03.15.10
Posted in Phlogiston, Stumble and Fail at 9:58 am by George Smith
Part of one new business strategy for making money from nothing is career advice.
At any one moment it’s easy to get the impression that half the on-line revenue in advertising now comes from either offering courses for retraining or the sale of job-hunting advice.
Nowhere is this more obvious than at my hosting provider.
Yahoo relentlessly bombards browsers with ads, columns and stories on getting a job.
For instance, the daily ‘apply for a training grant and go deep into debt to get a 2-year degree or you’ll never get a job’ pitch.
This weekend the New York Times finally latched onto the idea that it’s the latest variation on an American business Ponzi scheme.
Call it working over another subprime crowd of suckers, a lure that promises reward, never to be adequately delivered, if only you’ll go deep into debt to get some kind of vocational training certificate at whatver for-profit little school is offering them in your area.
Or, there is the ‘The 10 best-paying jobs are … post.
And then the always favorite variation on what not to do during a job interview.
Typical advice, condensed: Scrupulously avoid being human and capable of error.
All of these work off the guilt-trip assumption that high unemployment in this country — more specifically, the reader’s lack of it — is the result of character and skill set faults in the job-seeker.
It’s hard to imagine a worse article or one more demoralizing than the link I’m going to post. How not to f— up an interview in 50 — that’s fifty — easily digestible bon mots.
Why only 50 Why not 100? Why not 200?
Doubtless fifty was probably thought to have the best chance at getting linkbacks and ‘most e-mailed’ status among the busy bees scavenging for jobs.
Remember, these advices and articles only work by leveraging desperation. Their ubiquity now guarantees they provide no service or common sense advice that people haven’t already considered.
They work for an industry that needs everyone to believe that American economic calamity is the fault of an inferior US worker.
DD has done the theme up previously here, here and here.
Don’t smell like a cigarette, it advises. Don’t fail to demonstrate the proper qualities of a lickspittle. Don’t smell like this or that. Don’t ask too many questions or talk too much but don’t appear mum. Don’t sit down wrong. Look at the boss but don’t look at the boss.
It’s here — furnished by someone named Karen Burns who knows how to make a job out of leveraging the joblessness of others.
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03.11.10
Posted in Stumble and Fail, Why the World Doesn't Need US at 7:45 am by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! Between Wall Street and the way things are done here, the US is getting set to march proudly into the future. Home-schooling for everyone! Fire more of those slackers with three months off in the summertime.
“The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment,” Brooks said to applause from the standing-room-only crowd.
“And now the public education system is aiding and abetting in the economic demise of our school district,” she said. “It is shameful and sinful.”
Under the approved plan, teachers at six other low-performing schools will be required to reapply for their jobs, and the district will try to sell its downtown central office. It also is expected to cut about 700 of the district’s 3,000 jobs, including about 285 teachers.
“The Kansas City school board voted … to close” fifty percent of its schools to avert bankruptcy it sez.
More than a year ago I coined a phrase that seems to have made its way into the econolexicon; writing about how cutbacks at the state and local level would tend to undermine fiscal stimulus at the federal level, I said that we had fifty Herbert Hoovers.
Krugman
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03.03.10
Posted in Phlogiston, Stumble and Fail, Why the World Doesn't Need US at 8:55 am by George Smith
Little Tommy Friedman discovers — probably for the hundred or more time — LAX is a rotten place to be.
I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport — LAX — last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.
Whenever looking up at the intellectual giants in the sky I never have to strain to see little Tommy jetting about the country (or world) to interview some really big corporate swell. Some person whose boots are always to be licked, be they a wizard sipping strawberry lemonade with Friedman on a patio at Caltech or a king of the corporate world, for it is these people who are packed with wisdoms the rest of us shits cannot fathom or appreciate.
I had a chance last week to listen to Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, the microchip maker and one of America’s crown jewel companies. Otellini was in Washington to talk about competitiveness at Brookings and the Aspen Institute. At a time when so much of our public policy discussion is dominated by health care and bailouts, my public service for the week is to share Mr. Otellini’s views on start-ups.
