DebtorsPrison

The Dow of Cheez Whiz

2008-09-29T21:01:00.001-04:00

The insurance giant AIG was one of the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now that AIG has crashed and burned as part of the financial meltdown, a company needed to be chosen to take its place.

Let’s raise a frosty glass of Kool-Aid to Kraft Foods, newest member of the Dow.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is the most widely reported gauge of stock market activity, the one that news broadcasts and newspaper headlines typically trumpet. Many people are surprised that it consists of only 30 companies, given that the stock market as a whole consists of thousands.

Still, those 30 companies are widely accepted as accurately reflecting the market because they are dominant across a broad spectrum of the US economy.

Food companies are not new to the Dow. In fact, Coca-Cola and McDonalds are also part of the current mix. (Proctor and Gamble is as well, though the food part of their business is small; Folgers coffee, for example.) The original Dow Jones Average, created in 1896 with 12 companies, included food corporations. There was the American Sugar Company (now Amstar Holdings) and the American Cotton Oil Company (which eventually emulsified into mayonnaise company Best Foods, which ultimately congealed into Unilever.)

Here’s a surprise: Kraft Foods actually already was part of the Dow for a while up until last year. It’s just that they were hiding within the Altria Group (you know…Altria Group…the fancy new name for what had been the Phillip Morris Tobacco Company.) Kraft Foods had been bought up by the Phillip Morris back in 1988, which then baked it together with other food companies it had acquired, like General Foods and Nabisco.

Altria got rid of Kraft back in 2007, making it an independent company again (I guess they figured pushing both cigarettes AND Velveeta on their customers made the mortality levels too high for the bottom line), and Altria itself was taken out of the Dow mix earlier this year.

Are you following all this? Maybe you should go have a few Oreos to get your sugar up and increase your concentration. I’ll wait…

OK, so anyway, Kraft Foods is now part of the bellwether US stock market index. Since Kraft has only been an independent company again for less than two years, it’s a little hard to get a bead on what issues they are spending their million dollars per quarter lobbying money on. Their lobbyists work on import safety, cloned food labeling and on renewable fuels (i.e., the cost of grain), but it isn’t clear from what I’ve seen so far what positions they take on the issues. Incidentally, one of their chief Senate lobbyists is Abigail Blunt, wife of House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Whatever their lobbying aims, the basic truth is that most of Kraft’s products are poor substitutes for real food, and that their advertising extols us to eat bad things.

But hey, they are part of the Dow now, so let’s all suck it up if we want to see the headlines able to report that the Dow is going up. A healthy Kraft contributes to a healthy Dow, so make sure you eat plenty of Oreos, Chips Ahoy and Chicken in a Biskit. Have an Oscar Mayer bologna sandwich slathered with Miracle Whip and Velveeta. Wash it down with Tang, Kool-Aid and Crystal Light. This Thanksgiving, stuff your turkey with Stove-Top and slather Cool Whip on your pumpkin pie.

Your nation is depending on you.

Previously posted on La Vida Locavore

Some Straight Talk for John "POW" McCain

2008-09-13T23:01:00.003-04:00

(Originally posted on DailyKos)

Congratulations, John McCain. You have managed to turn an act of strength and bravery 40 years ago into an emblem of your shame and cowardice today.

There are thousands of soldiers who have suffered as POWs, but you don't hear them trying to hide behind their suffering to avoid taking responsibility for a mistake. You don't hear them claiming that their experience entitles them to being hired for a job.

Even more than that, there are literally millions of Americans who have suffered some great pain or trauma or loss at some point in their lives, but you don't hear them whining that their experience entitles them to a free pass, or using their suffering to try and game the system to get their hands on something they want. No, most people have more courage and decency than that.

Maybe you'd like to take a look at the POW Network's Biography Pages, Senator McCain. There you can find the life stories of thousands of former POWs. Read a few. Read a few dozen. Read a few thousand.

There you will find lives of quiet courage, stories of people who have managed to make it through their lives with varying degrees of success despite the traumatic experience of their past. What you will NOT find is story after story of how they used their POW experience to be given a job or a hand-out. You won't find stories of how they whined repeatedly "I was a POW' in order to escape responsibility for things they said or did.

Or perhaps you would like to take a look at the website of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. There you can learn about soldiers who have struggled to make it. There are an estimated 200,000 Vets living on the streets on any given night, 400,000 who are homeless at some point during any given year.

47% of those Vets are from your war, Senator McCain. The Vietnam War.

Though you just love to tell us repeatedly how much you suffered 40 years ago, the fact is you have lived an elite life of wealth and privilege since that time. You want for nothing, John McCain, except of course your hunger for power. You dumped your first wife (who had gone through her own years of physical and psychological pain) and married into wealth, you have had the benefit of ample money and patronage to further your political career. In contrast to those hundreds of thousands of homeless Vets, you have so many fine homes that you cannot even keep track of them.

And what have you done to help those hundreds of thousands of homeless Vets? Well, you voted AGAINST providing $20 million to Department of Veterans Affairs for health care facilities. You were one of only 13 Senators to vote AGAINST providing $430,000,000 to the Department of Veterans Affairs for outpatient care and treatment. You voted AGAINST increasing Veterans' medical care funding by $1.5 billion.

Yes, you got yours, Senator McCain, but you have repeatedly voted against helping your fellow veterans, many of whom I expect were POWs, to get a leg up.

And now you have the unmitigated gall to whine, both through surrogates and from your own lips, that your misstatements and your mistakes should be overlooked because you were a POW. You dare to incessantly wave the banner of your 40 year old POW story as reason that you should be given entree into the office of President of the United States.

Forgive me if I don't buy it.

Every single speaker in the Republican National Convention repeated at length your POW story. Every video recounted it. And you yourself in your acceptance speech wallowed in it once again. You and your surrogates have used your POW experience from 40 years ago to let you avoid any accountability for everything from infidelity to cheating at the Saddleback church forum to not knowing how many homes you own.

It is shameful enough that you trivialize your experience 40 years ago in the service of your lust for power today. But it is even worse how your trivializing the POW experience demeans the experience of the thousands of others who suffered through similar experiences, and the thousands more who suffer post-traumatic stress from their war experiences. Those hundreds of thousands of people manage to get through life without constantly calling attention to what they went through, just in order to gain some advantage.

And this goes beyond military experience, Senator McCain. There are millions of people who have suffered through terrible periods of physical and/or psychological trauma.

There are people who have been in horrible accidents in which they lost limbs or mobility or, from which they suffer life-long physical pain, from which they required years of physical therapy to recover.

There are people who have been the victims of rape, abuse or incest, inflicting psychological pain which they carry around in secret suffering for years.

There are people who have lost loved ones to sudden and unexpected death, who have had to carry on raising their family through their grief and economic loss.

There are people who have, often through no fault of their own, gone through periods of economic hardship, lost their livelihoods or homes, and spent time living on the street.

There are millions upon millions of such stories to be told among the American people, John McCain. But most Americans manage to shoulder their burdens, to move on with their lives, to live with quiet courage and dignity despite whatever times of tragedy have befallen them in the past.

They do NOT, 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years later, rehash their old wounds in order to gain advantage or avoid responsibility. By your actions, Senator McCain, you have also demeaned the experience of these millions of Americans.

You have said in the past, Senator McCain, that you would never use your POW experience for political gain. Obviously that is no longer true.

Some people call you a liar because you have gone back on your word, but I don't think that quite gets to the heart of it.

The truth is, I think that you are a prisoner today to a much greater extent than you ever were a prisoner in Vietnam 40 years ago. You are a prisoner of your political ambition, and more importantly, of the political ambition of your advisers and handlers. You have gone back on your word about not wanting to use your POW experience for political gain, you have gone back on most of your policy positions in order to pander to the right wing of the Republican Party, you have gone back on your motto 'Country First' by appointing an unqualified vice presidential candidate for purely political reasons.

Yes, John McCain, today you are a prisoner. But unlike that time 40 years ago, you are not a captive due to fateful circumstances. This time you are captive due to your own poor judgment. 40 years ago, you may have responded with bravery and determination to your captivity. Today, you have shown yourself to be weak and a coward. You have caved in to those who control you, you have ratted out your beliefs and the good of the country, you have betrayed and belittled those who have borne the circumstances of their lives with quiet courage.

You are unfit for command.

Enough of your shameless whining. Enough hiding behind your experiences of 40 years ago. Enough demeaning your fellow soldiers and your fellow citizens.

Enough.

2005-07-12T20:55:00.000-04:00

"They've got a brand new facility down at Guantanamo. We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated down there.
They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got
everything they could possible want." -- Vice President (and National Travel Agent) Dick Cheney, in a June 23 CNN interview

The United States is proud to announce our newest lifestyle community, The Villas at Guantanamo Bay. Situated along the turquoise coastline of southern Cuba, this tropical paradise offers an exhilarating escape from the terrors of everyday life. Here, you'll enjoy glorious privacy, far from family, friends, human rights organizations or legal counsel.

The Villas at Guantanamo Bay experience begins with lodging in our spanking new condominiums. Every detail of your sleek concrete and steel mesh habitat is designed to help us pay close attention to your every need. You'll love the little touches that make your home unique, from the brightly colored complimentary jumpsuits to the Koran placed in every bathroom.

Our spa has received global recognition for the services it offers. Our experienced masseurs will give your body a working over that will have your senses singing. You might also want to try our unique commode hydro-therapy facials, after which you can have your body slathered with the finest cleaning products and our special blend of all-natural body fluids. Later, sit back and relax as one of our hospitality specialists offers you the lit end of one of those famous Cuban cigars.

Our fitness center is outfitted with the finest equipment, and your personal trainer can run you through a sequence of exercises your body won't be able to resist. For a change of pace, you might choose to take part in the soccer matches we arrange during visits by Congressional delegations.

If it's entertainment you’re after, we offer endless possibilities. Some might choose to have their minds pushed to new limits in one of the daily discussion groups led by our trained facilitators, while others simply might prefer to squeal to the antics of our trained dogs. For those with more sophisticated tastes, our specialty hostesses offer exotic dances certain to provoke that special response.

Nighttime offers a whole new range of delights. Our Padded Cell Disco has a state of the art light show that will dazzle your senses as your body throbs to the beat of our powerful sound system. There’s so much fun to be had that you won't want to sleep…we'll make sure of that!

And yes, you heard right! All meals and beverages are are part of the deal, including our incredible all-you-can-eat pork barbeque blowout!

Please note that at this time the Villas at Guantanamo Bay does not accept pets, children or wives. We also regret that, due to circumstances we are trying to control, we no longer offer photographic keepsakes of your visit.

Perhaps you've heard that this fabulous opportunity is only available to terrorists, but we have great news! You don't need any connection to terrorism at all! Simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you too can be swept into this tropical adventure of a lifetime.

Once you've experienced the Villas at Guantanamo, you'll never leave. That's our guarantee!

The Price of Coffee

2005-05-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

I’ve read that a lot of people are upset about the recent 12% price hikes on Folgers, Yuban and Maxwell House coffees. I was feeling sympathetic until I read that the new average price for these major brands is only $2.57 for a 13 ounce can.

Holy Roast! I had no idea coffee was so cheap! No wonder people settle for those mediocre mass-produced vacuum-packed tin cans of brown dust instead of quality coffee.

Coffee was perhaps my first habitual premium purchase. I’ve been buying whole bean coffee and grinding it myself since I first started living on my own thirty years ago.

Funny thing is, it never was necessarily a better-tasting cup of coffee I was after, though I think I generally get it (the few times I’ve tasted these national brands of coffee, they struck me as lacking depth, watery with a faint aftertaste of cardboard). I’ve never been overly fussy about what water or coffeemaker I use, and I’ve certainly managed to brew some pretty shitty pots of coffee over the years even with fresh-ground premium beans (just ask Mrs. DebtorsPrison).

Rather, it’s the connection to the essence and history of coffee that has driven me to pay usually between six and fifteen dollars per pound for coffee, even during the leanest financial periods of my life. I love knowing that this particular pound of beans I’m drinking on any given day comes from Kenya, Peru, Columbia, or Sumatra…and very often from a very geographically specific collective of farmers within that country. Sometimes I feel that sense of connection so strongly that just pouring out the last dregs of a cup into the sink brings a sense of regret, aghast at how casually I can discard the product of millennia of horticulture and the careful labors of the proud people working some organic shade-grown finca in Costa Rica.

At first it may seem silly that I pay premium prices for coffee as much for the intangible vibe as for the superior taste. However, when you take a look at the websites of the major coffee brands, you see that they too market themselves on lifestyle rather than taste. At least I get genuine good feelings and flavor. Canned coffee drinkers get phony ad agency touchy-feeliness and a lousy cup.

Maxwell House promises to “brighten up your morning or energize gatherings with family and friends. Folgers claims to be “the best part of wakin’ up”. Yeah, and don’t droppin’ your ‘g’ when you’re talkin’ go makin’ ya feel all warm and fuzzy? Yuban goes haiku in describing how a cup of their brew will enhance your existence: “It's the moment before the sun rises...A sweet melody tickling your ear. It's a stroke of brilliance from an artist's brush...The clarity of a breathtaking view. It's the essence of serenity, the essence of perfection. It's Yuban, the essence of coffee.” None of these websites seem to talk very much about how the stuff actually tastes.

I also like knowing that by seeking out the Fair Trade label, my coffee-buying habits help ensure that at least some coffee growers throughout the world make a living wage, and, even better, earn a premium for using organic and ecologically sustainable growing techniques. Growers for the mass-produced coffees are trapped in a cycle of poverty and debt, laboring in what have been called “sweatshops of the field.” It’s nice to know my morning coffee has in some tiny way contributed to global economic justice, helping coffee growers in the Third World to escape their own debtors prison.

In my travels over the years, I’ve visited many of the impoverished countries that grow the world’s finest coffee. Sad to say, it’s damn hard to find a good cup in any of them. The good beans are reserved almost exclusively for export to the wealthy nations. Instead of serving an exemplary cup of their own world class coffee, your average restaurant in these countries give you one of the world’s worst: a cup of boiled water and a jar of Nescafe.

Nescafe, a division of Swiss multinational Nestle, has an ad campaign, “Open Up,” shot in countries around the world “to celebrate the role that coffee plays in people’s lives. Just think what greater role it might play if they didn’t pay poverty prices to growers and then turn around and foist their loathsome bastardization of coffee on the countries which produce the world’s finest beans.

A Modest Proposal: Rendition for the Bankrupt

2005-03-22T23:48:00.000-05:00

The bankruptcy bill is progressing in Congress, and looks to be on the verge of final passage. Although I have never had to declare bankruptcy, I am certainly vulnerable, given my position as a debtor and a paycheck-to-paycheck person. It has been interesting to watch our honorable representatives in Congress portraying people like me as the lowest form of cheaters and thieves.

According to the pontificators of Congress, banks graciously provide the poor and middle class with credit cards out of the goodness of their hearts, wanting only to offer a little convenience to ease their lives, wanting only to trust them…and what do people do? They go out and spend like crazy, live the high life until the monthly minimum payments start to cramp their high-rolling lifestyle, and then they swindle those poor trusting banks out of their money. O, the injustice! No wonder these poor banks and credit card companies have to spend millions in campaign contributions just to try and get a fair shake.

Our reps in Congress don’t want to hear any excuses. All that stuff about how a third of personal bankruptcies are suffered by families who are already impoverished under federal standards? Balderdash! Or that Harvard study that found that nearly half of personal bankruptcies are the result of illness or medical bills? Nonsense! Those other studies that show divorced women are 300% more likely to end up in bankruptcy than single or married women due to reduced income, loss of health insurance and increased childcare costs? Piffle and twaddle! The study showing that persistent discrimination in mortgage lending is a major factor in Black and Latino homeowners being 500% more likely to end up in bankruptcy court than white homeowners? Give me a break!

It’s obvious to our honorable representatives in Congress that these lowlifes are gaming the system. They don’t want to hear any phony excuses about job loss, divorce or tumors. If card companies are kind enough to flood your mailbox with dozens of pre-approved credit applications each year, then it’s your responsibility to contribute to increasing the $30 billion in profit they made last year. And if you’re ever late with a payment, aren’t the card companies thoughtful enough to give you a little reminder in the form of penalty interest rates of 20-30%? Of course. But do you heed these warnings? No! You have the audacity to be driven even deeper into debt.

What, do these credit card deadbeats think it’s still the 1960s and 1970s, when the average family spent only 56% of its income on fixed expenses like housing, insurance, childcare and transportation, when people dealt with unexpected disruptions to their income by drawing on savings or sending a spouse out to get a second income? Well, welcome to the new millennium, people! Nowadays, fixed expenses eat up 74% of the average family’s income, both spouses already are working to make ends meet, and as for savings…well, since the credit card companies in the past 20 years have pushed to put plastic in the hands of everyone whether they had the income to manage it or not, savings in the United States has zeroed out and household debt has skyrocketed. Hey, babycakes, if you didn’t manage to get rich in the United States during the 80s and 90s, that’s your fault.

The plight of the poor credit card companies is so heartbreaking that I don’t think the bankruptcy bill goes far enough. Financial ruin is too good for these deadbeats. I think we should take a page from the Pentagon and the CIA: rendition. That’s right. When the military and intelligence services need to be able to say with a straight face that the United States doesn’t torture people, they use ‘rendition’ to outsource the torture of detainees to countries where they don’t have any pesky laws to hamstring the hamstringing.

So lets put an end to bankruptcy as an option for the lower and middle classes (the rich, of course, should still be able to conceal their assets and avoid their responsibilities—they’ve earned that right). Instead, let’s ship these deadbeats off to countries where they’ll get what they deserve. Surely some countries must still have debtor prisons. Or we can send them to where they’ll have their hands chopped off for being thieves, or forced to live in a cardboard shanty in some sprawling slum, or have their limbs deformed so as to make a better living as a beggar.

C’mon, Congress. You can do it. Cleanse America of these deadbeats who think that being impoverished and facing financial ruin means they can put something over on the government or big business. It’s not like you ever have to worry about their campaign contributions…

I've Heard of Investing in Silicon Valley, But...

