Continue reading »]]> So…why did I decide to share this paper with the world? Well, I have my reasons–most notably because I do not want to see our economy get thrown into the wood chipper by the inept psychopaths in charge of our banking system. That, and I needed a URL to use for my Creative Commons license. (Yeah, I had to use a cultural reference somewhere, and Fargo was the obvious choice. As Marge said, “There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that?”)

Rescuing Bank of America: The Case for an Organizational Development Nexus Approach by Cynthia Bage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.graphicsignificance.com/posts/submitted-for-your-approval/.

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Continue reading »]]> I was doing some research into the effects of privatization and came across a serious article that read like bad satire. It suggested (in a rather racist way)  razing public housing and selling the land to the highest bidder, eliminating welfare, and abolishing public schools. There were also other anarcho-capitalist suggestions that were so dumbfoundingly asinine that I could not believe  any rational being would suggest them. The more I read this ‘scholarly’ article, the only way I can justify its existence is that it be taken as a satire of Libertarian policy advice. (I refer to an article from the American Journal of Economics and Sociology entitled “The Economics and Ethics of Hurricane Katrina” by L. H. Rockwell, Jr. and W. E. Block.)

On the concept of turning NOLA into a ‘free port’ using an ‘anarcho-Capitalist’ model, I had to shake my head at the logical absurdity of annexing one of our own cultural and commercial centers. When I got to the part where the authors suggest climate control measures such as using sonic resonance cannons and cloud seeding, I began to realize that Jonathan Swift could not have written a better ‘modest proposal.’ However, I came to the realization that the authors were deadly serious about their suggestions. Rockwell, after all, worked on the Ron Paul Investment Letter (you know, the race-baiting publication that we all know from news reports) and is a proponent of ‘paleolibertariansim‘  (strong emphasis on the paleo-). Such ideas lead to privatized public services, such as the fee-based fire department that allowed houses to burn when homeowners could not pay their fees. While Rockwell denies he had anything to do with that publication—calling the suggestion a politically-motivated attack despite the reality that people working on that publication outed him as ghostwriter-in-chief—I consider that a weaselly cop-out when comparing those articles with this particular essay.

One such article on the post-Rodney King verdict riots in Los Angeles is very similar in tone to the Rockwell and Block essay, the latter of  which stated:

A city in such dire straights such as the Big Easy cannot afford such fripperies. In the words of Margaret Thatcher, it needs “workers, not shirkers.” It is as if there were a life boat, already perilously loaded, and there were still a few swimmers in the water. If they take on bailers, well and good; the prognostication for the entire boat improves. But, if they encourage the entry of those unwilling to help, the prospects for the entire group are put at greater risk. Make no mistake about it: New Orleans is now in deep dark trouble. The last thing it needs is welfare dependents (Rockwell & Block, 2010, pp. 1296-1297).

The reality that people such as Rockwell are taken seriously is a rather disturbing problem IMO. They use racist attitudes and selfish motivations in lieu of the ‘greater good’ and conflate their personal preferences and prejudices with sound reasoning. Nothing could be further than the truth. Such writers and scholars are no less an authority than the village idiot, yet these base ‘intellectuals’ are given substantive weight for their delusional rants. It is syncretism at its worst, and I felt it was my duty to call both Rockwell and Block on their absurdist ‘logic’—ignoring it would be detrimental to our intellectual health.

For APA style purposes, the proper citation of the article is:

Rockwell, J. H., & Block, W. E. (2010). The Economics and Ethics of Hurricane Katrina. American Journal of Economics & Sociology, 69(4), 1294-1320. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.2010.00745.x

Continue reading »]]> Back in 2008, a rather small and highly independent documentary came out about the War on Drugs. The filmmaker, Kevin Booth, is not as well-known as his more famous (read: Michael Moore) or younger (read: Josh Fox) peers. As far as brass cojones go, he is no less impressive. I recently (read: five days ago) found out about his film, American Drug War: The Last White Hope so I ordered it from a reputable online merchant.  If you tend to believe what the government tells you about everything, this little film is going to shake you to the core.  Even if you have as healthy a skepticism about this as I do, it is still going to get to you for at least two reasons. 

