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Underestimated No More!

I had no idea how funny Charlie Sheen was.  I haven't paid much attention to his show and had just assumed it wasn't my cup of debauchery.  But after being forced to hear his diatribe over and over on every news program, radio and television, you can call me a fan.  While ironically enjoying the juxtapositioning of the two protest movements monopolizing the news - Libya and Wisconsin -  I read this hilarious bit on the news thread.

Charlie Sheen: "I'm tired of pretending I'm not special"

My son said so was he.  Aren't we all?  I think Charlie is still not being honest.  He has a way to go before he completely strips the lies and falsehoods imprisoning his pure, true self.  

I'll speed things up.  What he means is he's tired of pretending he's not better than everyone else.

O.K., that's kind of mean.  It's not like I know the guy.  I feel like I do, after this weekend.  I kind of feel like his porn friend, only I don't have to touch his special parts.

 

I have to admit, he's looking pretty special.  Thank God he has his t-shirt slogan career to fall back on.

A Couple of Truisms

1) The side with the drum circles is always in the wrong.  Same goes for the side with giant puppets.

2) The down-trodden do not eat artisanal cheeses and organic tortillas.

3) Extrapolating from one's fear of losing one's obsolescent government job to the destruction of the middle class makes one ridiculous.

Hitler loved a drum circle. 

 

The Elect VS The Private Sector

The public union protesters fascinate me. I can't comprehend the audacity of these people screaming about justice and labor rights. I'm just not the group-think, group-intimidation, group-identifying kind of person. I don't believe someone is a hero for choosing government work over the vacillations of private work. Nor do I think the middle class is under attack because tax payers want to limit the power and entitlements of public sector workers. And I could never disguise my own self-serving demands with slogans and emotions stolen from people who really were/are exploited and down-trodden.

 1) Public union members are simply private citizens that chose to work for the government. It is unfair that they take advantage of characteristics inherent in government work to extort ever greater benefits and security for themselves. It's like inside trading or monopolies. We as tax payers have the duty to rein in their power grab.

2) Collective bargaining allows unions to operate outside and against the interests of the tax payers for the unions' benefit. Give the power back to people elected by and responsible to the tax payers.

3) Let's tell the truth. These protesters are out for themselves, not the middle class. They want to keep the good times rolling. The last thing these protesters want is to work under the same conditions as the private sector. 

4)  And who needs whom? I bet we can fill those union jobs pretty quickly with other qualified people. Could union workers find private work so easily? They have it good. Tax payers just want to hold back their greed and bring some parity between themselves and those whom they support through their taxes.

You are replaceable.  Getting a job with the government should not be a ticket to life-long tenure.  You serve the tax payers' needs. 

 

Wow, there's someone with little perspective. 

 

Fighting for union working families.  The rest of you are on your own.

 

Another case of hubris.  Really?  Realigning civil workers' benefits to what the state can pay is a form of oppression?

 

Here they are.  The professional protesters saving the middle class from rapacious elected officials.

 

 

Organized Madness

I recently read Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt.  I learned a bunch I didn't know. For one thing, I had no idea how much the Nazis and their counterparts in other countries relied on Jewish leaders to organize, administrate, and carry out the complex task of rounding up every Jew and sending them off to their doom.  Of course, the Jewish leaders were not responsible for the genocide.  They had attempted to apply order and reason onto unimaginable events. 

Arendt also made the point several times throughout her book that whenever a country chose to protect their Jewish population, either through evasiveness and sabotage or through out and out defiance, they were quite successful - like Denmark, Sweden, Italy and Bulgaria. Letting Evil happen was a choice.  

She made stabs at why a few countries protected their Jews, and others couldn't shove them into the cattle cars quick enough -- something to do with Jewish assimilation at higher levels of society.  But she admitted that the efforts of Bulgaria to protect their Jews defied easy explanation.  Why wouldn't the people there condone the murder of their neighbors, despite their anti-semitism? 

