Feeding the Bears for Centuries

One of faux-conservatives’ favorite analogies and war-chants is the idea that “feeding the bears” and welfare are some sort of population drivers, while (of course) pretending to be pro-life and anti-abortion. Since faux-conservatism is rampant in rural areas, it’s a pretty funny “pot calling the kettle black” comparison.

Rural areas have been intentionally overrepresented, propped-up and subsidized by urban welfare, and have whined about being the underdogs while getting far more resources and support than their economic or social contributions deserve since the founding of this nation (propped up on the back of low population, rural state slavery). In the vein of :”it takes one to know one,” I suspect there is a sliver of self-knowledge behind this argument being made by people who absolutely can not take care of themselves and consistently have larger families that they can’t support than urban averages. Rural people are consistently easier to fool, which makes tossing them a few bones occasionally outrageously profitable.

The Dunning-Kruger arrogance of this bunch of ignorant rubes is always stunning. Without even basic the most simple K-12 science and mathematics to support their goober-beliefs, they will loudly and proudly argue against scientific consensus about man-made global warming, disease and epidemic management, the solar system and universe, evolution and biology, psychology and neurology, and, of course, even the freaklin’ shape of the planet.

The solution, eventually, will likely be the urban economic centers simply cutting off the money flow to rural areas. As populations continue to move toward urban areas, that will become increasingly easier. At any point in the past 100 years, it would have been painlessly easy to simply convert states like the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and most of the southeast back into territories without federal representation. Their only threat would be to withhold paying federal taxes which would immediately be countered with zero’ing out federal payments and investments in those territories. The same could be done inside larger population states with equally dependent rural areas. Personally, I think this is more likely than the splitting of the nation into several smaller nations, but either way rural areas will quickly discover what it’s like to be “a dependent population unable to take care of themselves.”

 

Ok, Boomer

Or is that “Ok Boomer?” Whatever. We all know it’s the clueless, snarky response of a spoiled brat who imagines that he or she has it “harder than any other generation.”Baby boomers just don't seem to get it. Millennials have it a little harder than they did. Not only with college tuition but let's look at the job market. Most jobs now, you need a college degree for. 61% of Millennials attend college compared to 46% of Baby Boomers. You need a college degree for places to even look at your resume. That wasn't the case when our parents were looking for a career. But now, not only do they want a college degree, they want you to have experience.” That’s typical of the kind of mindless drivel these children spew and they even imagine it is true. 

I’ve been dismissed a few times myself and I don’t waste my time trying to educate these kiddies any longer. I just remind myself that I’m not the jackass whisperer and move on with my life. However, I wonder if there will come a time when these old children discover how wrong they are? The author of the article I quoted above lists a collection of “boomer prices” vs today’s prices and imagines that somehow those numbers account for inflation. Of course, they do not, but math skills and, even, simple accounting skills appear to be something that has been lost in their education. It’s not like the tools aren’t there in K-12 and beyond, it’s that they do not want to waste their precious screen time learning those skills. Strangely, they imagine that my generation magically got that stuff effortlessly. “A dozen eggs for Baby Boomers” did  “cost about $0.84” and today they cost $0.99 to $1.50, for an inflation value of 20% to 50%, while the minimum wage was $1.00/hour in 1960 and today’s minimum wage is $7.25 (federal) to $15.00 (several states) for an inflation rate of 700% to 1500%. Eggs are one example and there are several examples of items (like housing) that have inflated far beyond wages. College, however, is one item that varies by state; from the worst case, California, where college tuition went from free to $138,000 for 4 years of UCLA and $15,000 in 1970 to $28,000 for 4 years at typical state colleges (like the University of Nebraska where I attended). California’s tuition rate is nearly an infinite increase, but most states saw an 85% increase in tuition over 50 years, not even close to wage inflation over the same period (the 1970 minimum wage was $1.60). 