Yes, I think we can all agree, Intel is quite the start-up. And who better to hear such a man leader than more wonderful and smart people at Brookings or the Aspen Institute, places where the rest of us are properly forbidden to go.
You can guess what comes next.
The same old story: America costs too much compared to China, a real laugher if you’ve been reading any stories about the many medium-sized towns in America emptying out and collapsing as a result of our current national sickness.
What Americans aren’t is too expensive. It’s just damn inconvenient to use them after their wages have been compressed for two decades, because the Chinese are still cheaper and one doesn’t have to worry about pollution, really squandering energy, the occasional pesky union, or dumping hydrofluoric acid into the back lot in plain sight until the silica in the earth catches on fire.
Give us more R&D tax credit, from one of the most successful companies in the world, says the guy who runs it.
Would someone tamp a cigarette out in his eye?
If the government just boosted the research and development tax credit by 5 percent and lowered corporate taxes, argued Otellini, and we “started one or two more projects in companies around the country that made them more productive and more competitive, the government’s tax revenues are going to grow.??? With the generous research and development tax credits and lower corporate taxes they receive, Intel’s chief competitors in South Korea basically have “zero cost of money,??? said Otellini. Intel can compete against that with superior technology, but many other U.S. firms can’t.
We must eat our moldy peas “because smart, skilled labor is everywhere now. Intel can thrive today — not just survive, but thrive — and never hire another American.”
To change this, of course, wealthy corporations must receive more tax credits, government incentives and rewards. So while you are eating your crappy-tasting peas this year and the next, implies little Tommy, you must hope our government smartens up enough to realize it must give much more to those who have everything before it trickles down to those of us grubbing around in the dirt.
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02.18.10
Posted in Stumble and Fail at 2:10 pm by George Smith
Best movie ever, today.
Bill Foster: I helped build missiles. I helped protect this country. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they give it to the plastic surgeons, you know they lied to me.
Sergeant Prendergast: Is that what this is about? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? You’re mad because they lied to you? Listen, pal, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn’t give you any special right to do what you did today.
Falling Down quotes.
Joe Stack: Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.
…Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.
I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand.
Joe Stack quotes.
Somehow, though, after all the rant and effort, they never get after the rich guys in the golf carts at the country club. Just ruining the lives and/or families of the shift office workers or janitorial staff in the same boat.
Lived in Pennsy and SoCal the same time as DD.
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02.12.10
Posted in Stumble and Fail at 3:16 pm by George Smith
“Human Resources people are drowning in resumes and they can’t keep up,” says executive recruiter Mike Oily.
Help your resume win the attention it deserves by following these up-to-date tips from our collection of parasite job-hunting industry insiders.
* “Keep it short,” advises one resume expert. “Resumes are by necessity becoming crisper and more to the point. But also be sure to list necessary qualifications. So it has to be sort of long and short.”
With Twitter, texting, and a barrage of quick-hit multimedia messages, we’re getting accustomed to blip advertising. “Readers lose interest in resumes that are clear and well written. They make them feel inferior. And like newspapers, they’re too hard to understand. This goes for cover letters, too.”
* “Show some humor or personality,” says Jennifer Fonebone of Glabrous, a recruiting and staffing company. “I recently called a candidate, even though he didn’t match any current positions, because his online resume title was, ‘Can juggle a career, the wife, Little League coaching and a fuck buddy all at the same time.'”
* “Make your resume read like a news story,” suggests Sam Clamdandy of The Peckerwood Group. Pop an eye-catching headline like, say — “Will Commit Profit-making Crimes for Pay!” or “Knows How to Legally Steal from Clients!” and be sure to include a summary of qualifications.
* “Be results-oriented,” advises Erin Gobra, assistant director of career services at the Chapman University School of Law. Whenever possible, quantify your accomplishments. Example: Instead of simply writing “Drafted OSHA appeal,” she says, include results: “Drafted OSHA appeal completely eliminating an employer fine for employee’s serious permanently invalid-ing on-the-job injury.”
