I have a feeling as to why Joe Paterno stayed as coach as long as he did – once he realized that Sullivan was unable to properly take over as coach once he retired (due to Sullivan having an undying desire to rape young boys) he realized he was stuck with coaching until he died. He probably justified it to himself by believing that after he died no one would care that a now-former underling was shooting things up where they shouldn’t have been shot.
In short, Paterno believed that his death would make things all right…but in the meantime there’s nobody left to take over the reins, so he’d better make sure things “go right” and hold down the fort until he died.
And the old coot nearly succeeded. Had they waited four-six months longer to out the news, Joe Paterno would be dead and everyone would probably have downplayed Sullivan and his actions.
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So here’s the problem: We know that the Penn State program housed, nurtured and protected a man whose main goal in life seemed to be the f*cking of young boys. A man who had had many chances to be flushed out by the leadership, yet was kept within…and even when he was forced to retire he was allowed free access to all the facilities.
We also know that the guy coached at Penn State since 1966, who was able to guide the team to bowl after bowl and brought them into the Big Ten when the time had come to become part of a conference. In short, a man who coached for as long as many of us can remember (I was born a year and a half before he coached his first game, and he had been there for a long time before then).
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Of course, whether the Penn State Football program would have been where it is now without Paterno is another question.
Looking over the list of football coaches and their records, the thing that comes to my mind is that any good coach could have come here and done well. There’s only three coaches with less than .500 records, and they constitute a grand total of 4 1/4 seasons out of 125. Even many of the one-year coaches had records of over .500. Even their first five years WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE A COACH was over .500. They could be considered to have spent the whole of the last century at over .500, and while there were probably a couple of seasons spent under .500 it’s obvious that those years were covered over with the coaches.
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I can’t help but wonder when Paterno knew what was going on with Sullivan. The guy had sort of become the laughing stock of the Football world, and whatever success he had had since joining the Big Ten could easily be put on the shoulders of his assistant coaches.
In the end, I’m sure there will be some rewriting of history going on. After all, Penn State has to deal with forty-five plus years of a single coach whose record rises above everyone else at PSU (at .749, he ranks higher percentage-wise over all but one coach, and that guy only coached five years) AND who allowed probably the worst crimes to happen on campus with his acceptance. It’s one hell of a whip-saw, one that those of us who stand outside the distortion-field of living within the Penn-State fandom need to be aware of as they work their way through the issues.
After all, you can’t just dismiss forty-five plus years into the black hole of illusion. Even if there’s been criminal activity embedded into it. It happened, after all, and only the NCAA thinks that they can sweep stuff under the rug.
First, if you remember the shitstorm on Romney’s “I like to fire my provider” comment, here’s the whole thing, in context, with the important stuff in bold and italics:
“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you could fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone isn’t giving the good service, I want to say, I’m going to go get someone else to provide this service to.”
Everyone focused on the “I like being able to fire people” quote because it was the easy quote to focus on. It seemed to exult in power to withhold good from someone, and had enough seeming harshness in it to beg for highlighting in the first place. Never mind that it actually tied in with the sentence before it, and was further explained further down in the same quote.
But the press seemed to go out of their way to ignore the first sentence in the above quote. I’ll drag it down below so that people can look at it closer (and yes, out of context):
I want individuals to have their own insurance.
Yes, imagine that: three hundred million people with their own separate insurance. Nothing allowed through companies, nothing where people group together in a Union, three hundred individual with a need for insurance.
And on the other side: Five insurance people with no real need to insure people, an insured profit margin to work with, and a government to do their bidding if people decide to go without.
Five major insurance givers against three hundred million people who need the insurance. And with the Federal Government forcing people to get insurance (although the court case is being looked through in the meantime), these five groups will end up having dictatorial powers over the people needing insurance if Mitt Romney has his way.
(And don’t tell me that open competition from out-of-state companies will drop prices. Already there’s a combining of companies so that health insurance companies operates in multiple states – Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield already operates in fourteen states and is probably looking to either be bought up or to buy other companies to expand their reach).
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Now, onto SOPA and PIPA:
All everyone seems to focus on is the issues of “Piracy.” As if it’s everyone’s right to listen to whatever they want and watch whatever they want without any cost to them.
