I suppose I should let you know that I have no reason to hold myself up as anything but an abject failure. I’ve tried to be an artist all my life and the results, a few nice words of encouragement aside, have been disastrous. My income has been dramatically lowered from what it would have been if I’d continued on a more normal path, and nothing I’ve ever done, be it musically or as a writer, has led to any real payday.
People like me, who are still trying to make it after decades on the ropes, often use some click-bait like the title for this piece to get people to read and then comment on their work. I’m sure many see comments, and threads on their Twitter feed, as justification for their efforts. See world, they are reading me!
Now I’d dearly like people to read my work. That is why I do this after all, other than my somewhat harebrained enjoyment during the act of writing, and my extreme enjoyment if I create something funny. But your comments? Why would I care what you think in a space where you don’t have to use your real name? Truth be told, I wouldn’t care about your comments if they came with your name, address, birth date, and social security number. I’ve never left a comment myself for a similar reason. If I like what you write, say, sing, or play, perhaps I’ll send a family member or friend the link, and that’s it. I don’t need to let everyone know my supposedly important insights and, truly, no one cares what I think.
For those trolls who believe their snarky and sometimes hurtful responses are so funny, I give you an especially emphatic fuck off. You people deserve a place in hell where your eyes are kept open and you must comment for eternity on everything, but in under 25 characters.
Perhaps comments are a way of thinking you belong to a community. That of course, is bullshit. Being part of a community is actively engaging in dialogue, being able to admit you’re wrong when a superior argument comes along, or someone gives you supportable facts you didn’t know. Commenting merely shows the world how smart you are and often, how dumb others are in turn. Like this writer perhaps.
So go on, comment away. Indicate how ancient and out of touch I am for this anti-comment outlook. Just understand I will never, ever, look at what you say. If you want, you can email me at commonmount@gmail.com with some interesting take. Just don’t expect me to comment on your comment.
I’m proud of the young men in the NBA willing to risk money to call out the injustice of America’s white supremacist policy that allows people of color to get shot for a taillight being out on a traffic stop, or for just doing what police say to do, or, as in Wisconsin, for being a good Samaritan and breaking up a fight. These extremely hard-working athletes are putting their livelihoods on the line, but more than that they are saying that we have a voice and we will not be ignored. They represent the best this country has to offer.
Remember these are people who’ve worked extremely hard to enjoy the fruits of a very short career. The time they really shine is right now. In the playoffs. That’s where the endorsements come. Forget the outliers like Lebron James who’ve already made gazilllions, how about the Fred Van Vleets of the world who need this kind of exposure to get a lucrative sneaker deal? They could be risking untold millions if they cancel the season in protest, and injured next year. Their ability to make generational change money could go down the drain.
Don’t think of them as pampered athletes, think of them as smart, hard working young men who are fed up and are stepping up. The same kudus goes to the WNBA players who are using their voice to say enough is enough. I also applaud the soccer players, the baseball players and any other young athlete willing to take a stand for racial justice.
But these young men and woman can’t touch the dark heart of racial subjugation in America. Systemic racism in America, built on the racial justification of slavery and then the brutal Nazi-like Jim Crow that pervaded the south but set the tone for all of white society in America, is built on white people ignoring its consequences. The core problem to addressing racial inequality in America, which everyone sees on a daily basis, stems from the inability of white people to discuss the problems of racism without seeing it through a lens of their hurt feelings. Systemic racism has for generations both denied access to the good life to people of color (grand scale here, not individuals) through redlining, through crumbling, poorly funded schools in poor neighborhoods that both degrade and fail young children of color, through denial of access to good paying jobs open to whites with and without college degrees. And for generations white people have looked away, or if we’ve looked at all have tisked and said things should change and then looked away again.
It’s not that every white person is racist. It’s that our economic system and our system of governance are both built on racist ideology that we have not taken part in dismantling. When I discuss this with conservatives and liberals they often get angry, as if I am calling them out personally. Yes, racism is both personal and societal. But the personal has limited power, ugly as it is. Until white folks are able to look at how white America’s implicit embrace of the systemic subjugation of people of color has poisoned the dialogue, we’re going to be like the rat on the wheel. We’ll have more killings of unarmed men and woman whose only fault was skin tone, we’ll have more of the dismal generational skin-tone-based poverty that destroys community cohesion.
