Syndicate and Hague

I don’t have much time these days to write long, detailed posts about interesting things (or, at least, interesting to me…), but I wanted to take a moment to comment on the unallotment decision from the MN Supreme Court.

For background reading, I suggest just going over to MPR. Here are most of their stories.

• How the budget may affect legislators
• Graphic: Minnesota’s deficit picture
• State faces unprecedented cash-flow crisis
• A closer look at Gov. Pawlenty’s unallotment cuts

• Explainer: What is unallotment anyway?

What I want to say about this is that I am so furious at Pawlenty right now. He and his legal team knew that what they were pulling had an iffy chance of not being overturned in the courts because the argument that it was not unconstitutional was not terribly convincing.

He used a law meant to bridge gaps to overturn the legislature’s decisions and do exactly what he wanted however he wanted. He passed all the spending, but not the revenue bills, which created the crisis situation that triggered his ability to use unallotment to change the spending bill to whatever he wanted it to be.

And now we’re in for it. Because of his cynical political move, our state is in an absolute fiscal crisis. I want to hammer home that it doesn’t matter where you stand politically - Republicans and Democrats should be outraged that he prioritized a ploy over our security as a state. He knew this was a possible outcome of his decision - even a likely one - and he did it anyway.

He sold us out. And I don’t know if it was to look tough on the national stage or if it was because he doesn’t know how to negotiate or compromise, but he sold us out.

Stop sending me special offers.  Stop sending me those damned “checks” to use.  Just stop it.

I just spent 45 minutes ripping up your mail - and why did I have to be so careful?  Because you, Citibank, have to put my full name and address in about 10 different places in the mailings.  Because you, Capital One, insist on sending me checks that some random person could just write up and charge the hell out of my account.  Because every time I buy a shredder it breaks within a month and so I’ve given up and taken to tearing up the bits of paper with my hands because, despite the fears over identity theft online, it’s your own recycling/garbage that poses the biggest danger.

Every week, I get five (or so) new offers for cards or “special” offers from my current company offering me the opportunity to spend money I don’t have on impulsive crap I don’t need.

I hate you.  You are exploitative and predatory and suck in the needy and greedy, preying on people’s desires and desperation.  You are plunderers, pushing consumption as the norm and portraying yourselves as our security nets when we’re in need.  Of course, anyone who carries a balance with you could see the ground shift beneath their feet in a moment if you decide to arbitrarily increase rates or change fees or alter minimum payments.

Your leaders make out like the bandits they are - even when your companies fail, they land safely in their multimillion dollar Central Park apartments with their golden parachutes.  They make more from their failures than most of us will accumulate in our entire lifetimes.

Stop sending me mail.  Stop trying to convince me that impulsive/compulsive buying is acceptable.  You can try to blame individuals for making bad decisions and getting into trouble, but the fact is that you and the legislators who allow you to ravage all of us have created the culture in which you are a solution for our crises; orchestrated the financial collapse that hasn’t affected you at all; and systematized your consolidation of power - of rate adjustments and fees and whatnot - while we have nothing.

You totally and completely suck.

Also, I will never carry a balance with you.  Never.

Also, also: stop sending me mail.

School started up again yesterday. This is usually a very exciting time for me because excessive brain exercise=happy. However, I’m suffering from what I’m going to call “recession malaise.” I think a lot of us have this right now - it’s the knowledge that the people in power are screwing us combined with the knowledge that everything could be much worse, so count your blessings.

It’s hard to quell the discontent, though.

As I’ve said before, people in general like to say that we become more conservative with age. It was Winston Churchill who said “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” Personally, I see that as both a cop out and as arrogantly self-interested. (As it’s Churchill, I shouldn’t be surprised by the latter).

The older I get, the less patience I have with how business (non-profit, government, education, private industry, whoever) operates. The “tough decisions” rarely affect the bottom lines of the top administration’s remunerations/benefits or those of the people in their peer group. The “tough decisions” always, always, always result in stripped away benefits from low-/middle-wage workers, with a disproportionate burden of layoffs falling upon low-wage workers.

I understand the basic human nature behind these decisions. You want to protect yourself, you want to protect your friends, you want to ensure that - when it’s your colleague’s turn to make a “tough decision” that they spare you. People don’t want to give up the trappings of power or power itself.

It’s still wrong, though. It’s still unethical and immoral. And I know that many people think ethics and morals have nothing to do with business, and I thank them for allowing the financial sector to become what it is today - you know, the financial sector that almost singlehandedly set up the environment that would most easily facilitate an economic collapse. But hey, you can’t even live like a pauper in NYC on a salary of less than a million, right?