As I’ve marveled before, humans don’t ever seem to learn anything the easy way. Two generations away from the last war fought with draftees, young Americans shrug off reality and history as if it doesn’t pertain to their situation or any situation with which they have chosen to compare themselves. For example the claim, “Most jobs now, you need a college degree for.” Ignoring, the fact that this presumably college educated kiddy doesn’t even know about dangling prepositions, that whole claim is a joke. The kinds of jobs that my generation didn’t need degrees for are often crying for applicants today, but Millennials don’t want anything to do with manual labor. I’ve been told that “we were promised great jobs if we went to college” by nitwits who were told in clear terms by a collection of experienced adults that their degree in music was worth slightly less than the paper upon which it was printed, economically. Not only did they persist in wasting money on that degree, but they doubled-down on the delusion and went for an MFA (which stands for My Fabulous Adolescence). Now, they are surprised that Starbucks asks for a degree for a coffee shop management job because every idiot serving coffee or donuts has a useless liberal arts degree. Why not ask for it? 

Housing inflation is an interesting problem. Housing is expensive in the places young people insist on living; large cities, and the quality of home Millennials insist is their right. My first house, in 1973, cost $8,900 in Central City, Nebraska. The place was a dump, but it was all I could afford. In three years, I replumbed the place, turned an attic space into two bedrooms and a sewing room, built a garage and workshop, and landscaped the place while supporting my wife and two kids on $3.25/hour and regular 80-90 hour weeks. My “vacations” were spent working on the house or working a second job (R&R bands and music equipment repair, usually). We sold that house for $16,000 and moved “up” to Fremont, Nebraska and a larger $20,000 1920’s house. I started the remodeling routine over, but in 1979 I was laid off along with 1,400 people in my company and almost 2,000 others in two other industries in Fremont and I sold that house for $18,000 and slipped the “buyer” $5,000 under the table so they could make the “down payment".” So, not counting my improvements and labor, I lost $7,000 on that house. I didn’t buy another house for almost a decade. 

Chased by the constant regional recessions of the 1980s, we moved to California where my salary was $28,000/year (with the usual 60-90 hour work weeks) and a typical middle class home was $120,000 at 15% interest. Totally unaffordable, by any math I understand; although at least one of my kids thought I was a failure and a fool because I couldn’t figure out the ladder of mortgages, second mortgages, credit cards, and third mortgages her friends’ parents used to pay for their homes. Like today’s young city dwellers, California homes were far beyond my reach in 1984 and that only got worse until I left in 1991. Just like city life, almost everywhere, today. 

However, while I lived in California and didn’t have a chance in hell of owning a home there, I bought a nice, normal, very old house in a normal town in Nebraska for $5,000 cash. Over five years in California, I took occasional “vacations” to Nebraska to fix up that house until I had it in good enough shape that I could rent it. As a landlord, I made a little money, took decent tax write-offs, invested money in the property, and a decade later sold it for $15,000. Not a terrific profit, but not bad either. I have always believed in the adage that “you never want to buy the nicest house in the neighborhood.” Usually, I’ve bought the worst house in the block or neighborhood or, even, town, fixed it up, and sold it for more than I paid for it. It’s hard to describe what I’ve done in houses as “profitable,” but at least I didn’t lose a lot and had a place for my family to live. 

That isn’t something a lot of today’s young people are willing to consider suffering with. They imagine that not only should they get to live like their parents do after decades of work (without the decades of work), but they should get to live in the city of their dreams in the house of their dreams with the stuff of their dreams. 

Good luck with that. 

I recently read a book about war, from an American perspective, that described “warriors” from each succeeding generation who imagine themselves tougher than the previous generation but who fought less risky, less demanding battles, for shorter durations each generation. For example, Civil War veterans were tougher than WWI vets who were tougher than WWII vets who were harder tested than Korea or Vietnam vets and so on. I suspect that is, on average, true. Today’s military that depends on drones to take the big risks probably feels really battle hardened, but has a terrible time with third world fighters who are throwbacks to American soldiers of at least 70 years ago. 

