I approached an intersection that approached an on ramp where someone, intoxicated, had stomped the gas into the floorboard to make the light – trying to get onto the Interstate. They’d hit the car (which was progressing under a green light now) square in the drivers side at about 50mph, almost killing the driver. Instead the driver of that car laid in the car dying, blood pooled around everywhere while some others around called the emergency crew. The drunk driver was however immediately punished by fate. They had been flung through the window, being severely cut and bones broken. That however was the easy part of this incident. The driver at that speed broke through the windshield and then flew forward making it over the car that was impacted in the side. There was a “dragons tail” of blood from there all the way to were this person had stopped flying forward. There sat their corpse. Absolutely horrible scene. Both innocent and guilty dead. The innocent suffering the most… as it took about an hour for them to die as others tried to save them.

Horrible story, but to take note. Stay safe, stay of sound mind when driving. Don’t kill people, that’s not cool. Please don’t operate anything over 5 mph when intoxicated, hell, one shouldn’t even walk too fast when drunk! Find a good couch, relax, enjoy one’s altered reality.

Seriously, I can’t say it enough. America sucks for drinking, it is absolutely the reverse of logical about it unless you live in a major urban center (i.e. Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, you get the idea). One has to be extra careful in this country about driving out to drink… simply, if you’re in control of a car you shouldn’t drink ANYTHING (cept water and such).

Nice Statistics

Gun ownership for instance, is vastly higher among the older rural middle class than urbanites.  Funny were the crime happens.  :/  hmmmmm.  Make yourself prey, the crazies will attack.  However the suburbs are the new crime zone…   how strange and awkward for those conservative Republican enclaves of the suburbs. They’re like the hypocrites of the party.  :(

However most progress and wealth is NOT created in the rural world, it is almost solely focused in urban areas.  Even the suburbs provide a moderate middle class generation of wealth, and often are a net loss to urban and rural workers. How perverse really, that the suburbs are labeled the “American Way”.

Funny when one looks at the various numbers, statistics, correlations, actual causation, and other numbers.

It really makes registered Democrats and registered Republicans seem like a bunch of cranky, unyielding, nut cases…

…even though the media would have us all think the “middle of the road” people are the crazies.  WTF?!?!

Economics and Annoying Smart Guys

First I’ll bring out a point. An economic fact is that politicians really can’t create jobs. They’re horrible at it. At least honest, truthful, prideful jobs that Americans want. Hell, that people anywhere want. The Soviet Union was a PERFECT example of this. They created lots of jobs. But jobs that people didn’t really care about. Japan also does this, and because of their social and cultural rigidity (along with a host of other reasons) they have a vastly higher suicide rate than the United States has even during a recession. Politicians are the LAST people we should look for the create “jobs”. Politically created jobs do not sustain an economy, they eventually are short lived and often cause more damage to the sustainability of the economy than good (unless you believe in Keynsian economics, which even then he stated the Government should have limited efforts in attempting to put people to work, as the economy is a vastly superior “thing” to create jobs than the Government).

Now dont’ get me wrong, I think Boehner and the Republicans are generally a bunch of douche bags. At least the vast majority of them. They also have no message these days and are growingly confused about themselves. However, the Democrats are just as guilty of this nonsense. They promise change and deliver continued mediocrity.

The fact is at the core of so many things, there are root problems in our system right now. It could be we may NOT recover from this recession. We may never see less than 8-10% unemployment again in our life times.

Now you also however point out the Bush Tax Cuts. They haven’t done anything to increase or decrease the job count. It’s mostly bullshit to argue this or that about the tax cuts. All it means it he rich get to pretend they have a lot more money than they do. Notice I said pretend, most of this wealth is fictitious and a lot of people that scream about the rich don’t realize that it’s a theoretical game. It’s not like it could be magically redistributed to everyone in the population. Right now, if it started to flow back into the economy (i.e. the rich started investing heavily in labor and other lower income jobs to fill out that unemployment gap) the currency would drop even further against competitors.

We’d ALL be screwed in that case. Ya see, one might blame the rich, or say it is unfair that they’re only paying 28% now instead of 33% in income tax. But the fact is, we’re all in this together and they’re are a few primary parties that are to be held accountable for setting all of this imbalance in place.

You may not realize it, but it is in LARGE part the responsibility of the Democrats AND Republicans.

The instability of the dollar, the decreasing value of the dollar, and the core way we operate our economy on this fiat currency is the root of this entire problem. We encourage unsustainable promises to the population such as home ownership, a car or two in every garage, easy child rearing, and all sorts of other nonsense that is absolutey NOT sustainable at our current rate of consumption. Our currency is suffering for it and other countries that have propped it up will push for the rich and poor gap to GROW just by beginning the process of dumping our currency. China for instance, has already set themselves up to rid their economy of a Trillion (yup, a TRILLION) dollars in Government Backed Bonds!! That means there will be a massive payout to the Chinese from the Government. The Government doesn’t have the money to pay them back, so that will have to come from an incursion of more inflation and larger debt incurred on our backs.

We won’t get a say in it either because the Feds are setup to work in collusion with the Federal Reserve to push the inflation up. The Federal Reserve is there to protect our currency, but they’ve lost a lot of the tools to do so (such as a REAL item to back the currency, it is nothing but fiat now. No gold, no silver).