1) It Will Shock You

I was not prepared for at least a couple of images in this film.  Although I do remember back in high school having seen my former world history teacher’s slides of Cambodia from when he worked for the CIA, I was not prepared to see images from another ex-CIA employee from another dirty little drug-related American war in Nicaragua. Yes, I had heard about the atrocities committed by the Contras; but it’s another thing to see the actual still images of such horrific events.  That part made me turn away in revulsion from the screen, and I’m glad I did not let my daughter see such images.

The second shocking image was the sight of a common reality for heroin junkies: shooting up their drug of choice.  I tend to look away when I get my own blood drawn for clinical reasons, which made this a particularly upsetting thing to watch.  It was even worse to see than the footage of a guy being busted for his chemically-induced behavior (on synthetic drugs, no less).  This is not a pretty film at all, because it is not a subject most people really like to talk about without dissembling into government/corporate-sponsored anti-drug propaganda memes.  I was aware that the War on Drugs was pretty bogus because of the CIA involvement in bringing illegal drugs to the US.  I knew about that since roughly 1985 or so.  But I had no idea just how fucked up it actually was.

2) It Will Make You Think

Booth was clever enough to use his ‘Republican disguise’ to snag a candid interview with the now-discredited Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  Apart from being the poster child for hubris, Sheriff Joe proves what being a true believer can do when one is bestowed with a nearly god-like power to humiliate and punish people who are trying to cope with life’s pressure through the use of man-made illicit chemicals that became an epidemic when more natural highs became stigmatized. Why were pot and hashish made Schedule 1 drugs?  Simply because President Nixon did not like hippies and African-Americans.  There really is no other viable reason to describe why Cannabis is considered as a worse drug than PCP or Meth when it isn’t.  The War on Drugs is a political tool that, as Booth explains with clarity, was meant to keep mostly non-whites and non-Republicans from being able to vote.

Yes, there is a lot of racism involved in the drug war. Add to that a heady mix of Islamophobia (Afghanistan is the source for all the heroin currently coming into the USA, and ‘our guy’ Karzai had a drug-lord brother who was killed last year) and you will know why our domestic war is a sham.  It was always a sham, of course, but the reality is that our for-profit prison system and our increased police militarization will only make things worse.  About the only solution that has been shown to work is one that our highly puritanical nation will simply not allow: decriminalization and taxation. It actually does work in Holland.  There is no better proof of this than what Booth’s cameras found: only one crack addict, no crystal meth use and clean streets with minimal policing.

The only reason why this solution will not work is that there is simply too damned much money to be made in private prisons, police money, and the Office of the Drug Czar. With this ever-increasing cost to our government to keep the status quo in place, along with the incredible amount of money from alcohol and tobacco conglomerates funding The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, this is one war that is not going to end any time soon.  It has lasted longer than the years that Prohibition was an active part of our Constitution, and it has created a permanent prison slave class that will never be given back their lives, much less their right to participate in our plutocracy.

This is not the end of the story…

Word has it that there is a sequel in production.  I wish there really wasn’t a need for it, but until we demand that our non-viable drug war policy changes our problems are just going to get even more entrenched.  Can you imagine a society in which cancer patients are not put behind bars for simply following their doctor’s prescription orders for medical marijuana? A lot of people now are thinking about such a reality here in the USA, and it’s probably the one good idea that Ron Paul continues to have.  I don’t care much for his other views, but this one rings true for over 80 percent of Americans.   The reality is that drug prohibition is not working for Americans, and a private prison system is no way to run what many people used to think was a ‘free country.’

If you choose to purchase this movie, I highly recommend doing so directly from the filmmaker. This  documentary will be a good option for community-minded peace and justice groups to feature in film screenings.  Sure, you can also rent it on Netflix as well if that suits you.  Just make sure you have a strong stomach and that any kids or people with weak constitutions are not traumatized by what they will see portrayed.  I am neither a Ron Paul supporter nor a fan of Alex Jones, but even an adult with a fifth-grade education can see this film and know that it is telling the truth.  This is not some paranoid 9-11 conspiracy theory we are discussing, as the War on Drugs is a long-term failed domestic policy with serious implications all over the world.  I’ve got more than a few years of college behind me, and I still learned a hell of a lot from seeing American Drug War just one time.