* “Show what sets you apart,” says Nancy Hu, a director of a Wall Street global executive search firm. “I like to see some indication of personal interests. It’s a good conversation trigger and provides some additional insight into who the person is.”
Another expert agreed: “It’s an opportunity to make yourself memorable as an applicant.” While an actual Personal Interest section is not usually advised, you can find ways to integrate your interests into your resume. For example, your interests should list volunteer activities.
But there’s a special way to do this. Find out the charity the boss likes to press his employees into contributing to — like United Way. Your volunteer activities and philanthropy should then mention you have a passion for giving to United Way.
* “Let others sing your praises,” says Deems Noteworthy, co-author of “Make Getting Fired Work for You.” “We add a section at the end we title, ‘What Others Say.’ Then we list five short statements — not necessarily true, but usually without attribution, that others have said about the person.” Examples: “Sticks with it long after everyone else has gone home,” or “The most creative apple-polishing employee I’ve ever had,” or “The most efficient and unprosecutable swindler of customers this company ever hired.”
* “If your name is difficult to pronounce, change it,” says Heather Gotnohart, president of Rebranding Excrement, an executive search firm. “Companies are more likely to call you for an interview if you provide a name they can easily pronounce,” she says. If your name is something like Wrzbowski or Benalshibh, you can forget it. Change it to something immediately recognizable, like a celebrity’s name, say, ‘Brad Pitt.’
“Then at least the boss will be able to always make an office joke and say ‘Brad Pitt’ is under him!”
And take our free resume test to see if your resume has what it takes to make the cut. Please note: A one time ten dollar processing fee will be charged to your credit card.
Also take America’s #1 Free Career Test for help finding the best career for you. Please note: A one time twenty dollar processing fee will be charged to your credit card.
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02.11.10
Posted in Extremism, Stumble and Fail at 4:09 pm by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! The Teabaggers are offended by Captain America and his sidekick.
In response to Marvel’s explanation and apology, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips told Yahoo! News that it “sounds less like a genuine ‘we’re sorry’ than it does a ‘we’re sorry we got caught’ statement.”
“When I was a child in the ’60s Captain America was my favorite superhero,” he said. “It’s really sad to see what has traditionally been a pro-America figure being used to advance a political agenda.”
The entire howler here.
Hey, there are plenty of right-wing extremist Marvel characters theoretically great for the Tea Party’s big tent.
Nick Fury, The Punisher, Hawkeye, maybe Thor.
Wouldn’t you rather be on the side of The Leader, the Super Adaptoid or Count Nefaria, anyway?
I would.
The best Captain America comics were always those featuring the Red Skull.
Everyone knows that.
And the best comic of all time, Watchmen, is loaded with heroes all Tea Partiers can love. The Comedian — basically Marvel’s Nick Fury, only better and the Nite Owl — who voted for Richard Nixon five times (‘It was him or the Communists!’).
Plus DD’s favorite — Rorschach, who despises the prison shrink for his liberal sensibilities, dislikes homosexuals and utters one of the comic and movie’s most famous lines:
All those liberals, and intellectuals, and smooth-talkers; and all of a sudden no one can think of anything to say.
The Cap and Tea Party news also affords me an opportunity to reprint an old appreciation of Marvel Comics from the archives.
So for your repeat enjoyment:
SHAMED BY YOUR ENGLISH? 40 Years of X-Men will fix that; thigh-rubbing optional
Cyclops is in no position to give an opinion.The
Locust, one in a very long list of silly X-Men villains,
backhands him.
For a couple decades DD was an avid reader of Marvel Comics. Then grad school and the Eighties ended.