Now I understand that the main entertainment companies (represented by the RIAA and the MPAA) bitching about “Intellectual Property Criminals” assume that every one of their customers (past, present, future and potential) are criminals out to steal from them blind – and that these companies tend to deserve to be ripped off. I also understand that these same companies need money to make stuff – and that, for the most part, the ability to reproduce stuff freely and at nearly no cost has caused greater problems for the smaller fish than for the larger fish. The Black Eyed Peas, those pervayors of Lowest Common Denominator pablum, do well but many other groups that don’t crush themselves into the form-fitting formats that reign now end up crawling from tour to tour.
(A word of admission here: I loved the fact that my groups were doing the above, living from tour to tour and recording like crazy…in the eighties. After a while I wanted to think that enough other people were getting what I was getting. Got that…and grew to regret it.)
But…here’s a question I’d like to you consider: Ever think that it’s not about the entertainment industry?
I remember a year or two ago, when the big issue was “Net Neutrality.” Back then service providers (Comcast, AT&T and a few other mega-providers) were trying to implement a system in which they would tightly control what people had access to. We’d get all the entertainment stuff from Disney/Fox/CBS/etc., and if we wanted more we’d either have to pay more or hack our way into hidden Internets that were busy hiding from the world.
Everyone in the internet reacted, and the providers quieted down. People thought that they had won their right to hunt down internet porn and download the latest hits heard on the radio; but the companies just hunkered down and figured out a new strategy:
Have the major content providers come up with a bill. Once it passes, we’ll be able to implement the barriers we were planning a couple years ago.
It has a couple of benefits. It shifts the focus from “access to our internet” to “prevention of piracy and theft,” thereby giving the impression of correcting a wrong. It also hides the actual plans (by one remove) from people’s minds. The people focus on the draconian measures that ISPs, Search Engines and Hosts would seemingly have to do with every complaint and misses the obvious answer from the Provider side: You can’t violate intellectual property rights if you don’t have the means to do so…and the death of net neutrality by the Access Provides (AT&T, Comcast, et al) would do that in one fell swoop.
It also makes the entertainment industry look stupid (although the RIAA and MPAA go out of their way to look stupid, talking down to their customers as if they’re kids who need everlasting punishment to pay for their “sins”) and takes all eyes off the folks who were to actually carry out the law.
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Interesting that the press keeps missing what’s really going on. At some point one begins to suspect stuff…like they’re missing stuff for a reason.
I’m already doing that.
First thing I got to say about Penn State Football: KILL IT; even if it kills off other athletics.
The simple fact is that Penn State knew about Sullivan and accepted him, proclivities and all. Which wouldn’t have been bad had he only had a thing for cute college co-eds, but his thing was for boys who had nowhere else to go but with him and his group.
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A death penalty wouldn’t even be a precedent-setting event. After all, we already have an example of a program that had something wrong going on within it and aided it: Southern Methodist University.
They had spent much time trying to make themselves a football power in the Southwest Conference back when it was a Division 1 conference, and they finally did it in the early eighties. However, the success came because of a lot of people figuring ways to get money to the football players.
As it turned out, not only was there rampant corruption, but the college leadership knew about it and aided and abetted it. They were going to do everything to get big, even if it put them at risk. They even continued paying some of their players after they promised not to, with the idea that they made promises to those players and needed to keep to their side of the bargain.
Needless to say, the NCAA went ahead and cancelled their season for 1987. 1988 was killed off as well, as there wasn’t enough of a team to play even the halfway-proper season that the NCAA allowed (seven away games).
This would eventually lead to the death of the Southwest Conference, the ascent of the Big Twelve and the major instability that is now a part of the College Football scene. It also set up a standard for the NCAA to implement the Death Penalty:
Needless to say, the death penalty has only been applied to side sports in smaller colleges (the death of the Southwest Conference, though probably inevitable by the time it happened, didn’t help out matters either – by making the NCAA gun-shy about applying it). Not only that, but schools have become very cooperative in the NCAA investigations, even to the point of doing pre-emptive punishments on themselves (in an attempt to avoid further punishment from the NCAA).
