The Great Whatever

We have an artificially-propped-up "recovery" that is just a pig with lipstick on. Job creation is worse than stagnant because the jobs that are being created are low-paying service jobs, and not full-time, for the most part. Housing starts are anemic, and the rise in home prices is only because of constricted supply of existing houses. Stock prices have been propped up by quantitative easing and are starting to dither. Military boondoggles, student debt nightmares, and exorbitant health care costs are sucking what is left out of the economy. This is not the end of the Great Recession; it is the beginning of something bigger.

Maybe gains are starting to show up in the figures, but if you check with the lower- and middle-class, they don't seem to be benefiting from any alleged improvement.  

No Entry Into The Clubhouse

We are just getting so many messages from the media that have nothing to do with most people's reality, and the disconnect just seems to be getting bigger and more blatant. Ads for multi-million dollar houses that make it seem like everybody lives that lifestyle. Advice columns on how to negotiate raises, when an employer would just as soon replace you with someone who will work cheaper. Houses in movies and on TV that are palatial, when the people (and the actors who play them) on the screen live lives of leisure. Plot lines on TV and movies where people leave their jobs and are immediately recruited by multiple employers. Commercials for expensive medical procedures that show the family next door and suggest universal availability (and, conveniently, don't ever mention the price). Yes, there is an microscopically small part of the population that sees those things in the sphere of their existence. And that is part of the problem--that there is a "performer class" being created so the rest of us can be spectators to a lifestyle we are led to believe we would be part of, but for our negligence in getting into the clubhouse.

Madness At The Texas Capitol

It is unreal that a government can treat its citizens involved in peaceful expression the way people were treated in the Texas Capitol the other night. There were people there who were people's grandparents, their neighbors, their children, their friends--people who have put in sweat equity to build this country's wealth and have watched the fruits of their labor be siphoned away. And does anyone know of anybody who was on the side that got the bill passed who was trapped in a small space, manhandled, violated, or had their property confiscated? They must have been tipped off and led away. They got shipped in as a wholesale effort at the surgically precise time that they needed to be there to provide testimony or feed some inaccurate picture to the media, then they got moved out of harm's way when the hammer of Thor smacked people on the head. This whole thing was orchestrated from the top. There are people who planned this out, and they have names and positions of authority. They even gave us hints by stating early on that this session would be different and dissent would not be tolerated. When peaceful speech is crushed and suppressed by violent means, and the political process is bent into an unrecognizable pretzel by greedy oligarchs for their own selfish ends, that is just wrong. Ethically, morally, legally. We have to make this right.

The Abortion Grenade In The Texas Legislature

One good thing about this abortion bill debacle...it is focusing everybody's attention on this corrupt system that forces itself on everybody with laws that a vast majority don't want. Though this battle is primarily about unwarranted intrusion into women's rights to control their bodies, it is also about anti-democratic corruption that is promulgated by oligarchic entities with an extraordinarily dismissive and warped sense of haughty entitlement.  At the least,  they sure as hell won't get out of this one without some serious claw marks raking their way across their misplaced assumptions that they own you.

Common Ground

There are so many different people with different beliefs and values all over the place. Our biggest challenge is to move beyond, "You have your head up your ass and your shit needs to be stamped out at all costs," to "Let's figure out how to live together and provide for those we care for despite our differences." Of course, all sides would have to acknowledge that.

Really, everybody should have access to what should be the basics of life...food, housing, education, and decent medical care at a minimum, as long as there are the resources to keep that up (and if there aren't the resources to keep that up we are in really deep trouble). Keeping up the fight for that should be a constant thing. But there seem to be so many people who fight back against that every time it is brought up. Everybody can (and will) have their own definition of who they care for...some will be more expansive than others.

Hopefully we could reach a minimum ground that everybody could agree on, and then we can keep trying to get more things that we believe in, while acknowledging that others will believe differently and that they are not necessarily enemies that need to be vanquished because of it. But has human nature become too deformed to even get to that point? When we look at seemingly intractable conflicts...Israelis vs. Palestinians, for example, neither side is willing to reach a minimum common ground and build upon it from there because they distrust the other side too much, and a mentality gets built up that the other side just needs to be wiped out because they are too unreasonable.

Fiscal Cliff?

• People are apprehensive about the "fiscal cliff."  Actually, we tumbled off the fiscal cliff in the 1980s, head over heels, limbs akimbo. We're still trying to mend our broken bones and climb back up.