Likewise, today’s kids act as if they are being tortured and mistreated when they are asked to perform ordinary work tasks. They have self-directed themselves into the college path to avoid growing up or having to learn manual labor skills. It turns out that electricians, welders, mechanics, technicians, and plumbers are worth a LOT more than musicians, graphic artists, anthropologists, historians, librarians, clerks, help desk phone operators, and the rest of easy liberal arts “skills.” That was true in 1960-70 and it will be true in 2050. That 54% of Boomers who didn’t attend college often found dirty jobs doing hard manual labor in dangerous conditions for long hours and they supported their families. 

When I tell kids that they wouldn’t believe the kind of crap I did to support my family, they say, “Ok, Boomer.” Then, they expect me to feel sorry for their foolish economic decisions and general low energy and motivation. I don’t. I am not the jackass whisperer. I’m 71 and I have, possibly, infinitely more days behind me than in front and fixing the future is not my job. If it was, I’d quit.

Who Is Sustainable?

As I’m writing this I am doing one of the least sustainable activities human beings have ever invented: a vacation cruise to the Caribbean in late January. I’m on a floating city with about 3,000 other old farts, burning tons of oil resources every few hours, consuming more food than many cities ten or one hundred times the population of this boat, creating nothing of use for anyone else on the planet, and we’re all pretending that we “deserve” this luxury because we managed to be lucky enough to be some of the world’s most wealthy people. We just left two islands, Aruba and Cascaras that are barely more sustainable than this boat. One of those two islands produces nothing but tourist attractions and the other is equally dependent on tourism plus water resources for a brand of booze that is incredibly water-intensive on a desert island that tears through energy and water as if the world were endless.

I live in a small Minnesota town, Red Wing that is barely more sustainable than those islands and this boat. Like all of the previously mentioned places, Red Wing’s residents are mostly oblivious to their dependence and like most of rural America they are even arrogantly clueless about how dependent they are on the rest of the country and world for their lifestyle. “We grow our own food, unlike the people in the cities,” they often argue. Growing corn and soybeans is not “growing your own food.” Corn and soybeans are food for animals and a particularly inefficient energy boondoggle. Just like the rest of the country, if the shit hit the fan and our system of interdependent reliance collapsed, most of rural America would fail in quick and spectacular fashion.

Oddly, the most sustainable community I have visited in recent years has been Detroit. Through corruption, incompetence, indifference, and lethargy, Detroit’s infrastructure and community completely collapsed in the wake of NAFTA, the Bush Recession, and the socio-economic upheavals of the last 25 years that is causing the auto industry to either reform or die (the outcomes, the winners and losers are yet to be determined). After neighborhoods collapsed and were abandoned, ransacked, and, eventually, knocked down and hauled away, urban farms sprouted up everywhere and became far more efficient, independent food sources than anything rural America has seen since the 1800’s. There are neighborhoods in Detroit that not only are capable of feeding themselves, but they produce enough food to export to the rich folks for a premium and profit.

Nobody ever said, “If you can make it in Red Wing you can make it anywhere.” One of the problems rural Americans haven’t had to face (yet) is the fact that talent, skills, and intelligence have been evacuating the countryside since the beginning of the Industrial Age. The smart kids leave and the dumb ones stay and reproduce, creating a growing dumbed-down rural population that becomes more dependent every generation. Every economic study I know of demonstrates that urban America economically props up rural America for diminishing returns and vanishing reasons. There will be an obvious outcome, eventually.

One of the lessons I learned from my manufacturing career was that engineers apply the Paretto Effect, sometimes unintentionally, to occupations. We first automate the jobs that are typically filled by assholes, eliminating the assholes and the places were their “participation” jams up production. For example, you might have thought that production line technicians would have been the last place for automation to appear, but it was among the first. Equipment and fixtures to perform final test procedures on assemblies and finished products were some of the first jobs to be automated because the people who gravitated to those jobs over-estimated both their skill levels and their necessity. Likewise, farming is experiencing the beginning of that effect as GPS, satellite weather monitoring, drone and robotic ground conditions observation, and robotic planting and harvesting equipment take over farming and farm jobs. In the very foreseeable future, the only commercial farm jobs will be high-tech equipment repair and “farming” will be managed from even greater distances; most likely from urban offices. At that point, rural dependence on urban support will be unsustainable and we’ll see even more rural communities dry up and blow away than in 1929.

