I've been arguing for three years on this blog how the national debt means nothing to no one...yet for whatever reason the debt is taking center stage now. Why now?
An interesting political dynamic is going on, and it has nothing at all to do with reducing the national debt. I maintain that we will never never! pay it off. We can't possibly fathom fifteen trillion dollars... fifteen million million; $15,000,000 million; $15,000,000,000,000,000.00. And it's not at all appropriate to pay it off in any event -- debt powers America, it's a place for investment institutions to park capital, and it's become a number so large that we simply have no capability to manage it.
And today we're supposed to be frightened of gasp! Moody's, downgrading our sovereign debt? The same agency that rated Lehman Brothers as sterling just before its public bankruptcy? The same agency that is rendering a simple opinion on our treasurys, nothing more, an opinion not to be indicative of a security's suitability as an investment?
We're supposed to be frightened because debt might, just might, cost a little more to carry? Here's the same Bush-era fear-mongering about Iraq coming to roost with the debt ceiling...the cost of borrowing for a new housal unit or vehicular unit may increase? Dear God!
Well...good. Interest rates have been artificially kept in the dirt as a consequence of the financial "crisis" and it'd be good to see them rise again as I carry no debt, and that I might get more than 0.2% return on any savings I stash. For whatever reason, we elect to ignore the positive side of higher interest rates and make the bold claim that it would kill our fragile economy.
Our economy has been systematically fragiled over the better part of my lifetime, with securitization, with the destroying of our manufacturing base, with our reliance on debt fueled bubbles as the only things providing value to our markets these days. Fifteen trillion in public debt and thirty trillion in private debt while destroying the productive base of our nation means, in my little opinion, that bankruptcy is inevitable.
Today we're embattled with the idea of our national debt simply because a supposed black liberal is in the white house, nothing more, and white Republicans don't like it. Didn't give a fuck when Reagan raised it seventeen times while in office, all as a matter of public financial housekeeping, and neither did they when Bush Sr, Clinton, or Jr raised it multiple times either. Didn't give a fuck that the debt doubled following the crisis of 2008 just as Obama was entering office...but now, whoa. Can't raise it again.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Hypocrisy
I had to make an on-site visit to a substation Tuesday, to retrieve relay settings from relays protecting transmission lines. I used to be able to do that remotely, but thanks to NERC reliability standards, our remote access was yanked away, causing me to sign out a vehicle and having to physically travel to the station. Don't bother complaining about higher electricity rates in the future -- you can thank NERC for a goodly piece of that.
And now, another reason not to complain about higher electric rates:
I traveled with a co-worker who has never had any problems telling me how he really wants Obama and his communist cronies out of the white house and Congress. You can guess which side of the isle he stands on. As I arrived at the substation gate I was a bit surprised to find it unlocked, but saw another truck inside the station. Still a violation, yes, even considering how NERC won't let me remotely log into a damn relay but copper thieves finding an easy way in due to a poor decision by a worker...that's overlooked?
I opened the control room door, the action of which rudely awakened two journeymen electricians who were napping in the comfortable conditioned air. It was indeed pretty warm outside, yes. While I gathered relay settings my co-worker and one of these two electricians then went to town, catching up on events, bitching about our management, relaying how one will retire in 340 days, and cracking racist jokes about Obama, as both these men find that nigger destroying the country with his socialistic agenda and giving money to people who don't deserve it.
As if taking a nap in a ratepayer subsidized air conditioned control room and getting paid $46 an hour to do so while bitching about giving money to those who don't deserve it doesn't represent the ultimate in rank hypocrisy.
This wasn't the first time I've seen this, nor will it be the last, and nor will it be the last time I'll get to hear well-to-do aging white men bitching about how they're getting taxed to death to support black deadbeats while fuckering away your electric rate-paying dollars sleeping inside an unlocked substation.
And now, another reason not to complain about higher electric rates:
I traveled with a co-worker who has never had any problems telling me how he really wants Obama and his communist cronies out of the white house and Congress. You can guess which side of the isle he stands on. As I arrived at the substation gate I was a bit surprised to find it unlocked, but saw another truck inside the station. Still a violation, yes, even considering how NERC won't let me remotely log into a damn relay but copper thieves finding an easy way in due to a poor decision by a worker...that's overlooked?