The answers to our problems are pretty clear, invest in schools and job training, invest in development in communities of color, invest in changing our hearts so we look closely at the problem without trying to get out of that by saying “I’m not a racist.” Until we look at the problem and address it through changes in laws and the distribution of funds, until we appreciate the sacrifice of athletes who want to make a stand, until we get to a place where a black person sees a cop car and is not worried that they might die in a traffic stop, than we are all implicitly (and, for too many outright haters like Donald Trump, explicitly) part of the racist problem at the heart of the American Dream.
I operate a retirement center for one persnickety resident, my cat. We named him Pandemonium as a kitten because he was tons of both fun and trouble. Long, strong and large enough to weigh upwards of 17 ponds before he slimmed down to a fighting weight of 11, Pandy has become a wise 15-year-old cat who has arthritis and kidney trouble. It’s he who graces my blog because, damn, I love him.
A digression, Pandy refuses to acknowledge his name in short or long form but does respond to the generic “kitty-cat” quite well. By quite well, I mean he will acknowledge that someone is calling him and, if he thinks it’s in his best interest (either food or getting some behind the ears rubbing) he will even come on over and say hello. I think I’ve called him Pandemonium twice in the last decade, both times when annoyed at him, like a displeased father calling a child by their full name, including middle.
A lifelong indoor/outdoor cat and inveterate mouser, Pandy now relies on pain meds to get through the day with just a serious limp. He still loves sleeping under my flowers, or going on walkabouts on our half acre property, as well as the lands immediately adjoining ours. And, since cats want to be cats till they die, limp and all he’s still chasing after prey. Quite spectacularly, he still gets about one kill a week, mice, rabbits, voles and other small prey.
These days I try to monitor his movements, but there is really no protecting an independent minded cat when they’re outside. Not without costly surveillance technology. I thought of a collar cam but besides the cost, Pandy’s never worn a collar. If you’re tisking about his lack of a collar, don’t. I’ve asked Pandy if he wants one and the answer is a definitive “No.”
Pandy’s such a good mouse that he’s kept our old farmhouse, with its myriad small inlets perfect for rodent invasions, fairly free of rodents since he arrived here full of love and mischief in equal measure.
One type of kill is exceedingly rare, perhaps twice in fifteen years my cat has killed a bird. And I fed the birds for about ten years too. Pandy would stay in the bushes near the feeder, but still had little success hunting them. I’ve asked others living with cat hunters and they report similar results. This makes sense. With the advent of farming and larges scale stored food, rodents became more of a problem which attracted that segment of the hunting population that already lived on rodents, cats. Cats are literally built for killing mice and other small mammals. Humans are nothing if not adaptable, so we adapted to cats. Over the course of their time with us, cats unlike dogs, never really became domesticated. There’s evidence for this in cat DNA compared to wild sources and dog DNA compared to wolves. There’s much more divergence between domesticated dogs and wolves than between cats and their baseline stock in old Eygpt and the Fertile Crescent. Interestingly the biggest divergence is in their coats. We like cute killers with a tabby coat.
For something like half their tangled relationship with people, which only goes back about 10,000 years compared to dogs 40,000, cats kept to themselves. They stayed in the shadows and ate the rodents who were also busy becoming part of our messy story.
And now we get to my pet peeve (forgive the pun). There’s shitty science out there claiming that cats kill an enormous number of birds. I’ve had cats for about 45 years and not one has killed birds with any regularity. Pseudo-science articles using highly questionable data sources (like the remembrances of pet owners in one study in New Zealand) have come up what every cat owner has suspected is wildly exaggerated data about cat bird kills. I’ve had bird lovers tell me I’m akin to a mass murderer for disregarding my four-legged avian menace. When I ask them if they’ve ever seen evidence of cats successfully killing large amounts of birds, I’ve never heard people say yes.
This is not to say a cat wouldn’t want to kill a little bird. I’ve already admitted their cute little barely domesticated killers. Birds probably taste like chicken, which Pandy loves. Perhaps a small percentage of cats achieve a high success rate killing birds. The majority of kitties just aren’t built for success at that endeavor. But the idea that scientific journals could deny the evidence in front of their face and publish articles proclaiming outdoor house cats are participating in avian ethnic cleansing seems absurd. Consider this, where outdoor cats exist in their millions, suburbia, is where birds are doing spectacularly well. The argument goes that cats are outrageous killers who without human intervention, i.e. imprisoning all cats inside, will decimate cute little bird populations. But in the Suburban landscape, the biggest test scenario for this theory, the place where cats and birds exist together in large numbers, birds are doing extremely well. When real world facts contradict a flawed analysis, in order for the facts to be ignored someone’s been sipping the cool aid laced with stubbornness.