In the mid-Sixties, I thought the X-Men were thrilling. In retrospect, I was a pretty gullible kid. Although the X-Men movies have made the group seem hip to a mass audience, truth be told, much of the comic book run is dominated by long stretches of patience-exhausting and/or intelligence-insulting trash. (How ’bout the seemingly endless war against the Brood, interstellar aliens … copied almost directly from the “Alien” movies, right down to poor man’s H. R. Giger conceptions and eggs put in the bodies of characters? Or, Lockheed, Kitty Pryde’s pet fire-breathing dragon from the same stretch?)
If your impression of Marvel is dictated by what’s been recently made in Hollywood, the occasional glimpse of Stan Lee on the SciFi channel (“Who Wants to Be a Superhero,” more accurately entitled “Look At The Neurotic Egomaniacs!”) or articles in entertainment sections about the marvelous goings-on at comic book conventions, you’ve had no glimpse of this sad history.
Your host will dive into the barrel of X-Men fail for the best apples bobbing around in the bunch.
1. Pathetic and silly villains. See The Locust above, anile human! The Locust was one of many in the rotten swarm. (My opinion is that he was a feeble attempt by Marvel to duplicate the Beetle, an early arch-enemy of Spider-Man. The Beetle, however, was only barely worth more than the paper he was printed on, falling somewhere in weakness between the Vulture and Mysterio. In truth, one can really get going and rip a new hole in Marvel for use of excessively shabby villains in any decade. Do you remember Stilt Man from Daredevil, the Man Without Fear?)
Showing up in Uncanny X-Man #24 in 1966, the dialog in this issue is often WORSE than “Away clod! You shall be the first to feel the bite of the Locust!”
On page 4, the Locust is introduced, overseeing his pet giant grasshoppers eating through a corn field. Spell-binding!
“Eat heartily my six-legged subjects!” exclaims the villain. “Too long have lesser mortals lorded it over the abundant planet! It is not the weak who must inherit the earth … but the strong! And we are the strong!”
Stan Lee, in a separate explanatory box, adds: “If, as you read on, it seems to you that our orthopterous antagonist has a distinct fascist fixation, please forward all analyses to mighty Marvel…”
Uh, no, I won’t do it.
Second place for wretched villain from the Sixties mag was Count Nefaria. The Count was a prop across a number of Marvel publications. With no obvious powers — a good beating by any strong man could have taken him out — for X-Men 22, the Count assembles a team of even more unmenacing villains than himself: the Unicorn (a refugee from Iron Man), the Scarecrow (another Iron Man castoff), Plantman, the Eel and the Porcupine.
Nefaria would show up again in 1975 with a crew of flunkies called the Ani-men. One of these was a man-frog, reinforcing Marvel’s early yen for pulling villains from the ranks of the most unthreatening specimens of the animal world.
The bronze medal for worst villains goes to … Frankenstein. Marvel editors were apparently desparate for filler in 1968. It’s a mistake they wouldn’t repeat for more than a decade. Until pulling Dracula from the mothballs for one issue in 1982.
2. Dialog. Closely related to silly villains, it’s consistantly dreadful, even by the hokey corn pone standards of comic books.
“If only I could tell [Jean Grey] the words I really want to say,” thinks the teenage Scott Summers in 1964’s issue 8. “How gorgeous her lips are … how silken her hair is … how I love her! But I dare not!”
Equally horrible was everything that came out of the word balloons written for Hank McCoy, the Beast. The Beast had a double handicap: He not only talked too much, he also looked bad — a man with the physique of a disproportionately tubby gorilla thrust into an ill-fitting uniform. Had they never seen Mighty Joe Young!? Marvel saddled the Beast with the affected vocabulary of a supernerd, one who would never use one word where two with a total of six syllables would do. The only thing Marvel editors couldn’t deliver for him was head-turning bad breath.
“It’s a pleasure to be divested of the encumbrance of our X-Men uniforms,” McCoy says in issue #7. “I wish you would learn to speak English, Hank,” says Ice Man.
By this time, even the most devoted readers were thinking: “I wish Magneto would kill you in this ish, Hank!”