I opened the control room door, the action of which rudely awakened two journeymen electricians who were napping in the comfortable conditioned air. It was indeed pretty warm outside, yes. While I gathered relay settings my co-worker and one of these two electricians then went to town, catching up on events, bitching about our management, relaying how one will retire in 340 days, and cracking racist jokes about Obama, as both these men find that nigger destroying the country with his socialistic agenda and giving money to people who don't deserve it.
As if taking a nap in a ratepayer subsidized air conditioned control room and getting paid $46 an hour to do so while bitching about giving money to those who don't deserve it doesn't represent the ultimate in rank hypocrisy.
This wasn't the first time I've seen this, nor will it be the last, and nor will it be the last time I'll get to hear well-to-do aging white men bitching about how they're getting taxed to death to support black deadbeats while fuckering away your electric rate-paying dollars sleeping inside an unlocked substation.
The Rockies
Recall that I became an engineer, in part, due to the Challenger accident in January 1986. My path wasn't all that direct, mind you, and any number of events might have derailed my efforts but I eventually did become an engineer. I was in trigonometry class when I heard of the accident...interestingly, I use trig almost daily in my work as a power protection engineer. I hate to say that it was the death of several astronauts that spurred me on, not the space program directly, but nonetheless it was a national topic for months and kept me wanting.
I wonder about what events today will inspire teenagers to want to become engineers. Clearly, we can now forget about manned space exploration, not unless our youngsters speak fluent Russian or Chinese. Not likely, not in this nation. In addition to the budget cuts associated with NASA come budget cuts for powerful school programs like woodshop, autoshop, music, and foreign languages. Our kids have become wonderful standardized test takers yet will never be able (or more correctly, will never want) to change out their own vehicular units' oil filters. We are a services nation, so we ought to pay others for such "services" such as oil changes so we don't have to get all that icky, icky oil under our fingernails.
I will attribute the loss of this nation's manned space exploration through an anecdote -- a guy named Rocky.
Rocky has not held a job since I met him in 2008, living amongst dozens of other non-working citizens within a forty-yard radius of my cousin's rental in South Sacramento. He had an operation to attach some sort of plate to support his neck bones, and now, obviously, cannot work. Obviously. Two weeks ago, he received a lump sum settlement from social security disability, and now, going forward, he has no problems telling me how he finally feels secure about the future, now that he'll be receiving a $1,200 check every month ad infinitum.
The next day after receiving a check for the 2.75 years of back social security payments the government owed him, he rolled up in a [fairly new] 725i BMW and paid my cousin $15 to have it detailed. I rolled up in my little piece of shit Honda Civic. Granted, I have options, yes. But I felt quite a bit of jealousy, I will freely admit. I am not one to spend money on such things, but still, I couldn't help but feel some degree of unfairness in all this.
Unfairness, particularly when I learned that Rocky decided to spring for a Lodi skydiving adventure, satisfying a long lifetime dream of doing it once. Granted, it was a tandem jump...but didn't that motherfucker pay for the skydive with funds supplied by a taxpayer funded governmental check due to disability?
There are millions of other Rockies out there in the broad land of ours, and each one contributes his/her part to this nation's loss of manned space exploration.
I wonder about what events today will inspire teenagers to want to become engineers. Clearly, we can now forget about manned space exploration, not unless our youngsters speak fluent Russian or Chinese. Not likely, not in this nation. In addition to the budget cuts associated with NASA come budget cuts for powerful school programs like woodshop, autoshop, music, and foreign languages. Our kids have become wonderful standardized test takers yet will never be able (or more correctly, will never want) to change out their own vehicular units' oil filters. We are a services nation, so we ought to pay others for such "services" such as oil changes so we don't have to get all that icky, icky oil under our fingernails.
I will attribute the loss of this nation's manned space exploration through an anecdote -- a guy named Rocky.
Rocky has not held a job since I met him in 2008, living amongst dozens of other non-working citizens within a forty-yard radius of my cousin's rental in South Sacramento. He had an operation to attach some sort of plate to support his neck bones, and now, obviously, cannot work. Obviously. Two weeks ago, he received a lump sum settlement from social security disability, and now, going forward, he has no problems telling me how he finally feels secure about the future, now that he'll be receiving a $1,200 check every month ad infinitum.