Continue reading »]]> Tomorrow is the anti-SOPA World Blackout Day. I have installed a WP plugin that will help me to participate. It is a voluntary participation, and I am 100 percent against SOPA, the “Protect IP Act” and the actions of the RIAA and MPAA to censor the Internet. We will all be negatively affected should these corporate criminals get their way. That is why I am involved in this. If I ever get back into creating songs and recording them, I will have nothing to do with the music industry. Everything I release will be through a Creative Commons License because, well, the only ones who get rich off of the work of musicians and songwriters are the 1% who own the Industry. They have ruined music for us all to the extent that we can’t perform cover versions of any song for free at open mics.

Fuck the RIAA. Fuck the MPAA. Fuck the industries that have turned creative people into whores.

Continue reading »]]> A funny thing happened on the way to this blog: a long and very strange trip through life.  I was living in Dallas, TX around the time that David Byrne was filming what would become the movie True Stories.  I did not audition because, well, all I had to ride was a bicycle and I was pretty busy between my full-time minimum wage job at Bookstop and my volunteer work at KNON-FM.  Besides, I was not exactly photogenic—in my mind, anyway—so it would have been kind of a waste of my time to show up.  However, I did appreciate the fact that it was going on at the time.

I knew of some of the locals who were in it—Brave Combo, a great little band that never quite reached the fame that I felt they deserved, had their 15 minutes in that movie.  It sticks out in my mind because I remember the drummer for that band hogging the snare drum when Todd Rundgren came through a second time through town on his A Capella tour.  I was up there singing back-up vocal during the audience participation portion when Todd sang, “Bang on the Drum All Day,” and I was wearing my KNON t-shirt.  It was important in a rather daisy-chain way because I was playing lots of Todd on my show, Remedy for Radio.

But back to this story.  I went off to join the Great Peace March after my own 15-minutes moment (which, since it involved being the face of the Pro-Choice Movement in Dallas, may have saved my own life).  But before I went off to the GPM, I was tying up loose ends and received a rather strange phone call while I was on the air.  Something about David Byrne speaking at a special screening of Stop Making Sense at the Inwood Theater.  I think I was supposed to share that information on the air, but something inside of me did not.  I wasn’t sure if it was true or rumor, and I had been burned before when sharing information on the air (for example, when I promoted Black Flag and was given a comp ticket for the event—spent my whole evening in the Ladies room because it was not exactly my favorite band after I heard them perform).

I did get two tickets: one for me, and one for a ‘fan’ of mine who was going off to Swarthmore College very soon.  I wonder what happened to that guy, anyway?  Even so, it was a very interesting Evening with David Byrne.  While I did not get to meet the man, I felt sorry when some schmuck shouted out the question, “Why the big suit?”  Obviously, that person did not have much of a life or a sense of humor.  Even through Byrne’s deadpan expression, I could kind of tell that he was getting tired of it in a ‘Freebird’ sort of way—you know, when some idiot shouts “Freebird!!!!” at every single fucking concert.  It was one of those moments. 

Watching the movie afterwards—Stop Making Sense, that is—was an act of culture clash between film students and fans of the Talking Heads.  The fans wanted to sing and dance, but the ever-too-serious film students wanted nothing of that around them.  I was not exactly a film student, so I thought it was even more fun to notice that pockets of resistance would emerge with people dancing for about five seconds before being told to sit down by their neighboring filmgoers.  That, and all the shusshing.  It was as if the film students were parents and the fans were boisterous children.  Well, in a way, we were children—in the very good way.  It was our culture we were bringing to the screening, and I have no doubt that David Byrne was enjoying the anarchy from a very safe distance.

If this were a movie instead of a blog, the script would say “flash forward’ to 1992.  I was in San Francisco at the time, though not in the way I had ever wanted to imagine.  I had been homeless for about six months or so, and had just gotten back to SF after spending way too much time in Santa Monica and surrounding areas.  After working in a place where I felt my soul was endangered and where I was bullied for various reasons, I had a manic episode and got on a plane to LAX.  It was an interesting ‘vacation’ in that I had no lodging or money.  I only got back to SF after they sent my last paycheck to Step Up on Second (please donate through eScrip if you can).  When I got back, it was harsh.  I was hanging around Haight Street for the most part because, well, that was what you did when you were homeless: hang out on Haight, get health care from the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic (another fine recipient for donations, BTW).