It also explains why nowadays when a school is accused of wrongdoing it’s always “Lack of Institutional Control” that the schools get hit for. The schools and the “alumni groups” have separated themselves well enough that the Coaches and Trustees usually have little idea what’s going on with the “support.” The school and athletic teams have their cover, and the alumni groups support their football players to the best of their ability.
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Now what happened at Penn State?
Well, in 1998 the police were already dealing with odd things with Jerry Sandusky showering with boys. In 2002 Mike McQueary saw a boy getting rutted into in the shower, when he went to Joe Paterno Joe Pa said “I wish you didn’t have to see that.” Not “what did you see,” not “You’re Kidding!,” but “I wish you didn’t have to see that.”
In the spring of 2008 Sandusky would assault a boy at a high school – and it would be spotted, and the school would BAR Sandusky from the school grounds. They would also notify the Police – something Penn State never did in its MANY years with Sandusky.
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The major thing is this: Joe Paterno, and by extension Penn State knew of wrongdoing on its campus and aided and abetted the wrongdoing. Not through supporting the guy (although with rumors of him pimping out boys throughout the state I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the trustees and/or teachers at the University had helped themselves to his offerings), but strictly by letting stuff happen to the boys on their watch.
It’s this support of wrongdoing that pushes this beyond “Lack of Institutional Control” and into the area of “Institutionally Supported Wrongdoing.” Which makes this ripe for the Death Penalty. Like SMU, another school that went so far as to directly support wrongdoing in the eighties.
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The question is: Why WON’T the NCAA pull the plug on the program?
They’re afraid of what will happen.
After all, we’re talking about a school being unable to put forth a football team for one, maybe two years – and having trouble putting a good team together after that. And while that’s just one team in a conference of twelve that spans two time zones and Seven states at its widest, Penn State reaches into some important areas, even reaching towards the Atlantic Ocean and the major markets of Philadelphia and New York.
For the NCAA, long weakened by its inability to control its biggest brands (certain college teams) until after the fact, to suddenly cut a major conference (Say what you will about how far down the Big Ten is verses the Pac Twelve, never mind the SEC, but it does hold great power) off from MAJOR markets would involve much larger balls than the governing body has. Indeed, I’ve heard that there were to form four major conferences of 16 that were to set up their own championship (complete with a built-in playoff of eight teams, one from each division of each conference), the NCAA would be dead within a couple years.
So no, Penn State will be allowed to muddle through their issues, a full member of a major conference. Even though the death penalty makes sense here.
Reading up on The Archdruid Report’s latest blog – a musing on why people keep wishing for apocalypses or breakthroughs when neither is hurrying to make themselves known – I’m reminded in many ways of the Roman Empire collapsed in the West, especially in Britain.
The first collapse was the Western Empire – the section that included Spain, France (aka Gaul), Britain and Italy. Rome wasn’t spared, indeed preparations were made for the possibility that Rome would fall, including the establishment of an eastern Roman capital at the site of old Byzantium (to be known as “New Rome,” oddly enough). Still, the defenses along the Rhine held up until 405ce (0r 406ce), when the Germanic peoples finally broke through and started pillaging the Western Empire.
Probably the most interesting part of this is what happened to the British Isles. Namely, the moment the Germans broke through Britain was abandoned by the Romans. In short, everything went along (although slowly growing worse)…until it didn’t.
The troops were there…until they disappeared and never returned. Coins ran the economy…until none were minted and they were hoarded. Books were copied and read…until suddenly no one could afford the time to read them, at which point they were burnt as fuel. Pottery was made in Britain…until it wasn’t and the locals were forced to rely on their hordes and what they could get/make. Jesus Christ was Lord…until the Germanic Gods brought men from over the sea, proving themselves truly Gods. The barbarians stayed north and on Ireland…until there was nothing to hold them back.
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Sometimes change is like that. Indeed, things can go on for long periods of time while miniature apocalypses go on around everything. Rural areas become emptied until the cities around them can’t be supported, then the cities start emptying out…or maybe the cities empty out on their own. Education becomes harder to keep up, standards drop yet fewer and fewer people (even relative to a dropping population) embrace education as it becomes less and less useful. Services become crappier and crappier, yet more and more depend on them and cling to them for dear life. Religions (and branches of religions) water down their beliefs to grab more believers, yet the holy places are more and more empty and useless, occasionally being reconstructed for other purposes.