The best possible scenario I can imagine will be that some rural areas will become like those Caribbean islands; tourist destinations that either learn to be incredibly tolerant and friendly or die. I got the feeling that Aruba was like one giant service business depending on positive Yelp reviews for its existence. It is scary-easy to imagine my current hometown, Red Wing, becoming one cruise ship-like entity living or dying by a few thousand tourist reviews.

The Face of Racism

Pick any one of these guys, they all appear to be the same privileged, spoiled, hate filled racist assholes. Have you wondered who they are, where did they come from, and how they ended up being such despicable semi-human beings? Some of these faces have become well-known, at least in their hometowns, thanks to the internet. The rest of us are left wondering if these people are our neighbors and that is the question we should be asking. Charlottesville, Virginia, to many of us, is the kind of place where we’d expect racism, fascism, and ignorance. It’s the South, isn’t it? To people who know the place, it’s more subtle than that.

For example, the Trump-spawn asshole front-and-center of this now-famous picture is a University of Nevada scumbag named Peter Cvjetanovic, who is now whining “I’m not a racist,” in spite of overwhelming evidence. Even when this guy speaks in self-defense and with some preparation time, he comes off no differently than his now-famous picture, “As a white nationalist, I care for all people. We all deserve a future for our children and for our culture. White nationalists aren’t all hateful; we just want to preserve what we have.” I assume he means his white privilege is the “what we have” he wants to preserve. Equally unsurprising, the University of Nevada is sticking by their Nazi student and employee. University of Nevada, Reno President Marc Johnson said, “There have been numerous inquiries about Peter Cvjetanovic, a student at our University who participated in the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Based on discussion and investigation with law enforcement, our attorneys and our Office of Student Conduct, there is no constitutional or legal reason to expel him from our University or to terminate his employment.” Moral values are, clearly, not part of the student code of conduct in Nevada, since that would typically give the university plenty of leeway for firing a neo-Nazi if they cared about that sort of thing.

A little more surprising is the story of Cole White, who lost his job at Top Dog, a Berkeley, California “libertarian hot dog restaurant.” Top Dog, a downtown Berkeley restaurant, posted a sign on its door saying, “Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog. The actions of those in Charlottesville are not supported by Top Dog. We believe in individual freedom and voluntary association for everyone.” Supposedly, White “voluntarily resigned” his weenie job with his weenie employer who went the extra mile to let the world know they did not fire their neo-Nazi employee. The last thing libertarians want is for anyone to think they have ethics. Just ask Paul Ryan how Ayn Rand would feel about that. I have to wonder what kind of idiot would buy a hot dog from someone who doesn’t believe the state has the right to ensure the safety of food?

Mostly, the faces from Charlottesville are unsurprising. They are the the bad guy in every Karate Kid movie. They are the spoiled, upper-middle class kids whose parents foot every bill and enable every moment of their miserable, useless lives. Unfortunately, I think calling out every neo-Nazi, every homicidal militia Klan’er, every future abusive middle-manager or cop in that crowd is going to be a thankless task. The country has been breeding for this class of creep for 250 years.

By the way, both of you know you are going to be bald by 40, right? Enjoy that pre-skinhead look while you can.

Mangling the American Dream

I am never more out of sync with my country than when it comes to consumerism. For all of the reasons Republicans say people like me are “un-American,” I hate all of the holiday seasons; especially Xmas. It’s not just the superstition and faux-good-will that smears itself across this smarmy holiday from work (for a rare non-retail few) and common sense, it’s the constant guilt-manipulating whining about “gifts” and expectations. If I could pick any time of the year to be struck down by lightning, it would be anytime between Halloween and Easter. Hell, I’d step between practically anyone and a bullet to get out of that time of the year (Trump and his spawn excluded).

