End Of A Long Year

Coming to what for me was a long, difficult year. While there were a few positives, on balance it was a difficult year for me and many around me. Starting with my job loss in the worst economy since the Great Depression, I quickly recovered, to a point, getting a job in about 3 weeks. For that I deserve some kind of award, for good luck I think. I look forward to the new year, I expect to pay off my mortgage and with proper adjustments I can make progress again towards some other goals.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Summer Post Mortem

Summer is unofficially over, my son is back at school and the weather has turned to bleh already. I've entered my 7th month at my new job and my family and I have been treading water this entire year. While I'm grateful for the work and it has kept us afloat, that's about all that's happening. It's impossible to save money. I keep coming back to the notion that our 'system' is broken. A system that rewards the top 1% of participants with most of the spoils of the system, is simply broken. I've heard that copies of Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto have become brisk sellers. They're starting to look for answers elsewhere. I feel that most of the things I've been told and learned in the last couple of decades is simply wrong. I doubt I will ever be able to re-enter the stock market as I once did. What people are realizing that they have been lied to and that the stock market is an institutionalized casino and like Vegas, the house tends to win, a lot more, than it loses. I'm becoming a rabid "conservative" in fiscal matters now. As one person once said "I'm more concerned with the return OF my principal than the return ON my principal". I don't trust bankers or brokers much any more, not that I ever thought they could be completely trusted anyhow. Brokers or "account executives" as they were rebranded some years ago, I never trusted. Bankers I trusted because they were bound by a lot of regulation. Once things like Glass-Stegal was lifted, all bets were off. In God we trust, all others pay cash.

Anyhow, inshalla (Lord willing), I'll have my home paid for soon and I can make some progress in other areas.

A Son's Admiration For His Father

I am middle-aged and have been for a while now. The thing that strikes me most is that I'm afraid if I have acquired any wisdom, it doesn't feel different to me. I'm certainly more careful about things, and perhaps that's how wisdom manifests itself. I don't feel "wiser" or necessarily "smarter" but I'll say this, I realize how very wise my own father was. As each day, week, month and year passes, I realize how wise, courageous, strong and yes fallible my own father was. Most days I wish I was half the man he was. My father would be in his early 80s if he were living, I can only imagine what he would have been like. I feel like I was briefly tested this year and I feel like I came out wanting. My own father would have been far more prepared for what happened to me this year, than I was. It was an object lesson in such things. My father was fiercely independant, conservative (in the good sense of the word not politically) and he wasn't afraid to face his troubles squarely. Either that or he missed his calling and could have been an Oscar winning actor.

My father laid out a very good example for me, many things I have tried to emulate, some things didn't seem to work and others still seemed to work better than I gave them credit for initially. In a way I am glad he wasn't here to see me in that dark hour to see how I held up. I am fortunate that I got through but I was less than pleased with myself with how I got through. I am resolved not to be in a similar place in the future. Sometimes we don't realize how fortunate we are, I have good family that was willing to help me in my hour of need, all part of the lesson. I've also learned over the last several years, we don't have as many good friends as we might think and that we're lucky if have any at all. It really is a bit of a cold, cruel world.

Good Luck And Bad Karma

Something has happened recently to make me realize that sometimes there IS such a thing as justice, of the cosmic variety. I heard from my friends at my last job that my boss who was never very supportive of my role at that organization has been more or less "demoted". He has been moved out of his office to a cubicle. But not just any cubicle, MY old cube, the last one I occupied before I was laid off. It is an irony that I'm sure isn't lost on him. He has also been stripped of his company vehicle AND they have FINALLY hired a director of the IT department, something that needed to be done years ago. It is unfortunate in some ways that I'm not there to enjoy this turn of events, but that brings me to the Good Luck part of this post. I was laid off in late January, in less than 3 weeks I had found a job. It turns out the ONLY job out there and frankly, other than the much lower pay, I'm much happier, it was Good Luck for me.

