Some further thoughts about Corporate America

It seems to me that greed driven capitalism is inherently and fundamentally antithetical to the ideals espoused in our constitution. Our country was founded upon the ideal that "all men are created equal": Meaning, of course, that we each have an equal voice in our governance. However, wealth perverts that ideal. The enormous economic power that our large corporations (and some individuals) wield readily translates into political power...especially in an era when political dialogue has sunk to the level of the 30-second sound bite/political attack ad.

Rather than looking for ways to make our society more egalitarian and to make this country a place where all citizens enjoy both political and economic freedom, the culture of greed has become pervasive. "I've got mine (or "I want mine") and to hell with the rest of you" has become our guiding ethos. That is partly the reason we have become xenophobic about our borders. Where we once welcomed immigrants to our shores, we now, selfishly, demand that our borders sprout walls to keep the rest of the world out. In fact, rather than spend the money those walls would cost to improve the lives of the poor of the world (so maybe they wouldn't want to emigrate to the golden shores of the United States), we selfishly think only of preserving our good fortune. I think part of this is an innate understanding that the pie is finite, and, if we share it with others, that will ultimately mean less for ourselves. Like I said, our ethos is now driven by greed and selfishness.

And even in our own country, the divide between the "haves" and "have nots" segments of our citizens is growing daily. The middle class, the skilled workers, the clerical and retail trades people are being squeezed like never before. Corporate employees in the high five figure and up pay ranges do their damnedest to squeeze more and more out of those in the lower pay ranges so that their salaries and benefits can become larger and larger. When corporate income does not meet expectations, it is not the upper levels who suffer--no, it is those at the bottom of the pay scale. The mantra from the executive offices is "cut the hours of the guys at the bottom first." It is wrong, but it is also the natural outcome when one has bought into the "gimme mine" mindset.

The great strength of the United States over most of its history has been the size and strength of the middle class. It is the middle class which has provided both the economic and political stability of this country. That middle class is now in danger of becoming...impotent. As economic and political power migrates to the wealthy individuals and corporations, the ability of the middle class to ameliorate the damage being done to our country evaporates. As the poor multiply, the society becomes more and more unstable. We are, in fact, sowing the seeds of our own destruction. It is time we, as a country, started to once again engage in substantive political debate and stop letting ourselves be lead by the noses by the spin merchants. It is, in fact, time for your wake-up call, America...

I've got writers block...or something similar

I got tired. I got tired of posting shit that nobody (except for one or two who do it out personal--for want of a better word--loyalty) reads. I got tired of being creative for no particular gain. Plus, I am still in the process of writing two business plans and the marketing materials for one business. And I am still working for the self-proclaimed "world's largest bookseller". That gig is sucking the psychic life out of me like one of Jim Butcher's White Court vampires.

Corporate America...I have come to the understanding that corporate America is as anti-American as was the old Evil Empire (and the newly aspiring reincarnation of same) . For example: on the 4th of July, the day that all, and I mean all but those who absolutely must be at their posts to preserve public safety, security and order, Americans should be celebrating the ideals and sacrifices that make this country possible, will see most corporate retail establishments open. OK, by corporate I mean big box. All the big box retailers will be open for business. This is, in my opinion, as anti-American as it can get. These retailers are cheapening the day by intruding commerce upon a time that should be set aside as being special. They are distracting the populace from the true meaning of the day. They are keeping their employees from being part of the communal celebration of the founding ideals of this society. And yet these self-same despoilers will drape themselves in patriotic colors and imply that coming to their stores is, in itself, an act of patriotism.

Bullshit!!

That's all...just Bullshit

Happy Fourth of July to all my fellow countrymen....

My Friday 10 on Sunday....

OK Fred, Here’s my Friday 10 a two day(s) late….

Kristin Hersh Echo
Kirsty Maccoli In These Shoes
Joni Mitchell Raised On Robbery
John Prine Ain’t Hurtin’ Nobody
Liz Phair Ride
Gomez How We Operate
Sinead Lohan To Ramona
(Also Bob Dylan, but I like Sinead’s
cover better)
Cowboy Junkies Las Vegas
Beta Band Dry The Rain
Zero 7 In The Waiting Line

No special theme: just what shuffled through the old…OK, new….MP3 player.

