Tax Payer Bailout and the Myth of Home Ownership

093008
Le Meme War

Tax Payer Bailout
and the Myth of Home Ownership

This morning I finally learned where and when I “missed the boat.” If you are unfamiliar with the phrase, “missing the boat,” it means sailing away to a lifetime of happiness without worry, financial or otherwise. It means getting on the biggest, unsinkable ship in the history of the world and sailing around with the other wealthy members of society and not having to worry about anything else. Certainly, God would take care of such a ship deemed unsinkable and populated by the ultra-wealthy, right? That is the point of view of certain right-wing ultra-conservative Christians; the point of view that God prefers the wealthy because the wealthy know how to take care of themselves and they donate to charity. What’s more holy than taking more than your working share and spitting out a few thousand dollars to qualify for the next lowest tax bracket?
Anyway, I learned that I missed the boat as I was driving in to work this morning, my stab at the American Dream, and I heard the weather update on WSB, a local A.M. radio station that features news, news, more news, and talk radio. The weatherman stated, “don’t rule out late afternoon showers, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
I thought, WOW! There’s a career I can wrap my brain around and do something with. “Don’t rule out late afternoon showers, but I wouldn’t bet on it.” How much stress could possibly be trickling down from his bosses? Such a weather update would be the equivalent of me going to a customer site and saying, “It’s probably fixed, but don’t count on it.” That is the ultimate denial of responsibility and a much more stress free existence than what I’ve been doing in my so-called quest of my so-called American Dream.
Another low stress position which is popular in the news seems to be that of Mortgage & Loan Lender or Bank CEO. Imagine the freedom of going to work and being able to report, “Yeah, I kind of tried, so since we have all these taxpayers who are rightfully concerned about our future, let’s put all my mistakes, and all the mistakes I’ve allowed to be covered at their expense and if you’ll just float me several million dollars, I’ll happily be on my way and not sit here where I can ruin your institution any further.”
I certainly missed the boat. I’m not the hardest working man in America by any stretch, but I do have to maintain a level of accountability that much wealthier people “on the boat” are able to live without. For example—I would love to hold a press conference next month and inform, say, Visa Credit Card Company, that some carelessness has happened and that I will not be able to make my monthly payment. I would also like to be able to demand that since I will not be able to make a payment, they need to pay me a few thousand dollars so that I can quit using their card and quit continuing to be a burden to their esteemed collection efforts.
I’ve certainly considered incorporating myself into a large enough entity that I wouldn’t have to worry about rules and regulations of mortal men and women. Why shouldn’t I have deistic rights to pass through this world, wholly unaccountable to myself or to those around me, on whom my very livelihood depends?
Many of us, me included, would like to believe that each of us is as important as, say, The CEO of a large Real Estate Agency or Financial Investment Institution. Many of us would like to believe that our mothers worked just as hard to squeeze us out of their respective tubes. Allegedly, some people were shot out of a cannon rather than squeezed out of a tube like the rest of us. Maybe that’s what Dr. Thompson meant when he created the analogy. Maybe that’s why he decided to be shot out of a cannon at the end. At least in death he became equal to the tie-wearing supermen who dictated his rules of existence because of a real or perceived inflated financial status. For the rest of us who don’t have large tracts of acreage deep in the mountains of Colorado, we’ll just have to keep imaging what it’s like to live on the other side.
Neal Boortz is a favorite Atlanta talk show host on WSB. He usually declares himself as a Libertarian or Independent with regards to political parties, but within the last few months he has swung far to the right with his assessment of the current economic crisis. His view, and the view of many prominent right wingers, is that the crisis is a sabatorial result of leftist policy to coerce big banks into making questionable loans to people who normally wouldn’t qualify for such loans, particularly in the housing market. Brother Neal could stand to sit in the pews of the Church of the Painful Truth and see that he is not independent on this issue, and that he is looking at a very narrow aspect of the current crisis.
The other side, most recently exemplified to me by Tim Wise, claims a different sort of intellectual honesty by stating that yes, in fact, the wealthy rightists are to blame for this fiasco. The culprit behind their motives? None other than Greed itself.
The current crisis, fiasco, failure, etc. must be deeper than these two sides of the coin illustrate. After all, the fact that we even have the phrase, “two sides of the coin” points to something deeper, and that “something deeper” is currency, with regards to the coin phrase. The economic situation we now find ourselves in is too a result of something much deeper and much more complex than anyone is willing to attempt to tackle—the myth of home ownership.
Who is responsible for this myth? What is responsible for this myth? Why this myth? How is this a myth?
Many a person, couple or family has proudly announced after filling out mountains of paperwork, “I am officially a home owner!” The well documented aspect of what is popularly termed “home ownership” is a mortgage. I’m hardly the first to notice this, or even mention it, but even with my rusty French, I think of the French word, “mort,” meaning death, and see an invisible “u” in gage, spelling “gauge.”
Death Gauge.
An indicator of death.
Maybe if you’re very fortunate, thrifty and never have need to take out a second or third mortgage, that little gem of a home will be yours for several years before death realizes that you accomplished something and begins stalking you.
The point is—good loan, bad loan, most people never own a home. A home is something you make. It can be made from a house, an apartment, a condo, a townhouse, etc. To advertise the home ownership as integral to the American Dream adds a puff of smoke to a brimstone burning fire, and who wants to die from asphyxiation when the house must be saved before the mortgage is paid?
There exists a category of people known as “House Flippers.” I don’t know if they use this dolphinic term to refer to themselves, or if people point at them and say, “There’s a House Flipper!” Regardless, these people engage in activity known as “flipping” a house. The simple definition is that they buy a house at a reasonable deal and apply often a minimal investment and sell the house at an even higher price. Believe me when I say that this is a tough argument to counter. Some people go so far as to live in the house while they’re fixing it for re-sale!
There appears to be no harm in these activities, and I’ll not be the one to launch an argument against them. What I do take issue with is how gullible these House Flippers allow themselves to be and take me to be. Sure it’s possible. Sure, it’s been done countless times over. However, there are too many factors that can contribute to the declining price of a house. If the neighbors let their yards resemble the jungle scenes from Full Metal Jacket, your granite cabinet tops won’t make a bit of difference.
I have known several people to make a great deal of money from House Flippery, but the overwhelming majority of “homeowners” will barely make enough money off the sale of a house to cover any of their expenses, much less make a profit. Houses do not have an automatic up-sell clause built in. Sorry. Most Americans work plenty hard enough to just keep themselves in their home.
Who’s to blame? Everyone religiously points at the other as sinful and full of blame. The other side always finds a nugget of honesty in their intentions and polishes this nugget to shine like a mine.
The sad fact is not that you are being dragged into this mess, the sad fact is that mess exists and pointing the finger is more politically strategic than finding the root cause and re-building from there. The root cause is a myth, and myths, like rumors, are disastrous and demeaning to everyone involved. We’re all involved.

