hung on to it for four years, surprisingly so, and finally saw the light and defaulted in January. Because I held a second, I was privy to all the foreclosure filings that the mortgage company filed. The most interesting thing is that by the time hewalked drove away from his house, he was $26,000 behind in payments to the primary mortgage company; that is, he hadn't been paying on it for 12 months by the time he was forced out. He, more or less, had lived for a year without having made a single payment for housing.
So, seeing how this one guy had no mortgage or rent payment for a full year, what do you suppose he did with all that money? Was it being saved?
Are you kidding me? No fucking way...Americans don't know how to save.
Now, consider that there are 7,400,000 mortgages in the U.S. that are not current. Many are only in arrears a month or two, but among this figure lies the guy who bought my rental. If you assume that just, say, 20% of these 7.4 million are following the same path and the average mortgage that would have been paid was, say, $1,100 a month, that's $20,000,000,000 a year that's suddenly "disposable."
If they ain't making mortgage payments and they ain't saving it...where's it going? I'm here to tell you: Asian foot massage parlors, cigarette shops, health spas, Comcast on-demand movies, gasoline, Old Navy, Kohls, Costco, joke t-shirts, haircuts, and Mimi's Cafe.
I know what you're thinking -- $20 billion? Meh, a drop in the bucket in overall consumer spending. But seeing how 72% of our economy is based on consumer spending and that $20 billion of that is from people spending their mortgages, sooner or later these Americans are going to have to resume paying rent on a housal unit somewhere and that "spending" is gonna dry up.
We're making this claim that the recession's over, but once these people resume paying rent, once the state of California ends furloughs and lays off thousands instead, once Sacramento RT fires 300 workers this summer, once gasoline goes to $3.45 on expectations of renewed demand, and once we begin to address our $1,200,000,000,000 national deficit and $12,000,000,000,000 national debt, tell me again that the recession's over, slick.
There are many, many people who've been able to hang out, housal payment free, for one hell of a long time. This is the American ethos of something for nothing being played out in every city, in every "community." These were people who lost out on the other American ethos of unearned riches, having wrongly assumed their housal units would rise 20% per year ad infinitum. This is no different from my cousin's neighborhood -- full of people living the American dream of something for nothing.
He hung on to it for four years, surprisingly so, and finally saw the light and defaulted in January. Because I held a second, I was privy to all the foreclosure filings that the mortgage company filed. The most interesting thing is that by the time he
So, seeing how this one guy had no mortgage or rent payment for a full year, what do you suppose he did with all that money? Was it being saved?
Are you kidding me? No fucking way...Americans don't know how to save.
Now, consider that there are 7,400,000 mortgages in the U.S. that are not current. Many are only in arrears a month or two, but among this figure lies the guy who bought my rental. If you assume that just, say, 20% of these 7.4 million are following the same path and the average mortgage that would have been paid was, say, $1,100 a month, that's $20,000,000,000 a year that's suddenly "disposable."
If they ain't making mortgage payments and they ain't saving it...where's it going? I'm here to tell you: Asian foot massage parlors, cigarette shops, health spas, Comcast on-demand movies, gasoline, Old Navy, Kohls, Costco, joke t-shirts, haircuts, and Mimi's Cafe.
I know what you're thinking -- $20 billion? Meh, a drop in the bucket in overall consumer spending. But seeing how 72% of our economy is based on consumer spending and that $20 billion of that is from people spending their mortgages, sooner or later these Americans are going to have to resume paying rent on a housal unit somewhere and that "spending" is gonna dry up.
We're making this claim that the recession's over, but once these people resume paying rent, once the state of California ends furloughs and lays off thousands instead, once Sacramento RT fires 300 workers this summer, once gasoline goes to $3.45 on expectations of renewed demand, and once we begin to address our $1,200,000,000,000 national deficit and $12,000,000,000,000 national debt, tell me again that the recession's over, slick.
There are many, many people who've been able to hang out, housal payment free, for one hell of a long time. This is the American ethos of something for nothing being played out in every city, in every "community." These were people who lost out on the other American ethos of unearned riches, having wrongly assumed their housal units would rise 20% per year ad infinitum. This is no different from my cousin's neighborhood -- full of people living the American dream of something for nothing.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Chemical Dependency
I was a longtime Republican, up until these wars for oil freedom we've voluntarily engaged in. I've also never understood how fiscal conservatism has been inexorably tied to the church and a whole host of other social pathologies that I don't agree with.
