The Un-Civil War

This has been one of the most contentious years in American politics since the Civil War.  Back then our country was split into Northerners who believed that no man should be enslaved, and Southerners who saw no problem with slavery and the denial of fundamental human rights, as long as you made a profit. Back then, it was the Democrats who were the racists, and Republicans like Lincoln who believed in abolition.  It is ironic that one hundred and fifty years later, we have a Black president, and the parties have reversed. The predominantly Republican South and Mid-West are pitted against the mostly Democratic coastal states and former rust belt, areas most affected by unemployment today. 

Today's conflict is more than Democrat versus Republican. It is a conflict between the American worker and Big Business. Big Business wants to make a profit whatever it costs.  Big Business will pollute the atmosphere because it’s cheaper for them to do so. Big Business will go where it is cheapest to produce their product, even if it means American jobs lost.  We contribute to that.  We have been buying German, Japanese and South Korean cars for years. We abandoned our own auto industry for imports and we paid the price.  I recently drove a new Ford Fusion and was pleasantly surprised.  I have not owned a Ford since the Seventies, but I would consider buying this car.  I think all of us should take our own impact on the economy into consideration when we start shopping again.

Back to this election:  The campaign here in California has been particularly brutal.  We have Republicans and former business titans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorino, running for Governor and Senator against Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. Whitman and Fiorino's commercials blame Boxer and Brown for the unemployment and real estate problems that they helped create. Whitman and Fiorino personally sent over 50,000 US jobs overseas, as CEOs of EBay and Hewlett Packard respectively. They and the entire Republican Party are running a campaign that they will be the saviors of our jobs, while everything they have done or stand for has shown that they have done the opposite.

What really bothers me is that these two businesswomen have personally injected over $150,000,000 of their own money into their campaigns-- money received from corporations who made their profits by laying us off. Since when is it right to buy an election?

Over 5 billion dollars has been spent on the 2010 election so far, with one week of relentless commercials left to go. Count the zeroes, folks.  That's $5,000,000,000 that could have actually have gone to improving the lives of millions of Americans, by conforming to US regulations and removing harmful toxins from the air, or paying their fair share of taxes, instead of on a massive media blitz of lies and distortion. Big Business is pouring billions into cutting back on auto and factory emissions, preventing the development of solar and wind energy, and paying taxes.  Their minions want power and will agree to anything to get those dollars, instead of standing up to their insatiable corporate greed.

We need to protect the American people and get our country working again. For the last two years, I have watched the party that lost the election prevent the winning party from making many changes. They stood there with their self-righteous expressions and their arms crossed and prevented anything good from happening. The few successes the Democrats were able to push through, like health care, are threatened by the current election.  Republicans are campaigning that they will undo the health care act which is currently helping millions of us stay insured.

Do not forget that people with pre-existing medical conditions like cancer or diabetes, would again be bankrupted by a medical system that charges more for indigent patients, than for those on insurance, and where death panels actually exist at the insurance companies to save money.

Do not forget that the economic collapse of the real estate industry was caused by fraud and lack of government control, not by too much government.

Do not forget that the next Supreme Court judge could determine whether or not a woman has control of her own body--How is it "less government" when you try to control my womb?

Do not forget the thousands of lives lost in Iraq & Afghanistan to fight a war over oil, because as soon as the Republicans control the House, it will just be more of the same.

Stop blaming the unions and illegal immigrants for all our problems and recognize how each of us has been voting with our pocketbooks for years.

The system that caused our current crisis, needs to be fixed, and the only way that can be done is when we start being more civil to each other. We must also understand that the needs and wants of the South and Midwest are different than those of the two coasts, but unless we want another Civil War we will have to find a way to work it out together for the good of all Americans, not just ourselves.  Let's start talking to each other again with a little more civility, whoever wins this year.

The Mad Hatter Republican Tea Party

I've always been a fan of "Alice in Wonderland" from the time I was a child.  I even performed in an Open Theater style troupe production of "Alice" after college.  But lately I feel like I have fallen through the rabbit hole again. Everything seems upside down and inside out.  I feel like I am at the Mad Hatter's Republican Tea Party. I am combining the supposedly disparate Republicans and Tea Party activists, as they really are one and the same. They both call for the overthrow of the Democrats, Liberals and Intellectuals who they blame for everything wrong in this country.

 

Why is it that they find being intellectual a problem, being liberal as something to sneer at?  Wanting less government intervention is a good thing, right?  That’s what all the Republican Tea Party candidates keep exclaiming.

But: Bush wasn’t an intellectual. Look where we are now.

