Adult Bibs

I admit I have a bad relationship with food -- I know how to eat too much of it, just like the rest of America. but I'm also type I diabetic and this has a strong influence on my excessive eating. I really wonder what I'd be consuming if I weren't diseased.

I see this wrapped around my newspaper this morning

and I actually take comfort in my own diabetic condition -- over time I've taken efforts to eat correctly that I might not have otherwise. I don't know what it's like to take Peptol Bismol. I certainly don't know what it's like to take it every day, as many of you do.

Indeed, a friend of ours who attended Thanksgiving at my in-laws last night was hospitalized this morning after having puked all night long...after having taken in a massive, massive quantity of food at the annual turkey day affair. Now, she was diagnosed with a small kidney stone -- really, not necessarily related to her day of binge eating...but I can't say it wasn't.

I've a brother-in-law who suffers from diverticulitis. His wife recently had her gallbladder removed following what looked to be a rather uncomfortable bout of distress. Should this be normal? Should every newspaper delivered on Black Friday be housed in a makeshift pink bib? I am blessed to have never suffered from gastrointestinal distress. I wonder, though, if it's just luck or if it has to do with eating less than the world's average production of meat, if it has to do with proper food combining, if it has to do with eating a diet of mostly plants. These things I do fairly regularly.

Obviously we don't have ultimate control over disease. I admit my likelihood of dying from lung disease riding my bicycle to work most days. But I look over our America and I know that Prilosec and Tagamet are among the most prescribed medicines, and I look out over our America and I see how many surgical procedures are performed to correct for our rich Western diet, and I have to wonder -- how much of my future productive effort will be used to provide universal health care for American diets known to cause disease? How much of my future productive effort will be used to pay taxes to subsidize meat and dairy industries that are known to cause disease?

In 2008 here on my blog I asked: Does a non-smoking vegetarian female state-university educated triathlete deserve to pay taxes to support the universal health care for a viable yet SS-disabled Tamiroff-swilling pack-a-day smoking Kraft-mac-and-cheese-eating type-II-diabetic beefeater who hasn't raised his heartrate above 100 since gradeschool? At what point does/should behavior influence these decisions? Should it not? Should we all just hope that there will be enough contributors to assist those who eat like shit? I mean, we do this everyday with our marginal tax system -- those who earn more pay more. This isn't any different, is it?

And I ask, should my health insurance rate rise more than 20% over the past two years for bicycling to work, for eating well, for managing my diabetes correctly? Perhaps it should. In any event, it most certain has.

National Consumption Day

In better times, 26% of us would go out today and buy shit for ourselves. These days it down to 11%. But hey! It's up from 9% last year! Wa-hey! This is the benchmark we use to define the health of our economy? I suppose it is.

Does Germany have a national consumption day?
Does Japan have a national consumption day?
Does Algeria have a national consumption day?
Does New Zealand have a national consumption day?
Does Bangladesh have a national consumption day?
Does Paraguay have a national consumption day?

I really don't suppose to know all their national holidays...but my guess is...no.

I do admit -- I went out and consumed this morning. I went to Bikram Yoga in an attempt to keep the Thanksgiving stuffing in check, and I think overall I did a good job of it this year.

Yep, I thought today would be a perfect day to get out there -- cold, a holiday of sorts, a day off, and I supposed I'd have no company on the roadway.

Boy, was I wrong.

Minivans with Samsung and Panasonic wares strapped into the back seats. Trucks with appliances in the back. I passed the Best Buy and wondered how all those people who were turning into the lot were even going to find a spot. My guess is that today, more fat women will burn more gas today than during any other day of the year -- as they endlessly circle the parking lots of our consumption centers looking for that close-in stall.

What we fail to understand, collectively, is that Thanksgiving through Christmas retail sales run about $754,276,600,035 on average, in a $14,352,192,883,060 economy. 4%. It really ain't shit, but it's all we can do to pin our economic hopes on these sales. The other 96% doesn't garner nearly the same attention that's lavished on post Thanksgiving sales.

I liked the fact that I spent the day yesterday eating a vegetarian meal (although I deep fried a turkey), today I worked it off at yoga and then blogged about the crush of consumerism going on all around me. Here I sit and it's rather quiet today, no football on TV, trying to think about what the rest of my day will bring. A nap? Does the pot garden need tending? Rake leaves? For me, it takes very little in the way of consumption to survive, to thrive. Yes, I own a computer, a TV (not yet HD), cars, bikes, a rake, etc., but since 2007 I've offed a large volume of personal possessions and I've not once looked back. I don't collect things anymore; no stamps, no beer bottles, no trinkets, no strawberry-themed kitchen gadgets, no magazines, nothing. What I like is to own things that can be used to produce other goods. Wort boiling equipment. Tools. A quality, US made pair of scissors.

