Where Do Economies Go To Die?

Sometimes I don’t think I listen attentively enough to the “other side”. I’m not referring to the dead, but that could be the case too. But I meant the other end of the spectrum, politically. There was some call in show on line where people were being asked about what they thought about government spending. Many, if not a majority believe that cutting the deficit should be the underlying, driving force behind any future government budget proposals. And if a goal is important enough than it will be worth committing your resources to it, to the exclusion of other considerations. Many sincere people believe if we don’t get a handle on this deficit problem then our economy has no future. If Obama wanted to cut the deficit and the debt he could. First of all just install a minimum tax all corporations pay to insure the richest ones don’t get off with paying nothing. Then re-institute a saying of Ronald Reagan that “We are only going to help the truly needy”. By this I mean poor people and not rich corporations. We’re going to remove corporate loopholes. We are going to stop paying farmers not to plant. We are going to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan right now and declare the “peace dividend” Clinton talked so much about- - will be devoted entirely to deficit reduction. Couldn’t the President sign an order saying “All pork barrel projects will be canceled till further notice”. And also I could institute a “cafeteria rule” where for instance if you’re a kid going through a buffet line, if you take the item you have to eat that item in its entirety whether you like it or not. Just think of all the waste the military does by designing a project and then scrapping it. Look how much waste there was in Nixon scrapping the Apollo project. Now Obama wants to scrap the space shuttles. And I guess he wants to cancel the Aries rocket. How about “You put it on your plate and now you have to eat it”. This single policy alone could effect amazing savings in the military. Look at the savings in just interest payments alone! Really- - - look at it.

You don’t have to go far to see the effects of continued economic cutbacks. Governor Swatzenegger has announced the termination of a “Welfare to Work” program that had been successful and millions depended on it. Now due to a deficit of 19 billion and a continued tax revenue fall off- - many more cuts in health and welfare must be made. Now there is some anti gang “Home Boy” outfit that has been around for twenty years is now closing their doors due to a fall off in donation. Now people are writing letters to Oprah Winfrey to keep the thing going. No doubt if more rich people opened up their wallets a lot of things would be different. That whale off the coast of Dana Point that we have been following- - died today. People were worried about the whale because first she acted if she were swim out to sea to join the rest of the pod, but then yesterday she returned and people wondered what the matter was now. Like the economy- - a lot of things are terminal, or to put it another way “sometimes things are worse than they seem”. LA City has announced they are going to not fill any more pot holes in the road because they just can’t afford it. Where do old economies go to die? Is the whole US economy terminal? Do we have any industries left? Have you ever wondered what dead people think about our society today. Doesn't the author of "Future Shock" need to put out another sequel? And what would we think if we could be transported to the year 2020 right now? Talk about “Future Shock” when Jimi Hendrix met Noel Redding when he died he may have asked him if people today experienced any more Pleasure than they did in his day. (I didn't know till Jeopardy the other night that Mitch Mitchell is also dead, making it complete) He would probably be amazed, “You mean people aren’t going around absolutely stoned on acid all the time? If things are as bad as you say they are you people need it more than our generation needed it”. Somehow I don’t think when you died will have a significant impact on your adjustment to the Afterlife. If you died today or 150 years ago you will still make some sort of adjustment. Death is where everything ends up eventually, after it has run its course. People in the Afterlife will be unified by one thing- - that none of them was able to escape the ultimate grim reaper. I imagine it’s kind of like Viet Nam. They regard all people who haven’t experienced as utterly foolish and unqualified to speculate or talk on the subject