Why is it that the so-called “Ivy League elite” care more for the general population and the Tea Party Republicans only look after their big donor corporations?

Why is it that the very lack of government control was the reason the banks and Wall Street screwed the American people, then they got bailed out?  What about us?

Why is it okay to gamble with our retirement funds and bankrupt people for being sick?  What is so damn important about repealing a health care act that protects the American people for the very first time, against unscrupulous corporations whose executives are made millionaires, while they deny our citizens basic medical coverage? 

I can’t believe that all Republicans Tea Party activists are really such sheep as to be deceived into thinking that the very people who were laid off because corporations shifted their jobs overseas, should be called lazy and blamed for their unemployment.

I can’t believe that a modern society really thinks it is okay to strip a person of their job, their home, their identity and then flog them in public as if it is their own fault. When the real culprits, the greed mongers, the war machine and the very people who created the problems we are currently suffering from get off scot free and even run their current campaigns on saving us from this mess that they created.

What I really can’t believe is that the current Republican mantra “Greed is Good”, has to come from stepping on the backs of the poor and middle class.  Why can’t we ALL do better?  

And finally, why is the Republican Tea Party so white? Look at Congress when they are seated during the State of the Union. Almost everyone on the Republican side of the aisle is white and male. Even if the Chairman of the RNC Michael Steele is a black man.  Believe me that was more for symbolism than to show true acceptance, because the people who are complaining the loudest and getting the most help are the wealthiest. The people with multiple homes and millions of US dollars  in investments hidden in offshore accounts so that they don’t have to pay taxes. They are the real Americans, right? The rest of us hard working blue and white collar Americans, don’t really count. 

Money Money Money

Do you know how great it feels to earn money again?  Today I deposited a paycheck for the first time in four months.  An honest to gosh paycheck with taxes taken out and everything!  Since it was a bi-monthly check, it was quite a decent amount, enough to make my mortgage payment for the first time since May.  Over six hundred was taking out for Federal taxes and almost three hundred each for state taxes and social security, but you know what?  I didn't care.  I'll be getting some of that money back come tax time in April, and it feels good to be able to contribute something again.  Even if it means paying taxes.

You see, the way I look at it, we have a certain social responsibility that can not be ignored or be made to sound like too big a burden for others to bear. It's not morally right, to call for less government, when less means more distress for the less fortunate among ourselves. And who are these people calling for less government, the ones who are making all the money?  The ones in the back pockets of corporations and lobbyists and bigots and religious zealots?  The one's who have multiple homes and fly around in private jets and shop in high end boutiques?  Does that feel right to you?

I believe we ARE responsible for providing for the poor and needy and especially for other hard working Americans who have been punished by the greedy, who sent our jobs overseas in order to make a buck. I believe that excessive CEO bonuses are a crime; the stock market is nothing but legalized gambling for the elite, and that laying off workers and making one person do the job of three, while making enormous corporate profits, is a form of economic slavery.

I want to thank my family for having taught me the difference between right and wrong, between wealth and greed.  I want to thank the planets Jupiter and Saturn for being in the right alignment for my money to start flowing again. I would like to thank the House and Senate for belatedly extending unemployment benefits for the millions of long term unemployed.  I would like to thank the former employer who rescued me from amongst the ranks of the unemployed, and gave me a new and challenging assignment so that I can contribute something to the world again, be rewarded with a paycheck, and pay taxes to help those who can't work and those who are still looking for a job.

Keeping Track

Let's make a list of the Senators and Congressmen and women who have voted against extending unemployment insurance at a time when well over twenty percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed.  I use twenty percent, instead of the official ten percent because I am one of the many millions who are not even counted anymore and I know there are lots more like me.  The statistics are based on bogus figures that leave out everyone underemployed and everyone who is no longer collecting unemployment. There could be as many as thirty percent unemployment now, but I'll go with a conservative twenty percent.  Twenty percent. One in five. For every five people you know that used to have a job, one of those people is now unemployed.

Some people are luckier than others. It depends on what part of the country they live in. In South Florida, half of my family is unemployed. In California, all three persons in my household are un/underemployed and five of my good friends. Only my family in Indiana is working now, and that is because GE had second thoughts and did not close their Bloomington plant and send all those jobs to Mexico. They were planning to, but someone must have had the brilliant thought that people without jobs don't buy refrigerators, so they retooled the plant and started hiring again. Thank you General Electric. You value American workers.