2005-03-03T19:03:00.000-05:00

Here’s another reason why income over a couple hundred grand should be subject to a 90% tax:

According to a Reuters news report, former stripper Tawny Peaks is auctioning off one of her 69HH breast implants on www.ebay.com. No, you don’t get to remove it yourself. She already had them removed six years ago when she decided to retire and become a soccer mom to her three kids (I’m resisting the obvious soccer ball jokes here). The implants were just gathering dust in her closet until she had the brainstorm to auction one of them off (she’s keeping the other one for sentimental reasons).

The auction ends on Saturday, and as I write this on Thursday evening, there are already dozens of bids, and the price is up to $16,766!!

OK, Tawny is going to autograph it, and there is some historical jurisprudencial value given its involvment in a1998 lawsuit wherein a patron of the strip club where she worked claimed he had suffered whiplash when she swung it and its twin in his face, but still….$16, 766?!

Yes, it’s funny, but it also really angers me. Some people have just too damn much money and too damn little sense. If you’ve got twenty thousand bucks in disposable income lying around, do something good with it. Help your friends, donate it to a worthy cause, even just save it for your retirement. Hell, give it to me…

I don’t even want to imagine the depraved acts this dude has planned for his $16,000 ex-stripper’s used Frankentit. But guess what? He is only an extreme example what seems to be an entire subculture.

When I did a “breast implant” Ebay search to find the particular auction mentioned in the news report, imagine my surprise to find that there are a lot of them going under the gavel. None of them have the heft nor the notoriety of Tawny’s, so they’re only pulling in bids up to fifty dollars.

Says the description for one: “smooth 450cc silicone breast implant. intact and in mint condition. NOT for human or animal insertion. Makes excellent paper weight or novelty.” Oh no…no animal insertions, please.

One other auction at least touts their 300cc model as having more practical uses: “You can stick it in the freezer and it acts like an ice pack or you can use it as a wrist rest for your computer mouse, it also makes a great frisbee as long as someone besides your doggie is there to catch it. Also can be heated and used on sore areas.” Sure, and maybe it’ll even be covered by your medical insurance.

If you want to blow your college tuition, here's the direct link to Tawny's auction, but remember, you only have until Saturday, March 6, 2:32pm Pacific Standard Time.

And Baby Makes Me

2005-03-01T23:17:00.000-05:00

I see from yesterday’s New York Times that Fairchild Publications will be launching a new magazine for “affluent parents who want sophisticated things for their children.” It will be called Cookie, which to me is quite apropos in that it conjures up images of just the sort of bratty, over-indulged cookie-demanding spawn that affluent, self-absorbed, status-obsessed parents tend to raise.

Its editorial goal will be to “bring you the best—and only the best—of everything you want for bringing up baby.” You can read the word “best” as most expensive or prestigious. Mary Berner, president of Fairchild, makes no effort to hide the fact that this magazine has no reason to exist except as an advertising vehicle for luxury parenting gear: “There’s a lot of product out there that is looking for a sophisticated audience.” She further explains that makers of high-end children’s fashion and accessories don’t like advertising in the existing mass-market parenting magazines—readership of those rags are evidently too unsophisticated, not to mention income-challenged, to appreciate real luxury. Until now, they have been forced to try and reach their affluent target audience by advertising in publications like Vanity Fair, which hasn’t been too effective, since most VF readers are more interested in Leonardo DiCaprio’s love life or the latest scandalous legal trial than they are the in the well-being of their children. But now there will be a magazine specifically tailored for their advertisements.

Editor Pilar Guzman calls the magazine a “mom treat” to help busy but picky women make the best choices (translation: women who want the best for their children as long as they can buy it and not have to be bothered researching or thinking too much or being too involved in the decision, and as long as other parents can tell at a glance how expensive it is so they’ll know that you are a good parent). But if Fairchild thinks it will be just moms reading Cookie, then I suspect they are ignoring a big part of their audience.

Dads are hot for status parenting gear too, we see from an article in The Wall Street Journal on February 24: “Dad’s New Wheels are on the Stroller.” It seems strollers are overtaking sports cars in the wheeled virility-enhancing department. Testosterone-drunk dads are roaring down sidewalks and through shopping malls pushing their Sport Utility Ironman strollers from Bob Trailer, Inc.. Yep, pushing your baby in one of these $300 babies, with 16 inch composite polymer wheels, fine-tune tracking adjustment and 3-inch suspension system will “make curbs, uneven sidewalks, supermarket aisles and unpaved trails a breeze to navigate.” Nobody will dare call you ‘Mr. Mom’ when you’re behind the wheels of one of these.

Cookie. Look for it on your newsstands in November.

Ruminating on Organic Milk

2005-02-28T21:07:00.000-05:00

Every penny we spend has multiple and often contradictory real-world repercussions, and it can make you crazy trying to sort out whether your buying habits are screwing up the world or helping to make it a better place.

It was milk that got me thinking the other day. There was an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about local organic dairy farmers. They work hard to adhere to strict organic guidelines requiring cows to graze on open organic pasture. The official organic guidelines, however, are not so strict: large corporate dairies in the western states get away with calling their milk ‘organic’ just by giving their herd organic feed, even though the cows live a miserable life, penned up in close quarters and rarely if ever actually put to pasture. The local farmers see this as cheating, and as damaging the reputation of the organic label for milk.

Funny thing is, the DebtorsPrison household probably buys less milk than ordinary households. Although Mrs. DebtorsPrison has a glass now and then, I can’t drink the stuff straight—don’t like the taste or texture and it makes me gag. I do use it on the cold cereal I breakfast on a few times each week, use it in cooking, have some hot chocolate occasionally. So far, I have not paid the premium price for organic milk.

Still, I try and take these things into consideration in everything I buy. I do most of my food shopping at Whole Foods Supermarket. It costs somewhat more, but I like knowing that I am minimizing the amount of chemically-enhanced fake food I put into my body, and I like that my buying habits show these ‘Foodenstein’ multinationals that I reject their products.

The milk I buy at Whole Foods is not organic, but it is at least free of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormones (rBGH). Now, the corporate food industry is spending plenty of bucks to convince you that this stuff is harmless—see, for example, the Milk is Milk website put up by the agribusiness-funded Center for Global Food Issues (there’s even a blog!), but don’t you believe it. The European Union bans the import of US meat containing rBGH, given the ample evidence that it is not only highly carcinogenic, but that due to the environmental contamination produced by industrial farming, low levels of rBGH show up in our drinking water and may be a factor in both the increasing early onset of puberty in girls and in the slowly falling sperm level counts in men.

Whole Foods does offer organic milk, but it costs about twice as much as the non-organic stuff, which so far has kept me from buying it. As much as I’d love to buy only the best and the purest, the sad fact is in DebtorsPrison America, shitty food often costs less, and when you have low income and large debts, you have to choose your battles carefully. But perhaps organic milk is one more modest step I can take.

And even there you have to make choices. Is there really a difference between organic milk from cows grazed in open pasture versus penned cows fed organic grain? Here’s the scoop according to Organic Valley Farms: grass-fed, open-pastured cows are healthier, the farming practices are more environmentally sustainable, and the milk is healthier too, richer in such heart-healthy and cancer-fighting compounds as Vitamin E, Beta-Carotene, Omega-3 fats and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (sounds awful, but it’s all good for you).

So maybe the extra buck or two per week for pasture-fed organic milk is a worthwhile addition to my rage-against-the-machine shopping basket. As I said at the outset: every penny we spend has real-world repercussions.

I'm Back to Blogging

2005-02-24T23:15:00.000-05:00

I’m back to the blog, and happy to be here. I’ve missed it.

DebtorsPrison started about two years ago, when we had $23,000 in credit card debt. We still have some debt, around $9,000, your basic average US household credit card debt. Of course, we are luckier than a lot of those average debtors, since ours is locked in at 2% special deal interest rates. Things could be a lot worse.

Of course, DebtorsPrison was never really about the debt per se. This blog was more about the social, political and economic forces that make debt so easy a trap to fall into in the United States. The opening entry of this blog two years ago can still serve for its reintroduction today:

I used to think that responsible behavior like paying your bills on time was the
key to earning good credit. I now realize that what brings you the
whopping high credit limits is irresponsibility, the willingness to surrender
your good judgment to the lure of desire.

I love my credit and am
grateful that it has allowed me to build a happy life for my wife and me, to own
a home, to have traveled to over thirty countries, and to own a hell of a lot of
stuff. Nevertheless, for all the freedom my credit has brought me, the
accumulated debt brings a powerful burden of worry. Even worse, now serves
to constrain my freedom. I have entered a type of debtors’
prison.

This weblog, DebtorsPrison, intends to examine this
peculiar consumer society of ours. Life with easy credit and abundant choice can
be very sweet indeed. And yet we are also living in a kind of madness,
continually tempted and urged to do things which are not necessarily good for
ourselves, for society or for the planet, things we might not have done if we
had the constraints of tight money and fewer choices.

I don’t
intend simply to rant and blame society, corporations, the government or the
media. That would be too easy. It’s true that my politics are
generally left-leaning, pro-conservation, suspicious of big capitalism, and
generally appalled by much of the mindless consumption I see around me.
Nevertheless, it is also true that despite my political beliefs, my good
intentions and my low wages, I too have been lured into the debtors’ prison.

I’m sure there are plenty of out-dated news and broken links in the the old posts and archives, and I’ll be cleaning them out from time to time. A few of my favorite essays from the past will still be linked to in the column on the left. But now it is forward, into the renewed, interest-compounded DebtorsPrison…

"Perhaps You'd like me to Hold Your Dick for You...?"

2004-04-29T14:10:00.000-04:00

That is, of course, a line memorably delivered by Sir John Gielgud playing the butler to Dudley Moore's spoiled rich kid character in the 1970s-era movie 'Arthur.'

It's a line that came to my mind today as Bush and Cheney perform their ventriloquist-and-dummy act before the 9/11 Commission.

What a bind they got themselves into. It had become politically untenable for Bush to continue stone-walling the commission, and yet the administration also knew that Bush is too stupid, ill-informed, transparently dishonest and immature to be trusted to testify by himself. They had no other option but to have Cheney right in the next seat to, if I may, hold Bush's dick for him.

They've trotted out a number of explanations for the joint appearance-- 'it saves time,' 'they were in different places that day so this lets them give the commission a broader picture'--but each of them is laughably inane. No one believes them and they know it.

All they can do is brazen it through, while knowing full well in their hearts that in the eyes of the world, they have all but admitted that Bush is a pretty-boy figurehead who lacks the capacity to be president.

But you're not fooling anyone, boys.

No Shame and No Morals

2004-04-24T21:27:00.000-04:00

Utterly amoral and utterly shameless. How else to describe the Bush Republican attack machine for trying to smear John Kerry's military record? This, from a president who pulled all the strings available to him to avoid service in Vietnam, and then barely showed up for the stateside duty he landed, along with garnering mediocre reviews from his superiors, losing his flying status, refusing to submit to drug testing (and why would that be, unless you knew you would test positive?).

For a good short side-by-side comparison of the military records of Bush and Kerry, CLICK HERE.

For an administration that's constantly braying about how it values our men and women in uniform, they sure seem to have few qualms about disparaging one when it suits their purposes. Of course, this is also the administration that outed a CIA agent out of political vindictiveness, so why should we be surprised?

Draped in the Flag

2004-04-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

I wonder how many of the soldiers you served turkey to in Baghdad on Thanksgiving are dead now, Mr. Bush? Maybe some of them are even in this picture that you don't want the American people to be able to see:

A policy adopted by the Pentagon during Daddy Bush's first Gulf War in 1991 prohibits news organizations from photographing caskets being returned to the United States. Allowing the public to see row upon row of these flag-draped coffins, they say, would be insensitive to the grieving families.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy confirms Bush's support for this policy: "In all of this, we must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitivity of the families of the fallen, and that's what the policy is based on and that has to be the utmost concern."

Which is bullshit, of course. The names and faces of the fallen in Iraq are shown in the print and broadcast media every day--real names and actual faces. These images of coffins are completely anonymous. There are no names, no faces, no personal identification of any kind.

No, it's not for anyone's privacy that Bush wants these images suppressed. He wants them suppressed because he knows they are powerful in their stark simplicity. Oddly enough, it is the anonymity itself which helps lend them power, as the hearken back to our long collective visual memory, dating to Vietnam, World War II and beyond, of similar pictures of war. Vital human beings, soldiers, now reduced to silent flag-draped cargo.

This president who so loves draping himself in the flag, does not want us to see these images of flag-draped coffins of those who have died in the service of his ill-advised policies.

Oh, and woe to any who try to cross the Bush administration's censorship. The flag-draped coffin issue originally arose when the Seattle Times published a similar photograph on its front page last Sunday. That photo had originally been taken by Tami Silicio, a 50 year old American working in Kuwait for the Maytag Aircraft Corporation, a government contractor providing ground handling services for military air bases. She since has been fired from her job. For good measure, they fired her husband too.

Silicio says she shared the photo because she hoped it would portray the care and devotion with which civilian and military crews treat the remains of fallen soldiers. In return, she was squashed by the petty vindictiveness of the Bush administration.

Cheney Endorses Freedom to Sell Guns to Terrorists

2004-04-18T13:03:00.000-04:00

At least that what he seems to be saying in his speech yesterday to the National Rifle Association convention. According to the news reports, Cheney blasted John Kerry for supporting various gun control initiatives over the years, including one that allows random federal inspections of gun dealerships.

OK, I happen to be in favor of strict gun control, but I recognize that there is a middle ground where reasonable people may disagree. To oppose legislation like this, however, seems totally unreasonable. Our entire commercial business code includes as part of its standard operating principles the idea of random unannounced inspections. Agricultural inspectors check out slaughterhouses, health inspectors inspect food production facilities and restaurant kitchens, weights-and-measures inspectors make sure the prices posted and the scales used in retail establishments are accurate, fire marshals and building inspectors make sure that structures are up to code.

These inspections are done to help ensure that our food is unadulterated, our buildings are sound, and that we are not being cheated. Believe it or not, businesses have been known on occasion to cut corners in ways that make their products less healthy, less safe and more dangerous. They may do it innocently, not having the time, resources or workforce to make sure things are done to a certain standard, or they may do it for unscrupulous reasons, a greed for more profits.

You know this is true.

Gun dealers are no different than anyone else. The vast majority are honest and diligent in their business practices. But there may be a few who are lax in making sure that the rules and regulations concerning the sale of guns are followed, and there may be a greedy, corrupt few who are tempted by the money to be made selling guns outside the regulatory system.

All the law says is that gun dealers should be in the same position as virtually every other business in the United States: to be aware that on occasion, someone will check to see that you are fulfilling the requirements to which you agreed when you received the license to operate your trade, to make sure that you are not selling to people with criminal records, and to ensure that all the weapons you have procured are accounted for either in stock or in sales records.

In short, to help ensure that you are not acting, either through laxity or design, as a conduit for criminals and terrorists to obtain weapons.

This is a well-established feature of our commercial code, Mr. Cheney. Perhaps you have not had to deal with it so much in heading such crony-capitalist companies as Halliburton, but for most businesses in the United States it is accepted, and our society enjoys safer food, buildings, transportation and fairer services because of it. There is no reason gun dealers should have a special exemption from having their businesses subject to inspection.

If you had your way with the Patriot Act, even the book buying habits of every American would be open to government inspection. Yet you want the vendors of weapons to be free from inspection!

And we're supposed to believe you take the 'war on terror' seriously?

Where's the Money, George?

2004-04-13T22:46:00.000-04:00

Here's one question I wish some reporter had asked of President George W. "I never make mistakes" Bush at his press conference this evening:

"Mr. President: Given your stated determination to 'stay the course' and do whatever necessary to follow through on your policy in Iraq, and given both the increasing costs of our Iraqi operations and of the burgeoning budget deficits here at home, would you be willing to raise taxes, or even to consider forgoing any of the new tax cuts you seek, in order to finance our military operations?"

I wonder how he would answer that. Somehow, I don't think his determination to do whatever has to be done to "achieve victory" in Iraq would include cutting back any of the goodies he's passing out to the wealthy. No, let the little people pay for his war, both with their lives and with the economic well-being of the future generations who will be forced to foot the bill for our economic recklessness today. Let no cost fall on the wealthy and the powerful.

THIS is the interview the Bushes claim show Richard Clarke is a liar?!

2004-03-24T21:22:00.001-05:00

The Bush administration is in a real panic over former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke's revelation of how clueless they have been in dealing with terrorism. As part of their flailing, desperate attempts to smear and discredit him, they gave permission to Fox News and other media outlets to disclose Clarke as the 'anonymous administration official' who gave a background briefing in 2002.

They claim that in that interview, Clarke praised the Bush administrations anti-terror policies.

Well, I've read the transcript of that backgrounder, and I certainly wouldn't call it a ringing defense, even though at the time he was still working for Bush and dutifully trying to put the best face on things. As you read it, you can sense his struggling, complete with umms and uhhhs, to make it sound like the Bushies were actually doing something.

Helpful hint to the Bush crowd: you may hope people will see Clarke's words back in 2002 as praise, but in truth, any intelligent person can see that they are in fact damning with faint praise.

Of course, the most laughable part of the Bush smear campaign is still their decision to send Vice Presdient Cheney to sit in on Rush Limbaugh's show to badmouth Clarke. (Read that transcript HERE) Rush Limbaugh? Sheesh! What next? Condi Rice appearing on The Simpsons?

A Little Too Truthful

2004-03-21T12:24:00.000-05:00

The Philadelphia Inquirer last Thursday started out an article about the continuing attacks in Iraq with a sentence that perhaps conveyed a bit more truth than intended:

"As military analysts see it, yesterday's car bombing of a downtown Baghdad hotel is the latest in a surge of attacks on "soft targets" - poorly protected civilians - in the shadowy war to disrupt Iraq's march toward pro-U.S. democracy."

Oops. Usually we're told that we're fighting for just plain old democracy in Iraq, but here someone forgot to delete the modifier 'pro-U.S.' It seems that some democracies are more equal that others. Should Iraq dare to ever democratically elect an Islamist government that isn't sufficiently "pro-U.S.," I guess it will be regime change time all over again.

