Small victories

I have written from time to time about driving the casual carpool.  This happened yesterday.

I had a full car, and was on the carpool only on-ramp.  A few car lengths ahead I saw someone stop, and try to force themselves into the left hand (the on-ramp has two lanes, that merge at the very top) lane.  It held up traffic for a bit, until the driver managed to stick his nose between two cars, and make everyone wait until the lane change was accomplished.

There is no good reason to be changing lanes there, they are going to merge soon anyway.  Except, it was a solo driver on the carpool on-ramp, and a highway patrolman was parked near the top of the ramp.  The driver was trying to make it more difficult to be seen.

Shortly after, the highway patrolman was walking between the lanes of traffic.  This was not a dangerous maneuver, the traffic was stop and go.  He signaled to the right hand lane to stop, creating a gap.  He pointed to the solo driver, signaling for him to turn into the hole created by the stopped traffic, and pull over.

We passed the car as the patrolman was at the car window, explaining to the driver the error of his ways.  We all cheered as we drove by.

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Yes, he really is that evil

I just got through watching the Showtime documentary The world according to Dick Cheney.  It reaffirmed every bad thing that I ever thought about him. He really was a Svengali, leading the hapless Bush around by the nose for his entire first term.  But what is worse is, he remains happy in the damage he inflicted upon the United States.

He fundamentally changed this country from one where the rule of law mattered, to one where only expediency matters.  It know longer matters whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, as long as we win, within his warped definition of winning.  That Iran has become the major power in the region as a result of our crippling the only nation strong enough to counter them?  When asked about regrets, he said he would do it all over again.  While that was never addressed in the interviews, I am sure his solution would be still another war.

That he squandered all the sympathy and good will we had acquired after the September 11th attacks, creating a whole new generation of enemies?  Apparently no regrets there either.  He turned the United States from the beacon of hope we have tried to represent to the world to the school bully shaking down the other kids for their lunch money.  The concept that his actions created more danger in the world, not less, is beyond his understanding.

He set a standard, a tone, that still exists.  Laws are for the little people to follow, the lash that keeps them behind the plow, while the powerful may ignore them with impunity.  That is true in this country which has become a Security State, and it is true in how this country behaves in relation to it's international obligations.

He argued with Bush for Scooter Libby to be pardoned, but he would never come clean, that Libby was only trying to protect him.   His loyalty only goes so far.  A Chicken Hawk to the end.

While the program presented some opposing thoughts to a number of Cheney's views, there were very few tough questions asked, and few challenges to his assertions.  Yet despite the kid gloves with which the former vice president was handled, he still came off as an soulless ideologue who was uninterested in any fact which might conflict with what he had made up his mind he wanted to do.

It appears to me that in many ways he accomplished his main goal, which was to mold the United States into his own image.  He removed morality and justice from the equation, making us mirror images of the evil we found ourselves confronted with back on September 11th.  Will we ever recover?

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Why am I writing this story again?

This is the third Christmas in a row that I have written about Barbara, the woman who stands outside the building where I work begging for money.  The first two times were Second and First.

She is thinner now, if that is possible, than the first time I wrote about her.  I have seen her with cuts and bruises, and broken bones.  She has disappeared for days at a time, only to return with stories of being in the hospital.  Sometimes it has been due to illness, and others due to the fragility of aging bones.  But still she clings to existence, such as it is.

She is the face of our steadily declining commitment to the least of us in our society.  She is also the future, if the right wing has their way.  She is no longer any use, so they have no qualms about tossing her onto the scrap heap.  When you and I are no longer of use to them, that is the future they envision for us too.  Of course they would rather we had the decency to just fucking die when we are no longer useful to them.

I know, you think I am exaggerating.  Then how do you explain that, when there are men and women like Barbara, just hanging on by a thread, and they want to cut every service that Barbara and people like her depend upon to survive, while at the same time giving tax breaks to those who want for nothing?

They would tell you (if they had the courage to speak their minds openly) that there is a natural order to things, and that you exist to serve your betters.  It is essentially the same line that you have heard in all class based societies.  If you stand up for yourself?  Then you are instigating class warfare.

It is much like the line used against black Americans during the civil rights movement.  They were expected to stand idly by while they were brutalized, lynched.  But should they stand up and resist, fight back, then they were instigating violence.

Now two years after I first wrote about her, Barbara is still barely surviving on whatever kind of pension she receives and what she gets begging on the streets.  She gave me a Christmas card again this year, thanking me for the help I give her.   I know she has others, like me, who help her out with a few dollars when they see her.  But still, that isn't enough, not even close.

Unless we change, she is not only the present, but the future.

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Bend over and crack a smile

Imagine you are driving along and you come to a traffic light.  It is green so you don't slow down.  As you cross the intersection you are struck from the side, your car rolls over several times, and you awaken in a hospital.

The next few months are spent in a painful recovery.  As you are unable to work, the bills pile up.  Your insurance company files suit against the insurance company of the other driver, and they settle on an amount that, while not making you whole, will at least pay off a lot of your medical bills.  Then you receive a letter from your insurer, telling you that they are going to keep all the money and you are left to fend for yourself.

That stinks, right?  OK, here is another story, and this one is true.

The banking industry discovers that if you write crappy loans, that are likely to default. you can sell them to some sucker if you package them with a bunch of other crappy loans as mortgage backed securities.  You might even make some additional profit by servicing the loan for the sucker you sold them to.

So your CEO gets a huge bonus, and because anyone and his brother can get a loan now, the price of real estate goes crazy.  Buying a home becomes more and more expensive.

Now you have a decent job, perhaps some savings for a down payment, and you go shopping for a house.  The prices are absurdly high, but that is just what they cost.  You take some comfort in the fact that with your purchase, you are building some equity, and you can recoup that when you sell.