That leaves us with a conflicted system. With less and less investors looking to us as a growing value opportunity. The country continues to move into the future demanding the world provide us with 25% or so of the world’s petro energy while we only make up a small portion of the world’s population (15% or so?) Our demand continues to increase while our mitigation of its use has not. We aren’t building transit nor are we building or zoning our cities more intelligently. Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago are about the only cities that have and are acting to mitigate the problems.

I know you like to think that this tax cut is a big impactor to the overall economy, but rest assured it is NOT. The greatest threat, and I can promise you this, is that the wealthy that DO want to invest in this country are starting more and more to look to just leave. The US is burning its bridges with people who can do something about this economy. Let’s take a few examples:

Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) – You may love or hate Microsoft, but they wanted to tack a tax, regulations, and other fees, costs, etc onto Microsoft and indviduals in Steve Ballmers position. Most of the time all you will read about and see is the bullshit in the papers, which is highly hyperbolic. Always check your premise. Ballmer has fought this moves because it will in fact cost Washington & other states were Microsoft has a presence around a thousand jobs. These are high paying and good middle class jobs. Almost entirely the responsibility of the Government, Democrat AND Republican for stopping this expansion of jobs.

Bezos (Amazon CEO) – Again, another company that is continuously fighting with states over their byzantine and draconian tax laws and regulations. The states (and feds) have prevented the company from hiring hundreds and expanding business that would require many more hundreds of jobs. These are high paying and good middle class jobs. Almost entirely the responsibility of the Government, Democrat AND Republican for stopping this expansion of jobs.

BNSF, UP, and other Railroads – Multiple companies that employ a combined total somewhere around 90k Americans in blue collar work. Work we’re desperately short of in this country today. They’re always under continued pressure from the Government, are HEAVILY regulated, and the feds + states recently have threatened to re-regulate them. During the 70s the freight railroads suffered heavily. Hundreds of dozens of jobs lost with dozens of thousands of track miles lost. All because of ridiculous and draconian regulation. The 80s saw those regulations wiped out and a massive stabilization of the railroads. Which now employ, very productively, thousands of Americans to move products around the country in one of the cleanest modes of transport in the country.

Gore (the company, not the X-VP) is one of the most open companies in the world. With great practices, management, leadership, and otherwise. They’ve also been stymied multiple times from the Government from expanding their employment because of the “pull of politics”.

The USDA has stymied further advances around Organic Food. (http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/organic-hydroponics-460110?src=rss) that could lead to further jobs in farming better, higher quality food, etc.

The list of interference from the State & Feds is massive. The “Taxes” the rich have to pay are not a problem, if payed or not payed. They’re still paying them. Even as it is the bottom 9% income earners of the top 10% income earners (be sure to read that correctly, it always tongue ties me to say it) still pay the vast bulk of taxes for an income spread. The top 1% still pay a massive amount.

Think about it for a minute. It isn’t a matter of these taxes. The fact is, the Government is in the way of job creation on a number of fronts and when they can help encourage job growth they often screw it up. Both Republicans and Democrats. We need empowered local leaders, real leaders, and the State & Fed leaders need to focus on foreign issues, foreign trade, and encouraging job growth in the market. NOT in Government jobs.

The solution isn’t to add to Government, or go after the wealthy for more money. The solution is the force the Government to work with what it has (which is still about 30% of GDP of the RICHEST COUNTRY ON EARTH). If they can’t make do with what they have to help the country progress, then we’re in deep shit, because our currency is only going to continue to inflate at a higher and higher rate of speed until the Government learns to live within the budget. The Government needs to learn it must truly serve the populace to keep peace here, not particularly abroad. It needs to not play corporatist favorites and focus on truly getting shit done here in the country.

• We need infrastructure exceeding hundreds of billions.
• We need to stabilize our school system (not spend more particularly, but figure out that it isn’t training industry labor anymore and do something about it).
• We need to stop the militarization of states and the nation as a whole.
• We need to find community and societal zoning that is positive for us as humans and NOT focus around mass separation by automotive style transport.
• We need to realize that immigrants aren’t our enemies.
• We need to realize that we as a nation have a great deal to offer ourselves that is NOT commercialized consumption of every gadget on earth.
• We need to realize that we can create art, music, and often have led the world in progressing genres and artistic stylings, if we’re not careful we’ll lose that.
• We need to realize that we do have a way to live clean, sustainable economic and environmental lives.
• We need to realize the answers are in each one of us and not the politicians we elect in our representative Government.

The Catharsis is Music

I haven’t written too much new music for over a decade. I’ve written small pieces over the years, but nothing whole. Nothing solid. No complete thoughts and evoked emotional catharsis. I find this insanely frustrating, stressful, and hurtful to myself. If there is one thing that drives me forward it is music and I seem to masochistically deprive myself of this. Well earlier in the year I setup, of all places an association to do something about this on my Composite Code Blog. My words and music, since they’re unrelated entirely to technology and related matters, will be here. However I might write about my recording, composing, and software related learning on Composite Code. However all of the fuzzy notions & emotionally related aspects of the music will end up here…  where I have just a thought or three.  :)