The thought process embedded in our organizations by this kind of lunacy - that executives should make obscene amounts more than their underlings - has infiltrated pretty much every aspect of our society, and this is a problem. It means that when terrible times come and a terrible governor makes the worst possible decisions about a great state’s welfare…well, sacrifice becomes the keyword of all state organizations. It’s not proportionate sacrifice, of course, because we operate with an oligarchy and: in good times salaries are justified by the good times and in bad times salaries are justified by how hard it is to retain such valuable employees in bad times.

The entrenchment of power never ends.

And so…malaise…

Back in April when Megan and I fled our insane and scary living situation, we had just put a very reasonable - but low - offer on a house in an absolutely dreamy part of Minneapolis. Yes, we had to leave in the middle of the night; yes, we had to put all our things in storage; yes, we were getting married in less than a month; yes, it was hard to crash here and there with two cats and a dog; yes, it was the end of the semester; but we would get the house and live happily ever after the end.

Ha. Hahahaha. HA.

This is our third month of “transition.” Technically, we are homeless. Homeless as in “no permanent address,” not homeless as in “sleeping in a shelter,” but still…the state of being unsettled sends out ripples in every direction. Concentration, sleep, creativity, motivation, money - they all decrease.

I have reminded myself repeatedly of our privilege. We had to move suddenly, but we had enough resources to buy boxes and rent a storage space and even get movers to take things to storage. We had places to stay - sure, we had to move around a bit, and staying with other people is stressful for all involved, but we got to keep our animals with us. We were (and are) homeless in the most privileged way - we’re waiting to close on a house. And it’s keeping us in limbo.

However, it’s starting to drive us insane. Every time we think things are ready to go, something else happens to throw a wrench into the ordeal. It’s the problem of trying to buy a short sale, and of a real estate market full of insanity. But we’ve just come to a point today where - unless something dramatic changes - we may have to walk away from a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood for reasons that have nothing to do with us.

I am building walls around my heart (I love this house) in an attempt to prepare myself for the worst. Aside from our love for this house (we’ve not seen anything we like nearly as much), though, is how exhausted we are from all this. The idea that we have to move yet again in August - after we just moved again in July, and without knowing if/when we’ll get the house - it’s making me lose my damn mind. To have gotten the banks to accept our offer and now have it on the verge of falling through…

My writing life has suffered greatly from lack of stability, as has any research I was planning to do this summer for school. Instead I spend an inordinate amount of time creating false structures of stability around me. And try to remind myself of how much worse it could be. Because it could always be worse.

But here is my confidential to the banks moment:

You suck. You suck. You suck. You loaned people money when they had no way of repaying it. You inflated the housing market to a disastrous point. No one knows what the hell anything costs anymore because of you - and appraisals are now all over the place. You facilitated peoples’ desperation or greed or ignorance to a point where you were all bound to fail. You’re not making any money on this damned short sale that you’re holding on to. Every day that goes by is another day this beautiful house is vacant, and is another day of disrepair. You suck. Take the losses you’ve brought on yourself. You suck, you suck, you suck.

So they did it. The Regents, sans two, voted to destroy the Regents Scholarship. There are not enough expletives in the world to express how I’m feeling right now.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s our own damn fault.

Let me repeat that: it’s our own damn fault.

One of the Regents who voted against the proposal cited phone calls she’d gotten as one reason she would not vote to destroy the scholarship. Public outcry does work and if 2,300 people take classes every year, 4,000 workers should have been at that rally. Do you really think they would have passed it if McNamara plaza had been filled with U employees and the TV reporters who would have followed a crowd like that? I don’t.

Maybe we’ve just gotten so used to getting screwed that we don’t see the point of making an issue of it anymore. Cut pay? Sure. At least I have a job. But what happens when they come for more? How willing are you to have your compensation package sucked dry so that we can keep executive salaries at a “freeze” and not a “cut”?

If you weren’t there and didn’t make phone calls:
You all just took a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it. Those of you who make money and don’t need it let your lowest paid workers take a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it.

Protest works. But it only works when people show up. Sadly, those who proposed anti-employee solutions were able to waltz off with more of our money because we as a whole didn’t bother to try.

And that pisses me off. And depresses me.