Then take a look at a company like Hewlett Packard (HP).  Isn't it annoying when your computer breaks down and you call for technical support, and the person who answers the phone is on another continent and hardly understandable?  It is especially irritating since I have friends in the U.S. who lost their jobs at HP when Carly Fiorina was CEO and practically transferred all of tech support jobs overseas. Now the pride of the Californian Republican party, she is running against Barbara Boxer for the US Senate.  In January 2004, at a meeting to "head off rising protectionist sentiment in Congress," Fiorina said: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."  I  for one can tell you, that's not who I want representing me in the U.S. Senate.

Meg Whitman, the current Republican candidate for governor of California sent 40 percent of eBay’s jobs to low wage areas abroad. According to Carl Boice of the LA Progressive, "Between 2002 and 2007, Whitman increased the number of overseas workers at eBay by 666 percent, rather than keeping jobs in California."  Now Whitman claims to run on a platform to find jobs for the very people she has abandoned.  Does that make sense to you? 

By the way, I stopped buying HP products and switched to Dell, which is still based in the United States.  I love my new Dell notebook and I love talking to Americans when I need tech support. Go, Dell for keeping America working. More corporations need to follow GE and Dell's lead and bring our jobs back home. 

That is why I am keeping a list of Congressmen and Senators who don't believe we really want to work, who blame us for not finding a job when there are no new jobs, who have abandoned us in this time of crisis.  Let's print that list on the front pages of every newspaper on election day, to remind voters who actually helped us when we were down and who didn't even try.  Don't buy into their bull about less government, unless you enjoy being unemployed and living in the streets.  Less is not better for the American people, and punishing the unemployed for not having a job is pure election folly.

And finally, a huge round of applause for Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, for crossing party lines and doing the only humane thing to do and extend unemployment. Shame on the rest of you.

Let Them Eat Cake

As one of the millions of underemployed people who have not been able to get a full time job for over one year, shame on you Tom Corbett, Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania. I definitely do not prefer sitting around collecting unemployment to actually working. And guess what? I don't even collect unemployment, despite the fact that when I do work, a portion of every paycheck is automatically paid to the state disability insurance (SDI).  At the moment, I am earning about third of what I used to earn, through freelance jobs and part time work. It's about the same amount as unemployment. I am telling you, it's not enough to make ends meet.

You have no idea what it is like out here in the real world. How hard we all struggle to find jobs that no longer exist. Every company I know has laid off workers. Every family I know has at least one unemployed person. I am currently living with my sister and nephew and none of us have a job. But we try every day. My sister's unemployment insurance will end in a few weeks. She's been out of work for six months. I know she appreciates the extra $25 a week, she receives from the Federal government's stimulus funds, but what would really be nice, is if she could continue to collect unemployment until she finds a job.  Like most of us, she has considered changing careers, accepting a less challenging job with greatly reduced pay, or moving to another city altogether to find work.  She gave up her apartment, moved in with me, reduced all her non-essential spending and she still needs $2,000 more a month than she receives from unemployment just to cover rent, health insurance, car insurance, food, phone and general living expenses.

My nephew, who is only twenty, and willing to work for minimum wage, has been in California for a little over a month.  He's a cook, and has applied to every restaurant along Ventura Boulevard from the 405 to Universal Studios. He doesn't drive, so he is limited to jobs in areas where he can get to by public transportation.  He has pounded the pavement and inquired at over one hundred places to no avail.  You try pounding the pavement in Los Angeles when it is 100 degrees and having door after door shut in your face.  Don't tell me we're not trying.

I've got one better. You try living on the equivalent of unemployment insurance for one month.  That would be $1900/month in California. I don't know how much that would be in Pennsylvania. Can you survive for one month and pay all your rent or mortgage, car payments, insurance costs, utilities, medical costs and food on that amount?  I know I can't.  That doesn't even begin to cover my mortgage and property tax. You probably spend more than that on eating out each month.

You and all the uninformed in Congress think you know what is best for the people, but the truth is you don't care about the people of your state. You only care about the rich 1% who fund your campaign.  What should the unemployed do when their money runs out?  Live on the streets or in their cars if they still have them? Send their children out to beg on street corners like in some third world country? The people in power have no clue how hard it is out there for the American people. Those of you with jobs and who are beholden to big business and special interests for those jobs, better think twice before you kick another person to the curb. It reminds me of Maria Antoinette's response when told that the poor had no more bread to eat and she said "Let them eat cake."  You remember what happened to her?

And shame on Congress for not extending unemployment benefits again. They bailed out the banks, they bailed out Wall Street (the only legalized form of gambling acceptable in all 50 states).  What about us?  We are America! Not those corporations that influence you with their soft tax dollars. Helping us, helps the country. Helping corporations is just another way of helping yourselves.