In the meantime, we've probably got a division of troops readying an invasion of Spain now that their voters have democratically turned out their pro-U.S. prime minister.

Let's make this clear to the world: democracy doesn't mean you get to vote for what YOU want; it means you get to vote in favor of what the United States says you can have.

Why Do They Keep Saying 'Re-Elect?'

2004-03-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know why they keep talking about the re-election campaign of George W. Bush, since he was never elected in the first place.

I know, I know, get over it already, you're probably thinking. And I have gotten over it, for the most part. I don't call it a stolen election anymore, but rather accept that it was an unusual situation in which the party most willing to use lies and deceit won the day. I occasionally will write the words President Bush, rather than 'President' Bush or President* Bush or President (sic) Bush or White House Resident Bush.

No, I've mostly gotten over the stolen election (oops), even though his White House Residency has been much worse than I ever envisioned. All I care about now is semantics, about accuracy, about a pure and simple love for the English language. I hate to see the word "re-elect" used improperly.

Now if you're talking about the nine Supreme Court justices, you may validly use the term "re-elect." Strictly speaking, the vote of those nine people was the only election that George W. Bush actually won in 2000. Next time Vice President Cheney goes duck hunting with Justice Scalia, he can feel free to urge the re-election of Bush, should circumstances once again lead to that situation this year.

But Bush lost the election in popular votes--there is no disagreement that more votes were cast for Gore. And after reading many analyses both for and against Bush of the Florida voting irregularities, it seems convincing to me that had the ballots been properly counted, Gore would have won the electoral vote count as well.

So lets honor the proper use of the English language and stop using the term 're-elect.' You can work to elect George W. Bush for the first time. You can work to bestow legitimacy on his future time in office after four years of illegitimate rule. But it is not possible to work for his 're-election.'

Put Away Those Almanacs!

2004-01-02T23:10:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to all from DebtorsPrison. One of America’s most beloved annual publications has been in the news at this start of 2004: The World Almanac and Book of Facts.

Yes, the annually updated World Almanac has been the bestselling reference book for millions of Americans since it was first published in 1868, and has played a supporting role in our nation’s history as well. During World War II, the US government commissioned a special print run of over 100,000 copies each year for distribution to our fighting men and women. In White House photographs, the Almanac can be seen close at hand on the desks of presidents Kennedy and Clinton.

You might want to hide that Almanac of yours for the time being, however. According to the Associated Press, the FBI has put out an alert to 18,000 police departments warning that terrorists might be using World Almanacs to assist them in their nefarious plans.

They urged police to be on the lookout for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if they seemed to be loitering or writing in them, for that "may point to possible terrorist planning."

Wow!

Now it’s true that the World Almanac and Book of Facts does have a lot of information. It lists the airports, rail lines, port facilities and truck cargo stations for the 100 largest US cities. It names the highest buildings, notable bridges, longest tunnels, biggest dams and reservoirs. It lists the Most Widely Known Americans of the Present.

Of course, it also lists the most commonly confused words in the English language. Who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Who had the highest batting average in the National League.

But you can never be too careful. Who knows what evil plots these bastards could be hatching?

The Associated Press story goes on to quote publisher John Pierce of the Old Farmers’ Almanac as saying that his publication is of little use to terrorists, unlike the book put out by those traitors over at the World Almanac. Nevertheless, he vows that "while we doubt that our editorial content would be of particular interest to people who would wish to do us harm, we will certainly cooperate to the fullest with national authorities at any level they deem appropriate."

We’re still waiting for other publishers of reference guides to say whether they are on the side of America or of the terrorists. Will Zagats exhort us to be suspicious any under-nourished persons of a certain nationality checking out what eateries are most likely to be packed? Is Spa Finder watching out for those who would soil our favorite mudbaths? Are the Kelly Blue Book people making sure that no one uses their books to make sure that their potential car bomb isn’t a lemon? Is The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book making sure that those people prowling Beverly Hills for glimpses of movie stars’ homes are only fantasizing about kidnapping their favorite sex god or goddess?

Perhaps the safest course is to not publish any reference books at all. Yes! Add the slogan to the Department of Homeland Security website: “Ignorance is the Best Prevention!”

The On-Off Economic 'Recovery'

2003-12-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

I don’t know why economists and pundits seem so puzzled by the merry-go-round of good news-bad news economic statistics that are announced each week.

You know, one day in the news they’ll be trumpeting that the economy is back, that the Gross Domestic Product rose at an 8.2% clip in the third quarter, that personal income rose 0.5% in November, that company inventories are dropping which means consumers are buying which means that any day now companies are going to start hiring…

And then the next day there will be a report that orders for durable goods dropped unexpectedly in November or that new housing starts dropped in November, and the story of the day will express surprise at such weakness in the economy because damn, didn’t yesterday’s statistics show promise of everything starting to boom?

I don’t think there’s any mystery to it at all.

The economy rose because Bush gave Americans tax rebates and tax cuts early in the year, and people spent them. But the economy continues to stall because Bush gave most of the tax cuts to the rich, who don’t need the money.

I said it BEFORE and I'll say it again: the rich have no pent-up demand, because they can already buy anything that their greedy little hearts desire. Non-wealthy Americans, on the other hand, have been scrimping for years as their wages stagnate, their expenses rise, their jobs are ‘downsized.’ They’ve been making do with old clothes so they can save for their children’s education, nursing along their failing automobiles and appliances because they can’t afford to buy new ones.

Give them a little windfall of a tax cut or a tax rebate, and they’ll give a boost to the economy by spending it. Problem is, now it’s spent, and they’re financially strapped again, though perhaps with a new suit or new washing machine to show for it. Even worse, since their pent-up demand exceeded their tiny tax rebate, they probably spent more than Bush had handed them. After all, credit card debt is still rising, personal bankruptcies are still rising, and our savings rate remains abysmal.

Two-thirds of the US economy is built on consumer purchases, and it is consumers who have managed to keep the economy afloat. They’ve done it through refinancing their houses (as we here at DebtorsPrison did) and by going into credit card debt. All Bush’s tax cut did for the average consumer was to give them a couple months of financial reprieve and tempt them into going a little further in debt to make some of the purchases they had been deferring for so long.

Bush dazzled average consumers with a few hundred dollars in their pockets and a whole lot of talk about how his tax cuts benefited the average person, but it’s all lies. The Bush tax cuts were all about giving more money and power to the rich and doing nothing for the economy. It is even a lie to say that taxes have been cut for the average person, because the under-financing of the federal government has meant all sorts of increases in government service fees, as well as in state, local and property taxes. These increases usually hurt the average person with a tiny tax rebate more than they do the wealthy person with a windfall tax cut.

Bush is hoping that the buying boomlet stimulated by his tiny tax cut to the average person will carry the economy at least to the next election, so he can get away with his deceitful lies about his massive give-aways to the rich.

Lets make sure he doesn’t get away with it.

Happy Holidays from DebtorsPrison

2003-12-25T20:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays to all from DebtorsPrison. It’s been a lean Christmas in the DebtorsPrison household, with Mrs. DebtorsPrison having had only sporadic employment over the past six months. We exchanged modest gifts, and took care of gifts to others by baking lots of goodies. All in all, Christmas cost us well under one hundred dollars. I realize everything is relative, that many people in the United States were unable to afford even that much, and that for many people around the world, one hundred dollars represents months of earnings.

Still, Christmas would have been a lot leaner had we not gotten rid of the $23,000 credit card debt that was the original inspiration for this blog. You can read those early entries about the debt HERE. Or you can just read on, as I’m in the mood to recap the story.

We are a liberal and fairly non-materialistic couple who nonetheless slowly found ourselves drowning in credit card debt. Indeed, the debt is only part of the story…Mrs. DebtorsPrison had gotten a legal settlement of around $30,000 in 1995, so the actual turnaround of our finances—running through the 30 grand and building up the debt—is actually more like a $50,000 hole.

Some of the money went towards the down payment for our house. Some of it went towards a ‘new’ used car, since deceased and never replaced—we’ve been car-less for going on two years now. Much of it went towards our stubbornly striving to live our lives the way we want to. In that period, we took three two-month trips, one to Kenya and two to India, Nepal and Tibet, as well as shorter trips to the US southwest and to Peru. Immersing ourselves in other cultures and seeking to become more global citizens is important to us. These trips were financed partly from savings, but also partly from the settlement money and in smaller part on credit. Another chunk of the debt came from both of us voluntarily giving up stressful jobs for less-stressful ones, despite pay cuts in each instance. Some of the money went towards Mrs. DebtorsPrison’s efforts to develop a consulting business in which her considerable experience with comedy improvisation could be used both for corporate training and for wellness workshops for those suffering from chronic and/or terminal medical conditions, a venture which so far has brought us a minor stream of income.

Very little of the debt came from the accumulation of ‘stuff,’ per se. Nevertheless, the money we devoted towards the pursuit of our life goals meant that ever-so-gradually even our day-to-day expenses eroded our financial position.

Last Spring, thanks to rising real estate values, we refinanced our house, taking out enough additional debt to pay off the credit cards. The debt didn’t actually get paid off, in other words; it just got folded into a new, higher mortgage, and we gave up whatever equity we’d built up in our house over the previous five years. We didn’t really save much in interest costs, since the entire credit card debt was at very favorable 6% and 7% rates. Nevertheless, the ‘nut’ we had to come up with every month for minimum payments decreased dramatically.

It is those reduced monthly payments that have allowed us to stay afloat and virtually debt-free these past seven months despite our greatly reduced income. In fact, thanks to my fistful of credit cards no longer tied up with debt, I’ve even managed to make some money back off of them.

With the accumulated ‘points’ on one card, I had enough to cash in for $175.00 worth of gift certificates at various retailers. In addition, I took advantage of a couple limited-time, no-interest, no fee deals that two cards offered me. I borrowed $13,000 on the cards and used that money to open up accounts at two internet banks. Both banks offered $50.00 bonuses for opening new accounts, so that alone earned me one hundred bucks.

In addition, the accounts paid 2% interest, so over the time I was able to keep the large sums in the accounts, I earned an additional $65.00 in interest. I simply paid the minimum payments out of the borrowed money itself, and when the no-interest period expired, paid the debt off. No interest paid, $165.00 in interest and bonuses earned, and I’ve managed to keep both accounts open with smaller sums, continuing to earn interest.

Finally, two cards offered me limited-time 5% cash back on purchases up to two thousand dollars. I took each of the cards up on the deal and have been charging everything, including groceries, and paying off the balance each month. I already hit the two thousand dollars on one card, thus earning the maximum $100.00 back, and am well on my way to doing the same on the second card.

In short, over the past six months, I’ve made about $540.00 off of my credit cards. Sure, they’ve made more off of me over the years in interest, and yes, a truly daring person might have taken that limited-time, no-fee interest-free thirteen grand and swung a real estate deal to make more money, but I’m happy. Unfortunately, now that my credit profile no longer shows me as a home-owner with a large yet manageable credit card debt, the best deals are no longer coming in the mail so often. But I remain alert for ways to earn more money off these cards, and we are resolute in never getting back into those huge debt problems.

Anyway, it has been a wonderful Christmas, despite our strained finances and all the craziness in the world. We feel refreshed, focused and ready to continue trying to make the world a better place. I hope all who read this have had a wonderful holiday as well.

Roast Turkey in Baghdad, Cooked Goose in Tikrit

2003-12-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

George Bush has had a very good few weeks in the photo op department. First, there was his surprise Thanksgiving drop-in on the troops in Baghdad, and then there was the capture of Saddam Hussein.

I’m certainly no fan of this unelected president currently residing in the White House, but I’ll confess to feeling a rush of happy gratitude and admiration when I saw those pictures of Bush serving turkey to the troops. What a surprise, what a thrill to the men and women in that mess hall, what a daring and magnanimous gesture.

But also…what a stunt. Because in the end, that’s all it was: a stunt. I truly believe that Bush went to Baghdad in part out of a true goodness, a desire to show his support and appreciation to those soldiers he has asked such sacrifice from. But I also feel that an even stronger motivation was pure political calculation…his political team was looking for visuals that would really wow the voters, razzle-dazzle ‘em and make them forget their increasing discontent. After all, the video footage of his prior stunt, flying onto that aircraft carrier in his flight suit and addressing a crowd of cheering sailors before a huge banner announcing “Mission Accomplished” after the fall of Baghdad, had become largely unusable, what with the hundreds of slain and wounded soldiers and the continuing chaos and violence in Iraq showing that, well, maybe that ‘mission accomplished’ had been a little premature. (And will the flight-suited George W. Bush action figure inspired by that stunt now be joined by a second, this time in army fatigues with a roast turkey in his arms?)

Yes, Mr. Bush. It was very nice of you to spend Thanksgiving in Baghdad (foolhardy too, perhaps…I have to question the judgment of a President who flies to a war zone for a publicity stunt.) But I can’t help thinking that those soldiers you dined with would not have rather been home enjoying Thanksgiving with their own families. And I can’t help thinking that the families of the soldiers who have died in your little war would not have rather had their sons and daughters at the dining table rather than in a casket.

Nor can this stunt obscure the fact that this war in Iraq is bad policy, a forfeit of hundreds of young lives and a waste of hundreds of billions of dollars in pursuit of a policy that has little to do with justice or with lessening the threat of terror, and much more to do with oil money, defense contracts, and the worldview of a few rightwing zealots who believe that America’s greatest destiny lies in bullying the world and ignoring global cooperation.

And finally, (because Americans love to dwell on gossip more than issues of substance), what kind of son invites his parents and children to the ranch for Thanksgiving dinner, but then at the last minute flies off to have turkey with the guys instead, without even telling anyone? Sheesh. My parents woulda killed me….

Bush’s other great publicity coup is, of course, the capture of Saddam Hussein. Here again, I feel some gratitude in seeing one of the world’s tyrants having his goose cooked. This does not mean, however, that I agree with the way it was done.

Removing Saddam Hussein from power was not the job of the United States nor should it in any way have been a priority of our foreign policy. Iraq was not an immediate and direct threat to the United States. He had no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His weapons of mass destruction program was largely contained by UN sanctions and inspections. This was still an unnecessary war undertaken for ill-considered if not corrupt reasons. Hundreds of US soldiers have died, thousands have been wounded, thousands of families have been disrupted, hundreds of billions of dollars squandered. The Bush administration flat-out lied to the American people about its reasons for waging war. We have alienated our allies, lost the respect of much of the world. And we have, through arrogance and poor planning, fostered a chaotic situation in post-war Iraq that may very well give rise to a worse nightmare than Saddam.

To the American audience, seeing the humbled, humiliated and cowardly Saddam crawl out of his hole was a cinematic moment worthy of Hollywood. His haggard appearance was shocking (the jokes have already begun…Santa Claus goes Goth, he had a suitcase full of $750,000 and he couldn’t afford a haircut….) Seeing his head checked for lice and his mouth checked for sores was humiliating. Yes, the good guys had won and the bad guy had gotten his due.

But those same visuals that play so well to the American cowboy mentality don’t play so well in the Arab world. There, they see an Arab leader being humiliated by the United States, and that just feeds into the simmering resentment and suspicion. Anti-Western sentiment in the Arab world found voice in two major political philosophies in the 20th Century. One was the secular nationalists who came to power in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, people like Gamal Abdul-Nasser of Egypt and Saddam Hussein. The second political philosophy was the fundamentalist Islam that has steadily increased power since the 1980s. The fall of Saddam represents the fall of the last of the powerful secular Arab nationalists, and thus increases radical Islamic fundamentalism as a home for those who seek an outlet for their resentments.

After all, that is why the United States supported Saddam Hussein throughout the Reagan administration. Yes, it’s true: Saddam was our boy, and many of the very acts that Bush has cited as justification for overthrowing him were, in fact, done with US complicity in the 1980s. Sure, we knew he was a devil, but when the choice was between him and the other devil as represented by the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, we threw in with Saddam. We sold him weapons, sold him technology which could be used in his nuclear weapons program, offered him intelligence which he in turn used to gas his own people, and we even sold him anthrax, bubonic plague and other biological horrors. I’m sure all this will come out when Saddam goes on trial, a trial I suspect will bring more embarrassment than satisfaction to our government. But until then, you can read up on it all at the following links:

From the National Security Archive comes the tale of US support for Saddam in the 1980s, and from testimony in the Congressional Record by Senator Robert Byrd (D-Va) comes the story of our furnishing Saddam with all he needed to make those biological weapons

And finally, there is that wonderful picture of our current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making nice with Saddam in Baghdad back in 1983…

...Or Maybe It's Worth A Comment After All

2003-12-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Last week I offered without comment a story about a woman being trampled in a Wal-Mart by a horde of shoppers racing for a bargain DVD player.

At least I thought then it needed no comment: it seemed to perfectly illustrate the self-absorbed greed which people can exhibit. But it turns out that this tale has several different levels of greed involved. Here is a follow-up news story:

Associated Press
ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A woman who was reported trampled by Wal-Mart shoppers during a holiday sale on DVD players has filed numerous injury claims against stores since 1987, including nine against the huge retailer.

Patricia VanLester, 41, a former Wal-Mart employee, has received thousands of dollars in injury and workers' compensation settlements from Wal-Mart, records show.

Paramedics reported finding VanLester unconscious atop a DVD player Nov. 28 amid a frenzy of shoppers during an early-bird holiday sale. She was airlifted to a hospital, where she spent two days.

Orange City Police Cmdr. Peter Thomas said yesterday that his department had found no evidence of a crime and had closed its investigation.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said he had no details about the past settlements, including one filed by VanLester's sister. "We're going to investigate this claim as thoroughly as we have investigated the other 10 claims that this woman and her sister have brought against us in the past," he said.

The sister, Linda Ellzey, said VanLester had suffered a seizure and other injuries caused by shoppers who trampled her "like a herd of elephants." A case manager for VanLester's attorney said VanLester had not filed a formal injury claim against Wal-Mart from last week's incident.

