Nine Things From The Seventies That Sucked

There have been two updates since the original posting. The original title was “Seven Things From the Seventies That Sucked,” so you know what the two updates were.

If you asked me which decade was the worst decade for America, I would state “The Nineteen Seventies.” Not the Civil war decade, not the Depression, nor even the last ten years. And I have nine reasons.

Note that none of these reasons have anything to do with what was done overseas, or with arts and entertainment. These are political actions that many people cheered on because they took an immediate benefit from these decisions. It’s only with hindsight (and a willingness to look beyond one’s nose) that we see what it was that made the seventies the pile of ugliness that it was.

So…here’s the list, with my reasons:

• Nixon Changes How Farm Subsidies Worked. Used to be farmers would farm enough to put stuff to market, and the government would pay farmers to let fields lie fallow for a year or two. Clover or other plants which had relatively little worth on the market but plenty of ability to revive soil would be planted and the only major cost would be a hit on the pride of the farmer. Now they’re paid to overproduce certain crops, and we get depleted farm land, a dead Gulf of Mexico and High Fructose Corn Syrup to mess with our bodies (more than real sugar, may I add).
• McGovern takes over the Democratic Party. Before the people behind George McGovern took over the Democratic Party, it was run by city bosses and other people who knew how to run a government and hold office. After him, the party became a group of minorities who had grievances and needed people who were able to hold them together (read: hold their hand and tell them “Everything was all right, now be patient and vote for us; after all, you want to vote for THEM?”). This has led to the pussification of the Democratic Party Leaders at a time when they need to be real men, and the rise of Bullies in the Republican Party (because they can, and it works).
• Roe v Wade, Doe v Bolton. Granted, this was more-or-less imposed by the Supreme Court. However, one thinks that we would have come to a compromise that would have been accepted by everyone but the extremists; however only the extremists are allowed to speak up. Not only that, but this was one of the changes that allowed the “Me Generation” to arise, as the ruling declared nationwide the freedom of women from the dictates of pregnancy, children raising and the consequences of voluntary actions and ugly twists of fate…and it allowed women to stay in the workplace longer, essentially doubling the work force (and allowing for the possibility of wages to be forced downward). This, of course, is the most contested of decisions, and has had certain adjustments done to it over the years.
• Bankruptcy Laws loosened. I fully understand why the Bankruptcy laws were loosened by congress – once people were over their heads, it just gets worse and worse. However, we’re now talking about the freedom from the strictures of financial responsibility. On the personal scale, this meant people could spend like crazy and force the system to absolve their debts every so often, in the corporate world this meant the ability to expand like crazy, pay their CEOs obscene amounts, and toss aside unions when they felt the workers were given more rights than they deserved (none, with all the responsibilities the companies could pile on them). Which explains why the business world has suddenly gotten more choppy, with companies coming and going at will (outside of Wal-Mart, which in much of Rural America IS the governing body and profits well off its de facto status).
• No-Fault Divorce Spread Nationwide. This one seems to be the most sacred of the legal changes in the seventies, as while Roe/Doe gets constant opposition and the Bankruptcy laws have been change to make it harder for people to go bankrupt (not that it stops them anymore…), divorce seems to have entered into the pantheon of constitutional rights (along with free speech, guns and the right to strive for profit above all else sane). And why not: here we’re talking about the freedom to disassociate from whomever you want to, whenever you want to and never mind whomever happens to be attached (i.e. the kids). It also forced what was promised with Roe and Doe: the entry of women into the workforce.
• End Of The Draft. While it could easily be seen as the death of the hypocrisy that the draft had become in the late sixties and early seventies (anyone dedicated enough to avoid the Vietnam War could, and often did), the shift from the people’s army to a caste of professional fighters (“volunteers”) meant that the price for belonging in American Society had dropped to almost nothing. One could not only trace the development of the US Armed Forces into the biggest Welfare State in the world from this, but also the shift in the view of college from “good for society” to “done for the benefit of the individual” (and from that, the shift from grants to loans), amongst other things.
• Proposition Thirteen. A logical response to the issues of bracket creep, inflation and the idea that Government must be definition keep growing, Proposition Thirteen in California had a greater effect than even Howard Jarvis intended. Because the allowed rate of increase on property taxes was set at a level below what was then inflation, there was an implied message to California Government that it must prepare to die from financial starvation. The Californian Government didn’t (between starving it colleges and buying into hyperbolic growth in housing it avoided its fate for forty years), but its shifted how governments collected taxes from “whomever had the $$$” to “whomever had habits bad enough to deserve taxing” It also led to Reagan, and through him to the present situation where Government is not allowed to get the money it needs even to keep the lights on.
• Deregulation of the trucking industry. Here’s the first of three reasons why I think Ted Kennedy killed Mary Jo Kopechne. For the sake of cheaper rates the Trucking laws were loosened, and the Truckers, already suffering from five-plus years of reduced earnings (Dropping the speed limit from 70 to 55 was a more than 20% reduction in their earning power, any wonder they grew to hate the DOT?) were thrown under the bus for the sake of a few fewer cents cost for the consumers (or, more likely a few more cents profits per item for the companies selling what the trucks brought). Is it any wonder they’ve become the most reactionary of constituencies – you too would hate the people who gave you the middle finger, gave the people immediately above you carte blanche to do what they pleased and told you to worship the people fucking you over. Even if you DO end up worshiping the people fucking you over; at least they’re not the ones who betrayed you for their own gain.
• Deregulation of Airlines. The second of three reasons I believe Ted Kennedy killed Mary Jo Kopechne (the third being his treatment of Carter in the 1980 primaries). It’s this item that drove PATCO into the arms of Reagan in 1980, which led to their (and the working class’s) betrayal in August 5, 1981. EVERYTHING (and I mean everything) since then can be traced to this date; I’ve heard of parties at corporate headquarters on this date for years.