This blog post https://outthefrontdoor.com/2015/09/17/bird-conservationists-whats-wrong-with-this-picture/ does a nice job pointing out the holes in the cat killer idea and has links to other pro-cat information. But all you really need is to look at a cat. They may try to kill birds, but birds have one significant advantage. Cats can only fall when they try to fly.
Though I never saw him play, Mickey Mantle equaled god in a Yankee uniform. Yes, I’m THAT old. I blame the Mick for my becoming a Yankees fan at a time when the Yankees sucked and everyone loved the Mets
My dad loved Dimaggio, the baseball god of the 1930s and
40s. Between Mick and my dad, my Yankee embedded fandom so deeply I can’t root
it out no matter how loutish Steinbrenner was, or how much Yankee fandom feels like
rooting for Amazon.
I remember the excitement of just putting on the little league uniform. I fondly recall sifting dugout sand through my fingers while I waited for an at bat.
One thing about baseball, it’s got tons of waiting for
something to happen time.
With decreasing attendance, the game’s overlords are
panicked by the thought that everyone under 35 will consider watching paint dry
more exciting than going to a ballpark. And about $100 less expensive!
I had cause to wonder just how long this anachronistic game
could last during the recent 2018 playoffs when my Yankees bowed out meekly to
the hated Red Sox. I’m a hardcore fan happy to watch parts of 100 Yankee games
per year, (don’t judge) but I fall asleep during literally every PLAYOFF game.
I think doctors should recommend baseball for insomniacs,
it’s a much healthier way to get some z’s than Ambien.
Baseball games meander along with little besides a pitcher
staring straight ahead for long periods of time until those few moments of
drama whip up the crowd of half-drunk fans (giving credit where it’s due, many
are fully drunk). Then there’s a fabulous amount of beer drinking, towel waving
and screaming vitriol at the opposing players. These days Americans need constant
action, or at least consistent shouting, to maintain our interest while
reclining on the couch with our favorite adult stimulant.
Baseball gives us green lawns, watching players scratch and
shift their groinal area, and sonorous announcers pontificating on launch
angles.
Basketball gives us constant motion of semi-undressed hyper-athletic
specimens who sometimes fly. Football provides shouting, violence, drama, violence,
tactics, and more violence. Hockey gives
us fighting combined with figure skating, and beer. Even Soccer has constant action,
albeit some of the “action” seems like meaningless running about for the
uninitiated.
Walt Whitman thought the game would cure the nation in the
1870s after the civil war nearly tore it asunder. But in those days just being
able to see grass meant a ton to the urban masses. And before the days of
constant stimuli, baseball seemed amazingly active. Seeing adults run was a
novelty in and of itself. Back then no one ran after the age of 12; it was the
law.
Pundits proclaimed the boring game dead many times: first in
the 1890s when horse racing, cockfighting, and boxing ruled; again in 1919
after the World Series was thrown; and in the 1990’s when management greed
killed the world series. Yet baseball still enriches old white dudes (show me a
non-pale baseball team owner not named Derek or Ervin) and defies expectations
by increasing revenue.
But kids play games that are more fun.
How long can a game last when a late fifties guy like myself inhabits the younger fan demographic?
Predicting the future is a stupid endeavor – ask the vast
majority of economists who never saw the 2008 deregulation depression coming on
– so I’m going to predict away. Sometime around 2030 baseball fandom will be
the exclusive realm of old dudes like me who usually fall asleep by the third
inning. Baseball will probably go the way of bowler hats sometime around 2050,
about the time the last owner extorts billions from a dying city to build a
stadium.
But then again, people have said that sort of thing before.
I’d planned my next blog post to take on that crucial issue of how baseball is too slow for the modern world. But I just started reading Andrew McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump and it brought home two things: First, even with a literary team of helpers, McCabe chose the correct career path in the FBI (OK that was bitchy). Second, McCabe is a patriot and we should heed his warning.