Of course the house of cards that the banks have constructed eventually comes tumbling down, and then suddenly the house you have been making payments on every month for five, six, or seven years is worth dramatically less than you owe on it.

If you were to lose your job,  you cannot go somewhere else to look for a job because you cannot sell your house.  If you are ready to retire, you have no equity to pull out.  Need to move to a smaller, cheaper place now that the kids are grown?  Forget it.  Even if you walk away from that mortgage, your credit is trashed and you won't be able to buy another house for years.  Some landlords will not even rent to you.

Ever the federal government and the states.  They reach a settlement with the banks.  Now the amount of the settlement reached is a tiny percentage of the amount of equity that was wiped out as the result of the banks gaming the system.  But at least you may get some small amount of relief.

Until the state decides that they are going to keep your share of the money, the money that was supposed to provide you with some sort of relief.  That is what many states, including my own state of California intend to do.

So bend over and crack a smile.  You are about to get fucked in the ass...again.

Went for his gun?

You are walking alone, being stalked by a stranger.   The stranger approaches you, and addresses you in a belligerent manner.  The stranger is not a police officer.  He are carrying a gun.  What do you believe is about to happen?  What do you do?

This is why George Zimmerman's excuse does not sound like any kind of an excuse at all to me.  Even if it is completely true that Trayvon Martin hit him and tried to take his gun, that would only mean that young Trayvon had decided that his best chance of getting out of there alive was to overpower his assailant.

The 'followed him back to his car' part of the story does not fit with the narrative that Martin's girlfriend provides.  She was receiving an ongoing account from Martin right up until the apparent struggle where he was killed.  She heard the initial exchange of words between them.

Lastly, how would Martin even know that Zimmerman had a gun to take away, unless he was brandishing it?

None of us know the whole story.  There may be much one to this than any of us know.  But why do I see these stories offered at face value, with none of the important questions being asked?

Peanuts

That is the word that comes to mind whenever I think about the proposed settlement with the banksters. 

The housing bubble was essentially their creation.  They made money creating it, and when the bubble burst, we paid to bail them out.

So they were made whole again.

How much equity was lost by how many people?  Twenty-five billion dollars is a drop in the bucket.  It does not come close to repairing the damage done to the financial position of millions of Americans.  So the banks got their money back, and they got a lot of the properties back too, in foreclosures, many of them illegal.  They rest of us?  Chump change.

If the price of food goes up, you have to pay it.  If the price of gas goes up, you have to pay it.  How is it different if the price of a home goes up?  If you do not pay it by buying a home, you pay it in rent, either way, you pay it.  And in this case, the price of homes went up because they gamed the market.  And if you do not think lending money to buy a house to virtually anyone who wanted one drives up the price of homes, then I would like to talk to you about a great opportunity in investment property.

So the bankers got theirs.  Until the homeowners of America are made whole, this isn't over.  Not even close.

Names and Faces

I have a stepdaughter who has been active in the Occupy movement, and she talks to us about what goes on in the meetings they have discussing strategy and tactics.  My wife and I were talking about it the other day, and during that conversation my wife made what I think was an excellent observation.  A big difference between the Occupy movement and the earlier anti-war movements has been the lack of a specific target.

We knew who was responsible for committing American lives and treasure to the ill-conceived war in Iraq.  It was Bush and Cheney and their ilk.  The current financial mess we find ourselves in has also those who were responsible also, but who are they?

Put it this way.  A lot of people made a shit load of money driving our economy into the ground.  So far, none have gone to jail for it.  What they did that was legal, and what was illegal, I am not going to debate here.  In any case, what they did was wrong.  Whether or not any of them go to jail, they should be exposed.

This would be a great next step for the Occupy movement.  Identify who did what, how much they made, and put names, faces, amounts on the signs of the next series of demonstrations.  Call these people out in public, let their names and faces appear on television.

This will not be easy.  A lot of the decisions were probably made by people we have never heard of.  But I don't see the Attorney General doing this, so it is being left to the rest of us.  I am not even sure how I would start looking.  But it is what the movement needs right now.

Make no mistake, these are the architects of our decline.  It was done for personal gain without regard for the impact it would have on you and me or the nation at large.  It is time that you, and the rest of the nation, knows who they are.

Missed opportunity

A lot of people, left and right will disagree with me, but the killing of Osama bin Laden was the loss of a tremendous opportunity.  We lost the opportunity to demonstrate to the world not only that we are strong enough to win, but that we deserve to win.

Returning him to the United States in shackles, making him stand trial in the full public eye, would have demonstrated to the world that we are not only strong, but just.  Yes, it would have been a magnet for trouble.  His presence would have incited radical Muslims to try and free him, prolonged the ordeal not only for him but for all of us,  It would have been messy and a pain in the ass.  But guess what, that is what justice is.

He would have been exposed to the world for what he is, in the way releasing home videos never will.  And our insistence that he stand trail would have been a demonstration to the world that we are a nation of laws, even when those laws are inconvenient.  Essentially, we would be telling the world that George Bush and Dick Chaney do not represent the United States, that we are better than that.

Now having said that, I do not fault the military who carried out the execution.  I don't know what their real order were, but given the circumstances, a covert mission in a fortified facility, I believe that they are justified at the slightest hint of danger to open fire.  They found weapons caches and barricades inside the compound, it is not unreasonable to expect Resistance.  So if somebody has to leave in a body bag, I would rather it be Bin Laden than one of our troops.


Still, if Bin Laden had been arraigned on Tuesday morning in front of a judge, that would have sent a powerful message to the whole world.  It would have told them that although we are the most powerful military force in the world, we are not a lynch mob.  We practice what we preach.