That said, I've found solace in breaking from the supposed party of fiscal conservatism (by the way, they ain't) and felt much better about identifying alongside more social liberals. I wish these two went hand in hand, but they never do.
I can personally shield myself from the inane, ridiculous monetary policies of both parties...I am a personal fiscal conservative regardless of what goes on around me. I don't really give a shit if my taxes go up another 10-15-20 percent. I've lived my life, always, under the belief that if I made X dollars, I would live with X-y. I've always lived within my means. Always. If I get taxed more, well, I'll just learn to live with X-y-z.
Nonetheless, I feel much better about voting people in who are social liberals because in the end, this has a much more meaningful impact to me. If I had continued to vote in Republicans and if everyone else had done the same, I'd have no bus to ride to work, my bicycle rides would be much more hostile, the environment would turn to liquid shit, diesel trucks would be polluting more alongside me, I'd be biking in brown air, we'd be engaged in five foreign wars for energy instead of just two, and the church would be dictating social policy.
Let me tell you, though. As I bike to my cousin's duplex after work in South Sacramento where a solid 65% of everyone is unemployed, his entire neighborhood is comprised of chronic chemical dependents. Alcohol, prescription pain meds, weed, meth, and crack. None of them work regularly. Every one of them, every one, has applied for social security disability, whether they are disabled or not. All of them, all of them, have EBT cards. They all sleep 'till 11, are drunk by 5, and most importantly, all of them are capable of working. All of them. Yet they don't. They only reason they are up before 11 is to spend time at the department of human assistance, requesting assistance.
This is a lifestyle choice. Period.
I have always been willing to help the impoverished, yes. Yet all these people, an entire community, are decidedly not impoverished. Rocky recently spent 5 days in intensive care to treat symptoms from a massive Tamiroff vodka and Vicodin binge. My cousin was sent to the emergency room to treat a staph infection on his leg...along with five other neighbors because of the filth they live in. Four in the same duplex developed ear infections...two needed medical treatment. In every case, in every instance, not a one of them paid so much as a co-pay to get treated. They were all covered, somehow, under state sponsored programs, and didn't have to pay a single dime. Repeat this across 3,200 communities across America to see the true impact of what social liberalism has brought.
We just passed a health care bill. We continue to allow these people to manage on a combination of food stamps, SS disability, and general assistance in perpetuity. In my mind, in my personal opinion, we are subsidizing the lifestyles of the underclass to live without contributing a thing back to society at large.
To help the impoverished, yes, is a noble effort, because in my opinion a worthy society is defined by how we treat those who cannot help themselves. But these people, as described above, while they might be friends, neighbors, and relatives, are leeches on a social system that I take no pleasure in supporting...yet I am forced to.
How do we distinguish between those in real need, and those who are just needy?
That said, I've found solace in breaking from the supposed party of fiscal conservatism (by the way, they ain't) and felt much better about identifying alongside more social liberals. I wish these two went hand in hand, but they never do.
I can personally shield myself from the inane, ridiculous monetary policies of both parties...I am a personal fiscal conservative regardless of what goes on around me. I don't really give a shit if my taxes go up another 10-15-20 percent. I've lived my life, always, under the belief that if I made X dollars, I would live with X-y. I've always lived within my means. Always. If I get taxed more, well, I'll just learn to live with X-y-z.
Nonetheless, I feel much better about voting people in who are social liberals because in the end, this has a much more meaningful impact to me. If I had continued to vote in Republicans and if everyone else had done the same, I'd have no bus to ride to work, my bicycle rides would be much more hostile, the environment would turn to liquid shit, diesel trucks would be polluting more alongside me, I'd be biking in brown air, we'd be engaged in five foreign wars for energy instead of just two, and the church would be dictating social policy.