One morning a few weeks ago, I was making potato pancakes for our breakfast and decided to drag out my rarely-used food processor to shred the potatoes and onions. As I was assembling the pieces of this vintage machine into something that would turn potatoes into bits of vegetable confetti, I was reminded of where this kitchen implement came from. Sometime around 2005, I decided I wanted to make one more attempt at adding a lot of vegetables to my diet and I figured buying a food processor to make that job a little less irritating might be motivational. As usual, I didn’t want to pay much for this speculative diet-motivational tool. So, I went on Craig’s List, created a “search alert” and let CL do what it does best. A couple of days later, I got a hit on a processor in my price range in the Payne-Phalen area of St. Paul. I called the seller and set up a time for me to check out the appliance a few hours before I needed to be in St. Paul for a recording session later that evening.

The sellers turned out to be a fairly recent-immigrant Asian couple who were doing the American Dream thing: buying all new everything as fast as they could toss their credit cards at anyone with stuff to sell. They had a new Honda Accord in the driveway, a living room full of nice leather-bound furniture and a television bigger than my living room wall, and a recently redecorated kitchen with lots of brand new appliances. I suspect the processor they were selling me was a hand-me-down. When they greated me at the door, they checked out my classy 1998 Ford Escort station wagon and my usual high-style outfit: a tee-shirt and jeans and sandals and a Denver Nuggets jacket. I don’t think I impressed them at all. We talked a bit while I tested the food processor and stuffed it and its parts back into the original packing box they had provided. They wanted to show me their new Cuisinart food processor, but I needed to keep moving so that I wouldn’t be late for my gig.

That morning, I considered the fact that I have never been much of a fan or even a participant in the American Dream; as commonly accepted by most Americans. I have owned exactly one new car—a  1973 Mazda RX3 station wagon—in my life and would just as soon never get financially beat up that badly again. I bought two new motorcycles, both early in 1974, and got my financial ass handed to me on those vehicles. Since then, I’ve owned a collection of beaters and utilitarian used vehicles and have driven a few of them into the ground. I’ve been accused of being willing to buy used food if I could figure out how to safely digest it. During my working career, I allocated so few minutes to meals that I probably wouldn’t have tasted the difference most of the time.

I don’t care about keeping up with the Jones’s, I just don’t want to get screwed. For most large purchases, being the first buyer is accepting the fact that you will likely be the one who takes the biggest financial hit for getting it when it is new. New cars lose 25-50% of their purchase value the day they roll off of the lot. Most motorcycles are no different. I bought a relatively new construction home in Parker, Colorado: I paid $71,000 for it in 1992, the original owners paid $110,000 for the house in 1984. (Thank you, Mr. Reagan.) I bought a like-new carbon fiber guitar a couple of years ago for $750. The original owner paid $1100 for it and a friend bought a lower cost version of the same instrument at the same time I found my used one; he paid $1300 plus tax. I bought a collection of power tools from a local retired guy for $100. On the way out his door with my new tools all loaded in the pickup, he mentioned that he’d paid about $2000 for those same tools when they were new. I bought a like-new $1400 digital oscilloscope a few weeks ago for $200 and the original owner threw in a couple hundred dollars worth of test probes to seal the deal. All of this equipment was barely used when I bought them. And on and on I could go. You too, I hope.

The real American dream used to be to hand off a world and a country that was better than the one we inherited. Americans used to take pride in trying to give their children a leg-up into the world they would possess when their parents were either old and feeble or gone. Today, many Americans appear to be proud of doing exactly the opposite. The two generations currently in power, Boomers and X-gens, seem to be doing everything they can to use up all of the world’s natural resources before their children realize how greedy they are being. We’re cobbling together dysfunctional national and state governments, solely purposed to make the rich richer and everybody else poor and enslaved. At least half of us are pretending that humans are not primarily responsible for the rapid climate change the world is displaying.