Enter David Byrne, riding in the back of a cab down Haight Street.  I was sitting on the sidewalk,and it was late one night.  He had someplace he had to go, and I was pretty much nowhere.  For some weird reason, our eyes met.  I think he recognized me—after all, my face had been plastered on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald back in 1985.  Also, I was working at the Granada Cinema and Drafthouse after returning from the Great Peace March and the assistant manager, a woman named Pan, invited me to stay after work to sit up in the Crying Room of the theater to watch True Stories.  I don’t know if I was the only one who was given this opportunity, and we weren’t exactly scheduled to show this movie anytime soon.  But I had just made a friend from The Church of the Subgenius (hi, Ken!) and there is a very strong connection between that for-profit religion and True Stories (the song “Puzzling Evidence” is a meme right out of the COS).

But seeing David Byrne in that context—me being homeless and him being a wealthy musician and artist—was just a bit too surreal.  Of course, now I am no longer homeless but I am far from wealthy.  Oh, and I now drive a car (which sadly you have to do where I live because the transit sucks) even though I’ve known how to drive a stick since  I was 18.  Anyway, last night I was watching TV out of the corner of my eye and out of curiosity I wondered what was on the cable.  Encore Family was showing (drumroll, please) True Stories.  I had forgotten the details of the past, but everything came flooding out in my mind and memory that night.  I was still watching with my subconscious mind, but it really did distract me from playing DC Universe Online (Level 7 player, character’s name is Boreales—and yes, that is how you spell it even though the spellcheck is going nuts with the red underline).

Although I really doubt that David Byrne reads my blog—yeah, that would be a major conceit on my part if I thought that—it would be kind of cool if he did.  I screen all my comments through Captcha, so I don’t want to have a “Sparticus” moment where I get a hundred emails claiming to come from David Byrne.  Settle, people.  Even if he did read this, I doubt he would write to me anyway.  He has a life, and it is far removed from mine.  Still, I do understand why he did not stop the cab, and I cannot blame him at all. I did recognize the expression in his eyes: compassion mixed with regret.  All in all, it is a very human combination of feelings that we all feel from time to time.  Mixed emotions are what make us human, after all.

Anyway, I have miles to go before I stop.  I’ll be doing what I can to rise above even my own circumstances.  I will be dealing with my life and challenges, but I will not let a lack of wealth keep me down.  I say this because I know that being wealthy is not the answer to life’s problems.  It’s just something that happens if you are lucky in this world either through birth or random circumstances, such as winning the Lottery.  Then again, if you’ve read anything by Shirley Jackson, you will not exactly think that the latter is a good thing.  And there isn’t exactly a certain degree of separation between myself and David Byrne.  Just a series of unfortunate coincidences.

Oh, and no video or photos in this blog.  I really do not want the MPAA or the RIAA on my ass shutting me down.  Those guys are evil fuckers.

Continue reading »]]> Yes, I know that all over the USA there has been violent police repression against peaceful Occupy Together activists, much of it involving the use of tear gas and pepper spray.  I know it really fits a tragically predictable storyline that all cops are pigs.  Okay, most of them are.  I’ll give you that.  I blame management and the organizational trend towards paramilitarization for that reality.  But tonight at Occupy SF’s Black Friday action, this has not been the case.

I will never be able to singlehandedly fight the meme that tear gas has been used against the Occupy SF marchers tonight.  I can only offer this YouTube video showing what most are assuming is tear gas, but is actually sewer vapor arising from a manhole cover on a typical SF street during a typical night.

I get it: being tear gassed during a protest is romantic on the same level as Cyrano de Bergerac fighting off the corrupt palace guards with a single sword and a rapier wit.  I love my romantic do-gooder imagry as much as everyone else.  I dig the whole use of the Guy Fawkes masks straight out of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta graphic novel.  But let’s not ditch factual reporting for a romantic meme that has no basis in reality.