Everything being purchased today, this Black Friday, virtually everything, cannot be used to make other things, or they have no utilitarian value. Electronica. Teapots. RC airplanes. Perfume. A hoe.

There is value in consumption; I mean, at some basic level we all have to do it. When it becomes wanton, then I take issue.

Four More

I believe, and have continued to believe that we are in the midst of a great deflationary period. Rising prices are not the only measure of things. We lived through a massive credit expansion over the past three decades -- credit that created excess claims to the same real wealth.

What are our stores of real wealth? Natural resources. Housal units. Factories. But all of these are in or are heading into decline. We are in an inexorable decline in our domestic oil production. We built twenty five years worth of commercial strip malls and housal units in under a decade. We eviscerated our manufacturing base to save a few dollars on bedsheets and coffee makers imported from Asia.

The claims made on these units are being extinguished...and at a rapid pace. And, there isn't any growth in the underlying wealth of these units. Indeed, I don't see much growth in American wealth whatsoever. What, do you see any? Where? Do you see any growth in the American manufacturing base? We grew our economy on the rise in digital technology and housal units -- both of which are overdone. I believe that we are living through a collapse of credit, which is nothing more than a future claim to this supposed wealth.

Thus, I see debt as a millstone around your neck. Real interest rates are high even while the nominal rate is low because inflation is negative (or very close to negative). The real rate is the nominal rate minus inflation...and so becomes greater than you'd think. Paying down debt is the best thing to do.

I look around me and people really aren't paying down their debts...not to any degree. Sure, my neighbor's housal unit debts are being drawn down at a few hundred per month collectively, but there's a new Lexus in my neighbor's garage -- a new SUV across the street. The guy I hunt with now owns at least another $20,000 in debt for his new truck. In every case, these people's old cars were adequate.

Today, Friday, I got paid and the first thing I did at the top of the month is blow a wad to the mortgage. It's a forced savings account, because once you draw it down, you can't easily get it back. Not like a bank account that's far too easy to raid for a vacation, a new floor rug, or new diamond earrings, when you don't maintain any fiscal control. As I watch all my neighbors increase their overall level of debt in this economy regardless of whether or not they have fair employment, I can only assume they aren't fiscally prudent.

I just blew money into the mortgage, and as of this morning I have four payments left. I barley have enough in savings to pay this damn thing off if I wanted to -- telling you how illiquid I am. But I'll soon be debt free, and that is something I've worked towards for a very long time and worked diligently. Not through housal unit flipping, or stock appreciation, or winnings at Red Hawk Casino (kreee-ee-ahhh), but through slow steady paydown. The slow accumulation of wealth is really a foreign concept to everyone around me. All I ever hear is "I'll be working 'till I'm dead," or "I'll let insurance pay it off when I die," or some other variation of that theme.

Slow steady paydown. How novel!

Lost in the euphoria of all that housal unit appreciation of the last decade, when people were making money off leveraged money (which, of course, is an unproductive effort in itself), is that there is still an underlying debt to be repaid. My neighbors conveniently forgot that the borrowed money has to be paid back.

Now, aside from all those souls who smartly drove away from their underwater mortgages we have legions of others who have become the new "debt serfs;" people who will for decades continue to pay on these mortgages. In fact, there are more people who continue to pay on these inflated mortgages than those who defaulted. Here we have a banking industry that has not created any new value or any new wealth and who will continue to live off these future mortgage payments for decades to come.

In some sense, all this financial churn, all these banking fees, all these insurance adjustments, they all mirror the wealth without effort mentality of the general population. Some four years after the crash and we still cling to these fantasies.

Take The Lane

Over 14,000 miles of commuting by bicycle and not once have I had any interaction with the Sacramento Police Department, the Elk Grove PD, Sacramento County Sheriff, or the California Highway Patrol.

Until this morning.

According to the DMV, if I am traveling straight through an intersection, I have a right to use the through traffic lane rather than ride next to the curb and block traffic making right hand turns. I do this every morning at the northbound intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Fruitridge.

I passed the parked CHP officer about a hundred feet before the intersection and I took the right hand lane, staying in the left hand side. He pulls up on my right and tells me "you can't ride down the middle of the road."