Probably the biggest thing to notice is how libertarian the list is. Liberalization of Divorce, Freedom to delay motherhood through extreme measures, cheaper prices for food, travel and other stuff, ability to escape one’s financial problems and the freedom of being an American without the price of service: whatever could be wrong with that stuff?

Well, it’s been thirty years since 1980, and we’re seeing it. Two generations unwilling to marry because they’ve seen the scars of divorce. A nation that seems psychotically split between city/college and country/suburb. Bankruptcy from Government to people. An education system that requires what amounts to a lifetime indentured servantship via student loans, and a  job “market” that no longer uses what’s out there. Working and Middle class on the cusp of final defeat (no unions, no organized body to fight against The Man ™). People so willing to believe in the system that they’ll cut their own throat to affirm that belief (aka Tea-Baggers); meanwhile everyone else has grown passive waiting for the Messiah (whomever that person may be) to save them from their inaction and passivity (Read: the Tea-Baggers may get “their way” by default, as they’re the only people willing to back their demands by actions and guns – Like Abraham at the mount, they’ll figure out that my throat will readily substitute for their own.).

I could have done without Disco (which comes from Roe and Doe) not needed Punk, and maybe been willing to suffer under twenty more years of Hair-Metal and Country/Country Rock transcendent for better times. Instead we got what we now have.

And it sucks.

Big time.

Further Update On My Job (and what’s going on around me while I’m at it)

Just so you know, when I last talked about my job things were going pretty well for me. While people working mornings were taking hits on their hours, the afternoon people were getting full days and sometimes more. While whole areas were getting removed from regular (medicaid) service, the core of the service seemed to be going on as usual.

Well, things seem to have changed yet again. Now the afternoon people are getting hit, mainly by pushing the start times a bit later. Not only that, but the boss has actually grown a backbone with workers who pick days off – a driver who decided to take a weekend off without warning was given a week off.

Granted, it’s about time – after all, it’s patently unfair for the morning crew to suffer all the pain from the dropoff in business. However, I wonder if there’s going to be some other impacts on the job.

Such as the ability to take time off whenever I want/need.

Since we’re talking about less people at work as time goes by, the remaining people will become more and more necessary. Since the remaining people will become necessary, time off will become rarer and more precious…or even nonexistent. I can see myself working the last months of my job (assuming it dies off) seven days a week, 14+ hours a day because they only need a few people to do everything.