Eventually the small collapses lead to larger, then systemic collapses. The whole, which was easily defended for so long, suddenly becomes indefensible…and leaving that portion behind ends up presaging the collapse of the whole, as the conditions that led to the section’s indefensibility prove to be the conditions of the rest. And while everyone knew things were going wrong, no one had any idea how to fix things…or indeed, how bad things were.
Many may not have seen things as wrong, or may have adapted to the situation and consigned the working past to memories of better times. Still others will have limited their memories of the past to gauzy images of mythology – all the better to handle a present that wasn’t up to now-forgotten standards and a future that looked dodgier every day.
And then…maybe not in one day, but relatively suddenly, things change.
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Now, here’s the thing: people know when things are about to fall apart. Even if the falling apart doesn’t happen in a lifetime, people can tell when things are about to fall apart.
Like the conservative and evangelical Christians. By the mid-seventies they were beginning to see the attractions of the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelations, going so far as to create detailed stories as to how the book was to play out. Never mind that they had also believed in the Rapture (they’ll be taken away so as to not suffer from what the world was going through) and thus didn’t need to know what was in those books….
By now, the Christians have been joined by many groups – New-Agers who embrace 12/21/2012 as the zero-point in history (some hope for renewal, but the end of the world would be embraced as their fear is being stuck in the hell known as the present physical plane of existence), Alternative health nuts (everything from the mainstream is, by definition, wrong, everything heard from the neighbor is right, and this whole edifice better fall soon), Peak Oil Radicals (Oil will end, it will end soon, and with an extremely sudden dropoff/stop), Islamists (they get to make the world submit before God comes), Islamophobes (We’re warring against the Muslims, as the only kind Muslim is lying through their teeth about what they want) and other groups.
Evidently waiting for the end is a grind on people.
I wonder what swept through Roman Britain from 380AD through 410AD (when they were told that they were on their own by Emperor Honorius), whether they listened to Revelations and the Roman Mythologies for hope. I’m pretty sure it was much like what’s going on now around me.
I remember how I listened to music in my youth.
No, I didn’t exactly seek out the alternative – I had no real idea of an alternative before late 1984. I did, however, react in various ways to what was considered popular radio in the late seventies.
First off, I made a point of not exactly giving myself over to the zeitgeist of what was considered popular “teen-ager” music in the late seventies. I was never much of a fan of “Rock Music” back in the days of Pink Floyd, Styx, Foreigner and Kiss. I liked the more angular stuff that was allowed on the radio, but that was about as far as it seemed to go.
I also remember I would come up with “smart-aleck” (try smart-ass by lame folks) comebacks to stupid lyrics. I don’t remember many of them, but they were there.
I also shifted what I liked. Instead of liking the “teen-ager” stuff, I actually hunted down the Adult Contemporary station in Flint (where I lived). And when that wasn’t enough, I hunted down 99.1 FM (WFMK, from Okemos) and listened to that for a while.
Then I discovered Flat Black and Circular, discovered Zimmerkampf, and by the summer of 1985 life for me was never the same. Radio no longer had anything to drag me to it – other than Classic Rock, which was readily eclipsed when WDBM finally made it on the air.
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And if things had stayed the same, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Of course, things pretty much stayed the same for years after that. I mined Flint and Lansing (and even a bit of Knoxville, TN) for local groups for years, all the while experimenting with stuff and finding new stuff worth getting.
This continued after school, after coming back to Lansing after some time trying to start again in Flint, and after getting my own place and a job and a sense of stability. I even started going out into the world and making a new set of friends and launching myself into what one could call my “Salad Days.”
Meanwhile there was a bomb getting set up in the music world that went by the name of “Nevermind.”
I never got too much into Nirvana; however the musical invasion they spawned made it seem safe for me to listen to popular music – after all, it WAS the popular music now. And I must admit that I liked that stations were either incorporating the alternative music into their playlists or falling apart in trying to answer. I remember “92.1 the Edge” causing the Top Hits Station to literally fall apart in their attempts to try to answer.