Americans and Arabs are doubling-down on their death-cult superstitions, pretending that prayers and wishes and a collection of gods so confusing that even the Greeks would be confused by who-is-who-in-the-sky. In the US, we’ve decided social and economic justice, education, democracy, and national security all take a backseat to making the rich richer and more powerful. That is NOT the American Dream. If anything, it is the Russian ogliarchy’s dream and they seem to be driving the car at the moment. I’d call that an American Nightmare.

They Took Ur Jobs!

Trump promised to bring the jobs he shopped out to China back to the USA. What do you think the chances are that Trump’s hats, shirts, ties, and other cheap shit will come back to US clothing manufacturers? How about zero, unless he can get US wages down to China’s.

The Trumpets wailed about how badly they were being treated, most of whom are living on Social Security and Unemployment and Welfare. These are the same people who elected Reagan and started the transfer of wealth from the US to Indochina and from the working class to the 1%. But they don’t get that, because they are the “uneducated” that Trump loves so much. When Reagan took his dribble-down axe to the federal tax code and made “unearned income” (interest and investment income, rent, income received from the ownership of natural resources, inheritance: aka “passive income”) more profitable than active income, any chance of US jobs expanding died and has almost no chance of ever returning. Trump is a prime beneficiary of this tax/social engineering plan and if you think Donald Trump has ever done one thing that didn’t benefit himself over every other person on the planet, you are one of his beloved “uneducated.”

For example, the unemployed (probably for decades) steel workers who campaigned and voted for Trump are great examples of uneducated voters without a clue. What could Trump do to bring steel production back to the US? He doesn’t even us US steel in his own casinos. The problem is on multiple levels: 1) the US tax system does not reward capital investment, 2) even if someone were insane enough take on creating a modern steel production facility, it wouldn’t employ uneducated, unskilled labor and would be highly automated, and 3) the US hasn’t invested in manufacturing and engineering education for so long that the country doesn’t have the talent to build a competitive steel production facility. Financial services has siphoned off at least two generations of the nation’s most talented people to the point that 45% of US STEM undergrads are foreign students who intend to return home with their US-subsidized education and skills. Our manufacturing economy is so weak that 74% of US STEM grads work in non-STEM related jobs. And why not? Engineering is complicated, competitive, and constantly demanding new skills. Finance is barely any different today than it was in the early 1980’s, when the Reagan Administration decided to blow-off enforcing Glass-Steagall. To become a finance millionaire, all you need is ruthlessness, a total lack of morality, and a little luck. You actually have to have talent, education, and perseverance to be Elon Musk.

The media has decided to blame Trump on liberals who, supposedly, ignored the “plight” of the poor white man. The reality is that the poor white man has always had the tools he needed to crawl out of poverty and step into the middle class: public education and white entitlement. The problem is these are the same poor white men who were easily distracted by the 1% aiming them at poor blacks, Hispanics, and every other ethic immigrant with a work ethic. The one skill poor whites will always have is an innate capacity for hate and violence. Otherwise, their claim of “white supremacy” is disproven by their existence.

There is, as best I can see, no fix for massive unemployment in the unskilled labor demographic. The best this lot can hope for is decent healthcare, available education for the small percentage with the values to work for it, tolerable housing, and the usual distractions of sports, religion, and guns. Preying on this crowd with easy credit and heartless bankruptcy laws is the Republican tactic and, so far, telling these nitwits that Democrats and liberals and immigrants are to blame has worked. It doesn’t make their lives any better, but it does keep their capacity for hate and violence in play.

Trump’s Election Upside

Buying local is expensive and a hassle. Most conservatives don’t bother with spending their welfare and social security money on local produce or on local products or services. Without progressives, liberals, and moderates there wouldn’t be any local businesses outside of second hand stores.