Meanwhile the area becomes more and more deserted-looking. The factories that once pumped jobs in the area have been getting torn down, some extremely rapidly. While there’s still an excess of housing, that is being shrunken down – not by people buying houses (WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL THE ECONOMISTS THAT HOUSING IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ENGINE AND THAT CALLING IT THAT IS JUST HIDING THE FACT THAT THERE’S NO LONGER AN ECONOMY?????) but by the local housing falling apart in an increasingly rapid rate. No news will comment on that, just something I see driving around. Malls are getting emptier (if they’re not emptied already) and those malls staying filled have accepted payday loan stores, rent-to-owns and multiple tax return offices to replace the Piano stores, upscale clothing shops and music stores of the past (Yes, there used to be Piano stores. Pianos were a sure sign of a settled, middle class lifestyle that started disappearing during Reagan’s presidency). There’s the constant shrinkage of businesses downtown as lots of once-useful stores are disappearing, replaced by such fufu as massage parlors, hairstyling places (when combined with massage it’s called a “spa” nowadays), Mexican restaurants, payday loan/pawn shop/check cashing/tax return place (yes, they combine nowadays) and antique stores. Even the big box stores are trembling as their customers find themselves with nothing.

Meanwhile people order online, happy in knowing that Amazon.com still doesn’t pay taxes (yes, Virginia, even “Liberals” cheer when they gyp the state they live in, which Amazon always tries to do). These same people cheer when factories that once gave workers a living wage are torn down to make “Green Space” and bellyache when someone wants to do something to improve things that doesn’t involve tourism or bike-friendly pathways (never mind most people get to and from places only in cars, using the bike paths for recreation on the weekends).

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It seems that the United States of America only has enough money to give to the rich, either directly or indirectly. Can’t get veggies to the city kids so they’ll eat something other than Doritos (nor can we teach their mothers how to cook) yet we fund Monsanto’s constant suing of everyone who chooses non-GMO’d seeds. Can’t fund Medicare or Medicaid properly anymore, so we gotta make sure the rich can take their Medical Vacations (they pay less for the whole Angioplasty plus a week’s tourism than I pay for a night at the hospital for a fake heart attack!). Gotta pull eyeteeth to save GM and Chrysler, but a bank whispers “I need more profits” and we hand it to them without asking or even checking up on things. Can’t fund a purchase on a new house, but Trump’s new castle for the nomadic elite – up and running.

And I’m left watching the detrius of the world left behind. Houses collapsing, malls emptying out and/or downclassing. People saying “we can’t afford anything” while supporting those who cut everything down to fund their xanadus.

Build Mass Transit? We can build enough to insure it fails.

Build Expressways, then? Just well enough to we can watch it fall apart in front of our eyes.

New Electrical Grid? Why, when the good (read: wealthy enough) can get their own generators to pollute the air for the poor around them?

Decline? Sure, as long as the rich get to watch millions die at the hand of their starving neighbors.

Welcome to 1984, only Orwell ended up blind as to what happened ten years after Winston Smith was shot… Who would have thought that Winston Smith ended up the lucky one?

Coming Question: Retirement Pensions, or Municipal Bond Interest Payments

Here’s a thought:

At some point the taxing ability of the states and cities (gutted thanks to NAFTA and the Chinese/American agreement, hidden by bloated housing prices, exposed by the busting of the housing bubble) is going to get to the point where some hard choices will be made. More to the point, there’s only going to be so much to cut before there’s no police, fire or ambulance service, and there’s only so much you can do with stop signs at important intersections – even with potholes the size of Rhode Island to slow down traffic with and the local housing stock stripped of anything of worth and thus made uninhabitable.

And when the states, counties and cities get to that point, the question will arise: Stop paying the muni bonds, or stiff the retirees?

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As anyone who keeps a long eye on the Supreme Court knows, government entities must come through fully on their promises of retirement monies to their employees. “Private” (read: non-governmental) corporations are allowed to gut retirement funds, then turn around and offer 401Ks (which gut Social Security); whereas government employees who stick around long enough are given a retirement complete with COLA.

This, of course, leads to heavy envy and hatred of Government employees by Fox News watchers and other envious types. But also consider that this means that government is on the hook for this stuff ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE.

But, and you should see the contrast, government is also expected ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE to pay off its loans and bonds.

So we get a conundrum: Which is TRULY number one?

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It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that this has been going up the courts right now, that some canny right wing “pro-investment rights” group is going against a “pro-labor-facade” group to make it to the Supreme Court. Just like some “pro-free-speech” group took the case that translated one-man-one-vote to one-buck-one-vote to the Supreme Court (don’t know the name, we all know the case). And with Roberts as head, don’t be surprised if the government is forced to oppress its own employees for the sake of “the grandmas who invested in the munis.”