3. Dealing with female characters.
By the Eighties, X-Men was dressing most of its superheroines in variations of dominatrix gear. Marvel Girl had started the original Marvel tradition of women with pathetic powers. Making too much use of her telekinetic abilities often made her weak in the knees during a fight, just like the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Girl.
By the late Seventies, however, Marvel overreacted, turning her into the Dark Phoenix, a woman creature with the power to destroy worlds. But just before that (and killing her off as a menace to the galaxy), they put her into a black corset, G-string and spike-heeled boots. (Think of it as Marvel jerking Jean Grey between the two poles of stupid-looking nerdy girl and menacing sexual predator.)
The way DD figures it, this was catering to the growing X-Men fanbase of young white men, guys who secretly harbored desires their girlfriends — if they had them — would never consent to: The trampling of their johnsons under thigh-highs, smothering, face-sitting, things of this nature.
(See also “Two Girls Out to Have Fun” — issue 189 in 1985. Corsets, bondage collars, maid uniforms, fuck-me spike-heels and fishnets — it’s a thigh-rubbing fest of superhoines in soft pornographic jeopardy. The only thing missing is a frank girl-on-girl sado-masochistic erotic play scene, presumably ruled out by the comics code.)
Cat-fights were also big. Callisto, the leader of the Morlocks, who lived in the sewers under New York City, dressed in tight leather pants and boots. With eye-patch and a got-it-at-Heidelberg-style dueling scar on her face, she was always ready for a close-in knife-fight with Storm, who’d be wearing almost nothing.
Even characters not originally cast in their underwear were dragged into things. The handling of Kitty Pryde surprisingly encompassed both the icky and the prurient. For one adventure, she was left behind as a hostage in an alien spaceship — in her bikini swim suit. What, no other clothes or bedsheets on the Shi’ar spaceship?
In “What Happened to Kitty?” (Uncanny X-Men #179), the answer is given in the first full-page panel. Well, Kitty Pryde was knocked woozy in the previous issue, dragged into the sewers by Callisto’s crew, stripped and dressed in a torn wedding gown slit to show a garter belt and stockings. Two punkettes in similar wear restrain her, presumably to keep the girl from running to the sex crimes division.
Why is Kitty dressed like this? To marry some weird living-in-the-sewer asexual ogre (pulling back on the thigh-rub at the last minute) named Caliban — another famously pathetic X-Men character. Caliban has mercy at the last minute and says he still wants to be her friend. Kitty says OK, because putting her in a Hustler mag bridal gown while she was unconscious was just so much water … through the sewer.
Now all of this has probably given you the impression I don’t like X-Men.
Far from it! Electronically paging through the collection furnishes a touchstone to many things forgotten. If you collected these issues before a parent threw them out in a fit of pique, you’ll have a similar experience. Things long buried in the mind jump up in their musty old sockets as one revisits comics long vanished themselves from near memory. At the very least, it furnishes proof the brain is not yet crippled by dementia.
Indeed, there’s much to like about “40 Years of X-Men.” And, for the purposes of this post, I haven’t covered any of it.
Advertisement from your Marvel mags, ca. early Seventies.
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Posted in Rock 'n' Roll, Sludge in the Seventies, Stumble and Fail at 11:48 am by George Smith
“Why Dontcha Do Me Right” — here.
The above is a song dating from around the time of Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention Absolutely Free album.
And — “Walkin’ for Bumwine in Pasadena Blues,” an instrumental as virtual B-side — here.
Inspired by the two bum wine selling markets on Villa.
From an earlier post here:
Most people think Pasadena is very upscale, a place where it’s hard to find bum wine.
Not true!
In at least one spot, made up of two small markets at the intersection of North Wilson and Villa, Thunderbird and Night Train Express are in stock.
These beverages served and serve a purpose. They’re for when you’ve really hit the skids. And because they are fortified with about 18 percent alcohol by volume, they’re bona fide painkillers.
Yes, it’s been a very bad year here in Pasadena and it looks to only get worse.