Maybe the rumors of SF tear gas is entirely the fault of MSNBC, but they’re only following the Twitter hashtag.  I can’t stave off millions of mindless Twitter RTs.  I get the whole ‘post without thinking’ mindset.  We all do that.  It’s in our heuristic programming.  Just do me a big favor, okay?

Stop it!

Stop the fairy tale that the bad ol’ SFPD are acting like fascist swine.  If anything, the SFPD have been blocking off car access to Market Street because several protesters were being hit by stupid drivers.  Hell, I lived in SF for ten years during which I finished my BA degree at SFSU.  You don’t need a fucking car in SF.  They have the best mass transit in all of California.  Only tourists and pricks drive cars in SF.  If you’re not a tourist and you drive there, then you are obviously a prick.

Anyway, I have seen in the past when the SFPD were acting like fascists.  That was during the first Gulf War.  I had just moved there about three months before that began, and I know how the SFPD were under former police chief Frank Jordon.  Trust me, what happened then is not happening now.

The ones really being assholes were the ones wanting to buy their fucking iPads and iPhones at the Apple Store and who were pushing violently through the protesters. 

See what happens when Steve Jobs dies on us?  Apple cultists all start acting like they’re corporate psychopaths buying Windows peripherals.  (I left the Apple Cult before Jobs kicked the silicon bucket, mainly because it sucked that I could not upgrade my old MacMini to run Lion.  End of digression.)

Here’s my point: we need factual reporting, not rumor mongering.  We need to take a deep collective breath and stop retweeting every damned fool thing that we see.  For the most part, I pick and choose my RTs.  If someone is saying something stupid or self-serving in 140 words or less, I ignore it.  I don’t regurgitate it.  I don’t follow Snookie, and the only reason I follow Billy Ray Cyrus is simply out of a perverted sense of schadenfreude.

That having been said, I hope that one day after the 1% start paying their fair share we can all live happily ever after…or at least for a couple of generations until they regroup and take over again.  Cue chorus of “The Circle Game,” cause I’m done here.  Peace!

Continue reading »]]> I am concerned about how the U.S. Government has been raiding the Social Security Trust Fund to prop up tax cuts for the wealthy.  I started a petition for U.S. citizens to sign, and I would love it if those who register for the White House’s We The People website could sign it.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/stop-practice-raiding-social-security-trust-fund-balance-federal-budget/WVNs5ncc

This is a legitimate petition, so please honor it by signing it.  Thanks.

Continue reading »]]> I got so tired of tredging through the spambot comments that have plagued me since I began using WordPress, so now I hope to have that situation under control. Goodbye, spambots…I hope. We’ll see what happens now.

In order to make sure that I have no spam problems, I have sadly had to delete all previous comments regardless of their intent.  I had someone complain to me about spam, which tells me that I am not very good at spotting them on my own.  That is why I had to delete all comments and set up a captcha system to deter spambot comments.  If I inadvertently deleted non-spam comments, I am deeply sorry.  I felt it crucial to start completely from scratch.

Continue reading »]]>

I have to say that, after hearing this latest Special Comments by Keith Olbermann, I have never felt more energized about my place in this world.  For about a week I was feeling depressed over many things: my recent birthday driving me one year away from being half a century old, the political posturing that threatens not only my disability income and medical coverage but my ongoing Masters studies in Organizational Leadership, my daughter growing up in a world of wolves where she is seen as fresh meat to be either devoured or exploited.  Yes, I am being metaphoric with that last item in my list of worries, but I am completely grounded about the first two.

Were it not for my Social Security Disability income, I could not afford the meager rent I pay to the county’s housing authority for the shitty little two-bedroom where me and my daughter live.  It’s a hole, but at least it’s one with lights, a fridge and a stove, and the affordability that permits me to pursue my education—an education that mandates having a high-speed internet connection.  I’m not sure how I will be able to do much of anything if there is a shutdown.  The timing could not be worse: August 2nd is one day before I am supposed to get the lion’s share of my monetary crumb.  I do get some SSI, but this month it was reduced from $136 to just under $122 per month.  Add to that the burden of having the lifestyle of a single mother without the benefit of a solid divorce behind me as well as the responsibility of raising a child who may have Asperger’s—and I’m still waiting to hear back from the testing organization that put her on their waiting list for a solid assessment—and you get one worried and rather pissed off mom.