The next day after receiving a check for the 2.75 years of back social security payments the government owed him, he rolled up in a [fairly new] 725i BMW and paid my cousin $15 to have it detailed. I rolled up in my little piece of shit Honda Civic. Granted, I have options, yes. But I felt quite a bit of jealousy, I will freely admit. I am not one to spend money on such things, but still, I couldn't help but feel some degree of unfairness in all this.
Unfairness, particularly when I learned that Rocky decided to spring for a Lodi skydiving adventure, satisfying a long lifetime dream of doing it once. Granted, it was a tandem jump...but didn't that motherfucker pay for the skydive with funds supplied by a taxpayer funded governmental check due to disability?
There are millions of other Rockies out there in the broad land of ours, and each one contributes his/her part to this nation's loss of manned space exploration.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
NASACAR
I spent the greater part of last weekend touring a relic of a former economic powerhouse, the USS Hornet. The Hornet was the exact vessel that retrieved the two Apollo 11 & 12 capsules.
It was indeed highly coincidental that I spent hours admiring the NASA Apollo displays while the last manned space mission by our nation was underway with Atlantis overhead.
I am deeply and profoundly saddened by the turn of events that have led to our dismissal of manned space exploration...even if they are only earth-orbital missions these days. I am as deeply and profoundly pissed off at how conservative commentators suggest that it's all Obama's fault, when clearly the end of the shuttle run was committed many years earlier.
It has not one thing to do with Obama. It has everything to do with the direction this nation's constituents have taken over the last forty years, over a period managed by Democrats and Republicans alike, who have:
If I had the ability to control where my tax dollars flowed, I would gladly gladly! pay 40% more if I could be assured that NASA would have direct access to that differential. I find space exploration to be among the most worthwhile uses of my tax dollars, and I am at odds with a nation unwilling to pursue it any further.
This is simply symptomatic of a nation that has lost it's way, in my little opinion, and a harbinger of things to come. We will give up our efforts to advance ourselves for the sake of enabling so many of us to fucker away our potential as citizens. We will continue, over the next few decades (i.e., over the rest of my lifetime), to prosecute wars to support our gluttonous energy requirements, to suppport the payouts of unsustainable entitlements to increasing swaths of our constituents, to lose another 5-6% of our manufacturing base to Bulgaria, et al, to cheerily lose a $21/hour real job and replacing it with a $17/hour financial, insurance or real estate (FIRE) services job all because we are unwilling to pay other Americans the wages they demand for shit that they produce.
I had immense pleasure to gaze on the intricate, detailed wiring inside an Apollo capsule that was launched unmanned in 1966 to test the control systems, the re-entry, the deployment of parachutes, the splashdown. An electrical engineer, probably my age in 1964, designed the wiring for this capsule, for the lunar landing module, for the command vehicle, and he had a small piece in developing this future national treasure. He was probably easily able to provide for his family with his one salary. He didn't necessarily get rich but lived an extraordinarily comfortable life and one with meaning. The sheet metal worker who attached the radio systems atop the island on the deck of the USS Hornet -- she was a small contributor to the building of a device that had the unplanned benefit of supporting a manned mission into space. These were valuable jobs. They had meaning. Work is noble, and work is craft, yet these ideas have been slowing eroding away here in this nation, what with the only possibilities for local non-college-bound Elk Grovian teenagers being Kohls' forklift drivers or Del Taco managers or Auto Mall janitors or strip mall security guards.
I am exceedingly fortunate to have a real manufacturing job that I love...and this all came about as a result of the 1986 Challenger accident (while I was a junior in high school) that spurred me to eventually become an engineer. While I never pursued any dreams of working on the systems to get people into space, I nevertheless did indeed find a worthwhile endeavor. I feel a bit of shame that my nation will now be less capable of developing such programs as NASA to spur future constituents to aspire.
We are now aspiring to be either NASCAR pitcrewmen or grips on the set of Jersey Shore, hoping to catch a glimpse of Snooki....
It was indeed highly coincidental that I spent hours admiring the NASA Apollo displays while the last manned space mission by our nation was underway with Atlantis overhead.
I am deeply and profoundly saddened by the turn of events that have led to our dismissal of manned space exploration...even if they are only earth-orbital missions these days. I am as deeply and profoundly pissed off at how conservative commentators suggest that it's all Obama's fault, when clearly the end of the shuttle run was committed many years earlier.