Twiddling thumbs

In effect, that is what this post is...I'm twiddling my thumbs while I reload my Sansa MP3 player. It has been about a month since I have posted anything...although I have had about twenty posts that I had planned--just never got around to actually writing them down. It has been a sort of up and down month. On the one hand, I got my Outback wagon so now I can haul stuff from point A to point B without nearly as much hassle as it was in the Saturn sedan, while, on the other hand, things like work and the swimming pool have been thorns in my side. First, let's deal with the good stuff. As noted above, I got my Outback wagon. In addition to making it easy to haul stuff around, it is just a cool car. It is, more or less, a basic model in that we didn't get any real whistles and bells. However, it comes with so much cool stuff that I didn't really think I needed much else. The built-in in-dash CD player plays MP3 disks, so I can use disks I burn myself...that works out to about 10 hours (mol) of music which is a day's drive anyway you look at it. In addition, it has a jack which allows me to hook up the MP3 player, and that adds about 2 gig worth of music or about 30 more hours. I don't have that much music that I really like. Aside from the music, we got the manual transmission 'cause I think it gives more control in snow and other adverse road conditions. And, anyway, I prefer manual trannies. All in all, it is a very comfortable car to drive and ride in. Not as quick around the corners as the Saturn, but, hell, it's a wagon. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I also got a gas grill this spring. I gotta tell the world that it is a great grill. Much less work than charcoal and the food tastes pretty much the same. I have been having a great time cooking on it for the past three weeks. My dear wife has pretty much closed down the stove and oven for the duration of the summer. About the only time they get turned on now is to handle overflow from the grill. I have the old charcoal grill out on the patio next to the new gas grill, but I have yet to have had the urge to fire it up. I think the only time it will be used this summer is this coming Memorial Day weekend when I plan to have a cook-out and pool party for my collegues at B&N. All in all, the gas grill is a real plus: big thumbs up!! Also, as mentioned in that earlier post, I got a new MP3 player. Way back when (2000, I think), my wife got me an RCA Lyra player for my birthday that year. I think the biggest memory card I ever had for that player was maybe 128meg. I don't think it could handle more than 256 meg...I know that it was limited to about 4-5 hours of music...and it ate batteries at a prodigious rate. That was it for me until two years ago when my daughter and her hubby-to-be got me a Sony Walkman CD-player which could handle MP3 disks burned on the computer. That gave me about 650 meg of storage to play with, and, for the most part, it has sufficed. However, now I am totally ruined. My new SansDisk Sansa player has a gig of internal memory and will handle up to 2 gig of external (SD card) memory. I just loaded the internal memory with 174 tracks or about 15 hours of music, and I am now working on building another playlist with about the same number of tracks for a 1 gig SD card. Now that I have been introduced to this slightly long-in-the-tooth technology, I am already thinking about my next player. This one's screen is a little small, and the firmware doesn't allow a great deal of programming flexibility. However, those small little quibbles aside, this little beast is soooo much better than any portable music player I have ever had that there is literally no comparison. 'Nuff for now...bitches and moans later...

Here's my problem with copyrights

So, the CRB has denied all petitions for a new hearing on their unconscionable ruling vis-a-vis royalties to be paid by Internet webcasters. Nobody is denying that royalties should be paid by said broadcasters, especially those who are using music created by others to make money. However, since most of the royalty money paid does not go to the artists who actually created the works in question, there is my first sticking point. My second sticking point has to do with people getting paid over and over for what is essentially one piece of work. Most of us regular people (as opposed to "creative" types)don't get paid multiple times for one piece of work. I understand the need for creative people to get paid, and paid well since it is they (and not the suits) who make our world a little better, and, if it were not for the suits taking such a big hunk of the pie, music would be available for mere pennies per track.

Sometimes this world really confounds...