The fuck I can't, I thought. I've got every right to take the lane under these conditions. And suppose I was intending on turning left on Fruitridge...I can't cross the middle of the road to get into the left hand turn lane, either?

I was immediately defensive. I told him "I have every right, sir." He nodded "no, you don't." I said, "yes I do -- I have the right to take the lane at every intersection, and have the responsibility to allow cars behind me to turn right." By then, the interchange had turned green. I waved him off, he turned right, and I went straight ahead -- end of discussion.


This bugged me all day long. Fourteen years of bicycle commuting and the first and only interaction with traffic law enforcement demonstrated their ignorance of the laws they are supposed to enforce. Not only do I have to content with drivers who wouldn't give me the right-of-way even if they knew the law (and most don't), I have to contend with highway patrolmen who also don't know the law.

Commuting by bicycle, I now surmise, is a lose-lose proposition. Not only do I not save a dime doing it (as I've pointed out here on my blog), law enforcement doesn't know the law, wouldn't or couldn't back me up in an accident, and I risk massive injury or death every time I mount the bike. I got rolled up on by four black guys in a Caprice this afternoon riding home, which might someday lead to an unpleasant outcome. I prolly don't get a real cardiovascular workout, either, as a commuter. Real bicyclists would say "never get on the wheel of a commuter."

This officer -- clearly younger than me -- certainly hasn't ridden a bike since grade school. He's as autocentric as every other Californian; completely dependent on automobiles and has no idea the laws pertaining to the use of the roadway by anything other than cars. Lives in the Sacramento 'burbs, two miles from anything other than other housal units, drives his car to work to drive another car to ticket/assist other cars.

I certainly get discouraged. I suppose I monologue simply to vent, because that's about all I can do...but it works! I'm a little more balanced than I was a half hour ago...

Relax And Enjoy It

I have long maintained that our American population doesn't give a shit about our wars. We were never taxed to fund them. We were never conscripted to wage them. We were never attacked by the parties against whom we engaged. Two trillion dollars on two wars? Christ, that's but a sliver of the overall economic calamity that's upon us; we borrow and spend that much in ten months' time these days.

We failed to sacrifice anything for these wars. With heavy hearts back in 2003, we climbed into our SUVs and drove to the mall to do a little extra shopping. That was our sacrifice. Remember that? Go buy a new car, we were told. From the highest office in the land, no less.

Now, today, there's this fake outcry against invasive patdowns at the airport. It's fake. It's protesting this fabricated notion that "they're taking away our freedoms." Bullshit. What it really is, is our nation's unwillingness to sacrifice anything for the engagement of our wars. If we indeed are fighting wars against terror, and if indeed we really gave a damn about 'em we'd accept these efforts. Instead, we cry foul over a hand across our crotch.

I rightfully bitched in June of '09 about having my little Alien bicycle toolkit taken in Amsterdam; rightfully, because the TSA expressly permits these on carry on luggage but that screener demanded I surrender it as he was ignorant of the security measures he was supposedly enforcing.

Now we have little girls "groped" and men's junk and women's breasts "fondled." What an outrage, eh? What a violation of our civil liberties! Our privacy is besmirched! Is there no God anymore? Why, oh why do we have to sacrifice at all? Aren't we the chosen ones? Aren't we privileged? Doesn't our liberty mean anything anymore? Does it not still shine as a beacon in the night across the oceans to all those who hate us?

Again, another interesting cultural fricassee is upon us, and I will enjoy hearing about how the 0.002% of those getting screened complain about a grope, about spilled shit from a colostomy bag, or whatever, and how we will all be made to "fear" the security checkpoints via well crafted media spotlights on a coupla people who cry feigned havoc over scanned images and patdowns.

If being groped by the TSA is inevitable, relax and enjoy it. You are finally being made to sacrifice for War, American Style.

The Forest For The Trees

The Sacramento Fire Department responds to over 3,600 traffic accidents each year. That the city is under a budget crunch there is pending legislation in the city council chambers to impose a crash tax, where those at fault are charged for services.

I'm not terribly concerned either way regarding how to pay for this, whether through taxation or direct levies. What bugs me is how the city/fire department tacitly create streets that encourage excessive speed, leading to accidents, leading to the fire department response. If they didn't require such big fire trucks, forcing every residential street to take on the geometry of the Texas Motor Speedway, there'd be far fewer accidents that require their services. That is, I maintain that our street designs call for accidents. They call for firemen not to fight fires, but to rescue dumbass drivers who can't stay in their lanes, can't keep under the posted speed limits, and who feel safe driving 62mph down a 55' wide collector road yet still manage to plow into parked cars and power poles.