In 2016, 1,322,891 Minnesotans voted for Trump and 55% of Goodhue County residents voted for everything Minnesota Nice was supposed to oppose. There were worse places in the state, some voting as high as 74% for Trump (Morrison County, where 32,000 barely-educated, 97%-white, timid Fox News-misinformed souls live in rural isolation) and many of the non-urban counties citizens voted Trump in 60% or greater numbers. Morrison County is typical of those outstate Minnesota ungrateful wretches, where unemployment fell from 12% in 2009 to about 4% in 2016. “Thanks, Obama,” said no one while they voted for a guy who relished their displacement and economic destruction in 2009.

So, when I go to buy groceries, household products, building materials, appliances, furniture, services, or anything locally, I have to think, “I have a 60%-or-better chance of subsidizing a Trump nutjob with my money.” Obviously, if I buy from Target or Wal-Mart there is a 100% chance that I’m handing my money to a corporate fascist but I’m spending considerably less money (For example, $0.89 for eggs vs. $4+ for locally grown eggs). The premium I am paying might be for the expectation that I’m buying chemical-free produce, but I wouldn’t trust a Trump supporter to be half-honest as an organic food supplier. I wouldn’t trust a Trump supporter not to be a slave owner, for that matter.

This puts local suppliers in a tough position. They advertise they are not Republicans or Trumpeters and alienate 60% of their neighbors but self-identify with 90% of their customers? They don’t advertise their political positions and people like me assume they are part of the 60% and we pass on gambling that they might be sentient humans? Not my problem. My job is to avoid the Trumpeters as much as possible and that means I either go with known quantities or avoid local producers because they are expensive.

What's It All About, Newt?

Listening to the new Republican majority in the house list their top priorities this morning, I realized that it is entirely possible for this crowd of morons to pull off an unintended conspiracy. Their agenda is to strip the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, to eliminate any federal funding of Planned Parenthood, to bankrupt the Social Security system, and to undermine health care legislation. Their campaign monkey-talk about "jobs" and "it's the economy, stupid" was a smokescreen for the brainless morons who vote Republican but live Democrat. Now that they are in the driver's seat, their "plan" is to eliminate every federal government activity that provides value to working people. That was the idea behind Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America" and Ronny Wrinkle's "government is the problem" and Bush/Cheney's outright pillaging of the nation's banking account.

None of that is new news. The only question one might ask is "Why?" I think the species-suicidal green house gas agenda is the key to the answer.

Republicans have always--with the momentary exception of Teddy Roosevelt and, sort of, Abraham Lincoln--been the tools of international money. Every action an American conservative takes is intended to either preserve the assets of the idle rich or put more money in their pockets. Global warming, especially ocean warming, presents an emergency to these powerful, useless, corrupt, and lazy people.

If the working class woke up to the threat to our species and to the world, huge resources would be spent on saving future generations. The only people who have huge resources are that 1-10% who own the majority of assets in the industrialized world and who control the world's income. Those people have two characteristics: they are incredibly greedy and incredibly foolish. Those qualities have worked for them for centuries and they expect them to keep working indefinitely.

Apparently, their theory is that the world is going to suffer a catastrophe regardless of what we do now. After all, scientists have been saying the world is heading toward a point of no return since the mid-1960s. Fifty years late, we must have past that point, right? So, if we can't save the world we might as well finish raping and pillaging every culture and resource on the planet right up to the end of life as we know it. Because many of those filthy rich families have pulled this off for the last several hundred years, they expect it will keep working for them, at least, for the rest of their lives. And they are probably right.

Worst case, my generation will suffer the result of the last 100 years of unrestricted industrial pollution and profiteering near the end of our lives. Which leaves out children to live lives of suffering and misery, one environmental catastrophe after the last, depleting resources, collapsing societies, and many of the horrors that science fiction has depicted in thousands of apocalyptic end-of-times scenarios. While most of us worry for our children, the rich have no such limitations. The ruling class has been willing to eat its young for convenience, entertainment, and profit since Roman times, at least. Every one of these crusty old families is willing to sacrifice humanity to preserve another week or two of their own opulence.