It has not one thing to do with Obama. It has everything to do with the direction this nation's constituents have taken over the last forty years, over a period managed by Democrats and Republicans alike, who have:
- Happily cheered on the opening of thousands of WalMarts and Targets to save a few dollars on hairdryers and plastic storage bins while cheerily supporting the death of local, independent merchants/manufacturers and good paying jobs.
- Looked to the real housewives of Atlanta for daily entertainment.
- Developed not a manufacturing economy based on the scientific prowess of NASA and other related technologies, but on perpetual suburban sprawl, the accessorizing of 3,200 sq ft starter mansions and garage majals with jet skis and his-and-her SUVs, and the advancement of money-for-nothing ventures such as Indian casinos, Las Vegas, credit default swaps and collateral debt obligations.
- Spent the greater part of two generations getting tattoos of their favorite NASCAR drivers, "pictures" of barbed wire on their biceps, and outfitting their rigs with 24" rims and low profile tires.
If I had the ability to control where my tax dollars flowed, I would gladly gladly! pay 40% more if I could be assured that NASA would have direct access to that differential. I find space exploration to be among the most worthwhile uses of my tax dollars, and I am at odds with a nation unwilling to pursue it any further.
This is simply symptomatic of a nation that has lost it's way, in my little opinion, and a harbinger of things to come. We will give up our efforts to advance ourselves for the sake of enabling so many of us to fucker away our potential as citizens. We will continue, over the next few decades (i.e., over the rest of my lifetime), to prosecute wars to support our gluttonous energy requirements, to suppport the payouts of unsustainable entitlements to increasing swaths of our constituents, to lose another 5-6% of our manufacturing base to Bulgaria, et al, to cheerily lose a $21/hour real job and replacing it with a $17/hour financial, insurance or real estate (FIRE) services job all because we are unwilling to pay other Americans the wages they demand for shit that they produce.
I had immense pleasure to gaze on the intricate, detailed wiring inside an Apollo capsule that was launched unmanned in 1966 to test the control systems, the re-entry, the deployment of parachutes, the splashdown. An electrical engineer, probably my age in 1964, designed the wiring for this capsule, for the lunar landing module, for the command vehicle, and he had a small piece in developing this future national treasure. He was probably easily able to provide for his family with his one salary. He didn't necessarily get rich but lived an extraordinarily comfortable life and one with meaning. The sheet metal worker who attached the radio systems atop the island on the deck of the USS Hornet -- she was a small contributor to the building of a device that had the unplanned benefit of supporting a manned mission into space. These were valuable jobs. They had meaning. Work is noble, and work is craft, yet these ideas have been slowing eroding away here in this nation, what with the only possibilities for local non-college-bound Elk Grovian teenagers being Kohls' forklift drivers or Del Taco managers or Auto Mall janitors or strip mall security guards.
I am exceedingly fortunate to have a real manufacturing job that I love...and this all came about as a result of the 1986 Challenger accident (while I was a junior in high school) that spurred me to eventually become an engineer. While I never pursued any dreams of working on the systems to get people into space, I nevertheless did indeed find a worthwhile endeavor. I feel a bit of shame that my nation will now be less capable of developing such programs as NASA to spur future constituents to aspire.
We are now aspiring to be either NASCAR pitcrewmen or grips on the set of Jersey Shore, hoping to catch a glimpse of Snooki....
Monday, July 4, 2011
Billy Goats Gruff
Big hubbub regarding a recent Sacramento Bee article describing how Bay Area commuters are saving $400,000,000 dollars by outsourcing pre-fabricated sections of the new bay bridge to China.
The usual claptrap in the letters to the editor -- indeed, the same claptrap I often argue here on my blog: "How safe will you feel driving on Chinese made roadbeds?" or "Thanks to our state government we're continuing to feel the effects of 12% unemployment," or "we're only perpetuating wage-slaves in Hongzhau," or other such banter.
No letter writer bothered to write the obvious : "The use of Chinese labor and manufacturing will allow each of you to pay only $8 at the toll booth instead of $12."
No discussion about that. None at all. We bitch and we bitch and we bitch about the loss of good wages or the use of slave-labor or the unregulated emissions released by thousands of Chinese coal plants, but then we climb into our Japanese-designed vehicular units and drive to Walmart and marvel at the wonderfully low prices on a new color-matched Chinese made blender that will fit quite nicely on the new countertop as the old one, while perfectly usable, doesn't quite match our new kitchen.