Gear: Roger Linn Adrenalinn III
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02.10.10
Posted in Predator State, Stumble and Fail at 12:31 pm by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! President Obama has cozied up to the banksters, calling them savvy businessmen for looting the country, wrecking the world economy and rewarding themselves with huge bonuses.
Sign No. 11 that you live in a dysfunctional country: Your President turns into a nauseating suck-up.
The Prez: Oh, the banksters will take all their money to the Republicans later this year! Tell me what should I do, Timmy and Larry?
Timmy & Larry: Bow and scrape.
Being republished thousands of times around the web right now:
President Barack Obama has praised the bosses of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as “very savvy” and insisted he does not “begrudge” them their success and wealth, in a significant softening of the White House’s attitude towards multimillion-dollar Wall Street bonuses.
Once a staunch critic of outsized pay packets, Obama adopted a strikingly consensual tone when asked this week about a $9m (£5.8m) bonus awarded to Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein and a $17m (£11m) payday granted to JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon.
“I know both those guys, they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in a interview with Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek magazine. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
What you mean by ‘most’, Kemosabe?
Prediction: After ridicule by everyone except the banksters for a week: “What I meant to say was [mumble]…” And it won’t make a difference.
Reward the parasite class, that’s the strategy!
“Oh. My. God,” sez Krugman.
Previously on How To Know When To Quit Your Country.
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02.08.10
Posted in Stumble and Fail at 9:18 am by George Smith
Today’s post comes courtesy of the parasite industry devoted to selling articles and services on how you can get a job in the dreadful economy.
DD cadged it off Yahoo a few weeks ago for it’s especially ludicrous nature: How to know when to quit your job because the business you work for is dreadful. Well, that would be more than half of the jobs in the United States, at least, DD reckons.
So I’ve chosen to steal it and rebrand the thing as a test on how to know when to quit your dreadful, or dysfunctional, country.
10 Signs Your Country is Dysfunctional
Does the United States drive you crazy? Do you sometimes wonder if you are the only sane person living in it? Is America dysfunctional, or is it you? Here’s how to find out!
Sign No. 1: Do large numbers of people in your country spout conspicuous value statements filled with vague but important-sounding words like “freedom” and so on.
Examples:
“America has the best healthcare in the world!” — see here.
“They hate us for our freedom.” — see here.
“We’ve found each other and we’ve found our voice and we are determined to fight for our freedoms,” says [a man who’s last name is Scott], wearing a white ‘Freedom Czar’ baseball cap at the convention.” — see here.
These slogans are never based in reality. They’re just rubbish statements used to end reasonable arguments or cheer-leading pap.
Sign No. 2: Bringing up a problem is considered more as evidence of a personality defect rather than as an actual observation of reality.
Example: “Those who oppose waterboarding are moral fools.” — see here.
In a dysfunctional country, if you don’t adhere to a belief held by many, you are the problem. Anything horrendous, illegal or plainly evil is justified on the basis that it’s a necessity for national security.
Sign No. 3: If by chance there are problems, the usual solution is a motivational pep rally.
From the Associated Press:
First, the independent Ross Perot contingent. Then, the liberal ”netroots” mobilization. Now, the conservative ”tea party” coalition.
No doubt this is democracy at work, a quintessential part of America.
Will the latest political phenomenon become a society-changing movement influencing elections and beyond?
”We are people who understand something wrong is going on in this country, and we want to change it,” says Dan Garner, a married 40-year-old sales representative from nearby Carthage who is new to politics. Like so many others, he’s had enough. ”The core thing is a loss of individual liberty.”
Here.
Attitude is everything. In dysfunctional America, there’s always a mob on the loose — a self-abusive confused mob more interested in tearing things down, setting fire to the place and obeying the interests of wealthier and more powerful people outside the mob aimed at destroying the lives of the people who comprise the mob.
To appear sane you must pretend that the mob is a symbol of democracy, not just a nuts crowd. Dysfunctional America is full of crazy mobs but if you have a good attitude, you won’t mention it. Or you’ll glorify them as part of the way the country solves its problems.