McCabe’s unquestionably an American patriot for shouting out the warning of an existential threat to our core structures: The infiltration of the halls of political and economic power by the Russian mob/state. As McCabe reminds us, in Russia the thieves run the state and the state is run for the needs of the thieves, and they are trying to remake the world in their image.
In this game, Trump and his inner circle are convenient dupes to be used until their usefulness has come to an end.
It’s sad that a failed state like Russia has infiltrated the US with the wink-wink, nod-nod from conservatives who used to rail against Russia when the kleptocracy was communist. With more than double the population of Italy, Russia basically has the same GDP. Its people are poor and stuck in their class, but the thieves who run Russia use nationalist pride to maintain their power by, say, annexing Crimea. Organized around a thief in chief named Putin, the Russian mob-state reaches tentacles into the halls of western governments and multinational businesses.
Don’t believe me? The Bank of New York happily laundered Russian mob money to the tune of billions of dollars. This is no longer a small concern that won’t affect our lives because the Russian mob is ‘only’ preying on small businesses and importing sex slaves.
Sadly, the Republican Party and the American
conservative movement have become either a wholly owned Russian subsidiary or
just happy to accept the Rubles and look away from the consequences. Either way,
conservatives in America are in bed with a mob-state, and that kiddies, will
certainly have long-term consequences.
The evidence is clear that the President has been compromised by Russian mobsters for decades, ever since his series of bankruptcies left him bereft of sugar daddies and they were the only source of cash. Just ask Donnie Jr. who when speaking of the family’s business empire in 2008 said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
Since then Donnie Senior’s needed even more infusions of cash from his Russian mob friends to help with things like his failing beauty pageant and his standard of living. The connections between Trump and the thieves from Russia are too numerous to mention – just try a google search and look for scholarly critiques if you don’t want to believe legit news outlets who’ve basically done the same thing and said “Holy Shite!”
Or pick up McCabe’s book.
I am terribly disheartened that a merely decent google search for Trump + “Russian Mob” or Republican Party + “Russian Mob” will prove scary enough to anyone worried about America’s ability to solve domestic problems, let alone our ability to tackle international problems like global warming.
But the incoherent conservative rage insulates the right wing from the consequences of Russian influence since most of their base of support would discount all the evidence. Why? Because they’re angry and responsive to a whole industry stoking their anger. Since time immemorial group anger remains the best emotion for keeping people hoodwinked.
Unfortunately, the consequences could be substantial for the 2020 election. If that happens I’d like to say that only the Republican party will shoulder the blame, but all of us should have seen it coming.
Thirty five years ago Tetris launched and instantly proved that electronic addiction didn’t need fancy graphics. Not really. Tetris had a still birth and was resuscitated by accident. But once resuscitated, Tetris ruled.
Tetris contains one rule – destroy the nasty puzzle pieces that endlessly fall by organizing them into a row. Like golf, no matter how good you get against the endless geometric rain, you could do better. Can we explain Tetris longevity because it’s like a Buddhist metaphor for life? Perhaps that’s why back from the dead Puma will be debuting a Tetris inspired sneaker this October. This combination of dated brands should be called retro soled retro.
In 1984, a Russian computer programmer named Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris. It seems quaint now, with Russian hackers making coin attacking websites, elections and bank accounts, but this game was built for old fashioned capitalism. The name Tetris is a mash up of the Latin word tetra, and tennis. Tetra means four sided, since all those falling shapes are built from squares, and tennis, well that was Mr. Pajitnov’s favorite game.
Caught in the end game of the USSR, Pajitnov tried to convince some Soviet committee to allow him to sell Tetris in a bundle with other games. As they so often do, the bureaucrats couldn’t see the point. There it may have lain, but for the funny thing about the early internet.
Before we ever heard of a computer virus, people considered the internet a safe space to share files and silly games like Tetris. Pajitnov and his team shared the game with friends. Pajitnov’s team shared other games too, but those sucked. However, Tetris jostled the internet like the cutest cat video ever. The game spread across time zones solely through file sharing, and quickly ended up in the US. There Tetris found it’s way into the lap of Henk Rogers. Henk took the unusual path of manufacturing game cartridges for Nintendo before acquiring the rights to Tetris from the Soviets. He nearly lost his shirt before giving the Russians a shit ton of money. After court battles in the US between game companies trying to corner the market on this simple little game, Tetris made gazillions for Microsoft through its Game Boy franchise. Remember Pajitnov? He made diddily on Tetris.
