Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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Occupy Wall Street part duex

Back on Oct 22 I wrote a short piece about the incoherent message of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

In that piece I said something to the effect,  that unless the message was clear and to the point that “Average” americans would loose interest.

Looks like that is exactly what’s happening.

I was chatting with someone yesterday who seemed to thing that the violence that has occurred over the past week toward the OWS crowds in many cities will increase the movement instead of disperse it. His thinking is that “average”americans will take offense at the OWS camps being systematically dismantled by police, and that they will join the OWS crowd in solidarity.

I understand his point but I don’t think he’s correct.

The problem remains the same. The OWS “Movement” still has a very incoherent message.

They haven’t created a simple message that America can actually get behind. This is in part because of the spin created by the media, but mostly it’s because OWS hasn’t done any kind of work at controlling the message that the media is presenting on their behalf.

Scenes of police tear-gassing crowds doesn’t have the same impact on us as a people as it did in the 60s. We’ve seen too much. We’ve had 10 years of war up close and personal. We’ve had scandal and trials about everything from abuses of political power to the treatment of our enemies in prison and what constitutes abuse. (For the record… making a prisoner wear panties on his head isn’t abuse… humiliation maybe, but not abuse.)

We as a people have become numb to riots and violence in general. It doesn’t matter where they happen they always look the same, they always end the same and just aren’t shocking anymore.

Apparently, the Occupy crowd is thinking that police brutality will galvanize public opinion.

They may be right…

The $64,000 question will be which way? Will public opinion swing in sympathy toward the Occupy crowd regardless of their complete lack of platform? Or will public opinion swing towards an attitude of “ABOUT TIME, get those squatters out of the public spaces and make ’em stop hindering folks going about their business”

I think that the fickle beast of public opinion is about to move toward the “Get out of here ya BUMS!” side of Occupy.

Occupy Wall Streets 15 minutes of fame is over.

In my opinion they’ve done nothing but HURT the protest process. For the remainder of this election season, anyone protesting, regardless of their message will be seen as a bunch of directionless irrelevant idiots from Occupy.

Occupy Wall Streets legacy will be that they killed the public protest and by abusing their free speech they silenced us all.

Nice Job!

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500 Billion needed to maintain the Roads?

So California is talking about raising the gas tax to fix the roads?

Because the state is projecting a 500 billion shortfall by 2020.

WTF?

Maybe they shouldn’t have been raiding the DMV fees, and reallocating other highway maintenance funds to purposes that WERE NOT highway related.

Of course we will never find out what happened to all the funds “Borrowed” to fix other shortfalls.

Oh yeah… We’re not supposed to remember that… And we’re not supposed to mind paying some of the HIGHEST license fees in the country.

I’ve got a salvage title on my 13 year old truck and have an annual 120.00 bill, same on my 10 year old bike. But the real killer is the 600 dollar bill on my passenger car.

Add it all up and the state of California gets 840.00 a year just for me to license my vehicles.

Add to that the 50.5 cents per gallon of gas and long commutes and I end up paying… and I’m estimating here, about an additional 480 to 600 dollars in added taxes per year.

That’s a grand total of  around 1300.00 per year to the state. Don’t even think about the additional costs of repairs CAUSED by the bad roads, or the cost of vehicle insurance.

You’re telling me that’s not enough!?! How do other states have great roads?

Why is it that when you cross the Nevada or Arizona boarder magically the potholes are gone and the roads are smooth? Why is I-75 on the East coast clean and well maintained?

If you factor in fuel wasted sitting in traffic, sitting behind morons that drive like they’re driving pace cars at Indy, and the idiots that slam on their brakes when a bird flies overhead, it’s probably a safe bet that most folks are filling their tanks at least twice a week.

So multiply just half of what I’ve been paying, by the number of drivers in the LA area alone and that’s an OBSCENE amount of money.

Then do the same for all the cities in the state and you’ve got a crazy obscene amount. So Sacramento… tell us again how we don’t have enough cash to maintain the roads?

Here we are;

Rock… Us ….Hard Place.

Our roads are for shit and decaying more every day, that hurts the economy. On the OTHER side of the coin Sacramento RAISING the taxes on a critical item like gas screws the economy.

This is especially true of most cities in California because WE DON’T HAVE MASS TRANSIT.