OK we’ll just pick up where we left off. Some of us like me had a ham sandwich for lunch, whereas others announced they got turkey. There was Fritos and Will gave me his also. We had watermelon. Nicole Sandler was in for Randy so the “boobies” song was not played. Later on after two they talked about the Val Dez oil spill in Prince William Sound in Alaska or wherever. A guest said that only five percent of the oil was ever removed. The rest was dispursed into the environment and genetic damage to the fish can be seen because the fish have strange growths on them. And they said that the “hering run” doesn’t occur any more after twenty years. The fishing industry is still devastated and the people of the Louisiana gulf know what to look forward to. By the way that 2-butyl ethanol stuff they talked about- - appears to be rug cleaner. Back on the third Saturday in May of 1966 I remember that we had our carpets cleaned and we had to eat out that night because the smell was driving us all crazy, since it was so lingering. (We ate at Wayne’s Steak and Lobster nearby) Fermin came by the next day and my Dad was remarking “the guy said it would be twenty minutes to dry out” and Fermin chimes in “- - and it turned out to be twenty hours”. From what they are saying, huge, and I mean large amounts of 2-butyl ethanol have been dumped into the Gulf. Which might be why the oil slick appears to be shrinking and not hitting the shore as dead on as people had thought it would. What President Obama needs to do is get on the television and make a speech showing real empathy, both for the people of Alaska, and for the current people of Louisiana, and announce that all parties involved will be made to pay in full. I am wondering (just wondering) whether in his zest to please the oil companies that the President might have made some deal to relax regulations so simple things like batteries didn’t need to be replaced. Corporations are like God. They live forever. But unfortunately the people they make promises to- - don’t. And so one third of the people in Alaska have died that were promised “to be made whole”. It would seem nobody is ever going to be made whole. Some have said that if the oil weren’t so deep (we said it was 18,000 feet when it’s actually only 5,000) that perhaps there wouldn’t be mishaps like this and the mere depth of the drilling lends itself to accidents.

Last night I checked out a calculus site- - and it divided all calculus into three divisions, Intrigal, Differential, and Multiple Variable calculus. And each heading had a long list of items of “using the so & so method”. And there were all these different “methods” you could use, kind of like my BASIC programs tailored to specific mathematical problems. Also yesterday I was reading in the “Karmic Suicide” blog. There is a lot of good stuff in there, where I make my feelings about President Obama’s shortcomings pretty clear. Pretty much it’s time to abandon all hope in him. In one posting I said “President Obama is going to make a massive move to the right” and he has pretty much done that becoming pro war and pro “security at any price” and appease the right at any price. But of course there is that utterly worthless health bill that was passed. Remember a few days ago I said that some recessions “have a tail wind” meaning circumstances accelerate the pull out from a deep recession, like the Reagan tax cuts of 1982 and 1983. But other recessions, like this one, have government “headwinds” that buffet the economy and hold it back. And this health care package is a monstrosity that can only serves as a jobs killer for reasons I’ve explained previously. We are now approaching a year into this “recovery” but people on main street that you talk to say “the recovery is bogus; business is not hiring. The economy is still contracting. People and governments are still in the process of cutting back”. So I don’t know what to do with this President except wait for all those liberals on KTLK radio to turn against him the way I have – and see the President for the pretender he is. I don’t want to hear any more stuff about “He’s playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers”. That line gets really - - really Old after a while. I can only repeat that if everybody spent as little money as I have and made the cuts in spending I have over the past four years- - this economy would be tanking a whole lot worse than it is now. If these Republicans in congress on C-Span would perhaps explain themselves a little more clearly, perhaps I would listen to them. I guess I don’t have a real clear picture of just what these republicans want. And if you talk to people from KTLK all they will say is “the republicans want more special privileges for business so they can continue to pillage and loot this country”. I wouldn’t have been for health care at all except these people were on the hysterical band wagon about how we can’t survive one more year of these Health Insurance abuses. But we won’t even find out whether this whole thing works for another four years. If six months is an eternity in politics, what is four years? I look at everybody and they appear rich to me. They can go eat a nice meal out any time they want or go to a movie or buy a new car and- - someone from another country would be hard pressed to explain these cell phones everybody carries with them, knowing how astronomical cell phone charges are. For a foreigner if you were to say “recession” they would regard it as an absurd joke.