VanLester collected more than $1,800 in workers' compensation claims for slip-and-fall incidents at a Publix supermarket and another Wal-Mart store in 1995 and 1996.

Well. It certainly takes blind greed to stomp over someone in order to get a good price on a DVD player. But what sort of greed does it take to understand so well how greedy people are, to know that if you stumble there in front of them they will trample you, and to use this knowledge for your own gain. I mean, the dozens of people who trampled over her only wanted to gain a few dozen dollars in savings on a DVD player, but this woman seems to have been out for both the DVD player and swindling Wal-Mart out of thousands of dollars. Now, if she can only sell the rights to her story to the National Enquirer on top of that....

2003-12-04T14:40:00.000-05:00

Maybe Now They'll Do Something About Global Warming...

Climate change seen as threat to ski resorts
By Andrew Dampf
Associated Press

TURIN, Italy - Global warming is threatening the world's ski resorts, with melting at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up mountains, a U.N. study says.

Downhill skiing could disappear altogether at some resorts, according to the report, issued Tuesday by the U.N. Environment Program. At others, a retreating snow line may cut off base villages from their ski runs as soon as 2030.

"Climate change is happening now. We can measure it," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. program. "This study shows that it is not just the developing world that will suffer."

Wow! I mean, when it's just a question of worrying about suffering in the developing world, of devastated agriculture and flooded coastal cities, who really cares? But how dare they let anything happen to our ski resorts?

2003-12-04T14:30:00.000-05:00

.
What Exactly Do You Mean, Santa, "If I'm A 'Good' Girl or Boy?"

A bit of seasonal news...

Santa's Knee Off-Limits For Some Children
AFP, Dec. 3, 2003
A small town in New Zealand has banned children from sitting on Santa's knee because organizers fear liability if anything goes wrong, organizers said.
Instead, children in the South Island village of Mosgiel would be asked to sit next to him, on specially decorated "elf chairs", as they discuss their Christmas wish list.

Organizer Gail Thompson, secretary of the Mosgiel Business Association, which is organizing the event, said the precaution was "ridiculous" but necessary. She feared children coming back in at a later date with allegations about Santa's behavior.
"None of us really wants the risk of someone saying in 15 years' time 'When we sat on Santa's knee at market day ...', so they are sitting on elves' chairs."

Graham Glass, who will be Santa, was less than impressed. "It's bloody ridiculous — I can't believe we have become so politically correct."

The town has also declared that scrambling for lollipops in a free-for-all would be too dangerous for the children, who will instead be handed sweets from a basket.

At Least They Offered Her A Raincheck

2003-12-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

Some stories are so perfect they don't need any additional comment...

Shopper trampled in Fla. Wal-Mart

Associated Press

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them: 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!' "

Ellzey said yesterday that some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and that one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals.

Paramedics found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.

She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family that VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials yesterday said they did not have any information on her condition.

"She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything."

Ellzey said that Wal-Mart officials called Friday to ask about her sister, and that the store offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

"We are very disappointed this happened," said Karen Burk, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The New $20 Bill

2003-11-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been staring at the new twenty dollar bills that have been passing too quickly through my fingers these past several weeks, and I can't say I'm impressed. When they were touted in advance as our first multi-colored currency, I was really looking forward to it. After all, I've traveled all over the world and spent thousands of incredibly beautiful and richly hued pieces of paper. US currency always seemed very drab in comparison to the wonderful banknotes used elsewhere in the world (though that never prevented people all over the world from wanting to swap theirs for US greenbacks).

Imagine my disappointment when all our national graphic designers could come up with was this patchwork of sickly pastels so pale that the bills look washed out even when brand new.

But while the design of the new twenty is bankrupt when it comes to creative design, the more I look at them the more I feel they’ve been invested with all sorts of subliminal messages.

The main element of ‘color’ in the new bill seems to be the beige blob smearing across the center of the front. The first time I saw the bill, I thought it was an old bill that someone had spilled their coffee across, and I still suspect that was how the design originated in some sloppy office of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It’s also possible that the spilled coffee motif was meant to symbolize the workaholic American culture.

But it’s the placement of this color right across Andrew Jackson’s super-sized face that I find most striking. When I was a little boy, there was a crayon in my box of Crayolas that was that exact same color. Today I think it is called ‘Peach’ but back then it was called ‘Flesh’—this was the late 1950s and early 1960s, when crayon makers still considered it inappropriate for children to draw non-white people.

Maybe our currency designers just wanted to remind us that Andrew Jackson was a ‘flesh-colored’ guy. These Bush administration Republicans have a lot of nostalgia for those pre-Sixties days before consciousness was raised and culture was diversified, so it’s not surprising that they would prefer our currency to celebrate white people in power.

But while the new currency reflects the Bush administration yearning for the days when white people were unchallenged in running things, it seems to suggest a much gloomier view of the present and future. Take, for example, the color-shifting ink of the “20” in the lower right corner of the bill’s front. Depending on the way you hold it to the light, the number changes from a shining gold to dull brown and finally to black. That’s right: they’ve produced money that tarnishes before your very eyes. This is not the design of a government that feels optimistic about the direction our economy is heading.

But the weirdest visual of all is to be found on the back of the bill. The White House is surrounded by a swarm of tiny yellow $20s that make it look as if it is being besieged by bats or locusts. I know that the Bush administration has a lot of evangelical Christians among both its officials and its supporters—perhaps they are the inspiration for this apocalyptic vision. Or perhaps it is a subliminal exhortation to support the ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile program. After all, the White House appears to be shielded from the attacking legions of $20s by some sort of force-field bubble—labeled, I might add, “In God We Trust.”

Well, I’m not surprised that the Bush administration would retool even our currency to reflect its retrograde politics, fundamentalist Christian philosophy and bankrupt economic policies.

Bush voted 'Most Corrupt'

2003-11-11T21:41:00.000-05:00

Philadelphians had a chance to vote last week on who was the most dishonest, venal and corrupt: their own city government or the Bush administration. Bush won in a landslide, handily voted ‘most crooked.’

Actually, the election was a mayoral race in my home town of Philadelphia, a rematch between incumbent Democrat John Street and Republican Sam Katz. Four years ago it had been a squeaker, with Street winning by only 9,000 votes. This year it was shaping up to be just as close, with the two candidates neck and neck in the polls up to the closing weeks of the race.

Then an FBI bug was found in the mayor’s office, leading to the exposure of a federal probe into corruption in City Hall. You’d think that would spell the end of Street’s re-election chances, but the opposite happened. Street’s numbers soared, and he ended up wiping out Katz by 80,000 votes and 17 percentage points.

Not only that, but the outpouring of anti-Republican voting helped to unexpectedly elect some Democratic judicial candidates in statewide races.

That’s right. The FBI put a bug in the mayor’s office, confiscated his Blackberry handhelds, raided the offices of several of his major campaign contributors and political associates…and voters reacted with a massive shift of support towards him.

How can this be? Easy. Because voters believed George W. Bush and his gang of cronies are way more unethical and underhanded than their mayor. Huge numbers of people concluded that the timing of the investigation was a Bush administration attempt to sway a close election to the Republican candidate. Philadelphia is a stronghold of Democratic voters in a largely Republican state, so a Republican mayor might dampen next year’s Democratic turnout enough to give the state to Bush in the presidential election.

Sound far-fetched that so many people could believe the Republicans are capable of such fraud? Well, not after seeing the recall election in California, where a Democrat in another crucial state was turned out of office for a Republican (Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Chris’sake!). Not after seeing the Republican legislature in Texas seek to undo a done deal in order to redistrict the state more in favor of their candidates. Not when the stories about the potential for rigging the electronic voting machines being installed around the country by the Diebold company, run by an ultra-conservative crony of the Bush administration, are leaping from internet rumors to mainstream media like Newsweek and the New York Times. Not when people remember how second place finisher Bush stole the election in his brother’s state of Florida three years ago.

As economist Paul Krugman writes in his recent book “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century:”

It seems clear to me that one should regard America’s right-wing movement—which now in effect controls the administration, both houses of Congress, much of the judiciary and a good slice of the media—as a revolutionary power…a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system….Why don’t the usual rules apply? Because a revolutionary power, which does not regard the existing system as legitimate, doesn’t feel obliged to play by the rules.

It doesn't even particularly matter to people whether or not in this case the Bush administration really was trying to interfere in the election. The point is that so many people are so ready to believe it. They've heard Bush lie about Iraq, about the economy, about who actually benefits from his tax cuts for the rich, about the environment, about social security, and on and on.

Philadelphians more and more see through Bush’s lies and his reward-the-rich political cronyism. I think a lot of Americans are starting to see through them as well.

Getting A Load of Schick

2003-09-30T13:10:00.000-04:00

I see where Schick has introduced a brand-new razor which they promise will revolutionize shaving: the Schick Quattro, featuring not one, not two, not three, but four blades packed into its little plastic cartridge.

A couple thoughts pop immediately into my mind.

First, I'd love to know how I can get a piece of the research and development money Schick will be spending to come up with its next revolutionary idea. I mean, I'd love to get paid millions of dollars to sit around in a room, staring at the Quattro until I finally jump up and yell "Eureka! Let's add a fifth blade!"

And second, I can only say I'm glad I won't be alive a hundred years from now. Considering that Gillette marketed the first twin-blade razor in 1971, and then introduced the triple-blade Mach-3 in 1998, and now we have Schick's four-blade Quattro--well, I figure by the year 2103 they'll probably be up to the nineteen-blade razor. Can you imagine having to wake up every morning and hoist that sucker to your face?

Of course, Schick says that there's more to the Quattro than simply adding yet another blade (along with a second vitamin E and aloe conditioning strip--so I guess there'll be ten of those on the 19-blader of the future). No, it has an ergonomic handle design for advanced precision and control. It has anti-clog technology for superior rinsability. And it has a synchronized, wire-wrapped dynamic blade pack.

Wow.

Of course, no matter how ergonomically designed the handle is, 99% of the precision and control still comes down to your fat fingers and shaky hands, staring at your reversed self in a steam-fogged mirror, feeling sleepy, hurried, hung-over and stressed out.

And superior rinsability still means holding the thing under the faucet for a couple seconds.

As for the fourth blade in its dynamicly wired and engineered plastic cartridge...well, has it really been a problem before this? Has your old razor been missing a lot, leaving big ugly clumps of bristles sprouting out all over your face, forcing other people to avert their eyes? Hell, half the time I'm in such a hurry to get out the door I just drag my three-week old generic drugstore twin-blade across my cheeks without even using shaving cream. Not the closest or most comfortable shave, true, but it doesn't leave me feeling flayed or looking grotesque.

Still, Schick wants us to believe that it seeks to improve the shaving experience of everyone, that it's taking YOUR face into consideration. Funny thing is, if you go to their website, shaving.com, you find they have links for selecting shaving information for different countries and regions around the world. Yet no matter where you go, whether it's the page for Japan or for Africa, all you see are white guy faces and white women legs. Oh yeah, Schick knows a lot about skin.

Schick thinks we're stupid enough to fall for all this. We're not, are we?

Did Richard Grasso Deserve What He Got?

2003-09-28T00:41:00.000-04:00

Steven Martinovich recently had an op-ed piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer claiming that Richard Grasso, recently resigned-in-disgrace CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, fully deserved his $97 million dollars in pay and his $148 million dollars in "deferred compensation" plus the $48 million additional dollars in "deferred compensation" that he said he wouldn't take in a last-ditch effort to fend off his critics and save his job. You can read his op-ed here.

Obviously, I don't agree with him. You can read my previous entry on Grasso HERE. And here is the text of an email I sent to Mr. Martinovich. If I get a response, I'll post it as well.

"Read your op-ed piece defending Richard Grasso's compensation package in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sorry, but I think you are missing the point completely. The question is not whether or not Grasso's work was or was not deserving of being well compensated. The issue is that he was over-compensated no matter how well he did his job. This system in which, as you so aptly put it, "people at the top receive magnificent salaries topped off by generous bonuses" is creating a groundswell of anger throughout society. It was not so long ago where people at the top of a company earned only up to around 40 times what their lowest-paid employees earned, and indeed this is still not uncommon in many industrialized companies. Now it is becoming common for top executives to make hundreds of times more than their rank and file workers. One usual apologia for these exorbitant compensation packages is that companies have to pay this much in order to attract top talent. Most people are unconvinced of that salaries have to be so astronomical. Grasso's compensation struck a nerve because it appeared to be a case of what the average person suspects to be the real game: people at the top scratching each other's backs, colluding to inflate executive salaries. You bring up the example of Jack Welch. OK, perhaps General Electric stockholder value did increase by $400 billion during his tenure as CEO. So what? He did not singlehandedly create all that wealth. He got one hell of a lot of assistance from middle management, from secretarial help, from factory laborers. I'm sorry, but I do not believe--nor do most fair-minded people believe--that Jack Welch worked a million times harder, or did work that was a million times more valuable, than other GE employees. His compensation is way out out of whack with his contribution, compared to his support team all the way down the line. No single person--not corporate executives, not actors, not athletes--deserves these outrageous pay packages that are declared to be fair and necessary. To value oneself so above the people who work for and with you is unethical and unhealthy for a cohesive, workable society. And hey, if corporate America keeps insisting on these inflated compensation packages, then I say let's bring back the 90% income tax bracket for the highest wages."

Private Flies

2003-09-23T22:38:00.000-04:00

Hey kids! Here's a fun database to peruse: It's the Federal Aviation Administration's aircraft registration database.

By clicking on the "Name" search button, you can see what kind of private aircraft your favorite corporate fat cats have at their disposal. For example, enter "New York Stock Exchange," and you'll find that up until his resignation, Richard Grasso had at his beck and call a Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV and a Cessna 750, and boy don't you bet he wasn't tempted to hop one of those and fly to Brazil last week!

I tried, just for the hell of it, Wachovia Bank, and damned if they don't have nearly 300 planes at their disposal, enough to form an air force for a lot of countries. Amazing that even in this day of instantaneous electronic financial transfers and video-conferencing, they still need all those planes. Maybe some people just like their cash delivered to their estates in person?

Losing your job? Perhaps you're one of the, say, 3000 International Paper layoffs announced last week. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the company's fleet of five planes will stay intact.

And are you sure you want to buy a General Motors car when you know that its executives travel around in a fleet of 22 planes?

Anyway, plug some names of your own in and have a little fun.

More Deferred Compensation

2003-09-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

Deferred compensation is in the headlines again this week. Last week, of course, it was the $139.5 million in deferred compensation pocketed by Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. That's $139.5 million on top of the $97 million in pay he's earned over the past eight years, not to mention the benefits package that pays for everything right down to his magazine subscriptions, because God knows it's tough to afford magazine subscriptions when you're only making tens of millions per year.

This week, Vice President Dick Cheney's deferred compensation package has been in the news. It seems that Cheney, since becoming Vice President, has received $367,691 in "deferred compensation" from Halliburton, the oil services company of which he was formerly CEO. He is scheduled to receive additional hundreds of thousands of dollars this year and in the next several years as well. Oh, and he also happens to have 433,333 unexercised Halliburton stock options, which entitle him to buy shares at prices below the company's current stock price.

This is the same Dick Cheney who just three days ago declared on a nationwide television appearance on Meet the Press: "And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had now for over three years."

And this is the same Halliburton that under the Bush/Cheney reign has been granted several billion dollars worth of no-bid defense department and reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

They think we're very stupid, you know. This gang in the White House thinks they can rob us blind, fatten their wallets, take away our rights, jeopardize our safety, gut our schools and social services, and ruin our economy, the environment and our international prestige. They think they can get away with it because they think we're so stupid that we can't see through their blatant lies.

Let's show them we're not so stupid as they believe.

(Some previous DebtorsPrison thoughts on Halliburton can be found HERE.)

No Wonder Shopping Feels So Good

2003-09-12T21:00:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of engrish.com, the hilarious website that features the fractured english that adorns merchandise and advertising in Japan and elsewhere in the non-english-speaking world, comes this shopping bag from the Wing On department store chain based in Hong Kong:

I was all ready to make fun of the language....but the more I read it, the more I felt....damn! Doesn't that exactly describe the shopping experience for most people! "Look it, taste it, feel it and get it. Then please touch yourself in your original way. Now you can see you are fresh and pure, can't you?"

Yes, that's it! The thrill of the search, the discovery, the sensual handling of the object, the orgasmic pleasure of making it yours, and then finally the sweet soul-cleansing as your new acquisition washes away your troubles and your sins, if only for those few short moments before the next unfulfilled desire takes control....

Looking For Some of That Deferred Compensation

2003-09-11T12:46:00.000-04:00

Hmmmm. I've got to check out the Employee Handbook at work to see if maybe I missed the part about "deferred compensation." Maybe I have a little something extra the company owes me.

Something like the $139.5 million in deferred compensation just handed to New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso. That's 140 million bucks on top of the $97 million in pay he's earned since taking the job in 1995. But doesn't include the additional $48 million more in deferred compensation he chickened out on pocketing after all the uproar over his bonus.

I guess making 97 million bucks over eight years just wasn't enough, especially for someone doing such a wonderful job--presiding over the "irrational exuberance" years of the tech stock bubble and the subsequent 27% freefall of stock market prices. Oh yes, he certainly earned that little $139.5 million bonus envelope tucked into his pocket.

Why do we put up with these obscene amounts of money paid to corporate executives in this country? You who are reading this right now, perhaps you make $25,000 per year, or $50,000 or even a $100,000. Do you really think that what Richard Grasso does is 5000 times (or 2500, or 1200) more difficult, more valuable or more constructive than what you do?

The great majority of people even in these wealthy United States will not have earnings that add up to 2 million dollars total over the course of their entire lifetime, but for some reason Richard Grasso deserves a bonus--a bonus!-- equal to 2 million dollars for every year of his expected lifespan.

A bonus--on top of his $97 million earned in salary--that works out to having $5000 in pocket money for every day of your life from birth to age 75.

A bonus that the Bush administration says should have fewer taxes paid on it, so as not to impoverish or be unfair to poor Richard Grasso.

Why do we accept this? Why?