People played so much Tetris they saw the falling shapes when they closed their eyes and dreamed about it when they slept, giving rise to the term Tetris Effect. More recently, since a spectrum of electronic gaming is reshaping minds, medical science broadened the term to Visual Game Transfer Phenomena (VGTP). Tetris Effect sounds much cooler. One study found that playing Tetris thirty minutes a day increases connections in the brain. Nice.
In the late 90s, displaced by fancier and bloodier games, Microsoft just threw in Tetris as a freebie with its operating systems. That’s how a certain member of my family discovered it, and if playing three hours a day qualifies, was addicted. She needed a few Tetris interventions or she might still be playing the game nearly two decades later.
Even after 35 years, people still play the game enough for companies to invest time and energy developing new versions. Though today’s graphics are fancier and the new iterations have names like “Tetris Effect” (A geeky attempt at humor) and “Tetris 99” – the basic destroy the puzzle theme is relatively untouched.
Tetris remains relevant enough that Hollywood’s planning a TRILOGY of Tetris themed movies. Ye Gods! One seems like far more than enough for a franchise that has no story and no characters.
Thirty five years after beginning its peripatetic launch, simple little Tetris still has that IT factor.
In fifth grade I was a rebel, mostly without a cause. How could I really have one? My parents loved me, so did my siblings. I grew up in a wealthy suburb with everything I could want – including a refrigerator dedicated entirely to soda. What more could a fifth grader aspire too?
Unlike most eleven-year-olds, I loved reading history and had developed a radical viewpoint because of reading books like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Growing up in a time of strife helped form my world view as well. The Vietnam War was still raging, school busing was an intensely divisive issue, and I could easily take a train into New York City to see the effects of poverty and racism on our culture. At that time, NYC was a poverty-stricken mess with something like a million heroin addicts, if the papers could be believed. Back then heroin primarily affected the poor, the dark-skinned and the dispossessed, so the only weapon used against it was mass incarceration.
One day, amid this swirling maelstrom of war, racism and poverty that I saw all around me (but did not feel on a personal level), I sat down and refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Even though the teacher who wanted us to recite it was my favorite teacher ever, shout out Mr. Stamler, I felt honor bound to protest. Eventually, Mr. Stamler shrugged, and told me to go to the principal’s office.
The
next day my mother sat in the principal’s office with me, and listened to Mr.
Stamler go over the details of my
behavior. When he finished, she asked
the principal if they’d questioned me about my motives. Mr. Stamler knew what
motivated me; so he shut up. But the principal took the bait, and asked me why
my ass remained planted.
When I
responded that America seethed with racial and economic injustice and the pledge ignored those national shortcomings,
the principal looked perplexed. I’m sure he expected something less nuanced
from an eleven year old kid of privilege. When he asked my mother what she thought about
my reply, she asked him to refute anything I said. Within moments I was back in
class, and the pledge was not said in that room for the rest of the year.
I’m not reminiscing because my mom is one of my heroes for this and a number of reasons, but because an eleven year old youth from Florida was arrested for not saying the pledge. That’s right a boy was arrested for exercising his first amendment rights. Oh they dressed it up with other charges than “refusing to pledge.” This fifth grade threat to the national peace was accused of four things: Threatening the teacher with violence (for which they have no evidence); “Nonviolently resisting arrest” -an eleven year old unsurprisingly lost his cool and shouted when the police dragged him from the room; Not following directions (all my kids should have been arrested as eleven year olds for that); Saying the principal should be fired.
Of course, the boy is black. Could you imagine a white child arrested for similar behavior? I could understand, though not agree with, the child receiving some school based disciplinary action, but arresting an eleven year old for voicing opinions and losing his cool?
The kicker? The pledge was being administered by a substitute teacher who was unaware that children have the right in that district to not say the pledge. Given that the very first amendment to he Constitution guarantees the exercise of free speech, perhaps all kids should have this right? But that is a topic for another post. Maybe my case would have been handled differently if it were to occur today. But given my family’s color and economic circumstances, I doubt it.