However, next thing I knew (say, around 2002, when I began to notice this) was that what I was buying had changed. Get a load of what I was adding to my collection during much of the decade:
Notice the link? Cute girls who sing what passes as alt-pop in the United States.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem (as I see it now) is that this was all there was.
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So what happened?
Part of it is simply that I grew older. Part of it was also that what passed as alternative had turned into a sludge that could turn off whole audiences in two minutes flat – assuming the songs lasted that long. Another part of it was that I found myself isolated as to what else was going on elsewhere.
There was also a general turning away from the alternative, partly based on the audience growing older, the music growing uglier, and the radio sticking with what sold in the music stores. Probably the biggest example of the last point is what happened to WTMX. When I first listened to it it was pretty much lower-key alternative. However, as time has gone by they went from what the mothers listened to to what the daughters forced their mothers to listen to.
So I’ve found myself presently going back to earlier habits. Listening, but making a point of resisting. And I’m also coming up with smart-ass lyrics in response to the lame lyrics in the songs.
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Will I be able to find new stuff, like before?
I should be able to. It’s not like it’s not out there, and I’m already pretty much doing it.
There’s one problem: With growing older you’re also stuck with responsibilities. Which eats up time that one can use to find new music, or to listen to it.
That’s probably the big reason why oldies formats are forever popular – there’s only so many hours in the day, and once your responsibilities take over there’s only so many brain cells you can dedicate to finding new sounds.
So you slide around picking up stuff that sounds like stuff you’ve heard before…or old stuff which you haven’t heard before but happens to sound like what you’ve liked before.
It’s a box which can be hard to get out of…in part because of the effort needed to start looking for a way out.
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Anyway, that’s where I find myself today. I get moments out, but no real dedicated escape.
Maybe I’ll find the time. Who knows….
I remember in the seventies and eighties how the stories on people getting rich always seemed to start with the person starting from nothing, or near nothing. No mention of family, no real mention of help from the past except from some odd outsider who took pity on the person believed in his future success. Occasionally we even run into an orphan stuck in a family of nonbelievers who found “economic salvation” in his work and in those who believed him.
Well, fast forward to the past decade (the 2000′s, 2010 and 2011). And now the story that comes out is a bit different:
And more and more, the people making it in the arts have a connection to people in the arts. The movie industry seems to have become very incestuous.
So it would seem that the key mythos of the American experiment is changing. Success is still considered the highest aim in America, but no longer are we getting the idea that anyone can be successful if they worked things. Nowadays it seems you need connections to make it, and if they don’t come from family, good luck.
Another exercise in press watching (updated December 11th, 2011):
Suddenly everyone outside of the “mainstream press” is sounding the alarm over a bill which puts into law language that allows the government to define whomever they want as their enemy and thus allow them to treat them however they want. While at the moment nothing’s law yet (it has to be harmonized with the House version of SB1867, which is without the offensive articles) it’s probably best that a bill this important (defense appropriations) should at least get some press.
And what are we getting in the mainstream news?
Okay, so they’re interesting. That’s why there’s Fark. But I shouldn’t have to hear it in my morning show, or for that matter read about it in the CHICAGO newspapers.
Thing is, when you’re not putting proper news in its proper place, you have to find SOMETHING to distract people with and fill up space. Especially when nobody’s buying the paper anymore.
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Well, there’s been a BIT of reporting on Senate Bill 1867 (and remember, it has to be harmonized with the house version before it gets signed and vetoed, the offensive parts may not survive). First, that it’s been passed, and second that Obama’s vetoing the bill if it allows the military to take people from civilian custody to military custody…evidently he seems to feel that local constables need their chance to beat up the people they arrest.
So what happens? Virginia Tech, the pale repeat. There’s another shooting that happened elsewhere, but somehow nothing of it gets noticed.
Of course, the person who shot up Virginia Tech before had the advantage of doing something that nobody could believe was happening. Now, that memories of what had happened before still existed, people knew what to do and the shooter only shot a cop before doing himself in.
But you can see what could happen. Another shootup somewhere, and this time linked to Radicalized Islam. And the bill gets passed without having to be linked to the defense bills.