From AP:
”America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this,” Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, told convention attendees Saturday.
Sign No. 4: Double messages are delivered with a straight face. Too many to list.
America is always ending war and bringing freedom by starting up more war or escalating whatever wars it is in.
From Krugman:
Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.
Sign No. 5: History is regularly edited to make executive decisions more correct.
Huge bankster salaries and bonuses for people who wrecked the economy require justification.
“Bonuses must be paid to retain top talent.”
Sign No. 6: Directives are threatening.
“Your seatbelt fine is $720.”
“The fine for that red-light infraction is $500.”
“[With] the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.”
Sign No. 7: Democracy means giving someone the power to do something and then watching them not do it.
Example: Obvious when you think of it, really.
Sign No. 8: Resources are tightly controlled.
The big pieces of the national swag pie go to the military/national security and Wall Street while little or nothing is diverted for the social good or advancement of the country.
Whatever is proposed with regards to advancement and social good, the first and loudest response is that it will saddle the country with ruinous debt.
Sign No. 9: You are expected to feel lucky to live here because America is always the greatest country in the world. And if you don’t like it you should get out, preferably to some other country regularly mocked even though that country has a higher standard of living.
Sign No. 10: Rules and success are enforced based on who you are.
In a dysfunctional country, there are clearly insiders and outsiders and everyone knows who belongs in each group. If you’re wealthy, powerful and/or a celebrity, you’re always an insider and it is everyone else’s job to be a lickspittle to you and to reward you who have so much with even more. Most of the outsiders know this and like it. Only a few don’t and they’re all losers with bad attitudes. Class war is forbidden unless you want to wage it on others in your own class or those in one beneath yours.
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02.07.10
Posted in Predator State, Stumble and Fail at 1:32 pm by George Smith
Fine for unbuckled seat belt, January 2009.
A sign of the country’s dysfunction failure is the escalation of fines as a way to squeeze money out of the populace.
A selection from today’s news tab:
A bill before state lawmakers would increase fines and add driver’s license sanctions for red light violations. — DesMoines Register
Large increase in penalties for anti-social behaviour in Lincoln … PNDs are fines issued by police to people over the age of 16 who commit low-level anti-social behaviour, such as harassment, being drunk and disorderly in … — The Linc
State and local budget crises are causing more municipalities to increase fines for driving and parking infractions as a way to boost revenue … — Los Angeles Times
During its Tuesday night meeting, the Selectboard had a first reading of a change to the town’s traffic ordinance that would increase fines … — Brattleboro Reformer
Report: LA County red-light camera fines soar … the fine has jumped from $271 to $446 and increased at about three times the regional rate of inflation. … — San Jose Mercury News
State and local budget crises are causing more municipalities to increase fines for driving and parking infractions as a way to boost revenue … — Los Angeles Times
Total fines bring in close to $600000 a year. With fines of $5 for the first two tickets in a year, $10 for the third through sixth tickets and $25 for each … — Appleton Post Crescent
The city of Madison plans to increase fines next month for most of the 11 dozen ways motorists can receive a parking ticket … — Wisconsin State Journal
Bayless says last December, city council agreed to increase civil infraction fines as a way to offset a bottoming-out budget — WILX
In California, the government in Sacramento is paralyzed by the same circumstance now halting all things in the nation’s capital. The minority party can, through legislative rules which require an unreasonable majority, destroy the government’s ability to raise money sensibly.
Unable to raise taxes or doing anything to combat fiscal crises, very mediocre local politicians immediately turn to increasing fines for all traffic violations, whether serious or trivial.
The citation stub at the top article comes from DD’s unbuckled seat belt at a stop sign infraction from last year.
That original post is here.
At the time, I wrote:
As if to emphasize the broken and irrational nature of US life in 2009, note this month’s exhibit, DD’s $720.00 ticket for having an unbuckled seatbelt in Pasadena.