And watch Blackwater suddenly become active with its new branches – the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard.

Is 20% The New 5%? And When Should We Start Shitting Bricks?

So I’ve been listening to the economists on the radio (Mainstream and Left) and more and more their comments seem totally disconnected from reality. None of them seem to know (or want to know, if you ask me) why the economy hasn’t recovered from the recent drop-off, and they’re even more puzzled over the looming second dip in this “Great Recession.”

And those who hoped that Obama’s attempts wouldn’t work? They’re already shouting “give more power to the corporations, they’ll fix everything for us” never mind that giving that power to the corporations has been what brought us here in the first place. Worse, I expect that they’ll continue to get their way to the bitter end.

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There’s a simple reason why there’s no recovery, and why there will NOT be a recovery: No more jobs at the bottom of the ladder.

Here’s how an economic recovery is supposed to happen, to my surmising: After a while, when people with money finally have a need to spend some of it, they go to the store (or online nowadays) and spend that money. Now some of the money goes towards store costs (bills, profit, upkeep and paying of employees), some of the money goes to the corporation (adverts, upkeep and management salaries), and some of the money goes to the manufacturing (machines, bills and the help, both management and workers).

Used to be a lot of manufacturing happened in the United States. This meant a lot of workers could pretty much depend on getting checks on a weekly or bi-weekly rate, and earn enough to buy what they needed and pretty much what they wanted (within reason). And since these people would buy at local stores, they would support local economies (as well as the national economy – a Budweiser bought at a local bar supported the bar owner and bartender as well as Anheuser-Busch, the workers at the brewery where the beer was made and the trucker that shipped the brew to the local distributor).

Now…with the greatest part of consumer manufacturing offloaded to China, India and other nations with lower wages, fewer workers rights and looser (if not an absence of) pollution restrictions, there’s a large gap in the amount of lower-level workers able to make a living. A four percent loss in manufacturing leads to greater losses in other services that cater to the working and lower classes.  Lose enough, and you get other activities that end up mopping up further monies from below (Think PayDay Loan Stores and Tax Return Loans for monies a couple weeks earlier) and gut the local economy.

You can see it in the cities and towns, where the only thing multiplying faster than Wal-Mart, Pawn Shops and Car Title Loan Stores is the empty windows of all the other businesses that couldn’t make it on the remains of the monies left. So the bar loses its bartender AND bar owner (who may have changed his business to a Rent-To-Own); when pushed to the edge people will spend their money on what they need to pay for.

But the poverty industry runs on a minimum of employees, more of a minimum than Wal-Mart at night. So there’s more people on the dole, or saying goodbye to employability as they search for jobs that aren’t there long enough to get discouraged, then drop out.

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And so if you look at the official Unemployment Rate, it tends to hang out between 9.5% and 10.5%. And if you look at the “discouraged” workers (ones not counted because they’re not “looking” although they’d work if it was worth their while) you’re actually looking at twenty percent.

Twenty per cent. One in five.

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One should ask how this will affect a bunch of things economically.

Such as inflation/deflation. If it’s true that people unemployed long enough will accept anything, at what point are we seeing unemployment NOT because of people’s unwillingness to work “beneath their station,” but people unable to find work that pays above what the Government (Federal, State OR local, depending on what’s higher) deems the minimum amount an employee should be paid.

Of course, the argument against deflation is obvious: there’s only so little you can pay someone (the minimum wage); sales jobs don’t count after a while as the untalented and/or unlucky get weeded out. And anyone who understands classes can understand the basic argument in favor of raising the minimum wage: higher minimum wage means more money directly injected into the economy from productive areas.

However, there IS the specter of dropping values on various items. Housing, collectibles, large ticket items that can be kept up long term – all these things have dropped in value as the number of people able and willing to purchase these items has dropped. Lots of people have bought collectibles as hedges against inflation ONLY TO FIND that you can’t get what you put into it when people aren’t willing to buy…or bid against each other.

As for hyperinflation, the corporations that hold our debts aren’t going to go for that as long as they can’t pin their credits to inflation. In short, they’re not gonna allow a 50% increase in prices (and wages) when they’re allowed to charge only 10-15%. Even 30% interest fades when dealing with a 50% increase in prices.

Although one can note that food prices in general are increasing. While it’s true that Chip and Soda prices haven’t kept up with inflation (although it’s caused inflation of bellies as a result), real food has found itself going upward and upward.