Just Another Hidden Tax Increase

2003-08-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

Government officials were very quick to rule out terrorism as a cause of yesterday's blackout, which crashed 100 power plants, including 22 nuclear reactors, over an area of 9300 square miles and left 50 million people without power for varying times. Michehl Gent, head of the power industry-sponsored North American Electric Reliability Council (sensibly acronymed as NERC rather than NARC) was equally quick to rule out terrorism: ''We don't have any indication of blown-up equipment, so we're almost certain it's not terrorism of any kind.''

Well, forgive me for being skeptical. The government of course is loathe to admit any failures in protecting the country and terrified of getting people worried and, even worse, starting to doubt George W. Bush's leadership priorities. And power industry spokesman Gent's statement misses the point as well: an attack on the electricity supply doesn't need to come from blowing up equipment. It is just equally if not more likely to come from a hacker attack on the computer networks controlling it all. Gent himself described how 300 megawatts of power that were traveling east on the loop and suddenly and unaccountably reversed direction, resulting in an estimated 500 megawatts suddenly moving west, he said.

But it's all speculation. I'm not going to insist it was really a terrorist hack attack, but I also am not about to blindly accept the pronouncements of this government that has been proven so ready to lie to us in the past.

I am, however, very ready to call this massive power outage just another tax hike foisted on us. As former Energy Department cabinet head and current New Mexico governor Bill Richardson said: ''We're the world's greatest superpower, but we have a Third World electricity grid." Well, guess what? It takes money to upgrade antiquated power transmission systems, just like it takes money to maintain highways, safeguard the food supply, buy textbooks for schools and a thousand other details of our society. Unfortunately, we have a president who would rather give tax cuts to the rich than to pay for such things.

So yes, for anyone who had food spoil, who lost work time, who saw their business lose sales, for anyone who suffered losses and inconveniences...that was a hidden tax hike. You have to lose that money because George Bush would rather hand out goodies than pay for infrastructure maintenance. It was just one more of the hundreds of hidden costs we are forced to pay because the Bush administration abdicates its social responsibility.

I'm sure a lot of rich people saw the food in their refrigerators spoil too. They can afford to replace it. I hope you who are reading this can afford it as well.

Don't Pee for Me, Argentina

2003-08-03T15:37:00.000-04:00

Okay, they're taking away your pensions, your pay raises, your overtime, your job security, your benefits...if you even still have a job, that is. But now they want to take away your bathroom breaks. Check this out:

Reuters, August 1, 2003, 10:18am

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Supermarket cashiers in Argentina are being forced to wear nappies to keep them from taking toilet breaks at work, a union says.

Female cashiers in western Mendoza province must wear adult diapers in case "cold, nerves, pressure or stress" provoke incontinence, union official Jorge Cordova told local news agency Diarios y Noticias on Thursday.

Cordova refused to name the supermarket but he did say the chain is backed by foreign capital, said Sandra Varela, Mendoza's labour sub-secretary.

"The truth is, it's difficult to imagine a line of 20 adult cashiers wearing diapers for eight hours," said Varela, who is investigating the matter.

"In seventeen years as a labour lawyer, I've never heard anything like this before," she added.

.

2003-08-03T15:02:00.000-04:00

My Life, Brought to Me by Snapple

At the end of a fine meal of Chinese takeout eaten as usual in bed, my wife and I turned to our fortune cookies. Here is what we both got:

Yes, my fortune now has corporate sponsorship. This annoys me in so many ways. First and foremost, I'd like to be able to eat a goddamn cookie without being subjected to an advertisement. Second, it's not even a real fortune...it's a gag. Jokes come on bubble gum wrappers, not in fortune cookies. I need my fortune cookie fortune, I rely on them, I live my life by them. Third, the thing isn't even printed properly, with the last righthand letters cut off. Doesn't Snapple care about quality control? Finally, we both got the same 'fortune', which I can't seem to remember ever happening before in all the decades I've been sharing Chinese food with people. I can only conclude that the Snapple people are utterly barren of creativity and were able to think up only a very small number of these unfunny pseudo-fortunes.

You know, I actually think Snapple makes some pretty tasty ice teas, though I don't like their fruit drinks. But they've pissed me off now, so I won't be buying any more of their products. They've lost my money; let them live on lo mein.

My Big Fat Tax Cut

2003-07-31T20:42:00.000-04:00

My share of the federal tax cut has started showing up my paycheck. I'm getting about three dollars and fifty cents per week more. Wow! $3.50! Now I just have to decide whether I want to spend it (and on what) or invest it.

$3.50! Not that I'm complaining. Hell, I still stop and bend over to pick up pennies off the sidewalk. It's found money, and after all, I didn't even want this tax cut in the first place (read my earlier rants against the Bush tax cuts HERE and also HERE.

I know what George W. Bush wants me to with it. Go crazy with it. Buy me a little something I've been hankering for. As he explained it in Philadelphia the other day, "When people have more of their own money, they will demand a good or service... and it's much more likely someone will be able to find a job....When people get checks, it helps them with their lives."

There's just one little problem with Georgie Boy's tax cuts. He gave the greatest portion of them to the rich. Understand that fully two-thirds of the United States economy is driven by consumer spending. It is consumer spending that has been keeping the economy somewhat afloat through the past couple years despite stock market stumbles, terrorist attacks and bad government.

Consumers have kept buying not because their pay has gone way up (it is falling in relative terms), because the job market is booming (unemployment and underemployment continue to rise) or because the economy has been booming. No, they have kept buying because...Hell, I don't know why. Sheer perversity? Blind optimism? Total ignorance? Utter weakness before the consumer culture that exhorts us all to buy buy buy? (And God knows we've shared in this both through out credit card debt and through our credit card debt and our refinancing.

If you want tax cuts to stimulate an economy that is two-thirds consumer spending, then wouldn't it make sense to give the bulk of those tax cuts to the people who have a pent-up desire to spend? Give money to the people who have either been unable to buy things or to those people who have jeopardized their futures by buying on credit and blowing the equity built up in their homes?

But no. Instead Bush gave most of the tax cuts to the rich. And here's a news flash for you: The rich don't need the money. They don't have any pent-up desire to spend and buy. All along, if they wanted something, they just went out and bought it. If they wanted a bag of King-Size M&Ms, they just went out and bought one. If they wanted to eat at the most expensive restaurant in town, they picked up the phone and made a reservation. If their Shih-Tzu shit on their oriental carpet, they just replaced it (the carpet and maybe the dog too), and if their Jaguar got a ding on the fender, they just bought another one.

The rich have already been spending to their hearts' content, and thay have no pent-up desire. The wads of money being stuffed into their pockets by the Bush administration isn't going to go go into the economy and create jobs. It's going to go into tax-sheltered savings and investments, contributing to economic growth about as much as stuffing it under the mattress.

The Bush government is flipping pittances to the poor and the middle class, while the rich are laughing and laughing....

Bush Claims to Denounce Slavery

2003-07-20T22:51:00.000-04:00

I suppose I can say I was pleased to read that George W. Bush took the time during his August 8 visit to Senegal to make a speech denouncing slavery. I know it's not exactly a bold policy statement, but I try to be fair and give credit where credit is due. Most of the things that come out of Bush's mouth are so misguided, ignorant and occasionally truly evil, so it is refreshing to hear him get one right. He came right out and said it: Slavery is bad. Way to go, George. Of course, denouncing slavery is sure to anger a lot of your rightwing supporters, but give them a few more tax cuts and I'm sure they'll return to the fold.

Unfortunately, every time I pick up the newspaper, I read something that leads me to believe that Bush's heart wasn't really in that denunciation of slavery. If he and his corporate cronies have their way, people will be forced to work harder and longer for less pay and fewer benefits. Not slavery, exactly, but as close to it as you can get away with.

Take, for example, the new rules on overtime pay being pushed by the Bush administration. By reclassifying many job categories to ones which don't require overtime, the new rules will free employers to demand more hours out of their workers without having to worry about paying them anything extra.

As a letter written by Senator Edward Kennedy and signed by 42 other senators pointed out: "Our citizens are working longer hours than ever before -- longer than any other industrial nation....At least one in five employees now has a work week that exceeds 50 hours. Protecting the 40-hour work week is vital to balancing work responsibilities and family needs. It is certainly not family friendly to require employees to work more hours for less pay."

Not that corporate bigwigs lose much sleep worrying about having to pay their workers too much. A June 11, 2003 Wall Street Journal article makes clear the anti-labor hubris currently reigning in the business world: "New Recipe for Cost Savings: Replace Expensive Workers." (Sorry...no free link to the article.) That's right. The article details how more and more companies have simply started to lay off or fire long-term employees, wiping out those pesky years of accumulated pay raises. They then start out fresh with a new batch of people at entry-level pay. More and more, our working lives will consist of a series of entry-level jobs--if you are lucky enough to find a job--until you retire on your eaten-away retirement funds and bankrupt Social Security.

And that's assuming you remain able to serve the purposes of the corporate masters. If you should falter, don't expect much sympathy from the overseers. As the July 14, 2003 Wall Street Journal explains, "To Save on Health-Care Costs, Firms Fire Disabled Workers." The article details how more and more companies are now simply firing workers as soon as they qualify for long-term disability, whether from illness or job injury. Goodbye paycheck, goodbye health insurance, goodbye company-sponsored life insurance. Tough luck, so long, get out of here.

Well, George Bush, I really am happy you had the courage to stand in the ruins of a slave-trading port in Senegal and declare slavery to be a bad thing. I only wish you had the guts to say the same thing standing in the White House Press Room.

George Bush Bucks the Buck

2003-07-14T21:47:00.000-04:00

I wonder what ever happened to that sign President Harry Truman is said to have kept on his desk, the one that said "The Buck Stops Here." Obviously, it is nowhere to be found on the presidential desk of George W. Bush. No, when his State of the Union address lie about Iraq seeking nuclear material in Africa was exposed, Bush was happy last week to let CIA director George Tenet take the blame.

I don't know which I find more disgusting: Bush's small-minded shirking of responsibility and insistence that others take the blame for his screw-ups, or the blase way in which he as much as admits that he is too ill-informed, unintelligent and incurious to question anything put in front of him.

It's bad enough that Bush allows others to have their reputations besmirched to protect his own butt, but unfortunately he plays more dangerous games of letting others bear responsibility for his ignorance. Witness his now-famous remarks at the White House on July 2:

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

The people who are going to bear the responsibility for his childish and mindless machismo are the soldiers who are injured or who die in Iraq and elsewhere when the enemy does indeed bring it on. His behavior belongs on an elementary school playground rather than in the White House press room.

George Bush loves to play the big military hero, with all his macho posturing and his photo ops in military garb on aircraft carriers. Of course, his real military record is one of cowardice and deceit, for which he really should have been court-marshalled. It is a story that bears constant repeating, so here it is.

A recent letter by military man M.G. Johancen to the Annapolis Capitol states the facts very succinctly, so I will reproduce them below. (The original letter can be read in the newspaper's archive HERE at the bottom of the page, and thanks to the blog williamp.blogspot.com for the original tip.)

"President Bush's theatrics aboard an aircraft carrier were yet another effort to portray him as a warrior. This is his "military record":

--Despite scoring 25 out of 100 points on the National Guard's entrance exam, he jumped 500 qualified men for a commission.

--Former Texas House speaker Ben Barnes testified under oath that he exerted influence to get Mr. Bush a slot in the unit.

--In Mr. Bush's final year of obligated service (1972-73), he did not fly at all and absented himself from duty. He lost his flying status in 1972 after failing to appear for his annual physical.

--According to his commander, there was no record of Mr. Bush attending training for that period. We in the military call that being absent without leave.

--During Mr. Bush's presidential campaign, his staff couldn't provide any proof of service for that period.

Instead of being a top gun, Mr. Bush appears to be the little man who wasn't there."

If these few tidbits make you want to read more deeply about Bush's desertion of duty, the following links will provide more info: tompaine.com, motherjones.com, or talion.com.

Back to the Blog

2003-07-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the six week hiatus from this blog. It's been a busy period of family obligations, home repairs and job changes, and I've felt a bit distracted. Perhaps a bit overwhelmed by a sense of futility as well, reading the newspaper or surfing the web every day and seeing the frighteningly bad politics, greedy self-serving policies and outright lies and deceit that this non-elected U.S. president and his cronies are foisting on the world. It's enough to send a left-minded activist into a funk once in a while, but enough! I'm back and ready to blog.

There has been one big change in our lives that will necessitate a few changes in the mission of this blog. Our credit card debt is gone. POOF!

Well, it sort of disappeared. Actually, we just folded it into a new mortgage, in effect mortgaging our future. Here's the deal in a nutshell: Our old mortgage had about $29,000 left to go. In the meantime, property values had risen to make our house worth more than we'd originally paid for it. So we refinanced our mortgage at a new higher loan based on the higher property value. Borrowed $60,000, of which $29,000 paid off the old mortgage, $2500 went for fees, and $25,000 went to pay off the credit card debt.

What did we get out of this deal? An interest rate on our mortgage almost 3% lower than our previous one, and a little bit lower than the excellent interest rates I'd had the credit card debt locked into (Click Here to get the details on the debt interest rates). A monthly mortgage payment around $130 per month more than our old one, but now without not also having to come up with at least $500 per month of minimum payments on the credit cards.

What did we lose? Well, we lost all the equity we'd built up after years of paying our old mortgage. So the debt really didn't disappear, wasn't actually paid off in the truest sense. We simply mortgaged our future, gave up the equity we'd built in our home, to get rid of a present burden. Although the interest rates on the debt had been as favorable as you're going to get, the minimum payments were incredibly burdensome. Getting so deep into debt had been a mistake, and the burden had become such that trying to undo the mistake was so constricting our lives that we had to do something.

So now it's a fresh start. As for the blog, yes, the debt had been a sort of organizing principle for it, a hook by which to examine the politics, economics and social forces of this consumer culture we live in. That will remain the focus of this blog.

Some readers may feel nevertheless that the blog has been drained of its drama. Sure, the political commentary and social rants might be interesting, but what you really wanted to know was whether or not we could ever get out of debt. I confess that in a perverse way even I kind of miss having that huge debt...it becomes a source of perverse pride, of identity, almost an addiction.

Well, maybe the debt is gone, but some drama remains. After all, we managed to get ourselves into a financial mess before (Read How Here), and there's no guarantee that it won't happen again. The consumer culture beast is devious and powerful, and life can be full of some unpredictable twists. Stay tuned....

The $600 Prom

2003-05-27T15:19:00.000-04:00

According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the average 17-year old attending their high school senior prom will spend $638. Regular readers of this blog probably expect that I’ll rant and rave against this shallow, self-indulgent waste of money, but guess what? I can't quite get my shorts in a knot over this one.

It's not that I have fond memories of my own prom...I never went to it way back in my graduation year of 1973. I would have been happy to skip the graduation ceremony too if my parents hadn't forced me to go...high school was a wretched period of my life. (My parents also insisted I buy my class ring--they paid--assuring me that once I entered the adult world I would look back on high school as a treasured memory and be glad I had that ring. Thirty years later, the whole 'treasured memory' thing still hasn't kicked in.)

I don’t have any great feelings towards prom-goers in general either. Every year around this time, limos clog the streets of my city, their windows dangling boisterous teens acting like 10-year-olds to celebrate their rite of passage into adulthood. Not a pleasant sight, no matter how daring the décolletage of the prom gown.

I do, however, have a soft spot for spending money on experiences rather than things. It is what has made me choose, despite the relatively low income I have earned my entire life, to travel as often as possible, trips that have ranged in length from one week to one year and that have taken me to 30 countries on five continents. It is why I find it so seductive to spend money on eating out, seeing a movie and going to a play or concert, but agonize over expenses for household items. It is why I can be miserly when it comes to buying clothes but fairly free-spending when it comes to buying good food with which to prepare our meals.

Experiences are freeing, events that expand your mind and weave your memories into something seemingly larger than any individual life. Experiences are connections to other people, to the world in which we live, to our souls. An experience lasts for as long as our memories do and can always be carried with you without needing to be packed. Our memories of our experiences can be put to many uses, and even years down the line can still thrill us.

As for things…well, yes, things are necessary and certainly can contribute to the pleasure of one’s life, and yet they can also weigh you down. Most things don’t last as long as memories. Things have to be cleaned, fixed, packed, moved. Things can be stolen, broken, tripped over. A thing usually serves a single static purpose. We tend to become so used to the objects in our lives that we even stop seeing them.

While a prom is not the sort of experience that matters to me, I know that for many people it is a treasured memory. The thrill of spending too much on that gown or tux, and yet knowing that you are going to look fabulous, feel like you are starring in some romantic evening. Those mental pictures you have of yourself stepping out of that limo or twirling on the dance floor will warm you for years to come. $638 per person—that’s $1276 per couple—is utterly outrageous. But isn’t that part of the thrill of the experience? It’s not likely that most of us will often have the opportunity to blow that kind of money on a single evening of pleasure. Go for it.

The Rich Are Just Like You and I

2003-05-18T01:11:00.000-04:00

Just had to pass along this bit from a May 17, 2003 New York Times article about the how the Bush propaganda team strives to manipulate its media images:

"On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut."

Can you believe the government thinks we're so stupid that by simply asking rich people to take off their ties they can fool working stiffs into believing the Bush tax cuts don't overwhelmingly favor the wealthy? Ummm....we're not that stupid, are we?

C'mon people, get angry! Say no to these tax cuts that help the rich get richer while deepening the government's neglect of our schools, our libraries, our environment, our retirement, our economy...of our very future.

Who Needs To Be A Billionaire?

2003-05-17T22:42:00.000-04:00

I keep thinking about what I’m going to do with that billion dollars once I win Pepsi’s Billion Dollar Sweepstakes. First, of course, I’ll pay off my gigantic $25,000 credit card bill. And after that, I suppose I’ll give a lot of it away.

That’s right. I plan to just give a lot of it away. Give wonderful, life-enhancing chunks to all my friends. Donate sizeable sums to my favorite charities, environmental organizations and political action groups. The truth is, I really don’t need a billion dollars. I’d rather have the money go towards doing good things for other people. (And by the way, here’s a link to Cat Whisperings, another blogger who feels the same way.)