I am one of those attempting to make a better life for me and my daughter by any ethical means at my disposal.  I chose to pursue my Masters because I really did not wish to default on the loans that permitted me to achieve my BA in English Lit before I got pregnant and married (in that order).  There are certainly irreconcilable differences between me and my estranged spouse with no hope of him ever being deeply involved in my life.  He does see our daughter when he has the time and energy, which means most Sundays we spend a few hours together.  But that’s too damned much about me and that was not the point of this essay.  (Yes, there is more verbiage to come about more important themes that the pile of horseshit I’ve been given—without a pony in sight, mind you.)

But damn, I am trying to build a car that runs on horseshit.  And for that, I need to know that the government will not shut down for even a microsecond.  I have some very thin and frayed bootstraps with which to pull myself up, and I’ll be damned if I stay silent while the GOP in the House and Senate try to wrench them from my hands.  These student loans and disability crumbs are all the hope I have.  I am no use as a cog—the business sector already ground me to an emotional pulp through my being disposable and expendable in low-wage America.  Before my disability, the only chance I had at escaping homelessness was working at the kind of places where ten years earlier I swore I would never work.  Becoming disabled and getting on Social Security and Medicare was hardly a golden ticket, but it was a second chance at being able to live with a shred of dignity.  It allowed me to finally finish my baccalaureate degree with at least some hope at employability.  While I tried for gainful employment, that ended up being delayed by my own unselfish choice to fall in love with the ‘wrong man’.

What does not kill me makes me stronger.  But without that social safety net, I’ve got nothing.  No wealthy family (in-laws who don’t care don’t count), no legacy, no stocks or bonds.  Just the dogged determination to rise above my circumstances that seems curiously reserved for the General Fiction section of Amazon.com.  While I tried to do what I could to start a business for myself, that simply was not possible after a state agency declined my business request because  some fossil from the SBA could not see past a brick-and-mortar concept of business.  All I had left was an online degree program funded by Direct Student Loans.  I‘ve been renting my books to save money, and I had to trade in the coffin-on-wheels that was gifted to me in order to get a very cheap but dependable used automobile—one with the ability to defrost windows on cold mornings and evenings.  Don’t even get me started on the uselessness of public transportation in my region, a bus system where the lines I need most shut down after six in the evening.

There are no jobs for me unless I make one for myself.  With a degree, it will no doubt be easier to write non-fiction books that can help point our society in a more equitable direction, one in which the oligarchy does not brand every one of us with a tattoo on the back of our necks in the form of their corporate logos.  I used to be a Girl Scout, and I even was a Brownie leader at one time when my daughter belonged to a troop.  I had to face one of those temptations that can seem irresistible during times of economic hardship: the bank that holds my former troop’s bank account sent me an ATM Debit Card and a PIN that would have given me access to all that cookie money raised by those future leaders of America.  I faced that temptation for only a second before informing the regional Girl Scouts council to take my name off that account immediately.  All my hardship as well as my personal moral compass made it a ‘no-brainer’ to do what was right instead of becoming a common thief.

In an age when greedy bastards own the financial establishment and act like kings while the rest of us have to invent haggis, I could have followed their corrupted lead.  But I was somehow raised better than that.  It wasn’t my paternal grandmother who taught me right from wrong, but those four-color 25¢ superhero myths that still held on to naïve values that used to make this nation great in the eyes of those who gave a damn.  Seeing fictional characters exhibiting personal integrity taught me who I was supposed to be when I grew up.  I gave up nine months of my life back in 1986 walking through mud, dust, rain and pneumonia just so we could not be destroyed by the arms race.  Now, my life is collateral damage just so some defense contractor can continue to build obsolete nuclear weapons systems. 

That’s what I get for thinking that nine months of direct activism was enough to change the world.  I have maybe about twenty good years left in me before any number of ailments might strike me dead.  I am going to have to make this time count for something, and since I will not become wealthy at the expense of others I will have to do what I learned to do back in my days as a Girl Scout: leave this place better than it was when I got here in 1962.  But I am only one person with a skill for stringing words together and a conscience to back me up.  I may be bent, but I am far from broken.  And I am not dead yet.