The art of listening to, or reading something you disagree with and then responding with passion, humor and intelligence is gone. The best ripostes combine analysis with humor. This devastating combination slays. But humor takes insight, insight usually requires thought, and thinking can be time consuming. Unfortunately outrage generates gets clicks, twitter followers, and sends eyeballs to your blog. Sadly outrage also allows people to feel secure in their world view, making it a useful tool for the money hungry.
I get a host of science, sports and political click bait. Of
the three formats, my science feeds are the most likely to use humor. No doubt the
authors are ladling humor so idiots like me won’t be overwhelmed by da big
words. Commentators on sports and politics know three forms, analysis (so rare
and so appreciated), hyperventilating over some minor issue and outrage over
the inevitable stupidity of humanity. That politics and sport have adopted the
same anger-management game plan seems natural in the fractured society that is
twenty first century Amerika.
I can generate anger over income inequality, idiotic
rollbacks of science based environmental policies, rapine corporate greed,
racism, global warming or a host of other things I’m really fucking passionate
about. But even though I’ve always blown up easily, I never could maintain
anger over some societal issue. Anger never solves complex issues. Like arguing
with your lover over cleaning, anger over societal problems inevitably becomes
too much work for too little return.
The thing that anger does do very well is consumer segregation. You’re a right wing nut job in love with guns, here’s your soupçon of trope about socialist Jewish bankers coming for your guns in the middle of the night. You’re like me (depending on your political beliefs, I am either totally rational or so left wing I’m wacky) here’s ANYTHING with Trump’s name on it. Now froth for the camera and post us a selfie angry style! Hashtag #yourangerisourmoney. Facebook loves anger. Anger separates the angry into groups where the eyeballs are that much higher priced for advertising. I’m sure a crass marketer has pitched targeting white sheets to white nationalist Facebook groups. Spoiler alert, I’ve always thought social media like F-book a waste of time except for the travel pics, some amazing photography posted by a college friend I haven’t spoken to in decades, and WHATEVER my daughter or sister post. I’m a curmudgeon, not a fool.
I’ve lived nearly 60 years in a world awash with the problems that ring my bell, like greed, racism, environmental horror, police brutality, and dictatorships. Undoubtedly, the struggle against those problems will continue indefinitely. The haves like having-too-much, the despoilers like their jobs/profits, police work for the rich so they will from time to time brutalize to enforce the economic divide that racism and class-ism reap, and dictators love their money and the power. Our problems will persist. While some listen, no good comes from vitriol. The great heroes of our age all used love and/or inspiration to motivate change – from Ghandi, to JFK to King to Mandela, even Bernie. Mandela won because world opinion sided with his peaceful message and isolated Apartheid from international capital. How motivating would a race to the moon have been if Kennedy shouted I’m really fucking outraged the fucking Russians might fucking get there first?
Why Private Infrastructure Investment Is Bad for America
Soon President Trump will deliver a State of the Union speech calling for a public/private infrastructure vision as devoid of specifics as the idea of public/private infrastructure is devoid of any benefit over traditional projects.
For decades American politicians have undervalued the return on infrastructure investing by the public sector because, you and I dear voters yawn about infrastructure and complain if taxes rise due to it. I get literally thousands of wide eyed alerts for this or that progressive cause, but nary a whisper about the things as boring as seawalls to combat inevitable sea level rise, or a smart electric utility system set up to accommodate widespread solar and wind generation. Until we stop focusing on the glitz and the tweet wars no one will remember the truly important and so very boring topic of infrastructure.
But with our roadways, tunnels, and bridges getting a grade
of “D” by the American Society of Civil Engineers and our transit systems living
in a dream world where all problems could be solved by adding another lane to
the highway, we must address both vision and financing.
As for the vision, redoing the solutions of the 1950’s will guarantee that global warming will literally wash away much of the work. The goal of infrastructure investment shouldn’t be recreating the same archaic transit systems, or simply replacing the old electric grid with a newer version of the same thing. My vision would be to find new ways to move people to and from work so that private vehicles are used for the “last mile home” so to speak, or in urban areas not at all. From roadways to train tracks to our power grid and every other infrastructure investment, we need to meet the future problems of sea level rise and other global warming effects head on. Otherwise we fail the future and just waste our money.