We Need Socialized Medicine And Lots Of Other Stuff (AKA Corporations Have Too Much Power)

I was laid off in January of this year. It was a jarring experience even if it wasn't altogether unexpected. I knew I was a target for such an action. My former company was losing sales every year, my supervisor was not supportive of my work/role and I was highly compensated for my work. So, they finally pulled the trigger and let me go, giving me a paltry couple of weeks severance (which I did not accept because I had to release them from any bad deeds known or unknown and some other stupid stuff) at any rate, my wife, child and I all take medication and use doctors frequently. It became quickly apparent to me that I was going to be as swiftly crushed under the weight of these medical costs. Fortunately I was able to find a decent job in less than a month. At any rate, people in this country are just plain stupid when it comes to things like socialized medicine. They have no problem with socialism for enormous corporations (like the recent bailout of banks on Wall Street, or even GM for that matter), they have no problems with socialistic things like the Fire Department, or the Police Department, Public School (well here they might buck a bit), even the Military but socialize medicine? You must be crazy?!?!? A National Health Care program (a real one) would be a tremendous boon to the people and small businessmen of this country and by God even to the big Corporations who still consider themselves "American" corporations! People say "How will we pay for all of this?". The answer: Taxes my friends, taxes, just like how we pay for everything else (well that and borrowing tons of money from Asian superpower rivals, but let's not get into that right now). I'm not adverse against taxing the wealthy in this country who have never paid enough taxes in the first place. People say things like "But if you tax the wealthy, won't they want to leave?" or "It's not fair, you're picking their pockets because they're successful" and other such spurious arguments. Let's get something straight, from what I've been told this is supposed to be greatest place on earth to live, right? Well we have an enormous defense budget, but what are we 'defending' against and whom are we defending? Well, it turns out that we're defending the wealthy and their money making enterprises all over the place. The other thing is that the wealthy, because they are the wealthy, yes, they create jobs, they also use up more of everything else, especially in the area of the commons. I had someone try to argue with me some years ago that Bill Gates didn't use up any more of anything "creating wealth" etc. Well gang, I call "bullshit" on that one. The wealthy use up more resources, more public services, more everything, so for the privilege of living in this country and using our public commons, our natural resources, our police, our fire departments, our courts, our military, our everything else, they can afford to pay a bit more in taxes. While I'm ranting and raving about corporate socialism, what the hell is wrong with the Supreme Court? It's bad enough that corporations already are treated as immortal persons under the law, but now they can contribute untold sums of money to influence politics, all in the name of free speech? For bogus non-human corporate "persons"????? It's time for the court and the law to understand that corporations are NOT persons, they are not entitled to free speech, they are not citizens and as the President pointed out, our political system (which is already corrupt enough with lobbyists) is now open to even MORE corruption from multinational corporations who will want all the free speech they can afford. Well, if corporations are persons, then they need to attend to some of their responsibilities as persons, oh yes, and penalties for their misdeeds. Like that mining company that just killed a couple of dozen of it's workers in an unsafe mine. Apart from the fact that the CEO of that company should be breaking big rocks into little ones for the rest of his life, the corporation should be, like a person might be for a similar offense, put to death. The Supreme Court is so stupid it is astounding. Well they're not stupid, just a majority (the conservative majority) is in the pocket of big business so they do the bidding of their corporate masters. So much for the founders idea of insulating these guys from that stuff by giving them a lifetime job. Anyhow, suffice it to say I think things are so messed up that while I don't agree with these Tea Party idiots, I understand their frustrations. And while that "movement" smells of a right-wing astroturf group, there ARE some real people and some real grievances to be aired, it's just too bad that most of them are bigots who basically feel "I got mine, screw everyone else". At least that's the sense I get from these people. Anyhow enough ranting for now.

One Brown Mouse

To lift your spirits, it lifted mine.

Long Live Rock!

Santa brought my son a Squier Mini Stratocaster!!!