Let me say that again: I don’t need a billion dollars. Even more important: NOBODY needs a billion dollars. Nobody. There is not a single person on this planet who needs a billion dollars to live on.

The BillionSweeps website asks you the question: How long would it take you to spend one billion dollars? It then provides the answer: If you spent $1000 every day, it would take you 2700 years to go broke.

Stupid answer, since even with a billion dollars to buy the best medical care, no one is going to live for 2700 years. A more instructive scenario is this: If someone wadded a billion dollars into your tiny little fist at birth and you lived for 75 years, how much money would you have each day? The answer is $36,500. Every single day of your life.

Of course, that’s assuming you just kept the billion piled under your mattress. Say you invested that billion with a very modest annual rate of return of 5%. How much interest could you earn each year? Fifty million dollars. That’s right. You would have fifty million dollars to live on each and every year, and the original billion would remain available for your friends to use to throw one hell of a wake after you died.

Hey, wait a minute.

Someone who has a billion dollars has $36,500 per day at their disposal over the course of a 75 year lifespan. That’s obscene, but after all, there are only 222 people worth one billion or more in the United States, according to the Forbes Magazine annual list of the world's wealthiest people.

There are, however, a lot more people who have annual incomes of at least fifty million dollars. And guess what? If you make 50 million bucks per year, that gives you $136,986 to spend per day, almost four times what our lifetime billion would afford. Hell, someone who makes a paltry $13 million per year has as much daily pocket money as our lifetime billionaire.

So now the question becomes: Does anyone really need to earn $50 million dollars per year? Does anyone even need to earn $13 million? Why do we accept this? And why in the hell aren’t we filling the streets in protest against Bush wanting to give huge tax breaks to the rich?

Getting Ready for a Billion Bucks

2003-05-08T22:03:00.000-04:00

Today I put my first entry in to win one billion dollars. Yes, you read that right. One billion dollars. The contest is sponsored by Pepsi, which gives you an idea of how much money these soft drink companies make. I hate the stuff myself, but my wife likes a Diet Pepsi now and then, so I can get the pieces necessary to enter.

(Yes, it's true, Pepsi: I don't like your beverage. I hate Coke too. Not only do I not like the soft drinks of you and your competitor, I hate the way you both have steamrollered your way into being global beverages, how you buy up local brands of soft drinks around the world, how you suck up the increasingly scarce water supply in so many poor countries, how you fill our children with sugar and caffeine, I hate your asinine lifestyle advertising that wants us to believe that drinking Pepsi will make our lives better. No, I don't like you. Nevertheless, according to the law, none of this should have any bearing on my eligibility for your sweepstakes, and if I win your billion I'll take it. And if I don't win it and somehow evidence leaks that you blackballed my entries because I publicly declared my loathing your shit-brown sugar water, I'll sue you for ten billion bucks.)

Oops! Did I write that? Oh my God, I didn't mean it! For a billion bucks, I'll do anything. I'll even drink a Pepsi live on international TV, giving a smiling, satisfied burp afterward. I'll bathe in it, I'll name my firstborn Pepsi, I'll swim 500 laps in a pool filled with it, I'll wear Pepsi-labeled clothes 24/7, I'll live on nothing but Pepsi for the rest of my days. Just please please please give me a chance. I really need that billion dollars to pay off my credit card debt.

Just kidding. You decide which of the above two paragraphs I'm just kidding about.

I'm sure you're dying to know how you can get your own shot at a billion dollars. Just go to www.BillionSweeps.com to find out. The billion is to be given away on live television in the fall...it is not yet clear as to what indignities the final contestants will have to subject themselves.

A billion dollars! When I was a kid, there was a TV game show called "The $10,000 Pyramid," and that was a big deal. Then the prizes went up to $100,000. Then came "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire," though even a million bucks wasn't rich enough for me to take being in the presence of Regis Philbin for even thirty seconds. And now someone is giving away a billion dollars. Talk about inflation.

William Bennett, Public Moralist, Craps Out

2003-05-05T13:57:00.000-04:00

I see in an article in Newsweek Online and in the Washington Monthly Online that William Bennett, the tsk-tsking, finger-wagging conservative moralist, author of The Book of Virtue and The Death of Outrage, has a little gambling problem.

No, make that a BIG gambling problem, with losses estimated by casinos at over eight million dollars over the past decade. Last July 12, he dropped $340,000 at Caesars in Atlantic City, and just a month ago gave up half a million bucks at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Over one two month stretch, he wired a casino 1.4 million dollars to cover his losses. The play this high-minded public intellectual evidently favors is the most mindless sort of gambling: $500 a pull slot machines and video poker machines.

Although he has built his career on castigating people for giving into their weaknesses and society for coddling them, Bennett sees no problem with his gambling. When asked about it, he spouts responses that are astounding for either their hypocrisy or their self-delusion: “I’ve gambled all my life, and it’s never been a moral issue with me. I liked church bingo when I was growing up....I view it as drinking; if you can’t handle it, don’t do it."

Though casino records show his substantial losses over the years, Bennett perceives himself as a winner: “I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve won a lot of money....Over 10 years, I’d say I’ve come out pretty close to even....You may cycle several hundred thousand dollars in an evening and net out only a few thousand.”

And there is nothing wrong with sitting in front of a slot machine between midnight and 6am 'cycling' several hundred thousand dollars? Says Bennett: “I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the law. I don’t play the ‘milk money.’ I don’t put my family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything.” In other words, he's falling back on the same "it gives me pleasure and it's not hurting anyone else" arguements that he has so scathingly condemned in other people and for other vices.

Well, I have good news for you, Mr. Bennett. Outrage is not dead. I do not care that you gamble. I am, however, outraged at your hypocrisy. You devote your days to criticizing people for actions you deem immoral. You have devoted your career to shaping public policy to penalize those who don't conform to your biases. Nevertheless, you choose to spend your nights wallowing in what many thoughtful people consider and many academic studies show to be a socially harmful activity.

I also consider your waste of money to be shameful. It doesn't matter that you are wealthy enough that your vice does not threaten the "milk money," as you put it. It does not matter that you give some of your occasional winnings to charity, as you claim. It happens to be possible to gamble for several hours without cycling through hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perhaps you aren't aware that there are slot machines you can play for less than five hundred dollars a pull. With this nonchalant and unnecessarily profligate gambling away of millions of dollars, you demonstrate an arrogant and willful disdain toward the financial situation of the overwhelming majority of people on the planet. This further destroys your credibility as moral spokesman.

I think Bill Bennett's income needs to be subject to a 90% tax bracket. He clearly has too much money, and it might as well be put to better use.

King Size M&Ms, or I Can't Believe How Rich I Am

2003-05-03T12:25:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I pop into a store and buy a King Size bag of Peanut M&Ms. Calling a little 3.27 ounce handful of candy that fits in the palm of your hand "King Size" seems an insult to royalty everywhere, and I'm really surprised some monarch hasn't declared war, or at least filed a slander lawsuit, against the makers of M&Ms. Perhaps the world is starting to learn to live together.

I usually buy these M&Ms when I'm feeling a little hungry, something to tide me over between lunch and dinner. Sometimes I buy them even when I'm not feeling so much hungry as anxious or angst-ridden, and just feel the need to chew something or give myself a sugar rush. I scarf the little brightly colored spheres down half-consciously, and they usually are gone within a few minutes.

We all do this on occasion. Millions of these little snacks are consumed every day, tiny financial and caloric transactions that are barely a blip on our budgets or our diets. Sometimes, however, I think it's important to put these snacks into a broader context.

I customarily spend 99 cents on my bag of Peanut M&Ms. Around the world, there are an estimated 1.3 billion people who struggle to live on earnings of one dollar or less per day.

That bag of Peanut M&Ms that I treat as a little snack has 480 calories. That represents approximately one quarter of the minimum daily recommended caloric intake for an active adult. Yet there are billions of people around the world who suffer from malnutrition, who can't get 2000 calories worth of food per day. For the most serious cases of starvation, even that 480 calories is but a dream.

In other words, what to me is a little between-meal snack, purchased with pocket change and consumed almost without thinking, represents every bit of money and every bit of food that well over a billion people around the world have to live on. Yes, I may be struggling with a credit card debt that now stands at $25,059.51, and within the United States my earnings are well towards the lower end of the scale, but relatively speaking within the entire spectrum of human experience, I am extraordinarily wealthy.

More on Taxes

2003-04-28T23:26:00.000-04:00

In my previous entry I said that despite the fact that we had to add $3000 to our enormous credit card bill to pay the taxes on April 15, I opposed the Bush tax cuts. In fact, I said I'd be happy to pay more taxes, if only we had a government that believed in the social contract and believed it had a role to play in bettering society.

But no. Bush wants to slash taxes, with most of the money going to the wealthy...pandering to the greed of the rich. He compounds this shameful rewarding of greed by seeking support among average voters with appeals to their selfishness, populist pablum about how the money would be better off in your pocket than in the government's. Finally, the ultimate goal of his manipulative use of greed and selfishness is slothfulness on the part of the government. Bush only wants enough of your tax dollars to wage wars around the world, but he wants the government to have less responsibility for the things we need here at home, all those things help us work together as a society in order to create the best possible lives for ourselves. To me, it all adds up to a very short-sighted policy.

Greed, selfishness, sloth and short-sightedness...that's our government under Bush.

They try and hide the fact that their tax policy is based primarily on the greedy rewarding of the already well off by citing 'supply-side economics.' This is the same free lunch idea tried under Reagan, claiming that a cut in taxes will spur so much economic activity that government will take in even more in taxes. It didn't work then...deficits soared under Reagan...and it won't work now.

Of course, the supply-siders claim the problem back then was that the tax cuts weren't big enough. Economists who still support supply-side also claim they now have better ways of predicting the benefits through the use of something called 'dynamic scoring.' Republican Congressional leaders tapped an ardent supporter of dynamic scoring to head the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, gleefully expecting his budget analysis would strongly support tax cuts.

Oops. No such luck. Of the various scenarios crunched by the Congressional Budget Office, some forecast a slight reduction in the budget deficit, some saw the budget get larger, and not one of the scenarios predicted that Bush's tax cut would pay for itself over the next ten years.

But here's the wackiest part. According to the Wall Street Journal, of the two scenarios that forecast lower budget deficits, "both those models got their results by assuming that after 2013, taxes would be raised to eliminate the remaining deficit. The theory is that people will work harder between 2004 and 2013 because they know their taxes will be going up, and will want to earn more money before those tax increases take effect."

Let's look at that again. This is how economists think your brain works: They think you are going to sit down in 2004 and think 'damn it, I bet the government is gonna raise my taxes nine years from now, so i'll fool them. I'm gonna work real hard and make a lot of money between now and 2013, and when that damn tax increase goes into effect, I'll quit my high-paying job and switch to some low tax bracket job like maybe flipping burgers for McDonalds. Ha Ha, I'll be damned if the IRS is gonna take my money."

Yes, the whole supply-side arguement is a farce, but even worse than that, it is a smokescreen for the true intentions of the conservative Republicans currently in charge. It doesn't matter to them whether or not their tax cuts ultimately bring more revenue to the government, because they don't really want more revenue. They don't believe in government.

I find it frightening that Bush and his cronies in government are so willing to sacrifice the economy, the quality of life in our country and the prospects of future generations to feed their own narrow, selfish and greedy financial and ideological interests. And it's not only left-leaning types like me who are saying this. Stephen Roach is chief economist for the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley, and he calls Bush's tax cuts " a policy blunder of monumental proportions...[which]...could well be the tipping point that finally brings this house of cards tumbling down." (Click here to read his article)

You know you don't want to accept this. You know you don't want the government to get away with thinking you are this stupid and this selfish. Speak out against the Bush tax cuts.

Debts and Taxes

2003-04-24T12:53:00.000-04:00

Our credit card debt just increased by nearly $3000. We now owe $25,209.96. Yikes.

We have our tax bill on April 15 to thank for this. Taxes can be a bit of a struggle for us, since my wife’s income comes from several self-employment ventures. You might gripe about the taxes deducted from your paycheck every week, but having to set aside the tax money yourself is no fun either. Also, many people don’t realize that the social security taxes deducted from a paycheck at an ordinary job represent only half of the taxes actually owed; the other half is paid by your employer. The self-employed person, on the other hand, has to pay the full 15% themselves.

Add it all together, and we really should be setting aside over 30% of what my wife earns to cover the taxes, but that is tough to do when you have a giant credit card debt monster to feed every month. Still, we did pretty well, saving about half of what we needed.

For the remaining three thousand dollars, we had to turn to the magic plastic. Fortunately, the credit card companies remain diligent in filling our mailbox with attractive low-interest deals. I borrowed the entire amount at a 5.99% interest rate that will last as long as the money is owed. Nevertheless, this adds another fifty dollars or so to our monthly minimum payment, squeezing us financially a bit more and making it ever harder to pay off the debt.

You might think that our tax woes would make me a strong supporter of George W. Bush’s $727 billion dollar tax cut, but you would be very wrong. I am vehemently opposed to it. Hell, I’d support a tax increase if we had a government that actually believed that government had a role in promoting a better society.

Unfortunately, we now have in power a government that doesn’t believe in governing. Its highest value is private property, minimally taxed and minimally regulated. It believes that society prospers best when it is ‘every person for themselves’, acting in their own interests and shouldering their own burdens. It believes that economic markets are self-regulating and will produce the greatest social good when government butts out.

I suppose this is a valid political theory, but it is not one I believe in. I especially do not agree with it as promoted by the current government in Washington. Bush and his crowd love policies that benefit what an article in The Nation refers to as the “haves and have mores.” Their philosophy seems to be to allow those with the most property—the wealthy and big business—do whatever they want and to hell with everyone else. A rising tide lifts all boats, they say. Unfortunately, most of us don't have boats, so we're left to tread water or drown.

What this has given us are corporate scandals and mismanagement, CEO pay that is absurdly out of proportion with both the results they produce and the pay of the people who work under them, and a gap between rich and poor that is the worst of the industrialized nations and growing worse. It has given us an under-protected environment, under-financed schools and libraries, and an under-maintained public infrastructure.

I do happen to believe in private property and in market economies, but I also believe in the social contract. Societies form governments because they recognize that there are some things too big, too important and too complicated to be left to the unruly jostling of individual effort and market forces. We form governments because we recognize that although life will always be unfair, with a little collective effort we can help smooth out some of the rough edges and make things better for everyone. We form governments because we understand that our quality of life has as much to do with our interdependence as a society as with our independence as individuals.

Bush wants to let me keep more of my tax money in exchange for letting his government concentrate on waging wars around the world rather than creating a better society at home. He wants to give me a couple of hundred bucks more a year in exchange for letting the rich pocket millions and for allowing corporations to have fewer regulations get in their way.

I don’t consider that he’s doing me any favors. I consider that his tax cuts cost me plenty. I consider the $1395.68 deducted each year from my paycheck for health insurance to be a tax, because our government is one of the few industrialized nations that won’t provide health care to its citizens. I consider the $1.60 I pay for a bus ride in my city to be a tax because our government prefers to slash mass transit funding. I consider much of the money I spent for college to have been a tax, since our government provides less subsidies for higher education than do many less wealthy nations.

We all pay hidden taxes every day thanks to the government’s withdrawal from the social contract. You pay more in tuition, more in insurance, more in healthcare. And don't forget the little things: that car repair after hitting a pothole costs you a hell of a lot more individually than the few cents per person in taxes it would cost to have public highway maintenance properly funded.

Well, if Bush cuts my taxes, I’ll take the money. And then I’ll tax it myself, continuing to donate to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, Amnesty International and other groups who oppose his policies. And I’ll donate some of it to political candidates who aren’t afraid to say that they will raise my taxes in order to promote the public good.

Damn. I’m $25,000 in debt, and I’m less greedy for tax cuts than people who have millions. What’s wrong with this picture?

2003-04-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

Although I am a strong proponent of organic and natural foods, as you can see from my previous post, that doesn't mean anything labeled 'natural' is automatically righteous in my book. Take, for example, the Jones Soda Company, maker of Jones Natural Sodas. Their products tend to be the most ghastly unnatural colors you will ever see, and most are overly sweet for my taste. The only plus I find about them is they come in large, thirst-quenching 20-ounce sizes, if you can bear to drink it all down. (Yes, I know I sound like an idiot: it tastes terrible, but at least the portions are big). They come with cutesy names like Bada Bing! cherry and D'Peach Mode. Their web site strives to create a sense of hip community, but seems to me more of a messy embarrassment.

But I could even forgive all that if it weren't for the outright dishonesty they show on their labels. If you look at the nutrition facts (an example from D'Peach Mode can be seen HERE), you will see that when it comes to the things people generally want to cut down on, like calories and sugar, a bottle is listed as having 2.5 servings. However, when it comes to the vitamin and mineral supplements added to the soda, the things people will want, a bottle suddenly becomes a single serving.

You can't have it both ways, Jones. Either a serving is one bottle, with a whopping 270 calories and 72 grams of sugar, or there are 2.5 servings per bottle, with each serving offering minimal amounts of Vitamins C and B6, Calcium and Manganese. A big raspberry to the Jones Soda Company, and a lesson learned: read the labels and don't be fooled.

Cents Off Equals No Sense

2003-04-10T00:31:00.000-04:00

My local newspaper last Sunday trumpeted on its front page that within I would find over $490.00 worth of money-saving coupons. You'd think that would be welcome news to someone with a $22,229.68 credit card debt, but alas, practically none of the coupons are for anything I use. In fact, most of the coupons were for stuff I don't know why anyone would use. Slimfast milkshakes, microwaveable Ragu pasta snacks, pull-top fruit and gelatin cups, Vanilla Indulgence plug-in air fresheners, Froot Loop cereal-and-milk bars, Kelloggs new Fruit Harvest cereal, with dried old bits of chemically preserved fruit. Ugh! Mystery Jello--"Starts yellow, turns red and tastes like a mystery flavor!" Actually, that describes a lot of the products available on the typical supermarket shelf: something that starts out one color, is chemically processed to another hue, and has a mystery taste.