I don't know where to begin. The shootings at the Virginia Tech campus just plain boggles my mind. That a person could kill 32 other people, with apparently little or no emotion or remorse, and then put the gun to his own head makes me believe in the existence of evil as something tangible in this world. To think that a mere human could do such a thing without being possessed by something black and horrible from outside of himself is hard for me. I think of the innocent kid that this person once was, and I wonder what could have brought him to this end. It is both easier and, in some ways, less scary to be able to assign ultimate blame for this horrible event to some outside agency which is both malevolent and self-aware. I would much rather have actual demons and a devil to contend with rather than something random and impersonal. At least with demons, one has some sort of a chance. At least if there was an absolute evil out there, the converse, an absolute good, would also have to exist. And that means we at least have a fighting chance. For things like the VT rampage to happen "just because" leaves us impotent and without any chance to alter events. That I can't accept.

My heart goes out to those left behind; parents, siblings, grandparents, other family, loves and friends. I grieve for all those promising lives cut short and for those who, although older, still had so much to offer this world. And I feel a sort of grief for the young man who did this atrocity, but I feel more grief for the innocent child he once was, and for the promise and hope that was snuffed out by his own hand.

Bushes' 2006 tax bill: $186,378 - Yahoo! News

Actually, I'm not really interested in the fact that that the Bushes' 2006 tax bill: $186,378 - Yahoo! News. I'm more interested in the fact that the President of the United States, a going concern with a budget of over a trillion dollars and at least a couple million employees (if you count the military), has a salary of $400,000. People, I think that the President of the United States should be the highest paid citizen in the country. Make his salary the cap, and then adjust all the rest to what they actually should be...

Really, if you want your sports stars, entertainment personalities and corporate executives to make tens of millions of dollars per year, then give your President a slightly larger amount. After all, he is the person who guides our societies destiny for his term in office. So, put a marginal tax rate of 100% on every dollar of earned income in excess of what the President makes. Be sure to include in the definition of "earned" income such things as performance royalties and bonuses. Allow people who build or create things to gain riches from those sources, but make sure that huge fortunes do not get passed on to heirs who have done nothing on their own to derserve such wealth. (If the holders of great wealth wish to create charitable foundations to preserve and distribute income from those fortunes, sobeit. That I can live with.

To get back to those taxes, my wife and I, together, made a little more than 1/3 of what the George and Laura paid in taxes, yet our tax rate was within a few percentage points of theirs. This is not equitable. What George and the rest of the "gimme mine" crowd forget is the concept of "noblesse oblige". For those who do not recognize this concept, it basically states that those who have more have a moral obligation to help those who have less. This can mean sharing your cardboard refrigerator carton with someone who doesn't even have that to "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." Nobless oblige falls somewhere between those two extremes, but this generation of Americans have turned their collective back upon that concept. So, I say tax the rich more and more heavily on each and every one of those marginally incremental dollars.

I am such a consumer....

So, yesterday I checked my Yahoo email and there was the daily flyer from Buy.com, and the very first item was a Weber gas grill. And not just any Weber gas grill, but a Genesis Gold Natural Gas grill. Now, you have to understand that Home Depot (aka: The Toy Store) wanted to charge me $50 bucks extra to have it burn natural gas and then they were gonna toss in a shipping charge. The nice folks at Buy.com sold me the grill for the same amount that The Toy Store would sell me a propane grill, and they didn't charge me any shipping. In addition, because I utilized the Google Pay option, I got another $10 off. This is a win-win situation for me. So, I will be getting this really cool gas grill in about a week, and my lovely wife will take the summer off from cooking...

But that's not the all of this story. Today, when I got home from slaving in the book stacks of Barnes & Noble, I checked Woot.com to see what their deal of the day was, and there, staring me in the face, was a Sansa 1gig MP3 player...for $34.95 shipping included. One gig...MP3 player...expandable to 3gig with a 2 gig SD card. And those cards are on sale all the time either at Woot or Buy.com or one of the other discount sites. Right now I am using a Sony Walkman which plays MP3 discs...but I can only burn 150 songs on a CD-ROM. Just the native 1gig of memory on the Sansa player gives me almost 100 more songs. I bit with alacrity.