So where the hell am I going to find an extra 3 grand a year? Anyone? I guess I’ll start applying for scholarships that could have gone to other students. I was actually not doing that because I felt I didn’t need the money as badly. That’s changed now, though…

There are plenty of reasons that women shouldn’t get behind Sarah Palin just because she’s got two X chromosomes, including her adamantly anti-choice stance on women’s rights to make decisions for themselves. Personally, I think that Palin was chosen cynically - to potentially appeal to the radical right Christian conservatives and to disenchanted (sigh, so sick of that meme) Hillary supporters.

All that said, I’m already seeing the sexism that encountered Clinton rearing its ugly, ugly head in discussions of Palin. It’s disgusting and unnecessary and none of us should stand for it. Just as we shouldn’t stand for the misogynistic attacks on Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton or any other woman.

That’s it, that’s all I’m saying on this. Have fun this extended weekend and join me at the Liberty Parade if you’re in Minneapolis!

Not to be crass, but seriously, all y’all libertarians and Republicans can go screw yourselves. Live on an island where you don’t care about the society you live in. Tear each other to pieces in some Lord of the Flies fantasyland where the strong survive and blah blah blah.

This is a note I might otherwise post on my Twitter feed. A 140 character WTF, but this is serious.

First, I’ll tell you why I’m beyond outraged. The Star Tribune wrote today that police and fire calls may start to be billed to the recipients of said services in Duluth.

Let me quote from the article:

Duluth city administrators are considering charging fees to property owners and drivers for police and fire responses.

City spokesman Jeff Papas says the amount of the fees haven’t been set yet.

If the Duluth City Council agrees to charge fees, it would then set an amount. The council could vote July 28.

Papas says the city is looking into whether it can charge different fees for residents and nonresidents. If so, fire and vehicle extraction fees would apply to everyone, but only nonresidents would pay to have accidents investigated.

Papas says the fees could bring in an extra $100,000 per year for the city facing a $4.5 million deficit.

Screed ahead.

If our economy/society is in such shambles that we can’t provide basic rescue and protection services to ourselves based on a shared pool of resources, we have a problem.

And here is the problem we face in general. Since the 1980s, certain members of our society have been reaping the tremendous benefits of deregulation, while society itself is cracking under the weight of economic and structural disrepair that has happened with the abandonment of checks and balances on the free market.

Laissez faire economic policy is a dumb idea. The fairy tale that what is good for “the market” is good for the society is preposterous. The current crisis with foreclosures is a fantastic example. “The market” drove up prices and encouraged greedy and corrupt mortgage brokers to get home buyers/refinancers to sign on with loans they had no perceivable way of paying off.

Why would they do this? Huge, huge commission. The bigger the “sale,” the bigger the haul. Lack of oversight and regulation allowed this to continue on a grand scale. There were home buyers/refinancers who made greedy/bad decisions, but if you read the personal stories that have been reported, some were just outright deceived.

Conned. Conned because a lot of people were making a lot of money.

And what happens to the people who really profited on this? They lose a tiny percentage of their ghastly wealth? That’s hardly punishment for hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and the destruction that wreaks on neighborhoods.

But forget that. We could talk about deregulation of mining, all those cranes that keep crashing down and killing people, the airline industry.

Deregulation=no oversight. No oversight=no one to call you out on fraud.

And now we’re in a situation where a city in this great state, and this is a great state, is considering charging for basic rescue and protection.

Minnesota is not perfect, but we used to value our communities. We knew that in order to have a functional state with a good quality of life, you had to invest in the society. We are responsible for the quality of our communities and neighborhoods.

If there’s no money, raise taxes. Forget this “fee-based” Republican crap. We are a society. We stand together or else we will fall apart. Hardly any of us could afford as a single household to create the kind of life that we have when we combine our resources. It is beyond my personal comprehension that people can ignore this simple fact.

I could scream right now, I’m so frustrated. Our physical infrastructure is disintegrating, and now our rescue/protection infrastructure is something we might have to consider the cost of the charges against the benefits of getting help.

Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Raise the damned income tax. Taxes are your obligation to the society in which you live.

Know what’s worse than taxes? A society where no one is accountable. Make people pay for rescue/protection services and some will opt out. You’d better hope those people don’t live next door to you if it happens.

This post crosses a couple of topics that have been on my mind lately. Little things, you know, like pervasive racism and the second-class status of GLBT folks in this country.

Jack and Jill Politics wrote on a particularly heinous op-ed in the Chicago Tribune last week. The article embodies a lot of the problems I’ve had with Clinton’s campaign–which has used racist sentiment…actually, let’s be honest…it’s used white supremacist sentiment to rally rural and older white voters. Obama is too uppity for his own good, know what I mean?