Even with the money-saving coupons, we still pay inflated prices for a lot of these so-called foods. You think you're getting a deal on that Kraft "It's Pasta Anytime" never-frozen, microwaveable-in-three-minutes snack? There's a 55-cents off coupon for it, and even if your supermarket doubles the coupon, you still are paying way more than it's worth. A few cents worth of pasta and over-processed tomato sauce enclosed in packaging bulkier than the food itself. Convenience is the one legitimate selling point: quick, easy, portable. But that so-called convenience seems to come at a terribly high cost: inflated prices, mediocre flavor, mealy texture, excessive amounts of salt and sugar, a long list of artificial flavors and chemical preservatives, and the shame of cluttering the environment with so much trash packaging for so little food? Aren't you tired of paying higher prices for bad, unhealthy food, tired of being hoodwinked by the advertisers and their multi-million dollar budgets?

Funny thing is, despite my large debt, I also choose to pay more than necessary for food. I do not pay extra for this absurd 'convenience' that wreaks havoc on both our health and the environment. I do not pay extra because some multi-national corporation spent millions of dollars to show it on television. I do not pay extra because some paid Tiger Woods a million bucks to say he uses it.

What I do pay extra for is to buy organic, preservative- and additive-free food as often as I can (which is most of the time, thanks to a Whole Foods supermarket that opened eight blocks away last year). I may not always get as much 'convenience' for the extra cost, but I do get the pleasure of knowing I am consuming fewer chemicals, artificial flavors and colors, pesticides, chicken antibiotics, beef growth hormones and hydrogenated oils. I get the pleasure of knowing I am helping to support a type of farming that protects topsoil and thus helps preserve our farmland for future generations. I get the pleasure of knowing that I am helping to limit the amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that seep into the land and run off into our rivers. I get the pleasure of knowing that fewer farm workers are exposed to toxic pesticides in the course of their labor. I get the pleasure of knowing I am supporting diversity of crops rather than giant agrobusiness farming that concentrates on a few crops genetically modified to be able to travel far and sit long on the shelf even if they lose flavor in the process. And yes, I find that I generally have the pleasure of having food that tastes better. Not only that, but a lot of the food is very quick and convenient as well.

It might be a bit too much to ask to go back to buying raw foods and making everything from scratch. But we do have choices. You can pay a little extra for your food and have your money help make a few corporate CEOs and celebrity spokespersons rich while destroying your health and the planet's environment. Or you can pay a little extra and feel like your doing something good for yourself, for society and for the future.

And please don't forget to contact your Congressional representatives in support of preserving federal organic food standards. Read more about it HERE.

The Debt Creeps Down

2003-04-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

Time for an update on the state of the debt.

With recent interest charges added in and payments made, our credit card debt now stands at $22,229.68, nearly $1000 dollars below what it was when I started this blog on February 11, 2003. But danger approaches: it looks like we're going to owe a couple thousand dollars in income tax with nowhere to turn for the money but credit cards. It seems absurd to owe so much given our relatively low income, but there it is. Most of the tax debt is due to the fact that my wife's income comes from self-employment, meaning we have to set aside between 25% and 30% of her earnings to cover income and social security taxes. Tough to do, and though we managed to set aside more than half of the necessary tax money over the past year, in the end we fell short.

If we do have to borrow, I've got plenty of options for getting the money from a credit card at 6% or less interest, but still...it means the debt goes up, the monthly minimum payment goes up, and the end seems further away than ever. The struggle continues to tame the beast, to get the debt down without life coming along and knocking it back up.

New Post at Last

2003-04-03T13:56:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. Just been busy, tired, and mentally beaten down by this idiotic war our leaders have undertaken. But I'm ba-a-a-ck, and have a huge backlog of things that have been rolling around in my mind, so watch out.

Yes, I've felt a bit gloomy as I ponder living in this United States whose ignorant, arrogant leaders I feel are wreaking destruction on international relations, the economy, the environment, civil liberties, human rights and on uncountable individual lives around the globe, but I'm dealing with it. According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans in general are dealing well with it. On March 27, they published an article headlined "Americans Seen Withstanding War's Psychological Challenges." It is truly inspiring to know that these challenges of living in wartime cannot defeat the American spirit. After all, how many of our favorite television sitcoms have been pre-empted by this endless war coverage? Aren't those sandstorm oranges and night-vision goggle greens really unappealing colors? Aren't those videophone reports from the 'embedded' reporters annoyingly jerky?

In spite of these hardships, requests for sleeping pills have remained normal, and have only risen somewhat for anti-depressants. Oh, there are a few signs of stress. Another Wall Street Journal article today warns: "America's Wartime Diet: Finding Comfort in Cupcakes; Calorie Intakes are Surging as Nation Hunkers Down." Yes, restaurants, caterers, personal chefs and groceries around the country are reporting an unusually high demand for high calorie, high fat and high sugar comfort foods. An upscale bistro in Philadelphia reported it sold 560 hamburgers the first week of the war, nearly twice the usual amount. That $29 sirloin and foie gras hamburger at DB Bistro Moderne in New York City accounts for 40% of the restaurant's sales some days.

People around the country report sitting in front of the TV watching news coverage while eating pizzas, caramel corn and Peruvian Blue gourmet potato chips. Noses are turned up at baked chicken or seared ahi-ahi in favor of gooey, fatty, mind-numbing and body-expanding concoctions of comfort. This is a little worrisome in a country where 30% of the adult population is medically defined as obese, especially with swimsuit season fast approaching, but I'm sure we'll deal with that hardship with equal courage.

The fact that we Americans have to endure these wartime deprivations should help us to feel empathy towards those Iraqis who have to suffer their own forms of trouble. Their worries aren't the same as ours, of course. Their wartime jitters come more from things like wondering if one of the bombs dropping night and day will fall on them, having to hunker down in concrete bunkers, worrying about lack of food, lack of water, lack of money, lack of healthcare, outbreaks of disease, but at bottom, isn't it all the same? Don't we both have to bear our own particular burdens of living in wartime? I hope American's fortitude can be an inspiration to the Iraqis. Perhaps they might also like to try a few of the Wall Street Journal's suggestions for coping, such as ordering a $20 apple strudel from Comfortfoodonline.com.

Giving Saddam a Wild Orchid Eye

2003-03-22T07:05:00.000-05:00

An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "Retailers Brace For Downturn," bemoaned the possibility that war in Iraq could temporarily dampen American's zest for shopping. But hoping to end on a bright note, the article included the following paragraph:

Yesterday in New York City, some shoppers were in the shopping mood. Abigail Mulligan, a 31-year-old attorney, spent $180 on makeup at Bergdorf Goodman, a division of Neiman Marcus Group Inc., in response to the war. "Coming to work today, I thought, 'I'm going to buy whatever I want,'" she said.

Very inspiring, Abigail. Nothing like buying some new eye shadow to give that Saddam Hussein a black eye.

Blood For Profits

2003-03-21T22:39:00.000-05:00

Here's another possible scheme to get rid of my $22,571.27 credit card debt. Maybe I could, ummm, perhaps do a little exterior painting on some presidential palaces in Baghdad after the war?

After all, I see where the Bush administration has quietly drawn up an initial $1.5 billion in contracts for private U.S. companies to do reconstruction work in post-war Iraq (Here's one sample article from the Washington Post). In the past, most such post-war work has been carried out through the United Nations and through nongovernmental organizations, but this government prefers to pass out these plum contracts to its corporate buddies in thanks for all their campaign contributions. The UN, foreign governments and international charity and development groups have protested this decision to no avail.

"No Blood for Oil" has been a popular chant among antiwar protesters, but oil is just a small part of it. This war looks to me like one massive transfer of public funds to a small group of politically powerful corporations. First, we use up all these armaments to bomb Iraq (which will mean big contracts for defense companies to replace the bombs and missiles), and then we hand out billions more to U.S. companies to rebuild what we just blew up. So what if countless people have to die in this unnecessary war? There are big profits to be made, and profits made at public expense are the best of all.

I thought maybe since they were passing out all these billions, maybe I could bid on some little job, just enough to cover my credit card debt. You know, sweep up broken glass, repaint one of the presidential palaces in red white and blue trim, scissor Saddam's picture out of school textbooks, put up Pepsi billboards...I don't know, just some little job too small for Bechtel or Halliburton to profit from. But no, I can't stomach the thought. Bush's lies and his willingness to sacrifice lives for profit make me sick.

Guess I'll just going to have to keep paying off this debt the hard way, one monthly payment at a time....

The Debt Creeps Down

2003-03-21T20:54:00.000-05:00

After adding interest charges and subtracting recent payments, I am pleased to announce my credit card debt is now down to $22,571.27. This is a drop of $638.97 since DebtorsPrison made it's first appearance on February 11. Whoopee!

War as Opportunity

2003-03-14T21:41:00.000-05:00

"There is nothing like a war to build brand loyalty."

Honest-to-God, that is the first line of an article on page B1 of today's Wall Street Journal. The article goes on to trumpet how corporations jockey to be the ones to make sure it is their brands that get supplied to the military. You know, blowing away a bunch of enemy soldiers can be a memorable experience in a young person's life, and so it naturally follows that the brand of candy bar and soft drink you celebrate your success and survival with will also exert a strong emotional pull. Coca-Cola and Kellogg's Pop-Tarts want to be sure they are the ones you recall so fondly.

It's not easy conforming to all those military regulations on "pan-coated chocolate disks," "toffee rolls, chocolate flavored" and "cylindrical cheese-filled pretzels," (that's M&Ms, Tootsie Rolls and Combos to us civilians), but the brand loyalty payback is evidently worth it. Corporations wage veritable battles over supplying the military, and the winner gets the spoils of making sure our soldiers get Colgate instead of Crest, Charmin instead of Scotts, and to make sure it is Keebler elves and not the Pillsbury Doughboy on the front lines with our troops.

And remember: If our great corporations can display such glee over opportunities to market their products to people who have been ripped from their home and families to possibly die fighting an unnecessary war, just think how much time, energy and plotting they put into marketing to YOU...

Welcome Co-Workers, Friends and Family

2003-03-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

If you read a lot of weblogs and dig deep enough into them, you'll often find some admission that the weblog is a secret. You know what I mean:

"If my boss ever read what I write about his stupidity here, the jerk would fire me for sure, and it would be his loss because I'm the only one who keeps his incompetence from tanking the company"

"I can't tell my husband about this weblog, or he would find out about the affair I'm having with the neighbor's English sheepdog"

"Thank God my family doesn't know about this blog, because then I couldn't write about the emotional damage my mother inflicts on me each and every endless goddamn day of my miserable life."

Well, DebtorsPrison is a fully public blog, with friends, family and co-workers urged to visit and read. Not that I don't do it with a bit of trepidation. It's embarrassing to admit I have $22,826.32 in credit card debt. Debt is perhaps not so shameful a confession as it was a generation ago, but it is something which can make people question your values, your judgment and your sanity, not to mention the way they subtly clutch their pocketbooks a bit closer to their bodies when you draw near.

Of course, questioning our values, judgment and sanity is what DebtorsPrison is all about. Sharing my troubles gives me a framework for examining this consumer culture which engulfs us and constantly exhorts us to act with such heedless self-interest.

The more I share, the more I learn how common my plight is. I have built my debt largely on non-tangible lifestyle choices: travel, taking jobs with less pay, borrowing to help start my wife's business (Read More About How I Got Into Debt). Others have built up their debts one Cuisinart, CD boxed set and La-Z-Boy recliner at a time. Still others have been forced into debt by job loss or illness. And even those who have little or no debt seem to be worried about it happening to them.

So welcome all to DebtorsPrison. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing. And no, it's not true I have another, secret weblog about my sex life....

Follow-up on Organic Foods

2003-03-13T12:18:00.000-05:00

I wanted to follow up on my earlier entry on the sneak attack on federal organic food standards by Georgia Republican congressman Nathan Deal(Read It Here).

For all you over-the-top political junkies out there, here is the actual text he had inserted into the federal spending bill passed on February 13, 2003:

Sec. 771. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to require that a farm satisfy section 2110(c)(1) of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (7 U.S.C. 6509(c)(1)) in order to be certified under such Act as an organic farm with respect to the livestock produced on the farm unless the report prepared by the Secretary of Agriculture pursuant to the recommendations contained in the joint explanatory statement of the Managers on the Law 107-171 (House Conference Report 107-424, pages 672-673) confirms the commercial availability of organically produced feed, at no more than twice the cost of conventionally produced feed, to meet current market demands."

What this says in ordinary language is that meat and poultry producers can label their beef and chicken 'organic' even if it is not, and the government can't do a thing about it. Representative Deal snuck this into the budget bill to help out a poultry producer in his state that wants to cash in on the growing market for organic food without having to actually pay the extra money to make its chicken organic.

You can read more about this in my earlier entry and also HERE. Bills have been introduced in both the Senate (bill S-457) and the House of Representatives (bill HR-955) to have Deal's dirty work undone, but at present both bills are still sitting in committee. Please write, fax, email or phone your legislators to urge them to pass these bills. Help in doing so can be found at both the links above.

Bush's News Conference

2003-03-06T22:38:00.000-05:00

I've just finished watching the news conference given by our non-elected White House P resident George W. Bush, and am reminded why despite my enormous credit card debt I find the money to donate to organizations that oppose his policies. A few random reactions off the top of my head:

I don't believe his rationale that Iraq poses such an imminent threat as to necessitate war. Yes, Saddam Hussein is an aggressive threat who likely is concealing a lot of terrible weaponry. But North Korea is now openly flaunting the international community to develop nuclear weapons, will be able to use nuclear blackmail over political and economic allies like Japan and South Korea, is believed to have missile capacity to launch a nuke to the U.S. west coast, is known to support weapons programs of rogue states and to export its weaponry, and is ruled by a dictator every bit as cruel to his own people as Saddam Hussein. Sounds like a pretty big threat to me, yet for North Korea Bush only speaks of diplomacy and consulting with other countries in the region. Once again, Bush has again failed to make a case that the Iraqi threat is so dire as to require war, and left once again the suspicion that his obsession with Saddam has more to do with oil and with avenging his daddy's honor.

He again failed to make the case for me that war is the only way to keep Saddam from using his concealed weapons. An alternative policy of keeping Saddam boxed in with heightened inspections and international pressure, while at the same time offering political incentives to Iraqi elements that might like to be rid of Saddam themselves, seems equally plausible and less risky to me. True, Saddam might find a way despite the intensified scrutiny to use his weapons against Israel or other neighbors, or to hand them off to terrorists for use against the West. But it seems equally plausible that our imminent invasion could spur him to do the same--use them or lose them.

Bush was again unconvincing in pointing to the intelligence data we supposedly possess about the great extent of Iraq's weaponry. As a couple journalists asked, if this evidence is so clearcut, why are our allies not as convinced of his threat as we are? And if our intelligence is so detailed--how things are moved, how often, that chemical agents are stored in cars parked in suburban areas, etc.--and we share this information with inspectors, how come they can never seem to find anything?

Bush's rosy picture of how the disparate elements of Iraqi society will miraculously form a peaceful and democratic federation after the iron rule of Saddam is removed, and which in turn will inspire democracy throughout the region, is truly embaressing. The man simply comes across as uninformed and unintelligent. You don't have to look any further than the continuing chaos in Afghanistan after we 'liberated' it to see the grave difficulties we would face in Iraq. And the Iraqis need look no further than our scant interest in Afghanistan now to see how little assistance we will really offer after we've had our way with Saddam.

I almost choked when he proclaimed how he had taken an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. His 'Patriot Act' and other undertakings of his Justice Department have taken a sledgehammer to much of the Constitution.

To the millions around the globe who protest his war plans, Bush simply said he was glad they had the freedom to express themselves. He certainly gave no indication that he listened to them or thought about what they said. He did, however, have a teary-eyed moment in which he said what he does hear: the thousands of prayers said for him every day. Well, I'm praying for you, Mr. Bush, and please hear my prayer: I pray that you call off your foolish war; I pray that you stop ruining our reputation in the community of nations, stop ruining our environment, stop ruining our economy; I pray, in fact that you resign. Please. You were not elected, and you are not up to the job.

Another Chip Off The Block

2003-03-06T01:35:00.000-05:00

The debt is now down to $22,826.32. Whoopee!

Flower Show

2003-03-05T12:24:00.000-05:00

Spent some money this past Sunday. Went to the Philadelphia Flower Show (2 advance purchase tickets @$18.00 each= $36.00), where we enjoyed dozens of beautiful displays to help chase away the blues of this cold, snowy, endless winter. We also spent close to $100.00 on various plants and seeds. None of this was put on charge cards, so our debt did not go up.

Our urban house has a small back yard, and every year we spend a couple hundred dollars creating a garden to enjoy from spring until autumn. Yes, we could make a very colorful garden with just some flats of inexpensive pansies, petunias and impatiens for a couple dozen dollars, but we enjoy the creative pleasure of designing a garden with many different visual elements. Our garden is a small extravagance which gives us much enjoyment all summer long.

Still, it is an extravagance, and with a debt of $22,914.72, there is no such thing as having truly 'disposable income.' The rational thing to do with whatever money is left over after meeting our monthly expenses is to use it to further pay down the debt. Well, to hell with rational. I never claimed to be rational. Besides, if everyone started making rational spending decisions, our national economy would crash so hard it would make the Great Depression of the 1930s seem like losing a dropped quarter down a sidewalk grate. Consumer spending makes up three-quarters of our economy, and a good part of those consumer dollars are spent on irrational choices.

The money we spend on our garden falls into the category I call 'experiential' rather than purely material. Our plants will provide us pleasure this year through the constantly changing tableau they give us, but then they will fade away, leaving us only with memories. Experiential purchases can be sensory, like flowers or meals in restaurants. They can be educational, like books or taking classes. They can be risks taken to better your life, such as borrowing money to start a business. Much of our credit card debt is made up of such items (read more about what makes up our debt here).