Let me tell you, though. As I bike to my cousin's duplex after work in South Sacramento where a solid 65% of everyone is unemployed, his entire neighborhood is comprised of chronic chemical dependents. Alcohol, prescription pain meds, weed, meth, and crack. None of them work regularly. Every one of them, every one, has applied for social security disability, whether they are disabled or not. All of them, all of them, have EBT cards. They all sleep 'till 11, are drunk by 5, and most importantly, all of them are capable of working. All of them. Yet they don't. They only reason they are up before 11 is to spend time at the department of human assistance, requesting assistance.
This is a lifestyle choice. Period.
I have always been willing to help the impoverished, yes. Yet all these people, an entire community, are decidedly not impoverished. Rocky recently spent 5 days in intensive care to treat symptoms from a massive Tamiroff vodka and Vicodin binge. My cousin was sent to the emergency room to treat a staph infection on his leg...along with five other neighbors because of the filth they live in. Four in the same duplex developed ear infections...two needed medical treatment. In every case, in every instance, not a one of them paid so much as a co-pay to get treated. They were all covered, somehow, under state sponsored programs, and didn't have to pay a single dime. Repeat this across 3,200 communities across America to see the true impact of what social liberalism has brought.
We just passed a health care bill. We continue to allow these people to manage on a combination of food stamps, SS disability, and general assistance in perpetuity. In my mind, in my personal opinion, we are subsidizing the lifestyles of the underclass to live without contributing a thing back to society at large.
To help the impoverished, yes, is a noble effort, because in my opinion a worthy society is defined by how we treat those who cannot help themselves. But these people, as described above, while they might be friends, neighbors, and relatives, are leeches on a social system that I take no pleasure in supporting...yet I am forced to.
How do we distinguish between those in real need, and those who are just needy?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Ministry Of Counter Counters
My doomerism doesn't stand a chance in the face of 162,000 new jobs created in March. At that rate we'll be back to "normal" by March of 2012. Wa-hey!
That is...if we can sustain that rate. Nonetheless, 48,000 of these jobs were census counters. My friend's wife is included in that number; someone who really wasn't in need of a job to begin with, but presumably took a nice temporary job to supplement the family income.
I don't want to discount census worker jobs, because they are jobs. But think about it -- these 48,000 people will do absolutely nothing, perhaps less than nothing, to augment the U.S. manufacturing or productivity base. Hiring a person to count another person, while an important function, doesn't do a damn thing towards reducing our trade deficits, to build stuff, to keeping someone employed for more than a month. But it is GDP -- government spending is GDP. So while these don't do a damn thing to promote any long term employment, next month we'll report that GDP is screaming along! 5% growth! The stock market will see this as a sign that we've turned the bend, and will scream up alongside GDP.
Look, if hiring someone to count others was really so productive, why don't we just hire people to count cars on our gold-plated freeways? Or, count how many hot water faucet handles in government buildings turn to the left, and how many to the right. If it were a truly productive endeavor we could just hire 7 million counters and we'd have a roaring economy in no time! Recession's over!
With that many counters, we'd of course have to hire a group of counters to count the counters; you know, to audit their counts and to maintain quality control of the counting. The Ministry of Counter Counters would be formed -- the only question is -- who would oversee this ministry? Justice? Treasury? The FTC? Boy, that's a tough one...
That is...if we can sustain that rate. Nonetheless, 48,000 of these jobs were census counters. My friend's wife is included in that number; someone who really wasn't in need of a job to begin with, but presumably took a nice temporary job to supplement the family income.
I don't want to discount census worker jobs, because they are jobs. But think about it -- these 48,000 people will do absolutely nothing, perhaps less than nothing, to augment the U.S. manufacturing or productivity base. Hiring a person to count another person, while an important function, doesn't do a damn thing towards reducing our trade deficits, to build stuff, to keeping someone employed for more than a month. But it is GDP -- government spending is GDP. So while these don't do a damn thing to promote any long term employment, next month we'll report that GDP is screaming along! 5% growth! The stock market will see this as a sign that we've turned the bend, and will scream up alongside GDP.
Look, if hiring someone to count others was really so productive, why don't we just hire people to count cars on our gold-plated freeways? Or, count how many hot water faucet handles in government buildings turn to the left, and how many to the right. If it were a truly productive endeavor we could just hire 7 million counters and we'd have a roaring economy in no time! Recession's over!