Anyway, Kathleen Parker’s nasty piece dwells on the concept of “full-blooded” Americanness.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that’s gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Now, I understand that Parker may think her own audience is blind to their own motivations, but how is something about “heritage” and “made in America” and not about race?

She’s hardly masking her racist white supremacist sentiment:

It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Man, you really can’t get much more KKK than that.

Here’s the thing, it’s all code. She’s not talking about my background. Fuck all that Mayflower and Daughters of the American Revolution bullshit. The WASPs never did think much of the Irish or the Slavs. But when she talks about full-blooded Americans, she’s also not using that code to slur me. It’s not about the old immigrants who are now neatly rolled up into whiteness, it’s the new immigrants…like Obama’s dad.

Now, where this does become about me is when the issue of…

Yet, white Americans primarily—and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially—have been put on the defensive for their concerns with “guns, God and gays.”

And the justification for both their racism and their general hatred of anything not like them is:

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Today, Governor Pawlenty vetoed the SF 960 bill that the Minnesota House and Senate passed. It would have allowed local governments in Minnesota to provide domestic partner benefits. I realize that “teh gayz” are a big selling point for the Republicans in a time when their economic and international policies are being shown for the shams that they are, but damn if it doesn’t break my heart every time they try to make life harder for us.

We’re part of this “multiculturalism” that Parker and her allies are scared of. (Or, rather, that she exploits this line of thinking to advance her name and get a book deal at some point. Controversy sells!)

And why are they scared of it? Because their heritage is being swept under the carpet? Bullshit. It’s the time-honored tradition of: if you’re doing better, it must be at some cost to me, so I don’t want your lot to improve.

Does it actually hurt heterosexual couples if I got Megan health insurance through my job or vice versa? I mean, unlike y’all, we have to pay taxes on the amount paid (FYI: that’s approximately $100 a month in taxes for health care at the U. On top of the normal cost of adding someone to your insurance.).

In order to be against gay marriage or domestic partner benefits or civil unions or black people becoming president or women becoming president or whatever, you have to believe that if any of these things occurs, you will have lost something.

And, you know what? If you think that people don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that you have because you’re afraid of a level playing field, you need to really think about what that means. It means you don’t think you’re good enough, it means you’re insecure about your position in the world, and it means you are petty and exploitative and just plain mean.

Congrats to Californians, by the way, whose largely Republican (I believe 6 of the 7 judges were Republican appointments) court said that not allowing gay marriages in CA was unconstitutional. It’s going to kick off a firestorm, but if marriage is going to remain a thing in this country (um, that’s a definite), then it needs to be across the board. Knock it down like miscegenation was knocked down.

/rant

Via Slog:

A public high school principal in Memphis, Tennessee, outed a pair of gay male students—to their teachers, classmates, and parents—after she found out that they were a couple. The principal also called the mother of one of the boys to tell her that she, “didn’t like gay people and wouldn’t tolerate homosexuality at her school,” and posted the names of the boys on a publicly posted list of known students couples in order to prevent public displays of affection, “hetero and homo.”

…

In Tuesday’s letter to the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners, the ACLU points out that the principal ordered the boys not to even walk or study together at school.

Emails of the school board and principal:

Principal:
Daphne Beasley
BeasleyD@mcsk12.net

The Board of Commisioners:
hartt@mcsk12.net
jonesmartaviusd@mcsk12.net
williamsf@mcsk12.net
whalumkennetht@mcsk12.net
gatewoods@mcsk12.net
MallottBettyJ@mcsk12.net
robinsonp@mcsk12.net
warrenj@mcsk12.net
webbsharona@mcsk12.net

Superintendent:
superintendentward@mcsk12.net

My response that I emailed them:

What you did to those two gay students of yours is absolutely shameful. I am appalled at the lack of compassion, empathy, and judgment that went into such a flagrant violation of the relationship between the student and the school. By outing the students, you intended them to be subjected to harassment, hoped for them to be shamed, and misused your authority. What you succeeded in doing is contributing to the long and storied history of oppression that GLBT people face in our society and others–and I am proud of those kids for standing up to you instead of internalizing what you did, which decades of young GLBT people have done. I am proud of them because they’re not letting you lead to depression or suicide. I am proud of them because they have taken what you thought would shame them and turned it into something that is shameful for you.

I am horrified that you hold such an advanced position in educating our youth.

(just a sidenote: that list in general strikes me as strange and overly, um, zealous on the part of administrators.)

Be warned: listening to this will make you upset.

But listen to it and email her. Via Blogactive.

Give Oklahoma representative Sally Kern a ring/email:
(405) 557-7348
sallykern@okhouse.gov