Time Flies

My sabbatical is coming to a screeching halt and I'm coming full circle. 9 ½ years ago I was dying to go from contractor to full time at my company and now I'm returning to that company—after 9 years of salaried employment—as a contractor. It's been a fabulous 8 ½ months off. I did some of the things I wanted to, didn't get around to some of the things I did, but overall got a good mental rest and restart.

Why am I returning to work? Technically speaking, I don't have to. But to not work would require certain sacrifices I'm not ready to make. I don't care how inane or vain those reasons sound, they still exist. Despite cutting back significantly in spending and being OK with that, there are things I'm not quite ready to give up unless I have to. Such as:

• I hate yard work. To be able to hire someone to do what I hate is the ultimate luxury and a reason—at least right now—to return to work.
  
• Despite its many wonders (and more of that to come), Costco cannot supply a good body wash to save its life. I want my Kiehl's body wash and I will not do without!
  
• Over five hundred channels and there's nothing to watch? There's always Law & Order and there's always a rerun of Big Love. I will not give up my massive cable or Tivo.
  
• Organic food. Yes, today I spent $3.99 today for a yellow bell pepper vs. $1.49 for a conventionally grown one. But I'd rather not poison myself with god knows what when I don't have to. I may choose to poison myself with cigarettes, but food should never be poison and I'm bound and determined to support the organic food movement regardless. Again, more on Costco later as I love rewarding them by buying whatever new organic product they stock.
  
• In Vino Veritas: Not that I ever gave up wine, but I'd like the occasional splurge on a bottle over $10, something I've denied myself these past eight months. There are great bargains for under $10 and I intend to continue to patronize those, but there are amazing wines out there for more that I want to treat myself with now and again.
  
• Not caring about the dry cleaning bill! There's no point in dry cleaning when you aren't working to justify wearing those types of clothes. But when fashion is something that makes your mornings creative, having to care about how much it costs to clean vs. the value of wearing said item becomes annoying. I want to wear what I want!
  

But in addition to gaining these little luxuries back when I return to work, I'll have to give up some things as well:

• Privacy: For eight months I've seen who I want, when I want and have been able to spend as much time alone as I want. In going back not only do I have to interact with many people on a daily basis, I have to carpool. Yes, I realize I'm a liberal and I'm supposed to embrace such green living, but I hate carpooling. I adore the privacy of my car and my NPR or CD and singing badly at the top of my lungs. Because of the location of the office and new parking costs, we all have to carpool which puts restrictions I'm not used to on my time and privacy. Plus the new office has open space rather than offices. I'm OK with that, but will take adjustment given I've spent eight months spending the majority of my time alone. Time to finally invest in an iPod I guess.
  
• Freedom to spend my days as I like. Regardless of what anyone thinks I've done or not done well during my time off, it was still all MY time. Now my time during the work day belongs to someone else (though they are paying me well for that). I don't see a problem in transitioning to that, but it is a loss of something I've enjoyed quite a lot.
  
• Managing my household: I don't care how Desperate Housewives it sounds, or how much you might want to make fun of me for it, I've enjoyed being a "housewife." I've enjoyed having the chores get done and not pile up into mountainous problems; I've enjoyed cooking every night; I've enjoyed doing little household projects like painting a wall or installing new switch plates or putting in a new kitchen floor. I like channeling my inner Bree (except for the aforementioned yard work). There simply won't be time—despite how well I've set up the systems—to do it all as well as I did while not working.
  
• Make up free: I love make up, I really do. But it's been wonderful to go days, even weeks, without any on my face because there simply was no reason to. I've grown used to a face without makeup. You might say then why start putting it on just because you're returning to work? Don't you work in an uber casual environment anyway? You would be right, but it still isn't going to happen. I go to work, I wear makeup. It's just my way.
  