With that many counters, we'd of course have to hire a group of counters to count the counters; you know, to audit their counts and to maintain quality control of the counting. The Ministry of Counter Counters would be formed -- the only question is -- who would oversee this ministry? Justice? Treasury? The FTC? Boy, that's a tough one...
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
522 of 716
In 2008 there were 716 bicycle fatalities in the United States. Of those, 125 of them were in Florida (17% of the total), a state that has 6% of the total US population. It's a good thing I ride in California -- I've a better than average chance of stayin' alive.
In trying to understand those 716, I'm going to go on a hunch and say that greater than 70% of them were the cyclist's fault. High on crank, drunk as skunks, no helmets, total and willful ignorance of traffic laws...I see these every day, and just like tailgating on the freeway, these actions eventually catch up to those who fail to exercise caution.
I think I have a much worse chance of dying compared to, say, my cousin, who has only been riding a bike for 8 months (on account of his latest DUI) and who has already crashed it twice while totally loaded. The last time he crashed he said he saw quadruple; not just double vision, but quadruple vision he was so fucked up. My brother-in-law told me that years ago, while drunk, he was riding on the back side of a supermarket -- you know, with those nine-foot-tall rough masonry walls? He was riding parallel to it when the wall became 40 grit sandpaper to the side of his face and forearm as he careened into in. Twice.
Stories like this, alongside personal observation, are why I believe most bicycling deaths are the result of bicyclist stupidity. Most don't usually result from a single error in judgment; it's usually a chain of events. Here's a fictitious chain: a forty-two year old biker, let's call him Hank, gets into a verbal fight with the old lady and rides out to his friend Charlie's. He drinks a sixer and five shots of Tamiroff to "calm down," stays out 'till eleven, never did replace his tailight battery on account of having lost his job thirteen months earlier. Hank believes bicycle helmets are only for fags -- so he obviously never wears one. Hank decides to ride home anyway, crosses a four lane street illegally and gets plowed down by a pickup truck he didn't see comin'.
Hank becomes #522 of 716.
In trying to understand those 716, I'm going to go on a hunch and say that greater than 70% of them were the cyclist's fault. High on crank, drunk as skunks, no helmets, total and willful ignorance of traffic laws...I see these every day, and just like tailgating on the freeway, these actions eventually catch up to those who fail to exercise caution.
I think I have a much worse chance of dying compared to, say, my cousin, who has only been riding a bike for 8 months (on account of his latest DUI) and who has already crashed it twice while totally loaded. The last time he crashed he said he saw quadruple; not just double vision, but quadruple vision he was so fucked up. My brother-in-law told me that years ago, while drunk, he was riding on the back side of a supermarket -- you know, with those nine-foot-tall rough masonry walls? He was riding parallel to it when the wall became 40 grit sandpaper to the side of his face and forearm as he careened into in. Twice.
Stories like this, alongside personal observation, are why I believe most bicycling deaths are the result of bicyclist stupidity. Most don't usually result from a single error in judgment; it's usually a chain of events. Here's a fictitious chain: a forty-two year old biker, let's call him Hank, gets into a verbal fight with the old lady and rides out to his friend Charlie's. He drinks a sixer and five shots of Tamiroff to "calm down," stays out 'till eleven, never did replace his tailight battery on account of having lost his job thirteen months earlier. Hank believes bicycle helmets are only for fags -- so he obviously never wears one. Hank decides to ride home anyway, crosses a four lane street illegally and gets plowed down by a pickup truck he didn't see comin'.
Hank becomes #522 of 716.
It's Just Too Risky
I may not ever again vote for or against any California state propositions. It may well be good to simply pass on those items on the ballot, and get on with the important things like determining who's next in line to nail Eyepatch, or who gets to host the California Wine and Seafood Industry Tribute.
California's proposition 16 will pass...whether I vote no or whether I don't vote at all. It will pass because of the $28,000,000 of PG&E money already thrown at it to get it to pass, and in this state, propositions with the most money always win. Almost no money has been allocated to the losing "no" side, so it will pass.
In 2006, PG&E outspent SMUD 24 to 1 to prevent the Yolo annexation. I knew that the annexation would fail when, 6 weeks before the election, I spoke with my mother about the propositions and she towed the exact same line that Stan Atkinson was paid $2,000,000 to tell her: "It's just too risky." Then and there, I knew it would fail.