All Packed Up & No Place To Go

Another sign of the times, a producer called to see if I was available to take over a show and go on the road in two days. I was so eager to work again on a union show, that I didn't care if it was four weeks on the road, moving from location to location. In fact, I welcomed the change. I said I would drop everything and be ready to leave by Saturday. Being pro-active, I began packing.  I figured one suitcase for my office equipment & supplies, and one suitcase for clothes.

Last year, I had impulsively purchased two silver multi-directional light weight carbonite cases for my next location job. The suitcases are ultralight and perfect for packing everything I need to handle accounting on a show. I planned to carry my laptop on the plane, and pack everything else. So into the case went a printer, calculator, label printer, electronic postage scale, alphabetizers, stampers, staplers in various sizes, red pens, correction tape, a power strip, router and VOIP box and all the necessary cables for all these devices,  a three-hole puncher, a plastic tool box filled with paper clips, staples, push pins, binder clips and all the necessary tools of my trade. There was even room left for a back support for my desk chair and few boxes of computer labels and pocket file folders and my all important cash box, sans the cash of course.

I had started to go through my clothes, mending and ironing and folding them into neat piles, when the phone finally rang.  It was the producer.  There was a big storm heading toward the first location.  They hadn't forgotten me. The earliest I would leave was on Monday.  So I spent the rest of the weekend, making lists of things to do, like cancel my newspaper, suspending my Netflix, making sure all my bills came to me online.

My nephew who is staying with me, was looking forward to sleeping on a bed instead of a couch. I made a status report for the other members of the board of the homeowners association, showing where we stood on our various improvement projects.  I packed up checks for my remaining post shows, in case someone needed something while I was away. 

When I was finally packed, the phone rang again. "I am so sorry, but..." those five words I seem to keep hearing, "We had to hire someone for political reasons." Another common refrain. "We really appreciate that you were ready to jump in at a moment's notice, and we will keep you in mind for the second season, which is starting to look very likely."  I thanked her politely, saying we should meet when she gets back from location. Then I hung up and started to unpack.

They say when one door closes another door opens. I keep waiting for that to happen. It seems lately that all the doors keep closing and none of them are opening. Come on people, all of you in positions of power to make things happen and give us jobs. Stop sending our work overseas and out of state to save a few bucks. If we don't have jobs, we won't be going to the movies or even paying for cable. And who needs all the cheaply made goods from China that break and are made with dangerous chemicals?  Help your communities heal.  Open the doors again.

Birthday Wishes

Imagine it's your birthday and for most of your life you have celebrated by throwing a big party--fine food and wine shared with friends and family. Only this year, you are unemployed, have exhausted your savings and really shouldn't spend a dime on your birthday. What should you do? Throw a virtual birthday party!  Invite all your friends via email or posting to your virtual party. People will check in throughout the day.  Like my friends in Germany, are calling now while most of California is still sleeping.

Wouldn't  it be great if I could add a video component.  I guess I can open Skype or Gmail and chat with some of my friends that way. Already I've received four Facebook birthday wishes and two fabulous E-cards and it's only 7 AM.  Then I realized that my iPhone battery was dead. When I plugged it in, there were six voice-mail  messages with more birthday wishes.

I checked my various email in-boxes to find all sorts of birthday greetings from friends and vendors like a free cup of coffee at Borders, a $3 coupon at CVS and  a free tarot reading at tarot.com, all of which I appreciate very much. There is a book I want to get at Borders and a free coffee would be nice. I'll use the $3 coupon for eye makeup remover pads and I'll see if my Celtic Cross reading promises a better year ahead.  My discounts at Loehmann's, Macy's, White House/Black Market, will have to wait until the cash starts flowing again.

Virtual birthdays are fun, inexpensive and convenient.  I think I should setup a website to coordinate virtual birthdays. (Brother D, this could be a cool app. Let's talk.) I need to find a way to make money without being dependent on someone employing me.  It is time to be more entrepreneurial, like my hero, Oscar Micheaux, a man who made almost four dozen films, even during difficult times like the great depression. He figured out a way to make his dreams happen, and now, so should I.

My birthday wish is that I get an amazing job or that I finally get a script produced, or a third solution I haven't even thought of yet, or a combination of all of the above.  I want to keep my home, this sanctuary that I have created, and that provides sanctuary for others.

Before I blow out my virtual birthday candle, I want to thank all of my friends for being part of my virtual family, and I want to thank my family for being you.  I love you all. Thanks for celebrating my virtual birthday with me.