That's over 10 calls every day, just in Sacramento. Why are they even called firefighters? They are traffic accident handlers who just happen to douse the occasional fire.

It's the fire department that bitches the loudest over traffic calming devices. You can understand why. Without these 10 calls each day their usefulness to the city becomes arguably questionable. Of course, their argument is always framed around response times to fires, and what city council member would risk the political fallout if one crippled woman gets third degree burns that could have been prevented had the department's response time not been worsened by speed lumps? It would indeed be ironic if that same woman had become crippled due to a previous auto accident, wouldn't it?

I find this amusing, because we again fail to see the forest for the trees. These trees -- the trees on streets are removed due to their presence as "fixed traffic hazards," when in reality the more "friction" a street has, the slower drivers drive. Trees are friction. So are parallel cars, narrower streets, lane markings, chicanes, and a host of other devices and methods that lend to safer streets, yet the fire deparment can't navigate their damn trucks through these so they are outlawed. The most dangerous streets are those that feel safer to drivers...

Foie Gras

According to our city council, the $500,000 the City of Elk Grove's city council just approved for economic development for the Ford dealership in our beautiful Automall "isn't a gift." No. This half million is to be used to cover initial promotion costs and ongoing advertising costs.

Sounds like a gift to me.

The city, of course, is further pinning its economic future on increasing car sales. By doing so, obviously we stand to benefit from tax revenue, revenue that supposedly will exceed the half million gift um, er...incentive.

Of course, the best way the city council can incentivize Elk Grovians to buy cars is to forcefeed extreme auto dependency into every goddamn planning approval. Make sure that if a resident wants to buy a pack of gum she'll be forced into a 6-mile round trip to the consumption depot. Ensure streets are built to discourage pedestrianism, that they only provide for the efficient delivery of vehicular traffic. Ensure that if anyone moves to Elk Grove there are no options made available to provide for basic services or for doing anything else unless sheltered under the carapace of a new 2011 Ford Escape from the Automall.

All the while Elk Grovians don't ever question this arrangement. No, a car is...just...necessary. Gotta have one. Actually, we gotta have multiple cars per housal unit. As I look at each housal unit on my street, my own unit has three. Next to me -- three. Next to them -- three. Next to them -- two. Across the street -- three. Next to them -- four, if you include the two motorcycles. Next to them -- foreclosed...but they drove away from that unit in their two cars.

Nothing like a little collusion between big developers and their deep pockets keeping the same city council incumbents in office, along with big automall financiers and their deep pockets keeping the same city council incumbents in office, along with the guaranteed expectation that every so often a half million dollars in borrowed monies flows to "stimulate" their endeavors.

What I really like about this incentive is how, early next year when the Ford dealership returns (which vacated two years ago), they will use a portion of this incentive money to blow on a grand re-opening ceremony complete with "NASCAR teams and monster trucks." Just what this city needs -- two autocentric spectator sports promoting the purchasing of vehicles that our residents will try to emulate when they race each other up Franklin Blvd. at 1AM or try to beat the lights at the intersections they know don't yet have cameras.

And we accept this. You know, some French farmers actually claim that their geese "look forward" to the mechanical contraption used to force feed them to fatten their livers. When their only source of food is such a device, well, I suppose they'd really have no choice but to look forward to it. We don't realize we're getting force fed continued auto dependent horseshit, and yet we cheerfully look forward to our darling children in the Franklin High School marching band at the opening ceremony, we cheerfully throw a fucking parade for a dealer that failed once and that may fail a second (or third) time, we cheerfully accept blowing a half million dollars into developing a few dozen jobs selling shit, and we cheerfully accept even further dependency on retail sales to provide our [only viable source of] tax revenues.

This incentives announcement comes not two weeks after an election where we chose the same developer/automall funded councilmemebers. No surprise there, eh?

Binary Systems

I am already thinking about my predictions for 2011. How will they differ from my predictions from 2010?

For the most part, I would say that my predictions for this year held true, with the exception of the notion of crisis. We are a nation geared only towards binary objectives -- Democrats & Republicans, fear & calm, liberal & conservative, and crisis & complacency. I expected that this year would yield to crisis...but most would likely agree that this wasn't the case.

Perhaps because we haven't yet extinguished ad infinitum unemployment benefits, that they are continuing in perpetuity. Perhaps because we've blown yet another trillion dollars of tomorrow's efforts on today. Perhaps. Granted, my hope for crisis as a condition is well documented here on my monologues, and indeed it's not only just a hope, but a wish, really. A wish that a crisis condition would move this nation off its current trajectory.