Since the 2010 elections, they have accelerated their misbehavior; tossing off even a pretense of doing what they do "for the good of the nation." Today, it's all about grabbing as many resources as they can hoard with the hope that they can hole up in their gated castles while the rest of us suffer the consequences.

The media is doing a damn good job of distracting the marching morons from issues that matter, too. Jabbering about Charlie Sheen's latest stupidity, Justin Beiber's ass, and all of the rest of the mindless crap that passes for "news" is just a way to eliminate any focus on anything that actually matters.

The real question is, "Will it work when the sky really begins to fall?" Ask the Roman ruling elites or the German Nazi elites or the British ruling class or King Louis the 16th's buddies. Obviously, it worked for a few of them, but a bunch of those useless inbred horse-faced, big-toothed, cousin-marrying hillbillies went down in a wave of pissed off peasants. I hope I live long enough to see our Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Girards, Biddles, Morris, Fords, Hiltons, Mellons, Kochs, Vanderbilts, Bushs, Murdocks, Trumps, Waltons, and the rest of that pack reap the humiliation and lynching they so well deserve.

Tipping, When Your Career Path Depends on Begging

I was in Durango, CO when I began to write this. My grandson and I were taking a Rocky Mountain motorcycle tour and we ended up here after a few days of camping. Right after parking the bike at the motel, we went for a walk downtown and stopped at an ice cream shop. An ice cream cone and a smoothie cost me about $10 and the server was obviously putout that I didn't leave a tip.

I suspect my father went his whole high school teaching life without spending much more than $10 on tips. His advice on tipping was that extraordinary service might warrant a tip, but just doing your job is what you get paid for. Today, people doing practically any sort of job that requires some sort of interaction with a customer expect a tip for the slightest nod to common courtesy.

I suppose I should be interested in the fact that most of these folks have done a pitiful job of planning their careers. I should probably care that their lack of technical knowledge or employable skills has relegated them to a life filled with the repetitive phrase, "Would you like fries with that?" or "Can I get you another beer?" I should find sympathy for the awful situation these people find themselves in after a life of screwing off in class, taking the easy path through the public education system, and grabbing an easy job at Old Navy or Payless Shoes instead of pursuing a career in manufacturing or doing something meaningful and useful. Sorry. I can't generate any sympathy for any of those decisions or the results.

A kid recently told me he had "the best job in the world." He was a guide in the Grand Canyon. So, having recently experienced the tactics guides use to weasel tips out of customers, I said, "Cool, you're a beggar." He was offended. Go figure.

When you spend at least half of the time you're with a customer telling them about how hard you've worked for all of your "outdoors degrees" and how much student loan debt you're in because of those degrees, you're begging. When you mention, every five minutes or so, that your guide has worked hard to show you a good time and that the guide deserves something extra for that effort (even if you paid $500 for a couple of days on a rubber boat), you're begging. When you make a special trip, with your hand out, around the group of tourists to be sure they have an opportunity to tip you, you're begging. There is no such thing as a "professional beggar." You're either a panhandler or you aren't one.

There are all sorts of jobs that are more critical, more entertaining, more helpful and more important than the occupations that incorporate begging. Firemen don't expect a tip after saving a home from a kitchen fire, so why tip a valet for parking a car? Teachers don't expect tips for educating children for a life free from begging and panhandling, so why tip a waitress who didn't bother to listen in school and who chose the high tech life of moving plates from a counter to tables? Not that long ago, craftsmen refused tips as a matter of pride. If we have degenerated so far that begging for handouts has become accepted practice for any act of employment we might as well walk around with "will work for food" signs on our backs.

No tipping for common courtesy and expected service isn't disrespect or cheapness, it's reasonable. You chose your career, you do your job, you know what the salary was when you accepted the job, why imagine the public is obligated to make up for your lack of foresight? If the foodies wonder why most people would rather grab a fastfood burger and go home, look at the unrealistic expectation of "food serving" beggars for your first clue.