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So what will we see?

Well, hyperinflation is easier for a government to deal with, as they can always outlast anyone, given the ability to print as much money as they can get. They will also get the fawning dependence of those whom they’ve both broken and freed from the debts of the bankers and other debt-makers who held the people in their hand before.

But this is America, with corporations to big to fail and a populace too small to be allowed success. If they can push the minimum wage (in a way the cornerstone of progressivism, as it denotes a specific minimum price on people’s time) downward (or disappear it forever), don’t be surprised if suddenly the government finds “oodles and oodles” of restraint and self-control on their spending, forcing housing and other prices downward along with wages. The only thing increasing will be debts as people will be unable to pay off (as their wages keep dropping along with the price of living, they will have less and less to deal with debts that only increase.

Still, bet on hyperinflation with debts allowed to COLA upward (COLA: Cost Of Living Allowance). Hyperinflation is almost always easier than deflation, it’s easier to print/create coin than to destroy it (even by wearing it out).

Everything You Need to Know In Three Sentences

Taken from Lotus – Surviving a Dark Time blog. I added the third sentence to put in a perspective.

1. Last Wednesday, the UN General Assembly voted 122-0 that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right.
2. The United States abstained, along with Canada and several European and other industrialized countries.
3. Thirty years ago The United States, Canada and the other countries would not have abstained from this vote – they would have joined the majority.

Boycott BP NOW and FOREVER

Let’s start with an observation I’ve had over the years: Whenever a refinery burns down with loss of life, it’s almost always a British Petroleum refinery. Sure, many of them are old (old Amoco refineries, may I add), but I’ve yet to hear of an older Sinclair or Union 76 or Shell or ExxonMobil or SoCal (Chevron) refinery burn down. Always (or almost always) it’s a BP refinery.

Now on to the present disaster in the gulf.

If you’ve been listening to the news slipping through the cracks, you get a different take than what we’re supposed to think: Instead of a leak that just happened and is now growing by the day, we’re learning that BP had cut every corner it felt it could as it drilled the deep water well. The pipe itself was weak, the cement was faulty (or made so), systems put in place to protect the environment didn’t work, and systems that should have been there weren’t put in. It seemed that the people at the BP rig weren’t so much trying to make the rig work, but instead hoping for it to fail.

And their response…seems that everything they could do, they’ve done slowly if at all. Stuff that should have been there already had to be made up on the spot, and everything seems to have failed. Indeed, it seems that BP is doing everything it can to fail.

And why not? It’s not like we’re out by the north sea, where anything wrong might wash up on the Thames Estuary. It will f#ck up Louisiana, then Florida, then the Gulf Coast. Then, if it makes it up to Europe then maybe the USA will be blamed by then for not doing everything it can (even though it’s been admitted that the Government doesn’t have what it needs).

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Trust me on this, I won’t forget.

Yes, our government let things go the way things went, and the disaster in the Gulf is the outcome. But let’s not forget, it wasn’t the government who put in the oil rig. It wasn’t the government who did things as shipshod as possible (although they didn’t do anything to stop it).

I know who’s to blame.

That’s why I’m boycotting BP now, and forever. Any company that makes a habit of f&cking up the environment shouldn’t be allowed to exist; and since we’re not in a position to ban BP from our shores, we can at least keep our money from their stores. Yes, it’s almost impossible to isolate (since the refinery business is almost its own entity nowadays), but the stores can be left to rot.

If nothing else, the next company to see this reaction (and it’s happening right now, with or without my goading it) will think twice before doing what BP did with its next well.

A number of former BP stations have already shifted their brand name. May more do so.

(not even Citgo is as bad. They’re led by a nut, but at least he knows safety – something BP has gone out of its way to forget).

“Bank Of Mom And Dad…” and other relations…

I wonder how many people are floating along with the help of some friend (or family member) who has the unenviable task of keeping multiple people afloat, ten-fifty bucks at a time. And I can’t help but wonder what happens when these people find themselves refusing to help these (often long-time) friends.

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Here’s the issue: There’s only so much that one can do to help out, depending on whom you are and where your friends are at.

You see, we tend to pick our friends not so much where we’re at, but where we see ourselves at. And (believe it or not) our friends tend not only to be very much like us in many way, but also financially like us.

Indeed, there are many pressures that end up pushing people of various financial levels away from each other. and much of it is money-based. Think of it: a lot of whom you know is based on how closely what they earn is to what you earn.