With the exception of the San Francisco Bay area, cities in California opted for commuting instead of trains / buses that run on time. 

Yeah,  Yeah, The talking heads and politicians speak breathlessly about the success of the light rail in Los Angeles.  

I’ve ridden it folks… yep you can get from one point that’s 40 miles away from your home to another point that 10 miles away from your place of work as long as you’re in the LA basin.   

Oh and by the way it can take you an hour to go the same distance you can go in 15 minutes driving your car during rush hour. If you want to bicycle that last 10 miles to work…. TOO BAD, you’ll have to wait for a train that has one of 4 bicycle slots open.  

Since the trains run more or less  every 10 minutes well you could be on that platform for a while. So you put your bike back on your car and drive to work. So much for being green, getting some exercise, and saving some money. 

The Folks in the Valley and Orange County??? Uhhh well you’re screwed… have a nice day!

Again with one exception, there is no mass transit in California.

Which leads us back to the decaying infrastructure, and what to do about it.

As one article pointed out, construction costs have risen considerably since the last time the gas tax was raised. Really? I guess we in the middle class hadn’t noticed that or the rising cost of living and our more or less static wages!

I’ve mentioned it before, I’m going to repeat it again.

It’s a given that he largest cost of major projects isn’t the material… it’s the labor.

We have a standing labor force in prisons throughout the state.

Instead of feeding, clothing, housing, and providing HBO, & Gym facilities to
these folks, how about we feed & clothe them and let them pay their debt to society with real work?

Prisons wouldn’t be as crowded…

At least not during the day while the work crews were out, and at night… well folks are sleeping and then all they’re worried about is having a bunk.

I’d even be for incentivizing. For each year you work on a road crew without incident, it’s a year subtracted from the sentence. You have to admit it’s a very real way to teach someone that WORK is rewarding.

I personally think that’s a lesson worth teaching.

I also think that little Johnny or Susie riding with Mommy & Daddy in their Prius would see a prison work detail as a cautionary tale of the consequences of right vs wrong.

That might have a beneficial effect in the future, reducing prison overcrowding and the costs associated with our penal system.

After Sacramento implements my suggestion… then lets talk about raising taxes.

Until then…

Keep YOUR wasteful greedy hands out of my pocket!

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The Rules….

Recently while my brother was visiting we started comparing notes about “Rules”.

We were both raised with rules and consequences. You know… you violate the rules and there are consequences.

Both of us at one point or another jumped off the roof of the family home. And for just a few seconds we did in fact defy the law (rule) of gravity! For a few milliseconds we enjoyed the thrill of being weightless, then came the consequences as we crashed down arms and legs flailing to the neatly manicured St. Augustine lawn.

As children, human body design allows for a certain amount of ill chosen activities. Most parents know that kids bounce surprisingly well. Jumping off a roof is in fact quite survivable when you’re 8 to 12.

It’s all about the landing… I could probably survive a similar leap today but I don’t think it would have the same thrill, (I’m Flying!) Today it would be more about (I’m Falling, now what is that terminal velocity equation… Splat!)

We won’t even get into my experimentation with gunpowder and certain chemicals from my chemistry set… Suffice it to say… my eyebrows eventually grew back.

I mention these ill chosen activities because they taught me a lot about rules / laws. These lessons formed the basis for a large part of my life philosophy. Well, these, and other lessons taught by the unique sound of my fathers belt as at arced toward my miscreant bottom. The lesson, simply put was “Obey the rules and bad shit doesn’t happen to you”.

Flash forward 35 years or so and I’m sitting with my brother in a restaurant. We’re witnessing some altercation happening out on the street and both of us reach the same conclusion about who was wrong and who was right. We turned back to our beers and pretty much said at the same time;

Why does it feel like we’re the only people still following the rules?

This lead to a discussion about the rules in general since apparently most rules have changed, and we missed the  memo.

Both of us will follow the rules.  This is particularly relevant in our workplaces.

For example.

In his workplace there was a rule that said no magazines or reading material was to be at various posts within the workplace (Think security). So he accepts this policy (rule) and then goes to his post. Lo and behold there is a substantial collection of reading material. As he cycles through other posts during the day he notes that reading material is abundant.

For folk like us, This creates a conflict.

Either all the rules are valid or none of the rules are valid.