I can be pretty judgmental when it comes to what people spend their money on. Our debt has been built on our desire to live our life the way we want, to travel, to learn, to participate in making the world better, and I am comfortable with the risk of having taken on this debt in pursuit of those goals. But I know people who have built similarly huge credit card debt simply through the purchase of objects, and to me this seems foolish, selfish and meaningless, filling your life with things in place of truly living it.

But how can we draw a line between righteous purchases and foolish ones? Our garden is mostly a private pleasure, enjoyed only by ourselves and a handful of friends and neighbors. Yes, it feeds our souls, both in its inherent beauty and in giving us a creative outlet, and through feeding our souls it helps us be better people. But is that enough? Why not donate that money to charity, or at least use it to pay down the debt so as to free us to do more with our lives?

I criticized people who would spent $76,800. on a Patek Philippe watch when you can get one for five bucks, or even $800 if you wanted to go crazy (read it here). But I defend our spending $200 on our garden when $25 worth of inexpensive flowers could suffice. Someone having trouble putting food on the table might jeer at our priorities.

There are no simple answers to these questions. The best we can do is to be fully aware of how we spend our money, to examine our personal reasons for buying something, the alternative uses for the money we are spending, and the consequences our purchases have on the environment, the economy and society. Consumption is not inherently bad. Self-interest is not inherently bad. We do not necessarily need to feel guilty for having more money to spend than other people. Nevertheless, thoughtless consumption, greed and self-absorbed disregard for others is bad, and I fear it is increasingly rampant.

There has been a lot in the news over the past year about greed and corruption in corporate boardrooms. Scandals like Enron, Worldcom and Tyco, where corporate CEOs seem more concerned with enriching themselves at the expense of their employees, their stockholders and society in general, have led to calls for codes of ethics to be more strictly applied and strictly enforced in the way companies are managed.

I'm all for that. But I also believe that we as consumers must develop a code of ethics as well. One of the goals of DebtorsPrison is to develop tools and guidelines we can use to examine what we buy and why we buy it. The marketing wizards who push more and more products down our throats don't want us thinking too hard about our purchases. We need to take back our brains, our hearts and our souls.

Another Hope Dashed

2003-02-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

I see where State Farm Insurance Company has chosen this particular moment in our nation's history to issue reminders to its customers that their auto and homeowners insurance do NOT cover damage from nuclear blasts, accidents or fallout. Curses! I'd been hoping that after terrorists incinerated my city with a nuclear attack, I'd be able to put in a claim that would help me pay off that $$22,914.72 debt on my credit cards.

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to keep paying the debt the hard way, one monthly payment at a time...

A New Number

2003-02-24T21:13:00.000-05:00

Hooray! For the first time since starting DebtorsPrison on February 11, the amount of my debt has changed. Even better, it has gone down from $23,210.24 to $22,914.72. Interest added some money on, payments took more off, and there have been no new charges.

Well, If the Government Says It's OK to Lie...

2003-02-21T23:04:00.000-05:00

I'm almost embaressed to have expressed such outrage in my last entry over the legislation granting meat and poultry producers government-approved permission to lie about being organic if the cost of organic feed gets too expensive. After all, it's not like we aren't lied to constantly. Still, I think it's going a bit too far when the government actually enacts legislation explicitly saying "go ahead and lie if it costs too much to be honest."

Lying to protect the bottom line is commonplace nowadays. It is what Enron and all the other corporate accounting scandals are all about. And a recent report revealed a rise in the number of labs testing air water and soil samples for the Environmental Protection Agency that have been caught falsifying test results. According to an Associated Press story in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 22, 2003 (I'll provide a link to the story if I find one that doesn't lead to a charge-to-view archive), "the fraud has caused millions of people to fill their cars with substandard gas that may have violated clean-air standards or to drink water that was not properly tested for safety....In addition, officials making decisions at hazardous-waste clean-up sites have relied on companies that fraudulently tested air, water and soil samples." One of the major reasons cited for this lab misconduct in falsifying results is "efforts to cut costs."

I don't imagine that Republican Congressman Nathan Deal of Georgia, who sponsored the law allowing meat and poultry producers to say their products are organic even when they aren't, eats much organic chicken himself. But he may very well be filling his car with substandard gasoline, drinking water with a high arsenic level and eating food contaminated with feces, thanks to corporations and laboratories that aren't bothering to wait for him to sponsor legislation legalizing their lies about their ingredients and standards.

And you also start to think: why should the little guy get left out? Suppose someone has a big credit card debt that's hurting their bottom line. Why shouldn't they simply start to lie, claim that these credit card charges aren't theirs, that they are a victim of fraud? Nothing wrong with that, is there? It's the American way....

Paying the Price for Organic

2003-02-19T20:38:00.000-05:00

Representative Nathan Deal, Republican of Georgia, has won himself a place on my people-who-are-idiots-at-best-and-evil-at-worst list. Last week, he snuck in a last-minute addition to the 2003 federal spending bill that will totally subvert the Federal Organic Foods Act, which had finally passed last year after more than a decade of work.

You can read in detail about his sneak attack HERE, but in a nutshell, here's what Deal's underhanded deal means: If the price of organic feed for livestock and poultry rises to more than twice the price of conventional feed, then beef and poultry producers can have their products labeled "organic" even if they have been fed conventional pesticide-, herbicide- and hormone-laden feed. In other words, they can feed us a federally-approved lie if it costs too much to be honest.

What a great idea! But why stop there? Let's make everything dependent on price. If the price of beef goes above a certain level, let Oscar Meyer put dog meat in their hot dogs and still be able to call them "all beef." If the price of oats goes too high, let Quaker put sawdust in their oatmeal but still be able to call it 100% oats. If the price of cleaning up a toxic waste site is too high, then allow the government simply to declare it environmentally safe. This revolutionary concept could eviscerate all those pesky government regulations in one simple step.

This all matters to me because I prefer to buy organic for both health reasons and political beliefs. With a $23,000 credit card debt, I don't really have any "disposable income" in the full sense of the term. Whatever money is left over after making my monthly minimum payment could and probably should be applied to further paying down the debt.

However, I daily make choices to make certain things a priority over paying off the debt. I send money to such groups as Amnesty International, National Public Radio, the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and the International Campaign for Tibet. And I buy organic whenever possible even though it usually costs more and thus means my debt is paid down more slowly. I make these decisions because I want to live a life that follows my political beliefs to the greatest extent possible.

If I am willing to pay the price for organic, then I want what I buy to be be organic, subject to specific standards. And if food growers and processors want me to pay extra for food they label organic, then they must be willing to pay the price as well, even if meeting the standards sometimes costs more. To their credit, many organic producers have protested Deal's deception.

If you'd like to call or email Representative Nathan Deal and tell him to take a belly flop into a cistern of organic fertilizer, click HERE for his Congressional website. And after that, please contact your own Senators and Representative to urge them to repeal this gutting of organic standards. Find them at www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

Time is Money

2003-02-17T17:05:00.000-05:00

Yeah, the credit card companies have my number and know how to keep me hooked, but I am highly resistant to other forms of merchandising and advertising. I have almost no brand loyalty, little status consciousness and find the idea of my lifestyle being either enhanced or characterized to others by the beverage I drink or the shoe I wear to be absurd.

I suppose it is the status-consciousness that is most on my mind at the moment.

Yesterday's Parade Magazine (the Sunday newspaper supplement that is such drivel that it's more embarrassing to admit I look at it than to admit I'm $23,000 in debt), had an ad for a Chronograph watch for $6.95. It told time, the day of the week, had an alarm and a compass and a stopwatch and a light, was water-resistant and shock-resistant. Not only that, but if you ordered it by phone, you could get a second one free (plus shipping and handling of $2.95).

No, I did not get right on the phone and order myself a couple...my debt holds steady at $23,210.24. I have a couple inexpensive watches that have worked fine for years and need no more.

What I did do, however, is go online and do a little imaginary watch shopping. Perhaps a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar/Moonphase/Chronograph for $76,800? Or perhaps that is too extravagant, when I can get a Rolex Day/Date Masterpiece model for only $41,500. If I really wanted to be thrifty, I could get a pre-owned Rolex President model for a piddling $23,500. Why, that one would merely double my debt!

These are the things that make my blood boil. I am not envious...if you are wealthy enough to spend $76,800 on a watch, then kudos to you. But I have to ask: Why are you spending that much on something that is at best infinitesimally more functional than something that you can buy at two for seven bucks? Or, if you want to be fancy, can be had with Swiss movement and in precious metal with classic styling for a couple hundred bucks? The seven dollar watch will give you exactly the same information as the the $76,800 one when you glance at it on your wrist. If you believe that wearing an expensive watch gives you status, then your shallow arrogance shows you to be undeserving of any respect.

The act of buying a $76,800 watch serves absolutely no purpose in the world; it is an utter and complete waste of financial resources. OK. You want a new watch. You have $76,800 in spare cash. What kind of selfish, self-absorbed oafishness could lead you link those two facts into such a ridiculous expenditure? How could any thinking, caring human being not prefer to spend as much as even $800 on a watch, and then put the other $76,000 to some useful purpose: , making a contribution to charity, donating to a favorite political cause or helping out a friend?

How can anyone spend that kind of money on a watch and dare to show their face, much less their wrist, in public? How? HOW!?

I Try To Get Out...And They Keep Pulling Me Back In

2003-02-15T23:39:00.000-05:00

Today's debt: Holding at $23,210.24.

I'm managing my debt pretty well, if you overlook that one pesky fact of owing a sum greater than my annual pay. If I was paying bad credit card interest rates in the 17%-21% range, I would be truly screwed, the interest rising faster than I could afford to pay each month, the debt steadily creeping upward even without any new purchases. Average interest rates in the 13%-16% range wouldn't be much better, pretty much treading water with my monthly payments with little hope of paying down the principle. The best interest rates commonly offered on credit cards today, in the 9% to 12% range, at least offer me a fighting chance of paying the sucker down, with at least half of my monthly payments going towards the principle.

In fact, most of my credit cards are in that 9%-12% range offered to good customers, an indication of the deep love my credit card companies have for me. But in truth, they do not merely love me. They know me. Oh, they know me so well. They get inside my brain and they can just feel that tension between thrift and spendthrift that exists in my psyche, they know that even at 10% interest I would be very hesitant to run up such a debt. They know that a devilish cautious streak lurks in my heart, a caution that could very easily have turned these past decisions to accept their sweet offers of money into a resolve to spurn them. And so they offer me even better.

Oh yes, I've played the balance transfer game. I have been so fickle. All it takes is some cute envelope slipped into my mailbox, dressed up in a skimpy little interest rate, and I throw my money at them. Huge chunks of my debt have gone months with only 3% and 2% interest, sometimes even no interest at all.

But even here my credit card companies know me too well. They know that I was growing weary of all the running around, never staying with any one card for more than a handful of months. They also knew that I was afraid of being caught in my fickle unfaithfulness, that I knew that too many balance transfers can damage your credit rating. So they offered me a nice, comfy relationship, interest rates of 5.9% and 6.9%, good not just for a few months, but for the life of the debt. They even offer to waive the transfer fees.

So that's where I am, with the entire debt cuddled among three cards for a lifetime 5.9% and 6.9%. Oh, once in a while I still cheat on them, bite off a thousand dollar chunk of debt to have a six month fling with a card offering me 2% with no fee, but for the most part, I'm faithful and relatively happy.

And so yes, they know me. They know how to keep me tied to them. At these rates, the interest on my debt currently is still a ghastly $120 per month...and yet, with that amount, over three quarters my monthly payment still goes toward the principle. I can watch the debt go down each month. According to the debt plan in my Microsoft Money software, I can be out of debt within four years.

They know how much that pleases me. But they also know that as I see the debt go down, the temptation to spend and borrow rises, and they've always got one more sweet low interest offer to seduce me with. I try to get out, but they keep pulling me back in....

By the way, this week one of my cards informed me they were raising my credit limit another $4000! Mwah! I love you guys!

Terror Fuels Shopping Sprees

2003-02-13T23:28:00.000-05:00

"Concern Fuels Shopping Spree" proclaims a front page headline in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. It seems that the government's raising the terrorism threat alert from yellow to orange has spurred Americans to do what they do best: go shopping.

The Inquirer offers several quotes from people enthusiastically enlisting in the government's call to shop. Says Kitty Leva: "There are terrorists out there. My husband and I and our cat have to be ready." And Natalie Hogan says: The TV-news people say America is taking safety too lightly. I don't know what to do. It's all so hard to figure out."

Fortunately, our retail establishments have stepped forward to do their part to stoke our national shopping emergency. Home Depot has put together a special display of duct tape and plastic sheeting, perfect for keeping clouds of mustard gas from getting in the house and stinking up the upholstery.

Reports the Inquirer: "People stood in nervous knots before hastily arranged displays of disaster supplies in home and hardware stores....More accustomed to questions about grouting bathroom tile than repelling chemical and biological weapons, store employees did their best." I'd say that's a heavy responsibility for people earning minimum wage.

Even the mayor of Philadelphia, great leader that he is, was spotted picking up a roll of duct tape at his local hardware store.

Of course, virtually every knowledgeable person agrees that plastic and duct tape isn't going to do a damn thing in the event of a chemical or biological attack. However, if you want to spend around $15,000 you can have a safe room constructed in your home, windowless with thick concrete and steel walls. And don't think there aren't plenty of patriotic contractors out there who wouldn't be happy to build it for you.

More than voting, more than protesting, more than educating oneself, shopping is the primary form of empowerment for many Americans. It is therefore only natural that, faced with prospects too frightful to face, shopping is where people will channel their energies and anxeties.

As for me, the amount I've spent on emergency supplies in the face of the Code Orange terrorism alert is zero. And the credit card debt holds steady at $23,210.24 even in the face of terror.

Past is Future, Future is Past

2003-02-13T00:38:00.000-05:00

Todays debt: Holding at $23, 210.24

I received an interesting comment on yesterday's post:

"I think for some people taking on an unmanageable amount of debt is a form of surrender to life. They, either consciously or unconsciously, don't see that they can ever achieve a particular financial goal, or could ever leave their current financial situation, so they give up. They take the money now, because tomorrow just ain't comin' for 'em."

A fascinating point of view, and it's worth re-examining my own situation: have I gotten into this mess through surrendering to life?

In truth, I may be guilty of the opposite. I'm too damn optimistic about my life prospects. This $23,000 debt has risen steadily over the course of about four and a half years, and it has grown not in a slow death of a thousand small purchases, but rather in several large spurts rooted in efforts to have a richer, more meaningful life. A good part of the debt comes from the following:

My wife seeking to start her own business. We borrowed for start-up expenses, for living expenses when she left her full-time job to do occasional temp work and devote more time to the business, and for taxes on her earnings. She has not yet made as much as we'd hoped, but continues to work at it

My switch from restaurant work, which provided a decent income through tips but was physically exhausting and soul-crushing, to a retail bookstore job, which was much less stressful, much more enjoyable, and much lower-paying. Last year, two years after making the switch, a promotion to management finally brought my pay close to what I'd formerly earned through tips

A two month trip to India, Nepal and Tibet in 2000, and two weeks in Peru last year. These may seem foolish choices, but for us travel and the experience of other cultures is vital. With globalization making the world slowly more homogenous, and with our bones getting creakier and less tolerant of travel in the developing world, we made the decision to go now and pay later

House expenses, including a new roof (necessary), a new bed and a replacement washing machine (both perhaps debatable)

A new computer last year for me, to replace my 1994 model, justified as a necessary expense for my freelance writing

Even among the heavily indebted there are divisions and prejudices. I know people who have built up credit card debt comparable to ours by purchasing a ton of stuff, furniture and electronics and gadgets and clothing, and I confess that I look down on their materialistic foolishness. I feel that our debt, built on the desire for better work for ourselves and on the quest for experience and travel is somehow more righteous, more justifiable. Of course, those who max out their credit cards accumulating stuff may see us as the fools, with little tangible to show for our debt.

And I am painfully aware that there are also people who have become heavily indebted out of necessity, suffering through high medical bills or the loss of a job. To them, our debt must seem terribly foolish and frivolous.

Welcome to DebtorsPrison

2003-02-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

Today my credit card debt stands at $23, 210.24. This debt is larger than my annual take-home pay. It is over half the take-home income of my wife and I.

Seven years ago, the only credit card I could get had a $500 limit, secured by a $500 bank account which I was required to maintain for eighteen months in order to prove my creditworthiness.

I guess I proved it, because now even this huge debt is just a fraction of the money that MasterCard and Visa have made available to me.

I used to think that responsible behavior like paying your bills on time was the key to earning good credit. I now realize that what brings you the whopping high credit limits is irresponsibility, the willingness to surrender your good judgment to the lure of desire.

I love my credit and am grateful that it has allowed me to build a happy life for my wife and myself, to own a home, to have traveled to over thirty countries, and to own a hell of a lot of stuff. Nevertheless, for all the freedom my credit has brought me, the accumulated debt brings a powerful burden of worry. Even worse, it now serves to constrain my freedom. I have entered a type of debtors' prison.

This weblog intends to examine this peculiar consumer society of ours. Life with easy credit and abundant choice can be very sweet indeed. And yet we are also living in a kind of madness, continually tempted and urged to do things which are not necessarily good for ourselves, for society or for the planet, things we might not have done if we had the constraints of tight money and fewer choices.

I don't intend simply to rant and blame society, corporations, the government or the media. That would be too easy. It's true that my politics are left-leaning, pro-conservation, suspicious of big capitalism, and generally appalled by much of the mindless consumption I see around me. Nevertheless, it is also true that despite my political beliefs, my good intentions and my low wages, I too have been lured into the debtors' prison.

This is not meant to be only my story. If society has constructed for us a debtors' prison, then it is a prison into which many of us have freely, willingly and even joyously entered and remained. I hope this, and a future website, can become a forum for people all over the world to discuss their debts: how they got there, how they deal with them, their feelings about it both good and bad.

I hope that through our stories and our insights, we can learn to fight back. By looking at everything around us with a fresh eye, by better understanding both the rewards and the consequences of our possessions, we can gain the tools we need to resist the siren song of "you want this, you need this, you have to have this, now buy, buy, buy......