Roast Turkey in Baghdad, Cooked Goose in Tikrit

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

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....

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?

.
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

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

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'

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

.

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

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

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

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

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....