I will say this upfront, I am talking about the public
sector investing trillions of dollars. Any politician worth their salt should
run away from that sentence, because without you and I signing petitions clamoring
for the investment, this idea is dead on arrival.
The latest fad in public sector financing is to implement a
series of regressive fees and then institute profit oriented solutions that
would increase the cost to Americans because it would increase the profit for
the few. Instituting Mileage Based User Fees on highways, a classic trope of
conservative thinking on the issue, would just export the financing burden from
government to the middle class. Of course if you’re wealthy you could pay a bit
more for the premium lanes on the highways of the new America.
The other financing option corporate America loves would
allow private investment to shoulder some of the upfront costs so they can
recoup money for decades and decades in the form of tolls, outright government
payments or, usually, both. And most of these agreements come with clauses that
only benefit the corporation involved. One Virginia project stipulates that if
too many people use car pool lanes, thus reducing the profits, Virginia will
pay the companies involved. After a terrible sweetheart deal in Indiana ran
afoul during the Deregulation Depression, the companies involved filed for
bankruptcy, a new private company came in, and voila fees on the road doubled.
The only way to do public financing is to tax gasoline, all carbon use, and institute a progressive income tax rise on the 1% and unfortunately on the rest of us too. There’s no sugar coating this, if America wants to have modern transit systems, with sleek trains going hundreds of miles per hour and dams that don’t fail, and solar and wind farms that generate electricity, we need to pay for it collectively. I know it sucks, but the private sector will still get to build the projects, they’ll just have to deal with public oversight and public financing and the loss of billions in excessive profits.
For the last fifty years monopoly capitalism has been destroying
diversity of our choices with a seemingly unquenchable desire to obliterate all
competition in the name of profit. When I was growing up I could shop at any
number of local stores, all gone now and replaced by national retailers. In
recent decades monopoly has become the accepted norm, the gaming of the system
only increasing as the grand experiment of the internet has gone off the rails
with a few monoliths controlling what we search for, how we socialize and what
we buy.
Remember the promise of the internet in the 1990’s? Of
course you don’t because no one utters any nonsense these days about a free
exchange of ideas and commerce. Oh yes we bleat about net-neutrality but that’s
because we want our Netflix movies to play without any interruption. Most
people have the same choice for high speed internet service as I do, a single
provider.
Remember when a search would take you to independent little
sites no matter what you asked for, be it band aids, shoes, dildos or news? Try
that today and you get Amazon shilling all four. It’s no coincidence that monopoly
focused Amazon pays terrible wages unless you’re a software developer or
considered their intellectual kin. People working in Amazon’s warehouses make
less per hour than those software developers spend on a breakfast latte and a
muffin at a monopoly coffee company called Starbucks. As an aside, from my
jaded point of view, though I love really strong coffee, Starbucks burns the
roast and deserves to go out of business for just that tragedy.
Starbucks is a perfect example of how monopolies look good,
but at every layer of the onion they suck for society. Starbucks outlets look
modern and happy, but it pays shit wages for mostly part time jobs without
benefits. They don’t hire local suppliers because they’re centralized and
everything needs to be the same in every Starbucks. Starbucks pays the
equivalent of $25,000 for most of its full time jobs. The definition of working
poverty. From news to shoes we have less and less choice of what to buy and
where to buy it as monopolies eat smaller fish and then centralize their diet
by dining on each other. Remember Sears? Or JC Penny? Soon we’ll have just Wal
Mart and Target left and they’ll be owned by the same corporation under the
justification that cheap goods makes our economy strong.
It is, of course, bullshit. Cheap goods helped destroy
American unions, leading to a low wage economy, less workers’ rights and laws
protecting voracious capitalism with Orwellian names like Right to Work. No
wonder we’ve seen 50 years of unremitting wage stagnation for workers with and
without college educations, while the few, that 1%, take an ever greater
percentage of the society’s wealth.
I write this cause I worry about my kids, and yours. Every
issue where greed trumps humanity and the environment can be traced to the lack
of diversity in commerce and thought. Why does the cost of health care rise
over the rate of inflation? Because health care is a monopoly. A select few
companies control drug prices, ninety percent of our nation’s pharmacies are
owned by two companies, and the doctors we visit now uniformly work for local
monopolies. Every successful monopoly seeks higher profits though higher prices.
Personal diversity is revered by the left (My people), but we need to start
equating economic diversity with public health.