Bear in mind that the profligate spending spree we enjoyed over the last decade or two is only perpetuated by the trillions currently being borrowed by the Federal government; that is, the same hallucinated increase in notional wealth we "enjoyed" between 1996 and 2006 is being propped up by trillions trillions! of future earnings. Overall I would say we haven't done a damn thing different.

As a result, 2010 was a year of overall complacency...marking time until the next crisis.

We know that wages between 1996 and 2006 didn't appreciably appreciate...yet our standard of living sure as shit did. Today we live in much larger housal units, drive more expensive vehicular units on more elaborate roadways, own multiple big screen viewing units, and carry about myriad units of electronica -- smart phones, boysenberries, iPads, in-dash nav systems, and DVRs. We get MRIs and CAT scans and X-rays for all manner of boo-boos, prescription drugs for whatever ails you, all while hiding absorbing the perpetual double digit cost increases with government expenditures funded by future taxpayers. Our standard rose, in part due to the borrowing of money we didn't have.

Ask anyone you know, including yourself: do you expect your children to carry a similar or better standard of living that you do today?

Why is it that not a single person I've asked answered in the affirmative? Why are we all such pessimists?

Let me ponder what this means:

• Tomorrow, people will be fatter and more diseased than today.
• The cost of preventative health services will become prohibitive...where insurance companies deny an increasing number of measures.
• Housal unit buyers will only be able to afford 3,245 square feet instead of 3,360.
• Tomorrow's children will (gasp!) have to choose between an iPod or a cellularized telephone...not both.
• Tomorrow's commuters won't be able to afford the 68 mile round trip, instead being forced into sub-55 mile commutes.
• Children might have to walk to school while both parents, if they even have both parents, are forced to work.
• A ticket to Mount Davis at a Raider's game will cost $355. Before service fees.
• Gridlocked traffic will become the norm as society has less money to build new freeways.
• We'll have to choose between a land line or a cell phone...not both.
• Apps for the iPhone will cost money.

All while Medicare taxes might increase, social security might go insolvent, even more jobs might be outsourced, water might become scare, imported oil might reach a limit, electricity might become intermittent, climate disruption might reveal itself negatively...

But, hey, those are crises that may be at hand tomorrow, so let's just enjoy the calm of our complacencies of today while we can get it.

Nineteen

Admittedly I was on the fence regarding the decriminalization of weed here in our Golden State, as I know how debilitating it can be. Apparently the majority of the state agrees, although there were myriad reasons why each chose to defeat the proposition. Some for religious reasons; somewhere God told them not to toke. Others for enforcement reasons; their jobs depend on continued decriminalization. Many for personal reasons: their stoner brother is a slug and they simply don't want to offer tacit support of this lifestyle. Fair enough. This decision won't change the habits of anyone who partakes; it'll be as omnipresent as before.

I openly address my own medicinal grow (yep...I'm licensed) with my co-workers, and it's clear there's a rift between them, not unlike the state or the nation in general. Almost a 50/50 split within my little group...not unlike the state or the nation in general. It demonstrates just another facet of the polarization we maintain as a nation -- in all areas.

I suppose such polarization has always existed; truthfully, I haven't bothered to go back in time to see if the same degree of polarization existed in 1932 or in 1962. But I suspect that this is simply a consequence of a two-party system, and that it's always been there, and that it's likely not any worse than today. I mean, I argue that there aren't any more pedophiles offering candy to get in the van today than there were in 1976; but popular consensus is that there are. That there must be.

I voted along third party lines during the last election; one, because I believe in the platforms of a few of the minor parties, but two, because I would like to see a viable third or fourth party emerge in my lifetime to wrest this polarization away. I'd like to see a swing set of elected officials, not just the two who's purpose isn't just to follow their own party line but to oppose the other.

Of course this will never happen. This is why I blog, to broadcast a set of opinions that will never see the light of day, but that represent the things that are important to me nonetheless. That we are moving to a general election where only the two top candidates are available from the primary election demonstrates the stranglehold the two major parties have on the process and why my little third party voting will never go anywhere...but I'll vote that way anyway, for as long as I can. If I can't vote third party, I will simply not vote.

In any event, I gain simply from the satisfaction that so much money is spent trying to get my non-vote. Contrast this with prop 19, whose supporters really didn't have to throw out much money to get the 45% that it did garner. In different times, times that aren't all that far off, the legalization of marijuana will come to pass.