Arendt attempted to understand and explain how a mediocre man like Eichmann, who professed to have no prejudices against the Jews, who worked hard to find a non-lethal way out for them, could nevertheless end up sending millions of them to their deaths.  She writes about Germans developing a rationale centered on doing their duty, of having the strength to develop a "ruthless toughness" to do what was necessary for the security of the State.  The ends justify the means kind of rationale.

 

 

The Elect VS The Elected

It would be difficult for me to tell the difference between Paul Krugman's editorial pieces from the crazy screeds which pass for comments on them if he didn't have his hypnotoad photo next to his work.  Thank God for that picture.  

In his NYT editorial, Shock Doctrine, USA, Krugman accuses the Republicans of trying to destroy unions so as to assume their powers. Heck right!  Who should have the power?  State employees with the power to bring the rest of us to our knees whenever they decide to stop providing the very services they were hired to provide, or elected officials beholden to the tax payers? Public unions seeking to expand their own interests at the expense of the private sector, or elected officials beholden to the tax payers?  Entrenched government workers whose rolls are ever expanding, or elected officials beholden to the tax payers?  The elected officials, of course.

It's all about power for Krugman and the pro-public union types, too.  But their power.  The power of the left, of the Democrats, of unions; all justified using the charged vocabulary and accusations of a past era with real labor and race problems.  Where Republican types may be anti-union in general, this attempt to return power to those we elected to run our States is of itself a good thing and separate from any anti-union activity in the private sphere. 

 

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Cat Friday!!! Enjoy It Before The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse Get Here!!

Is this not the Beast who slouched somewhere or another?

A Venti For Me, A Commute and Higher Taxes For Thee.

Time and again I've been told by an educated person that they only want to work for non-profits or for the government.  They have no desire to enter into the greedy world of private industry.  They are idealistic, you see.  They want to help people, not sell things to them for a profit.  Because profits are bad.  Money made off of selling services and products to people is a lower sort of pursuit.  And besides, the parts of town devoted to manufacturing, assemblying, and distributing products are ugly.   Nothing more idealistic and humanitarian than being able to buy a venti latte from Starbucks without getting into one's car. 

Working in the private sector is for suckers.  

Union will come for you two.  Union will join your minds to the hive mind.   Ahh, bliss.

Unions Under Threat From Logic

I wonder if one's political views are genetic.  Perhaps we can't help but lean left, right, or vacillate with the crowds.  Perhaps anarchists are born rather than formed through experience and deep thought.  Well, little doubt on that one.  Is being anti- or pro-union deep in our genes? 

I know I have a gut reaction against the union side of the argument in Wisconsin.  Something about government employees massing together demanding concessions from the State and the citizens who pay them rankles me.  And I have an almost physical dislike of words like "workers", "solidarity", "labor".  To have these well fed, well paid, sick leave, paid holidays, pensioned, protected workers speaking like exploited factory workers from the turn of the century is stomach turning. 

If one would be better off in the private sector, as many argue, then change jobs.  Don't try to tell us it's because you care too much, or because you are heroic in your sacrifice.  We know the truth.  It's because government work is the easiest path to a middle class life for the great mass of us who are not going to invent an artificial heart or start up an internet company.  Government employment is a haven for people wishing to avoid  the capricious and demanding nature of working for private individuals or companies.  After all, it's generally not the most driven, intelligent, innovative, or ambitious people who go into government work.  Hate me for saying that, but it is true.

Point?  One) the arguments of the pro-union side are self-serving, exaggerated, and stolen from people who really were or are exploited by the powerful.  Two) Protesting government employees are in no way similar to protesting Egyptians or Libyans despite being asked to pay more into their pension plans.  Three) Collective bargaining means State employees can hold government services hostage until the tax payers capitulate.  And what does the private sector have for leverage against that? 

Finally, I'm only talking about State employee unions. 

 

 

Valentine Photo

Nothing says love like big brown puppy eyes.   And a dog who'll let you endlessly mess with him for your own amusement.

Moscow Friday

This is the Ukraine Hotel near the Moscow River.

 

The particially frozen Moscow River.