We shouldn’t have to guess which of the rules our employer is going to enforce and which they’re going to let slide. If you’re not going to enforce a rule then remove it from the rule book and lets all move on.

When he questioned his superiors about the reading material he was labeled a Troublemaker. It set him up for all kinds of petty harassment and punishment by his peers. He wasn’t trying to make trouble, he simply wanted to know if the rule was actually enforced (apparently not), selectively enforced (low seniority couldn’t read, high seniority could), or enforced only when someone was watching.

Rather than actually answering his question, his supervisors just created a miserable work environment.

The creation of shitty work environments is all too common these days, especially among small minded, insecure, weak willed bosses. It’s less risky to their petty empire than an actual discussion and has no consequences other than to make the person they don’t like seek other employment.

When did the “Rules apply to others… not me” mindset become the norm?

All of us as children have that mindset. We are supposed to grow out of it.

Yet with each passing year evidence that we are in fact not growing out of it becomes more and more abundant. 
Recently there was the wonderful example of humanity at it’s worst in a McDonalds on the East Coast. A woman goes off and slaps a cashier because he needs to follow procedure and verify her $50 dollar bill. 
There are a number of things wrong with this scenario. First of all what kind of moron pays for a happy meal with a $50 bill? Given that you are in a position where you are the moron paying for your happy meal with a fifty, what part of the vendor is going to verify the bill escapes you? 
Then when an employee is obviously following procedure… where the hell do you get the idea that it’s OK for you to slap that employee?

But this bitch goes one further she climbs across the counter to pursue the employee who HAS retreated from her onslaught.
This is where things get really strange. The male employee being human grabs a pipe and starts beating the shit out of this crazed bitch.

I could have seen him punching her lights out but the pipe is over the top. The fact that he keeps smacking her after she’s down looks kinda bad too. On balance we can’t really see what’s happening behind the counter for all we know she’s trying to hit him with something she’s found.
Oh how proud the parents of these people must be! 21st Century homo sapiens to fresh out of the caves in less than 60 seconds!
All of them should have been taken to jail or better yet, a manners re-education camp complete with electroshock.
These people followed the rule of the jungle, not the rules of polite society and that’s the point!
Rules exist and are enforced by peer pressure within a society so that we don’t go back to the caves. But rules ONLY work when there is a homogenous society. 


We no longer have a homogenous society
I’m not talking about skin color here, or religion, or class. I’m talking about the fracturing of our society at a fundamental level. Ask any two people on the street about any set of rules and you’ll get different answers about which rules they’re going to obey.That’s a very different picture from 35 years ago.
We’ve become a society where people obsess over the tiniest of slights. You’d expect polite behavior, but in fact our society has focused so intensely on the minutiae that we have simply lost sight of the bigger issues. 
It’s no longer about if something is racist or sexist, we’ve broken it down to, “is something more racist or sexist against one group over another?” completely losing sight of the fact that racist or sexist behavior is in general bad.
We all need to step back think about the big picture concepts.
Don’t lie
Don’t steal
Don’t mistreat people regardless of their sex, color, sexuality, or whatever
Obey laws
Don’t cut in line
Be polite to each other
Treat everyone with respect and acknowledge their right to their opinion even if it differs from yours.
Apply all rules equally to everyone no exceptions


Why can’t we do this?
I think it goes back to a simple change in our thinking.
We used to all be Americans.
Now we’re Asian Americans, African, Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, [Insert Ethnicity Here] Americans. We’ve even broken it down to sexual preference, now you can be an [Alphabet Soup] American.
What point does this serve except to draw distinctions based on our differences instead of our commonalities? 
We are all here in America because we were either born here OR because we CHOSE to come here.

Regardless of how we came to be here OR WHEN, at some point, someone in our family decided that being an American was better than being what they were. (Even African Americans have a choice about where they live. If they feel that they can’t get past the injustice in America they have a choice to leave. That, by the way is a choice we all have.) 

It’s well past time for us to put aside where our families came from and embrace being American again.
That doesn’t mean that we have to forget our traditions, it does mean that we need to find a way forward. It means that we all have to hammer out a new set of rules that we as a society agree to, and will follow. It means that we accept responsibility for ourselves and our fellow Americans and once again take pride in our unique ability to be a melting pot where the best of Humanity, not the worst is on display.