The Growing Black Hole

I monologued a few days back about how I'm primed for a pay cut next year. An effective pay cut due to the 20.3% biennial increase in medical insurance premiums my utility faces.

Of course, this increase is on top of near double digit annual increases over the past several years. As Obama's long term health care plan hasn't yet arrived, it'd be rather mendacious to assume this should be held liable for these past increases. Yet remarkably, we now have a Republican controlled House that's primed to roll back this health care initiative before it even starts -- back to our existing 18% of GDP (and growing) black hole, into which we're squandering a great deal of public monies while our population continues its epidemic rise in obesity and diabetes.

Pardon me if my lack of enthusiasm doesn't come across very well.

You might think that our consumer price index would reflect this 10% year-over-year increase in my health care premium...but apparently it must only be affecting me. Nope -- CPI shows only a 1.1% total increase over the last 12 months. Nope -- prices aren't rising.

Nope -- my utility didn't just raise electricity rates 13% over the past 18 months. I didn't just get another 8% increase in my garbage and sewer bill. And neither did my cost of health care escalate...not according to those official economic barometers.

I enjoy thinking about these economic indicators, and thinking about how totally fucking useless they are to the bottom 75% of us. It is an interesting dynamic. To those employed the unemployment number is but a meaningless empty statistic. It's also a meaningless empty statistic the those unemployed.

But what isn't meaningless is that I'm set to lose another fifty cents an hour to a health care system that won't reflect this gain into better managed care. We will have more medically uninsured in this nation, not less, by 2012...a prediction I made last year here on my monologues. What do you suppose the Republican controlled House will do about that?

Absolutely nothing. They've no less indicated that. The continuation of channeling trillions into the same hospital and pharma enterprises is what's in store. The continuation of double digit premium increases for the foreseeable future is what's in store. It's not so bad for people like me, though, who can absorb this little $0.50/hour wage decrease and the 13% rate increase for electricity to pay for the employer's share...and for someone who will likely continue to keep his health insurance.

I should just shut up now. No sense in spending blog energy on the uninsured or those ad infinitum double digit premium increases. You, the electricity ratepayer, will absorb most of that. I'm so glad you are a captive consumer; if you choose to consume less electricty to reduce your own exposure to these rate increases, our utility will have no choice but to raise rates even more. I should just shut up now.

Economic Outliers

The new Target at 65th and Hwy 50 is bustling. Lots of traffic at that intersection, as predicted, and [presumably] less traffic at all the other retailers in a 7,500' radius. I would expect, say, that the new WingStop across the street has lost business as shoppers drive into Target and buy 50# bags of chicken wings themselves...along with a 2# brick of butter and a half-gallon of Frank's Hot Sauce. Nothing like buying in bulk for your family of three; cheapness reigns supreme, above all else, in these tough economic times.

Stores like this have been calling in more clerks and opening a few more checkout lanes on the midnight shift on the first few hours of the first day of the month...for obvious reasons.

I really don't want to sit here in my little cave and bash the tens of millions of Americans using electronic benefit transfer systems. I know and enjoy the company of many who use this program...but I've already blogged about their lifestyles. I regularly see whole South Sacramento neighborhoods that are dependent on EBT.

Really, it has nothing to do with these people. They are economic outliers, relative to the value the food subsidy program has towards the Archer Daniel Midland's and the RJR-Nabisco's and the WalMart's. They are the real beneficiaries -- they grow and process and package and transport and sell the notional foodstuffs consumed by the growing number of food subsidy recipients.

They would have been beneficiaries anyway, if the economy was better, as these same items are consumed in good times and bad. The only difference is who is paying for them. My cousin in South Sacramento, this isn't a gift -- that he was able to buy a few food items for his dysfunctional living arrangement is just a bone thrown by those who don't benefit by starving people, and who clearly would suffer if the starving masses ever went marching.

Come on -- public monies flowing to the same multi-national corporations? They'd have a hard time engineering this shit in a real economy.

Lower Prices, Always

Gotta love that WalMart slogan. They do indeed carry the lowest prices, don't they? Here in Elk Grove we've developed a city entirely dependent on the sales taxes generated by these few mass merchants -- the Auto Mall, the WalMarts and the Targets.

The difference with Elk Grove, compared to other cities, is that WalMart didn't have the opportunity to bulldoze the entire city's network of suppliers, distributors, and local businesses that created a diverse, employment-rich local economy. No, we built a city that never had a local economy to begin with and overlaid it with low-wage, low-skilled sales associates at big box stores.