• Spending hours in a day delving into a single issue in the world (economic, political, social, etc.). Not just reading one story, but reading ten or twenty to figure out exactly what happened and what it really means. That takes a lot of time and the average person's inability to do so is a detriment to society.
  

Don't judge my sabbatical on the above (or do, I don't care). I've had plenty of deeper philosophical insights than the relative merits of body wash or dry cleaning. But those are going to take time to internalize and articulate and in many ways, I need to return to the structure of a working world in order to do so. At least for a time. In the meantime, I relish not feeling guilty about buying skin care products and I relish that I don't really care so much about shopping anymore.

More to come …

Pork It’s the Meat of Kings …

If you watch this, it will stick in your head for hours, even weeks to come. You have been warned.

I'm sick of the term "pork." It has no definition and its use in political discourse is the last bastion of the unintelligent mind. One man's pork is another man's energy grid. One woman's pork is another woman's pro-life propaganda. It's an all encompassing term to deride what you don't like ideologically. It means nothing real or relative.

"Pork barrel spending" is not the same thing as earmarks. An earmark is a more tightly defined concept whereby Congress overwrites the executive branch authority on allocating funds without ever having to identify who authored it:

Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process, defined in the Constitution, in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a Federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress has given itself the ability to direct a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project, without the Members of the Congress having to identify themselves or the project.

The stimulus package is neither perfect nor laden with pork. And it's here. And it's here to stay. And yes there will be problems arising from the execution of it and yes there will be sterling successes. But the current debate about it reminds me of the intellectual capabilities of ideological teenagers who know absolutely nothing about what they argue about yet they do it so passionately.

I get that conservatives hate it on ideological grounds. You've been heard, it didn't work. No, that doesn't mean you should just shut up, but you are not contributing to the current situation. Pitch in and ensure that the money your state gets (and don't you love the Republicans who wouldn't vote for the bill clamoring for the money) is spent wisely, according to your constituents values and wishes. Do something constructive, please, because constantly referring to the laissez-faire capitalism that got us into the current situation is as annoying as living near the constant noise of an airport.

I'm currently reading a compilation of an advice columnist and I'm thinking I really should be an advice columnist. This isn't hard, at least not based on the letters that get sent in. Does anyone actually know someone who sent a letter to an advice columnist? I've never heard of such a person and wonder if they're like Oompa Loompas? Anyway, I love giving advice and have some for the people who have decided that they HATE President Obama. Not just disagree, but hate hate hate. My advice is based on experience so I know what I'm talking about. I HATED George W. Bush so I have direct experience in hating a president.

Check out. Tune out. Find a hobby other than what's going on at the national level. Seriously, it's the only way you're going to get through the next four, possibly eight years. Hating everything you see and hear the nation's president doing is exhausting. You should check back in around election times, but otherwise, you're going to be perpetually miserable. Stop reading your bubble blogs, tune out of FOX, take up knitting. Watch back episodes of Lost to remember to confuse you. Focus locally rather than nationally. Unless you are in a position to actually impact what's going on at the national stage, you are only setting yourself up for pain if you spend four years railing about Obama. I know. I've been there with Bush. I had to check out.

I-told-you-so's are hollow. They don't make you feel better. Being prescient makes you feel worse, not better. So if you're right, and everything Obama does is a spectacular failure, you won't feel better. I don't feel better that I knew the execution of the Iraq war would be a disaster; that the deregulation of the financial industry and the subprime mortgage debacle would blow up; that ridiculous credit debt would crash us all. Knowing all that years ago and being right doesn't feel better. In many ways, it feels worse because it makes you believe that the nation is stupid and who the hell wants to live in a stupid nation? So if, in your rush of hatred, you are banking on being "right" and relishing the prospect of saying I Told You So, it won't live up to your expectations. It might drive up Rush's ratings, but it do anything for your blood pressure. Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there.

Pragmatic Morality

Conservatives are all up in arms over what they perceive as the return of the "nanny state" because of the stimulus package. They fear near permanent status of many of the spending programs in the ARRA. Whether they are right or wrong remains to be seen.