Prop 16 will follow the money, and will follow these cute "Taxpayer's right to vote" slogans, making it a 2/3rds hurdle to allow entities to develop their own public power agencies. When you outspend 24:1 against a 50% requirement for Yolo, I imagine PG&E will have to only spend, say, 12:1 in the future because of the 66% requirement. It's a beautiful thing.
Truthfully, I say screw Yolo county. If they voted to keep their electric rates 30% higher than if SMUD would have been their provider, well, that's their business. That they get to absorb this $28,000,000 (and whatever else hasn't been spent yet) into higher rates, well, that's their business. "It's just too risky," they were charged to hear and think. I'm personally thankful that I live in a public power domain.
California's proposition 16 will pass...whether I vote no or whether I don't vote at all. It will pass because of the $28,000,000 of PG&E money already thrown at it to get it to pass, and in this state, propositions with the most money always win. Almost no money has been allocated to the losing "no" side, so it will pass.
In 2006, PG&E outspent SMUD 24 to 1 to prevent the Yolo annexation. I knew that the annexation would fail when, 6 weeks before the election, I spoke with my mother about the propositions and she towed the exact same line that Stan Atkinson was paid $2,000,000 to tell her: "It's just too risky." Then and there, I knew it would fail.
Prop 16 will follow the money, and will follow these cute "Taxpayer's right to vote" slogans, making it a 2/3rds hurdle to allow entities to develop their own public power agencies. When you outspend 24:1 against a 50% requirement for Yolo, I imagine PG&E will have to only spend, say, 12:1 in the future because of the 66% requirement. It's a beautiful thing.
Truthfully, I say screw Yolo county. If they voted to keep their electric rates 30% higher than if SMUD would have been their provider, well, that's their business. That they get to absorb this $28,000,000 (and whatever else hasn't been spent yet) into higher rates, well, that's their business. "It's just too risky," they were charged to hear and think. I'm personally thankful that I live in a public power domain.
Riot!
It's time for a riot in this country! To demand an end to the wars! To help the impoverished! To stop banker grifting!
And I'll do my part -- by blogging "It's time for a riot in this country! To demand an end to the wars! To help the impoverished! To stop banker grifting!"
And I'll do my part -- by blogging "It's time for a riot in this country! To demand an end to the wars! To help the impoverished! To stop banker grifting!"
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Sacramento Transit
If you live anywhere within the slumburbia of Sacramento, be prepared to drive your car, slick. Regional Transit is, more or less, eliminating weekend service.
If you have any intention of going to Midtown for a beer and a burrito, better get it down your throat by 8:15 PM before that last bus or light rail run, or you're either in for a good night of walking or a $62 cab ride.
Admittedly, in looking over RTs cuts to the 41 of 91 routes, not too much affects me...because I do have my own car, and indeed there are no cuts to light rail service during the weekday. But there are dozens of people who live along Franklin Blvd. whose only access to light rail or anywhere else is route 65, which currently only runs once an hour, and now, won't even run at all on Saturday.
Not only are choice riders like myself, people willing to use transit, increasingly unable to use transit, but also those most dependent on it.
This was a hard choice, for sure, but in this supposedly "greenest state in the nation," how we can effectively subsidize private cars six to one over transit is insane...insane if any of us truly intends on making a difference in our environment.
If you have any intention of going to Midtown for a beer and a burrito, better get it down your throat by 8:15 PM before that last bus or light rail run, or you're either in for a good night of walking or a $62 cab ride.
Admittedly, in looking over RTs cuts to the 41 of 91 routes, not too much affects me...because I do have my own car, and indeed there are no cuts to light rail service during the weekday. But there are dozens of people who live along Franklin Blvd. whose only access to light rail or anywhere else is route 65, which currently only runs once an hour, and now, won't even run at all on Saturday.
Not only are choice riders like myself, people willing to use transit, increasingly unable to use transit, but also those most dependent on it.
This was a hard choice, for sure, but in this supposedly "greenest state in the nation," how we can effectively subsidize private cars six to one over transit is insane...insane if any of us truly intends on making a difference in our environment.
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