We re-elected Gary Davis to the city council...a guy who wants to bring in 50,000 $55,000/year jobs to the city. The problem is, the only local jobs Elk Grovians have available are working at WalMart or service jobs in support of those working at WalMart. Not a single one able to reach that target wage. The idea that you would pay a little more to keep your neighbor employed is heresy. Not a single Elk Grovian is employed to manufacture any of the products sold in the WalMart.

This is a slow train wreck in my opinion. There is no opportunity anymore for quality made items, not when we demand the lowest prices, always. Either a big box supplier provides volume at a specified price point or the supplier's contract is yanked and they implode, because where else are they going to market their products if not at the WalMart? Product diversity is stymied; we get two suppliers of baby food and only two, and if you don't like it, well, fuck you. A thousand other Elk Grovian mothers will keep buying this low cost shit even if you don't...because it's low cost. They accept the mono-culture of their cheap purchases because they are cheap, and we're addicted to the consumption of large volumes.

50,000 AMI jobs? Gary Davis doesn't have a chance, not with the framework of a spraw-based strip-retail auto-dependent "city" he and his earlier cast of city council members created over the past decade. But hey, he was only enabling us to get what we wanted: Lower prices. Always.

The Illusion Of Hope

On my little street here in Elk Grove we still carry two foreclosed housal units. Oscar and Beth smartly drove away from their unit two years ago after purchasing another unit elsewhere. Another foreclosed unit lies eight units down. Across the street, Mark and Melanie have not yet done so and are [presumably] substantially underwater, but the unit is being rented. Perhaps a short sale will occur in the near future to the couple who's been there for a while; that would be good for everyone; they are good neighbors, although I rarely see them.

However, I don't think that foreclosures are as bad to our local economy as are all the other owers (sic) faithfully making payments on their underwater units.

By doing so, they are keeping the banks bottom lines up, they are not able to take advantage of record-low interest rates, and the money they are blowing on a losing economic proposition is not recycled back into the local economy -- the Asian foot massage parlors, the cigarette stores, the electronica emporiums and the temporary Halloween stores that define the Elk Grovian services and retail marketplace.

There are 15,234,552 borrowers underwater in our nation. Of those, 7,787,338 are underwater by 25% or more. Of those, 4,008,451 are underwater by 50% or more, with an average negative equity of $107,000.

Several roof tiles across the street have blown off in recent months. If you're $107,000 upside down on that mortgage, where's the incentive to fix or replace them? There isn't much of one, so the local roofer is deprived of that opportunity, even though in the long run the damage caused by leaking water will be more expensive for someone to address. The owners are borrowing against the future, like everything else we've done in the U.S. for the past thirty years.

The dollars spent on the underwater portion only supports the banking "industry." Gone are those dollars used to upgrade kitchens, to spend at the pool hall, to smoke the products of the cannibis clubs. All these owners will continue making payments and hope for the best -- hope for a rebound in the economy, hope that their unit will someday return to its 2006 value.

A hope that I regard as an illusion.

Health Bubble

The economy produced 151,000 jobs last month...besting virtually every month over the last two years, as these represent private hiring, not part-time census workers.

My son will be graduating high school in 2015. As he does, he'll be vying for one of those 125,000 jobs that will need to be created each month just to absorb new entrants. That is -- we need 125,000 each month just to hold steady. Last month's gains, while substantial to be sure, does nothing to lower the unemployment rate...it just keeps it steady. And it did.

My concern, oft discussed here on my monologues, is that these are likely fake jobs. No, they are not fake to the guy landing it, far from it. He needs it and is happy to get it. But they are destructive relative to the long term health of our society in my opinion.

Service jobs are exactly that -- services that assist production. They are inherently non-productive, and cannot last in an unproductive economy.

Of those 151,000, the BLS report offers that +24,000 were in food services and drinking places.
Of those 151,000, +6,000 were auto dealership salesmen.
Of those 151,000, +5,000 were in electronic retail sales.
Of those 151,000, +35,000 were in temporary help services.
Of those 151,000, +24,000 were in health care services.

I'm not bashing these jobs; far from it. I simply think that they cannot be created in a non-productive vacuum without long term consequences.

Think -- for how many months going forward can our health care system absorb 24,000 jobs? Yes, there will be increased demand due to retiring baby boomers and diabetic children raised on fast foods, but at some point, some point, we are not going to be able to continue to absorb double digit health care increases ad infinitium.