A lot remains to be seen over the coming years. Severe economic downturns produce sea changes in mentalities and I am fascinated (both from a positive and a negative viewpoint) to watch and participate it.

On the negative front, I'm worried that the drop in fast food prices will force lower income people to make horrible dietary choices because organics are too expensive. Fundamentally changing our agricultural business model to enable better food might not rise to the top of the priority list and in a generation we'll have even worse problems with yet another round of kids being raised on the poison that inhabits the average American diet. I also worry that many states (as well as the federal government) will raise the "vice" taxes to increase revenue. I actually don't have a personal problem with increased taxes on cigarettes and alcohol (and I consume both), but tying critical projects to consumption of substances that states are also trying to decrease will be problematic.

But on a positive note, I'm already starting to see some of my pet issues get looked at in the name of pragmatic budgeting. Five states are considering repealing the death penalty due to its cost. I am ideologically opposed to the death penalty, but if budget cutting that gets it off the books, I'll take what I can get. Connecticut is looking to repeal its Sunday ban on alcohol sales to increase tax revenues. This puritanical holdover should go the way of the dodo as it always seemed to encourage drunk driving since the dawn of the Sunday football game. And Washington is considering privatizing liquor stores so as not to have to take the cost on the state budget. Why a state would want to run a liquor store rather than just set the regulations has always been confusing to me.

How far behind can the legalization—or at least decriminalization—of marijuana be? The cost of prosecuting pot simply doesn't seem to be pragmatic in these times. For the record, I don't really enjoy pot and wouldn't even if it was legalized. I just think it's a ridiculous substance to prohibit to adults. The only reason I can see to keep it illegal is that it's not currently possible to test whether someone (a driver, an airline pilot, a doctor) is impaired at this moment in time, the way you can with alcohol. But once that can be established, what is the remaining argument against legalization? I'll be very surprised if we don't start seeing this debated seriously as a cost-cutting/revenue-raising issue.

Of course all of these types of issues will give rise to a huge outcry from the social conservatives that bad economic times shouldn't degrade our "moral fiber." And the responsibility of constraining the social conservatives will fall to the fiscal conservatives who claim that Republicans aren't really representative of conservatives. Because all of these small examples are as illustrative of a "nanny state" as are the programs liberals pushed for in the stimulus package. If conservatives want to seriously take back their party, they need to be consistent on all aspects of the limited government they claim to want so much.

Blank Check Good? Investment Bad? What Do These Republicans Want?

I don't believe that Republicans should just file in lockstep behind Obama and the Congressional Democrats. I believe that all representatives should vote according to the convictions they stated to their constituents that got them elected. If they and those they represent fundamentally disagree with the stimulus package, they should not support it and state why. After 9/11 there was this attitude that everyone had to rally around President Bush and give him what he wanted (except it was couched in terms of need, not want) because that's what needed to happen. I don't advocate that—then or now—because we know what happened. We need to rely upon Congress to rally around what their constituencies want. And in districts and states that went Obama for President and Republican for Congress, Republicans in Congress particularly need to weigh how much their constituents want Obama's agenda vs. their own.

But I don't understand Republicans—such as McCain and Baehner—who voted for the previous bailouts (by far so much worse than anything being proposed in this stimulus) but then nitpick this one. What are they saying? Blank checks to banks good, investment in infrastructure bad? I simply don't get it. Well, actually I do. It was political expediency at a time of crisis and this is exactly why I don't trust McCain and the like. You cannot claim to be a small government supporter than write a blank check for Treasury to disperse willy nilly.

There are those conservatives who just want the government spending to stop, hang the consequences. There's a certain Darwinist aspect to that view that I can appreciate. I'm even reasonably sure that we share the same beliefs on the end state. I just disagree with how to get there. I'm a progressive liberal who believes that government can and should do what it can to level the playing field in this country so that we can reach that desired end state where everyone has the same opportunity and succeeds or fails on their own merits. That state simply doesn't exist yet.