We don't seem to mind cheap Chinese household appliances. Yes, let them rat-bastards employ slave-wage labor to build shit like that over there, but a bridge section? Whoa. No-no-no-no-no-no, we have to drive on that, and would you trust taking your children across that bridge now that you know who built it? I wouldn't.
I only point out the hypocrisy of Americans who seem to think that we're getting taxed to death (with the lowest real rates over the past eight decades) and that we ought not pay a $12 toll to keep manufacturing local. We want cheap plastic hairdryers and refuse to pay American wages to make them. We want unrestrained services from our governments (for roads!) but we refuse to pay for them.
We are a services nation, not a manufacturing nation. We don't need to be building bridge sections -- leave that icky, icky work to developing nations. No, our job in the global economic hierarchy is to consume shit, not to build it. Our job is to spend the workweek in a cubicle in some too big to fail bank trying to make insolvent borrowers and insolvent lenders both appear solvent, then wake up every Saturday and pay the lowest possible rate for a toll so that we can comfortably drive the 99 miles to San Francisco in an Asian car on gold-plated out-sourced freeways (they're "free!") to enjoy Vietnamese farm-raised clams inside that "Manhattan" clam chowder in a bread bowl while enjoying touring the relics (WWII submarines and liberty ships) of a former manufacturing powerhouse.
And all the while we're adding a million dollars more every forty-eight seconds to our $14,472,276,393,201 national debt, telling the next buyer of our Treasury's "Mr. Troll, please let me pass -- there's a bigger, fatter, more capable future generation ahead of us who will have even better means to pay down the debts we're currently incurring."
Our debt, which we are continuing to add to by building half-trillion dollar bridges using federal matching funds, our debt which we will never pay back, is indeed the troll under the new bay bridge.
The usual claptrap in the letters to the editor -- indeed, the same claptrap I often argue here on my blog: "How safe will you feel driving on Chinese made roadbeds?" or "Thanks to our state government we're continuing to feel the effects of 12% unemployment," or "we're only perpetuating wage-slaves in Hongzhau," or other such banter.
No letter writer bothered to write the obvious : "The use of Chinese labor and manufacturing will allow each of you to pay only $8 at the toll booth instead of $12."
No discussion about that. None at all. We bitch and we bitch and we bitch about the loss of good wages or the use of slave-labor or the unregulated emissions released by thousands of Chinese coal plants, but then we climb into our Japanese-designed vehicular units and drive to Walmart and marvel at the wonderfully low prices on a new color-matched Chinese made blender that will fit quite nicely on the new countertop as the old one, while perfectly usable, doesn't quite match our new kitchen.
We don't seem to mind cheap Chinese household appliances. Yes, let them rat-bastards employ slave-wage labor to build shit like that over there, but a bridge section? Whoa. No-no-no-no-no-no, we have to drive on that, and would you trust taking your children across that bridge now that you know who built it? I wouldn't.
I only point out the hypocrisy of Americans who seem to think that we're getting taxed to death (with the lowest real rates over the past eight decades) and that we ought not pay a $12 toll to keep manufacturing local. We want cheap plastic hairdryers and refuse to pay American wages to make them. We want unrestrained services from our governments (for roads!) but we refuse to pay for them.
We are a services nation, not a manufacturing nation. We don't need to be building bridge sections -- leave that icky, icky work to developing nations. No, our job in the global economic hierarchy is to consume shit, not to build it. Our job is to spend the workweek in a cubicle in some too big to fail bank trying to make insolvent borrowers and insolvent lenders both appear solvent, then wake up every Saturday and pay the lowest possible rate for a toll so that we can comfortably drive the 99 miles to San Francisco in an Asian car on gold-plated out-sourced freeways (they're "free!") to enjoy Vietnamese farm-raised clams inside that "Manhattan" clam chowder in a bread bowl while enjoying touring the relics (WWII submarines and liberty ships) of a former manufacturing powerhouse.
And all the while we're adding a million dollars more every forty-eight seconds to our $14,472,276,393,201 national debt, telling the next buyer of our Treasury's "Mr. Troll, please let me pass -- there's a bigger, fatter, more capable future generation ahead of us who will have even better means to pay down the debts we're currently incurring."
Our debt, which we are continuing to add to by building half-trillion dollar bridges using federal matching funds, our debt which we will never pay back, is indeed the troll under the new bay bridge.
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