(And just so you know, I expect the payroll taxes to be restored to where they were. Obama is too much of a wimp to let them stand, they were done so that he could justify (to the 99%) the tax breaks extended for the upper one percent; now that he don’t have anything else to justify the payroll taxes will go back up and STAY up.)
Remember when the Wisconsin teachers took over the State Capitol for a couple of weeks? I do…and I also remember the sudden rush of female teacher “seduces” male student(s) articles that suddenly popped up on Fark.com. A definite agenda being worked on here – and with the convenient release of “Bad Teacher,” the message was suddenly VERY obvious.
So now, in the past month (Sorry I didn’t comment sooner; was busy with the NaNoWriMo challenge. FYI, didn’t make the 50,000 word goal but I DID finish the story.) a couple of new items have broken into the news in such a way that seems more conveniently planned than accidental:
On one hand, one of the paths to riches for kids who come from the lower parts of society (basketball, football) is not only getting more impoverished but the path up is proving to be rotten to the core. On the other hand, another way of riches would appear to have been hijacked with the express purpose of funding the coffers of those working for the top 1% without having to take any money out of the hands of the 1% themselves.
Add to that the shift in welfare from going to the people in need to the people (and corporations) tasked with watching the people in need, a shift from grants to loans in every sort of endeavour and the ability of the rich and connected to seal up all possible routes of money to reach the lower 99% (of which I am definitely part of, at least in the North American Continent) it looks very much like things have changed.
They’re no longer hiding. Indeed, their bringing the battles out into the open.
I’m not sure how I’m going to fight, but at some point I know it can’t be alone. The poorer among us are gonna have to figure out a way to unite and act as a group, just as the 1% have.
First came the New York Times Article which basically detailed that a home-cooked meal cost half as much as a McDonald’s meal for four, and gave better food to boot – and that people were being lazy in not making the effort to do the cooking (no thanks to the fast food industry, who made every effort to encourage our laziness).
Then came the Mother Jones Article which stated that the total cost of that home-cooked meal was much more than originally calculated, more indeed than a McDonald’s meal. Granted, again McDonald’s worked to skew the effort – this time by having the food-making as cheap as possible by automating the cooking in the store.
If you ask me, both people miss the point.
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First, the calculations for cooking time are a bit off, by both writers.
If you wanted to put cost numbers to people’s cooking times, you can start by being a bit more accurate. While the Mother Jones article calculates the earning power of the average American as $16.27/hour, I don’t know that many people whom I run into regularly who earn that much per hour. Indeed, the people I know who work earn much closer to $8.25/hour, which would make the home-cooked meal’s cost closer to $30/hour – close to the $28 which the McDonald’s “meal” costs.
Of course, that’s assuming that the time which could be used cooking could easily be used working – a false assumption, given that people are either already working or in a situation where the time used CANNOT be replaced by work time. In short, that time is worth nothing (and if you want to know why economics is messed up and is in bed with the 1% leaching off the rest of people, you can start there).
So what is cooking competing against? Here are some answers I came up with.
So it appears that to actually get into cooking, one has to WANT to cook. And not necessarily wanting as in ideological want, one should actually have an interest in cooking.
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Second, there’s the issue of the forces forcing people away from the kitchen and towards the restaurant table (or drive-through, as the case may be).
Think of it: as the working day grows longer and longer and women are now an integrated part of the work force, supper at the dinner table becomes a more costly. Rest, relaxation and distraction suddenly take on an importance that was missing back in the forty-hour workweek/mother at home holding down the fort era of the fifties, sixties and early seventies. People need time, not for Xbox but to try and salvage what’s left of their identity.
We’re already at the point of people going without sleep…not excess sleep, but sleep period. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this obesity epidemic can be directly linked to the dropoff in the amount of sleep gotten by people over the years. We’re also losing other things – I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that one of the reasons Borders finally went under was that people were giving up reading time (not book reading time for internet reading time, but reading time PERIOD) to keep up with things.
And everyone expects people to toss aside two hours of their day to prepare food, serve up supper and clean up after the meal?