I don't believe in the tyranny of the majority or the minority, but this isn't either. This election made it very clear which direction the majority of the country wants to go. As long as that stays within the confine of the Constitution, then that's the direction we're going per the will of the people. Obama has been consistent throughout his campaign and while willing to compromise here and there, is going to ensure that the spirit of what he promises is what's going to go out there. The tax cut only strategy failed. We need cuts, investments, and regulation.

If Republicans really want to rebuild their party they should take a cue from the Democrats' problems. The Democrats, starting in '94, were all over the map. Picking one day to strongly stand by their convictions and oppose the Republicans and taking another day to cave to political expediency. The American people don't reward that and didn't for many years. Republicans whose constituents voted for Obama need to take that into account. And Republicans whose constituents did not vote for Obama and who are opposed to bailouts and stimulus packages of any kind should feel free to take that position. They'll lose this battle, but they'll be the better politician for it.

Just spare me the Republicans who deregulated the financial sector, bailed it out, and are now whining about the stimulus package.

Do the Numbers

"How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives; how does that stimulate the economy?" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the Obama meeting.

The above is in reference to an item in the current iteration of the economic stimulus plan meant to slow the spread of STD's and provide contraceptives. That Boehner doesn't understand how that helps the economy is mind boggling. Actually, I'm sure he does understand it; he just doesn't want to acknowledge it because that means he'd have to acknowledge that people have sex just for fun and not for the duty of procreation.

Helping people have fewer children and helping them avoid unnecessary health problems definitely helps the economy. Right now, the fewer children people have the less money they need and the more they can invest in the children they do have thereby making the next generation a better one. But social conservatives seem to refuse to see the link between having or not having children and the future of the economy. The more children people have during troubled times, the less can be invested in them. The less we can spend on education, the worse off the next generation should be. Of course, given our society, no one can or should be forced to reduce the number of children they have. But by making family planning support available, individuals can make better, more informed, choices that will benefit the economy. Why is it so horrible to say that? Why is there any outrage at all over a very simple way to improve the future of the economy? I have to think that the only reason there is any controversy over contraceptives at all is because to use contraceptives means someone is have S-E-X which is apparently some huge scary thing to social conservatives (who I have to assume to perform the act but freak out if they have to know whether anyone else is).

In an attempt to balance out my love for Media Matters for America, I started reading News Busters as well. However, the two sites can barely be compared. The time and analysis simply isn't invested in News Busters, and a lot of their exposition of so-called bias is completely made up. For example, regarding the economic stimulus package (which isn't even finalized), they are outraged over the amount being spent on roads and bridges, claiming that the infrastructure spending was overpromised. That would be true, if infrastructure only meant roads and bridges. From this Jeff Poor guy:

In reality, little of the $850 billion American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 proposed by congressional Democrats will actually be spent on actual road and bridge projects - the sort of things most people think of when they hear infrastructure spending, according to the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Both Poor and the office of Sen. Sessions are being deliberately disingenuous, and exposing it in their own statements. If "most people" think only of roads when they think of infrastructure that only means that "most people" are ignorant. What President Obama has been saying throughout his campaign is that the infrastructure initiatives that he's been proposing include roads, bridges, electrical grids, expanding Internet access and upgrading the network systems throughout the country as well as improving rural communities, etc. Now I'm admittedly too lazy to go through the very detailed spreadsheet that the nice folks at Read the Stimulus created to break down the current iteration of the package, but even a quick glance shows how the folks at News Busters are trying to bias their readers against it. What a crystal clear example of skewing the data to fit a conclusion you've already drawn despite the evidence to the contrary (kind of like the intel used to justify invading Iraq). ReadtheStimulus.com is created by Kithbridge, a media solutions company whose founder is an obviously biased conservative (got to Kithbridge.com, click About, and read about the Founder). But if the information in the spreadsheet is correct and kept up to date as the bill progresses, it's incredibly useful. From what I can see of the construction of the site, ReadtheStimulus.com isn't trying to push any agenda other than organizing information for the citizenry, which is wonderful. It's the folks like News Busters who take this information and—by counting on the short attention span of their audience—attempts to skew it in a way to advance their agenda.