Punish the bad scofflaw!
Here’s the story: Around Thanksgiving, your host was stopped at a stop sign. A police cruiser was turning into the street and the officer looked into my car as he went by. And my seat belt was not buckled. He turned the cruiser around, flagged me and wrote out a citation.
Now, there was no amount for the fine on the citation. And in the past, when I once received a speeding ticket, a citation was sent in the mail around a month later with an envelope and bill.
This time, no citation arrived until the yellow piece of paper with the $720.00 fine.
The local government does not have to send out a bill informing the guilty of the amount of the fine and an envelope to pay it. That is merely a courtesy, one that is not always extended. If one does not get the bill, it is your duty to report to court by the date on the back of the original citation.
What is the original fine for an unbuckled seatbelt in Pasadena? A bit over ninety dollars, DD is informed.
Does no one think it is unreasonable to slap an extra six hundred dollars to this fine?
Silence … DD is informed of a deal, which is also on the back of the original $720 ticket. If you pay right now (or seven days from the notice), California will take off three hundred dollars. If you don’t, the Department of Motor Vehicles will revoke your license and it will go to collections.
DD assumes this will play out all over California and in other states in 2010.
Since sending out ticket notices costs extra money, count on not receiving any until your fine is jacked up for missing the due deadline, at which point you will be threatened with further sanction or offered only a slightly less impoverishing deal.
On its editorial page yesterday, the Los Angeles Times seemed to notice that something is wrong with a system that escalates fines for infractions everyone winds up guilty of at one time or another, for the purpose of squeezing out money for failed governmnent.
But the newspaper doesn’t complain very loudly. Just don’t break the law if you don’t want to suffer, it implies. Obeying traffic law is a must.
“Traffic fines as cash cow…” it begins.
“Raising traffic fines has become attractive to politicians because, unlike hiking taxes, it seldom attracts much opposition. That’s OK with us but it’s possible to raise fines to the point that they’re grossly disproportionate to the infraction. We’re getting perilously close to that in LA and in some cases have probably exceeded it.”
Yes, DD would say $720 for an unbuckled seatbelt, no matter how many days after issuance of the ticket, was and is ‘grossly disproportionate’. It is extortionate policy and it spawns contempt for government by existing only to criminalize lots of people who aren’t criminals.
“As a matter of principle, it’s usually smart to tax socially destructive behavior such as bad driving … But if the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, it encourages public cynicism and lawless behavior,” the newspaper continues.
Here’s how that works.
Over seven hundred dollars for a seatbelt infraction, or the reduced ‘bargain’ of $420, on someone who is just hanging on by their fingernails, or who has just lost a job, carries a substantial risk of inability to pay. At which point the person’s license is revoked.
Do they stop driving?
No, they don’t. And with no license, they now stand a good chance of being jailed if they’re pulled over because they still have to … like … drive, either to work or to try and find a job.
“For a low-income driver, a $500 traffic fine — the cost of running a red light in LA when traffic school is factored in — is a devastating expense,” the newspaper concedes.
Extortion of funding through traffic ticketing was discussed here by columnists at the San Francisco Chronicle last year.
Blog readers should be sure to read the comments. The outpour of the pure milk of human kindness raging satisfaction, even glee, over the meting out of such fines is eye-opening.
Eye-opening but not necessarily surprising. When Americans talk about being revolutionaries and fighting the government, they have an unusual view of what this means.
As said last week: After a year of Glenn Beck, everyone’s ready to … hand out punishment for our awful state of affairs.
Filled with populist vigor and the burning desire to set things right, we’ll riot and make sure that tax cuts are made and the government paralyzed so local offices are closed …
Then when state and local government sneak in stealth taxes by unreasonably raising fines and the numbers of things for which one can be fined, it becomes time to scream when the revolutionary gets his. At which point calumny and ridicule are heaped upon him by his formerly comradely revolutionaries, still carrying the fire to burn down government and all social services in our big banana republic.
Until they get their tickets, too.
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