And further, how many people are going to be willing to do what it takes to dedicate themselves to this, day after day? There’s probably a gaggle of girls who’d howl in pain upon learning that they might want to learn how to cook, clean and keep up a house.
Remember, Sunday used to be the day that Mommy worked her butt off (literally) to cook a Sunday meal worth the holiest of days. McDonald’s advertised the hell out of the idea of Sunday as Mommy’s day off, and succeeded.
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Trust me, the McDonald’s burger is expensive. But with all the changes that American Society (USA) has gone through, that McDonald’s burger is probably the cheapest thing you can buy, even at inflated prices.
And to get things back to where people would want to get back to cooking instead of eating out would involve large costs that society isn’t ready to pay. Not yet, maybe not ever.
In many way I’m lucky.
My job pays a minimal wage, but it’s enough to cover everything I need plus a few wants. I’m also able to take time of when I need…or even on an occasion when I want to.
I have room and board taken care of (for the most part).
I can also afford insurance at present. I’m also able to add vitamins and supplements to my diet (Glucosamine and Condroiten means I can still walk…)
I have no student loan debt, and my other debt can be taken care of easily, should I choose.
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But I do calculations on what I make and what I would need to spend to live on my own, and I keep running into the fact that I would be stuck in the place, dependent on the job for room, board and other necessities. If I wanted out, I’d have to go into debt, and that for the OPPORTUNITY to seek an escape.
I watch all the prices rise, even as the government trumpets the death of inflation to the nation. Food prices, gas prices, housing costs, insurance prices, medical costs, education costs all rise even as the reports keep saying “low inflation.” I now think the CPI means “The Corporation Price Index,” since I’ve yet to see wages rise.
Did I mention Health Insurance? That just leaped up 20 percent…for something that just means I’ll have to cover the first $5000…and I can’t help but think that Obama set up a trap with his “Health Insurance Reform Bill” that the Republicans will warp to suit their agenda…starting with the right (or is that obligation? THAT wouldn’t surprise me) to refuse treatment to those without insurance…or with just Medicaid).
And food prices…not only are food prices rising, but the quality of the stuff is going down as well. Wood, Ammonia, Perfume, Petrochemicals, Human Hair – the list makes High Fructose Corn Syrup seem wholesome, doesn’t it? Also, the packages are shrinking…and sometimes in inventive ways.
And Education…when I first went to school, you could get fourteen credit hours and a good weekend’s partying from the Pell Grant. When I first graduated it covered ten credit hours, and you had to take twelve credit hours to get that. Nowadays the only place you can get an education for a Pell Grant is in some Louisiana Colleges, and now people have gone out of the way to say that people are faking going to school in order to scam money from the Pell Program. Don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of “publicly funded” colleges close down – but NOT because people decide not to go, but instead because the states need to “save money to insure their rich don’t move out of the state.”
Trust me, there is a class war going on in the USA. The rich have been waging it against the poor for over thirty years (nearly forty if you ask me), and they’ve become so confident in victory that they don’t even hide it anymore; even with a Democratic President at the helm.
I’ve seen it up close.
You see, I live with a one percenter. And from what I’ve seen, they are indeed as venial and petty as you can think of them as.
Sad thing is, they’ve so fallen in love with their $$$ that they won’t even think of giving to charities until they’re dead. Not so much afraid of needing the money later (that’s their excuse) but not wanting to give the money at all. That they’ve made the excuse of “maybe needing the money for care in their last days” shows at the very least a need to justify themselves.
And many of the rest of us (those who are still bought into the “American Dream” concept) have decided to pass this stuff on as “normal.” “Sure, twenty percent raises in health insurance are normal.” “You’re supposed to mourn the fact that your brother can still get a job – after all, my students can’t find jobs and they do the work.” “Eighty years old, why should I retire? Kids Today don’t deserve jobs.” “Mass Transit is for those who leech off the system.” (all said by people well up in the middle class)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Revolutions are rough, bloody and may not give what people want, but at the very least it gets the rulers to notice. And when a people are so desperate for change that they’ll confuse anger with action, watch out.
Because sometimes people just want to tear shit up.
Especially when you’ve given them nothing to build up.
99 percenters, take over the nation. Wall Street Can Go To Hell (and stay there).