I'm prepared for the fact that some people are just going to balk at whatever the President and the Democratically controlled Congress does, no matter what. Issues like rolling back the international gag rule on abortion are going to blind them to anything else. I can even sympathize. I used to be that way on certain issues before I realized that bad decisions will have bad results and good decisions will have good results and to be blinded by ideology or party affiliation will not make a bad decision have a good outcome. Don't believe I can be that pragmatic? See my take on overturning abortion. Everything, big or small, icky or glorious, has an economic impact.

And that includes headlines. News outlets of all kinds have a pretty good sense of what headlines will get their readers/listeners/watchers to sit, read, click, buy. There's this outrage from the ultra-conservatives that certain "news" doesn't get covered. For example, the IMF reimbursements to Geithner. Of course it was covered. I read about it in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. What it wasn't was front page screaming headlines. That he had tax problems, yes, but not the details. Why? Because it's not interesting to the average person. Which means it won't generate a click, garner $.50, or get you glued to your television screens while you wait through the advertisements to get the story. It's economics, not bias. The news is there for those who are interested, but the headlines and top news is there to get you hooked. Why conservatives, who are all about the free market, expect the media to go bankrupt screaming headlines about something the majority of their customers aren't interested in is beyond me.

On a sad and scary note, apparently the fast food chains are in their equivalent of an airfare war. Supposedly Subway dropped their prices and so did Burger King, McDonald's, and other major fast food chains. This is bad bad bad. With the price of decent food rising and organic skyrocketing, actual food will be priced out of the lower socioeconomic classes forcing them into horrible fast food on a regular basis. This is not good for the future of the organics industry and nor is it good for the next generation. Yet another reason not to have more children than you can invest in. Note I said that you can invest in, not just whether you can afford them. Food, clothing, shelter, and medicine can be paid for and you're still not investing in your kid(s). Education, time spent parenting, offering enriching experiences, and the right kind of food, these are investing. If you can't afford on a regular basis to provide all of this to your kids, then sign up now for the contraceptive economic stimulus package. Please.

Zeitgeist

I spent a few days at my friend's cabin on an island just northwest of the city. I always love going up there, even in the middle of winter. Completely wired for internet, but my cell phone won't work. Rustic and functional. She just got a compost toilet which is a veritable luxury when compared to the pit toilet that used to be the only option. And wasn't something I was particularly looking forward to having to use in 36 degree weather.

We talked a lot about the economy. But in a way that I'm not particularly worried about. Yes, it is going to be tough and really tough for those who already had it rough before layoffs, cutbacks, and credit crises. But overall, I have believed since the crisis crested in September '08 that this recession is going to be good for the country. My friend lives very frugally, but well and in some cases—depending how you look at it—luxuriously (on a beautiful island overlooking your own beach? Who cares about hot water!) I've said this before I'm sure, I'm not a minimalist. No one who has ever seen my shoe collection could believe that. But that's when things are good. Not working and paring down what I want versus what I need (and good body wash falls into the what-I-need category still). Being cost conscious is a new interesting trend. What I sincerely hope is that people will not just go for the cheapest, but start prioritizing quality and worthiness. I'm looking to go back into travel tech, which is something I think is invaluable to life. Travel brings experiences, exposure, interests. I hope that even though it's terribly tough to make ends meet for the next 18 or so months, folks won't forsake experiences entirely.