Those earnings pretty much dictate how you experience your life. You either dine with friends, or you bolt-and-go at a McDonald’s (ever notice how lonely the fast-food places appear, even in college towns?). You sip on some Microbrew/a fine wine you found out about at a Friday night tasting, or you chug down some Busch/MD 20/20. You buy groceries at Whole Foods, Krogers, or the corner store with everything made by Pepsi/Lays lovingly displayed. Macy’s or Wal-Mart. Some used car, or a Lexus. Vacation overseas, or count the visit to your parents as the vacation.

And if you’re poorer than the surrounding people, it will isolate you from them. And if you’re richer than the surrounding people, you’ll be fawned over to the point where you’ll end up running to a richer group with similar expectations (or stick around long enough to fawn it over others).

And while I know we like to think of America as a classless society, we’re very much  aware of class. It’s just in one direction: downward. We’ll gladly piss on those we see as lower than us (or not deserving of their apparently higher station), but we like to think those above us think of us as swell and “one of them.” And because of this, the rich are able to turn the lower classes against each other by stating that there are people “above us” who should be lower than us. (Never, of course, the deserving rich…which means, of course, the ownership classes and those who run corporations (into the ground).)

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So what happens when certain friends or family members suddenly drop below what we’ve long considered their economic station, and start asking us to keep them afloat?

Well, here’s a thought: We support them for a while, then they become a drag because their needs start impinging on the way that the supporters meet THEIR needs. If we have savings we add to, the needy friend starts draining the savings (or at least your addition to your savings). If we like our vacations, we suddenly find ourselves threatened with shrinking down our trips for this friend. Or it’s the difference between a steak dinner and hamburger. Sometimes it’s just the subject matter that gets in the way. Or the fact that your “castle” (home) has suddenly taken on an alien presence (homelessness happens, and much more than people will admit in America).

No matter how it happens, suddenly the friend becomes more of a drain than we come to view that they’re worth.

So we kick them out.

Sometimes they find another friend to land at, and recover. Sometimes they find another friend, whom they burn out. And sometimes they disappear into the rescue shelters and streets. Those folks we consign to memory holes, only to remember them with a “but they were so smart/driven/dedicated, what happened to make them slothful?”

And meanwhile another person starts begging for quarters, or stands by an exit with a sign stating “Will Work For Food.” Not that anyone will want such a person to work; the one thing people tend to forget is that once someone’s unemployed for a few months it becomes harder to find a decent job (or sometimes ANY job); the idea of massive industries always ready to hire anyone willing to show up has long entered the realm of mythology in America.

And time goes on, the man gets forgotten (or criminalized) and life goes on elsewhere. A few people are one friend poorer, but they soon stop noticing that lack as the person’s either replaced by a “honorable person (read: job slave)” or get used to the gap in the memory.

And life goes on.

Goldman-Sacs and Ivan Boesky

I remember back in 1986, when the SEC started looking at Ivan Boesky and his group for insider trading.The morning after the news cracked, J. P. McCarthy of WJR (760 AM, from Detroit) talked with Ivan Boesky, and Boesky was his blase self with McCarthy. He even went so far as to state that many people trying to give him tips were themselves trying to act as inside traders.

Turned out that Boesky was part of a group of people who used the information they knew and made trades on that information. Making millions of dollars and bringing about one of the biggest slides in Stock Market history.

Fast-Forward 23 years, and we’ve gone through a mega-bubble involving sub-prime loans, derivatives, new investment technologies and a housing market in which prices (and house sizes) exploded despite dropping wages. It was the popping of that bubble that brought about the massive trauma that happened to the market (and it’s the stutter-step actions that have kept hyperinflation at bay for now).

And now, it appears that the more we know about what happened in the investment banks and loans and Wall Street, it appears the more criminal everything looks. Bad loans were floated because people would float them, bad investments were sold because people would buy them, and the people putting the bad investments together were happily betting that they would go bad (and making them so they’d go bad, to boot!).

Ivan Boesky merely took pre-knowledge and made money on it. At least the stuff he was using was truthful and genuine; this new stuff makes him look like a Choirboy who didn’t run into any pedophile priests (or at least any who felt free to indulge) while growing up in the Catholic faith.

