Bush's News Conference

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

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

Flower Show

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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......