I maintain, quite openly, how blessed I am to carry a job...but I do so having prepared years earlier. I saw this shit coming -- it was visible from a thousand miles away. I ensured I carried a job that can never be outsourced or lost during a recession -- domestic energy production. I didn't pin my economic future on flipping housal units or selling hot tubs, both of which made many people wealthier than I last decade, but are not needed today.

This year, my job's health insurance costs saw a 13.4% increase. For 2011, the premiums are set to rise 7.3%. My share of this increase rises another $50 per month, while wages will remain frozen. That is, next year I will see an effective $0.50 per hour pay cut. This money will flow into those +24,000 health care jobs created. I am hardly bitching about this. I'm an economic outlier who means little to the economy -- I'm not the one out buying new cars or clothes to support it. I live below my income and won't miss this fifty cents per hour. A thousand dollars less per year into savings, I suppose.

How long can our society absorb a 20% increase every two years? My guess is that every year going forward, I'll continue to see a $0.50 per hour pay cut (or more) to support the ballooning cost of health care, and we'll continue to see electricity rate increases to support the employer paid portion of this ballooning cost of health care.

When we cannot continue to support the exploding cost of health care, we're going to see the burst of the health care bubble we're creating -- the bubble creating the majority of jobs today.

Fait Accompli

Two teenage pedestrians were seriously injured two weeks ago when hit by a vehicle on the same stretch of road I ride the bike to work.

The uncle of one of the victims posted a comment on that link, indicating that the kids were in the marked crosswalk; the driver was going "too fast for the conditions." Read: he was speeding. No surprise there -- Broadway is full of speeding drivers in the morning. Come to think of it, it's full of speeding drivers at noontime. And it's full of speeders in the evening, too.

I am presuming the uncle knows the details of the SAC PD police report because I called the PD and they would not release it to me, as I was not involved in the incident. I tried to get the police report from the Elk Grove PD the other day regarding the man killed on Sheldon last month, but again, it's not releasable. Therefore I have to speculate. And if the uncle's account is true, then I wasn't too far off the mark regarding the cause of this accident.

If sun-in-the-eyes was at issue, it's always a matter of speed: slow the fuck down. If kids are present at that intersection the speed limit is 25mph. I hardly ever, ever! see anyone drive that speed. Slow the fuck down.

Consider this: the girls, unfortunately, will probably have to be driven to school for a while...when they are healthy enough to return to school. This will only increase the brutal traffic at that intersection, creating something like a fait accompli: More cars and parents will demand their children be driven for safety, creating more cars, making it a dead-zone for anything but vehicles.


This driver: if the victim's uncle is fair in reporting and his comments regarding the accident are indeed factual and not just speculation or wishful thinking (sorry: this is an all too common human trait), then what does this say about the way we drive? A guy in slacks and a collared shirt; he could work next to me in my office. Probably not a stoner. Probably not drunk on his way into work. Quite likely someone any of us would befriend. But behind the wheel, like 80% of the rest of us, he becomes an asshole. Doesn't give a shit about other users of the road. Doesn't signal. Speeds. Likely carries multiple pieces of electronica and operates them while driving, because fielding that phone call now is always so fucking important. This is the way most of us drive, and I don't care if I'm totally wrong about this one chap -- most of us drive this way.

So if a [presumably] well-to-do and responsible guy can level a few teenagers with his vehicle because of excess speed, what do you suppose those who maintain no personal responsibility are capable of?

Foreclosure Of A Dream

From a Huffington Post slide show of the foreclosure capital of the universe, Las Vegas, comes this slide of what represents (to me,anyway) not the worst of the housing meltdown, but the worst of the housing bubble:


This is a caricature of a home, a housal unit that opens its maw, swallows the vehicular entity and its occupant and closes up...awaiting the next victim. I imagine that the owner painted a upward curving smiley face on the garage door, maybe with a missing tooth too. That would go well with the his-and-her Lexus', adornments to the garage and the housal unit as a whole.

I suspect that this unit would have fetched $363,998 in its prime. A shame that such an architectural marvel is allowed to sit vacant for $121,000. Can you imagine the heat in that upstairs south-facing bedroom without working air conditioning?

To me, this represents the foreclosure of the American dream -- we've foreclosed on nice places to live, on houses built with some degree of charm years ago, now trumped by stucco and foam accouterments and a big blank garage door consuming 2/3rds of the unit facade. Places we used to live in -- medium density, walkable, tree lined -- have held their value during this supposed economic slowdown, but have long since fallen out of favor to shit like this. This is the America we wanted; charmless, soulless, empty, but above all, cheap...and we got it.