Another thing I remember is that Boesky and his gang ended up going to one of the Club Fed prisons (Federal Prisons for the nonviolent. Spacious grounds, with but the hint of a fence to remind you that your world was circumscribed by it.). Based on that, it wouldn’t surprise me if nothing happened to the banks and such. People won’t be able to comprehend what happened and how the actions of the bankers, investment places and other parties brought what happened to the nation.

Again: Not because they’re innocent. Because their crime is so big that no one could get their head around it.

Like Nazi Germany and their 12-year holocaust of Jews and others. The Germans should have been de-industrialized and left to starve, but what happened was so big that it couldn’t be conceived (even with the photos and films and such), so they accepted the sacrifice of a few leaders and let them recover.

(and for you deniers: It wasn’t just Auschwitz. A greater portion of the killing happened as the Germans invaded Poland; and then the Ukraine and Belarus. Out in the field, in mass graves. The concentration camps were used towards the end, and had less an impact than is assumed by the average Joe.)

Heard on MarketPlace:

Kai Ryssdal’s final note…

Ripped from the headlines right here in Los Angeles.

You might have heard about California’s budget troubles and how some state offices have been closing one day a month to save money.

They’ve got nothing on L.A.

This afternoon Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that all city departments — except police, public safety and those that make money — they’re going to have to shut down two days a week.

The city controller said yesterday L.A.’s going to run out of money by the end of the month.

I remember watching Vivian Albertine when she was playing in Chicago. She started into life in London during the early seventies that included stuff about the city getting its electricity shut off at 7pm and three days/week workweeks for government employees. She then went into life as a punk, and how things were going well in the scene when The Heartbreakers came to town…

“and brought heroin (a pregnant, wistful pause here) and Nancy Spungeon”

She then launched into a song about drugs and the Sex Pistols (what I think the babies line refers to, I’m thinking. Not that I’m in any way sure about it…).

Thing is, while the reference to Sid Vicious is probably the deepest cutting part of her comment, the stuff about London (or LondON, as the city’s advertised to the world as nowadays) struck me equally as deep. After all, this one-time capital of the world seemed about to enter the nether realms of the third world – and we’re talking Dysfunctional African City, not Calcutta or a South American City. And this during the time of Labor Power.

Almost makes you glad for Margaret Thatcher. At least it silences any criticism I may have for the Iron Lady.

And now Los Angeles is about to enter this nether realm of 3rd World status.

Maybe it’s not L.A., nor the state of California.

Maybe it’s the whole of the US joining Mexico as a 3rd world country, with its tent cities (slums) and extreme unemployment. With L.A. leading the way.

Just a thought….

MP3s and How They’ve Changed My Buying Habits

When I first started buying music in earnest, it was LPs as the big purchases, with Cassettes as the second choice (and choice for copying music). It was obvious: LPs were permenant, plus at 12″ they came with artwork for a cover and the ability to pick and choose which tracks you wanted to play. Cassettes were small and convenient for copying other’s LPs with, but could easily be broken and had the aura of tackiness (some of the layouts of the period didn’t help). And I bought plenty of both, especially since Cassettes were the main salvo of local groups putting out their Magnum Opuses.

Then I watched as LPs were eventually cast aside, first by Cassettes (turned out the portability was a big plus, with the expansion of car cassette players and walkmen, plus they started putting effort in the Cassette releases including different mixes and extra cuts), then by CDs. Cassettes had their glory days, but soon had disappeared from everything except garage sales and eBay. And I shifted with the tides, buying Cassettes between the “death” of the LP and finally giving in to the CD craze in 1992.

I still have plenty of CDs that I bought in the nineties and early oughts, both pop and classical (had a classical phase in time for Classical to die out on the radio).

Then came mp3s. I dipped my toe in them at first (did Napster once before Metallica crushed them), then eventually embracd them. Why not – they cost almost nothing, space-wise, and the iPod takes up the same amount of space no matter how much you have packed into it (and how much space, in GBytes, that the thing has).

And now for CDs, Cassettes and LPs? I found that now I have to justify their purchase in some way. Either I can’t get them via an mp3 form, or they’re a band that I’d feel stupid buying in an mp3 format, or some other reason.

Note that I’m still buying music. After all, I still believe in supporting the acts. It’s the physical item that I find hard to swallow anymore. Especially when they cost so much (compared to MP3s, even when paid for) and you can’t sell them at the record store anymore (because there’s no more record stores anymore).