So, in a couple of days, I'll be getting a new gas grill and a new MP3 player. And tomorrow I'm going to go automobile shopping. I want a Subaru Outback. I'm going to get a Subaru Outback. The only undecided points are where and when. Tomorrow is the first major step in that direction.

Now all I need to do is ditch this loser job and move on to something more suited to my talents and temperment. I know that, while I could be a CEO type, I would/will most likely function best as some entrepreneur's COO. I do the detail, day to day operations while the CEO goes out and develops new business.

Oh yes, and I found an ottoman in my mother's attic. Granted it needs to be re-upholstered, but it will round out my office. I have streaming music to my bookcase stereo in here: I have streaming music to my powered speakers on the patio and in my basement workshop: I have streaming audio to the living room. I have DVR in both my living room and my office. Life is getting really, really good!!

Family Research Council: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 cites 600,000 year old "evidence".

First of all, credit to where credit is due: I got this from Fred Clark (aka Slacktivist) first posted this alert. It seems that the Family Research Council (FRC), an organization that steadfastly attacks any science which contradicts literal Creationism, has shown its true colors. Namely that its leadership are nothing more than cynical, hypocritical poseurs who actually believe in nothing more than maintaining their power and economic position in this world. You see, in their fervor to show that they are "RTBs" (that's Real True Believers as opposed to the rest of us who are not included in the elect) these people, Tony Perkins foremost among them, reject any science that purports to show that the world...nay, even the universe...is only approximately 6,000 years old. However, in this little attack on the science of Global Warming, Perkins et al cites their own scientific "evidence". The cool thing about this is that the "evidence" they cite is reputed to be 600,000 years old. That's 100 times as old as the Universe.

Assholes!

This is all sooo cool!

Yesterday I was excited because my third Logitech Music system (the link goes to a review site...much better than I could do and well worth a look if you are interested in streaming sound from your computer to other areas of your house)receiver arrived. As I noted, I hooked it up and things were rosy. I was wrong...they were better!

I spent the evening down in the workshop picking up on a couple projects I have been neglecting. I had the music streaming. The sound was awesome! So much cleaner than the old boombox I had for company before. In fact, that workshop is becoming close to Heaven. Think about it. Here I am in a room filled with tools and great music; wtf more could I really want? (I was joking about 30 concubines earlier, but, as I noted, my darling wife would, in her own quiet way, object to that arrangement--my life would become both painful and exceedingly short--and, besides, one can't really give proper attention to one's tools if there are a bunch of females hanging around...*grin*) No, what I have discovered that I really need is to build a glass-walled cubicle where I can install a reasonably powerful workstation with a 20-inch(or bigger) flatscreen monitor. The cubicle part is to keep the sawdust from the workshop part of the basement away from the delicate innards of the 'puter. That would make this machine in the office , the one I'm working on now, and its brother over in the corner could become my network servers/workhorses, while my workshop workstation could be where I play and do fun things like run CAD programs to design and build my home projects. I shiver just to think about the prospect.

The other thing I need, and something that has a much higher degree of probability, is a set of outdoor, weatherproof speakers. But what I want are a really powerful pair of honkers...something that, when I crank 'em up, neighbors two or three doors down get nice crisp clear sound...*snicker*. I wanna be able to hear 'em when I'm in the pool...under water.

To recap, I only need three things to make immediate life pretty perfect (except for the continuing need to work...but I'll address that injustice later...): 1)a big honking set of outdoor speakers, 2)a big honking workstation in the basement and 3)a Subaru Outback (I know...I just threw that in with no prior prep, but it is on the list.)

And look at this...two posts in a row...I'm on a roll!

Addendum: There is a small raincloud in paradise. No, nothing at all wrong with the system as is. The problem is that I have things to do this morning, and I find that I am reluctant to leave. This is all just too perfect. *sigh* Oh, and I'm going to have to increase my quarterly donation to Radio Paradise. If I listen to Bill's station virtually 24/7, I'm gonna have to pony up a bit more to cover my contribution to keeping the music flowing...and Fuck You, RIAA. (I had to add that: I can't say anything about the economics of the music industry without telling the RIAA to go fuck themselves...) OK, now I really have to get the hell out and going...damn!