While I was there I finally saw the Zeitgeist movie. Like most conspiracy theory/docudramas, it raises some interesting thoughts, but completely blows it in others; jumping to conclusions without adequate backing, not sourcing information correctly, etc. It's very easy to spot no matter what the goal is (actually reminds me of the amount of time/thought--NOT--that's put into the News Busters blog). Still, the first section on religion was fairly spot on. And Building 7 is very weird. As for FDR provoking Japan into Pearl Harbor to launch us into WWII … duh. Pretty much nothing I haven't heard from my fiancé's conspiracy theorist father, particularly about the international banking cabal.

I simply love conspiracy theories. I really do. I have one that the reason for the piss poor response to Hurricane Katrina was that the government was trying to see if they could impose martial law, as a test to determine how easy or difficult it would be after a disaster. Given how 9/11 was handled, I was shocked that they didn't try to declare it in New York. Maybe they just didn't think of it in time. But my whack job theory is that they intended to try in New Orleans but failed because of the sheer amount of press coverage and national attention. As for international banking/financier cabals, I totally believe in that. I just don't always believe they're in the wrong. As long as there are people who want to be sheep, there will be people who feel the need to herd them. I'm a big Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist and am starting to have questions about some aspects of 9/11.

But the people who produce the conspiracy theories always screw it up by including something so easily caught out that the entire point of what they're trying to do falls apart. One false fact can unravel the best of arguments. Just ask Dan Rather.

Happy anniversary! Obama reverses the international gag rule regarding abortions. Not surprising of course, but nice to see happen so quickly. You know, I could have much more productive fiscal conversations with conservatives if they would drop all the dictatorial social issues. I'm sure they would say the same thing about me, but what I've always said about the left vs. right social issues: my side takes nothing away from them; theirs takes something away from me. Therefore, my side should win. And with this economic crisis, I'm hoping people consider restricting individual rights is lower on the priority than preventing their own foreclosure. But to be honest, what Obama said back during the primaries is true. When times are tough, people do get insular and cling to what is familiar.

Money for Nothing and the Jets for Free

Seriously folks, begging for my money via private jet? You’re so doing it wrong. And yet, these wealthy people that supposedly generate the jobs so god forbid their taxes should not be raised want to use my money to cut jobs so they can still fly in private jets.

I realize I’m being simplistic here, but don’t these people have PR people? To say, hey, this might look bad given the mood lawmakers and the public are in? The definition of socialism as bandied about during the campaign was completely off base. But the situation the financial industries and the auto companies are putting us in practically demands socialism (government ownership of industry for those who thought the progressive income tax enshrined in our constitution was socialism; NB it’s not).

Symbolism and illustration are important to the American people. Flying in a private jet to the hearings where you beg for money is illustrative of these CEO’s grasp of reality, or hubris. So they’re either stupid or dangerously arrogant. Either way, they have no business running these companies any more. But we will have to bail them out somehow should necessitate some government ownership/oversight which is in fact socialism. And all this is predicated by the actions of the uber-Republican type. The CEOs and Wall Street financiers who embody the symbol of success in the Republican Party.

Good job GOPers! You’ve created socialism in America!

So apparently there is some agreement cooked up in the Senate (of course appropriately bipartisan) that the mere announcement that it exists (no details) boosted GM and Ford’s stock prices. But, it might not get voted on because Congress might not stay in session all this week because they’re going home early in advance of their very long Thanksgiving break. I think it likely that my former coworkers are going to have to work over the Thanksgiving holiday. And with unemployment at its highest in sixteen years, there will be families who will be eating the cheapest turkey they can find (which is gross) but Congress can’t stay in session to deal with this.

Out of touch and oblivious to reality. I can often be accused of this given I’ve never not worked when I wanted to nor did I ever not have what I wanted (within reason) when I wanted it. But even I get that the people running the show are clueless. We did our job in shaking up Congress. Now they need to do their jobs and shake up the executives. Or at least stay in session.