© 2008 Le Meme War

Genius and Heroin

092908
Genius and Heroin

Today I received a very special e-mail, one that reached through the microcosmic world of the internet and grabbed me tightly, following up with a big, salivating kiss. At the moment, I can’t even recall who sent the e-mail. Maybe it was A Cappella Books, a great bookstore in Atlanta, despite one employee’s vociferous disdain for anything written by Kerouac (the Beat shelves are right in front of the register, and most people, like me, who just stop in to look, often without buying anything, like me, probably annoy him and deprive his growing paunched hunger pangs much needed money for food) but the shop is still a great place to find the harder to find gems of the literary world which don’t receive much love in the bigger chain stores. Now that I’ve plugged this fantastic bookseller, I should return to the lovely letter they may or may not have sent to my inbox today.
The e-mail was certainly about books, maybe even about authors and their public appearances in the area. I receive a bulk of these e-mails. Not because I’m in any way “in the know” but because I’m an excitable nerd for all things literature and Poetry and despite my hesitancy towards the internet, I did find that it is a great place to sign up for e-mail updates and lo’ and behold, Bookstores and Book Publishers LOVE to have newsletters concerning upcoming events. Maybe it’s a Capitalist thing, but since I’m not a fan of Capitalism (so to speak) ((nor am I a fan of ANY economic system for that matter—all breed greed and class contempt, but since I do sometimes make purchases, I’ll go with Capitalism as preferred opiate)) and I am a fan of bookstores and book publishers, I will declare that the genesis of these newsletters is a desire for a sense of community. Writers tend to work most prolifically alone, so why wouldn’t one encourage a sense of community? (I can be cynical about those things I love!)
A new book is forthcoming and the book concerns two of my favorite topics, and is aptly titled— Genius and Heroin. I was captivated a few years ago, inside one of those mammoth chain stores I recently spoke ill of, after reaching the top of the escalator and having my attention and imagination captured by a small little book titled—On Hashish, by some guy named Walter Benjamin. I quickly discovered that this Jewish-German Metaphysicist was a very unlikely candidate to write about the effect of such a well known potent drug, but Benjamin’s scholarly acumen added more to this gem than subtracted. I also learned later, and am still learning, of his involvement with some of my other favorite writers. That’s another story, so I’ll return to Genius and Heroin.
Maybe the guy’s name is Michael Largo, maybe it isn’t. I don’t have a mind for such detail. I remember ideas. One of my favorite ideas is to get good and wasted on some substance and rip your fingers away on a stilted, heavy clicking typewriter all night and publishing your sweat the next day. It works, sometimes, for Rock & Roll, and it works, sometimes, for Poetry and literature. I’ve written some of my best work, so far, on the mildly lame substance of beer. (I’ve also written some of my worst . . .) I’m not knocking the elixir of my muse, but even I have to admit that beer is rather tame compared to the legendary effects of Absinth, Heroin, Opium, or LSD. (Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones does proclaim, the world’s greatest writers are all drunks and fighters and I want desperately to believe him.)
Anyway, Michael Largo wrote, published and is most likely supporting a new book called Genius and Heroin which deals with some of the most legendary people in the history of Rock, Poetry, and Literature and their self destructive lifestyles with regard to the plethora of genius they were able to perpetuate. Genius isn’t a static event which happens to few people, it is a dynamic occurrence which inflicts us all at one time or another, and the trick is learning how to harness that genius into something that gets you off and might just help someone else find their jollies. Creation is a marvelous activity, no matter how you define it, but it can be very lonely and sometimes the only cure for the intense, fiery pain of loneliness is a good beer, a shot in the arm, or a drop of something on the tongue. I can’t say that it’s right for everyone, but the history of substance abuse and its marriage with the creative impulse is undeniably attractive and just damn entertaining. I excitedly anticipate reading this book, and what I look forward to more than the actual reading is NO HANGOVER!

© 2008 Le Meme War

Bumper Sticker Politics

092408

Two bumper stickers on the back windshield of a shiny black car; the owner probably upper middle class, judging by the shininess and model of the car. His tag and tag frame indicates that he received his post high school education at a little known university somewhere in Kentucky, and now he drives his car through a wealthy section of Atlanta and doesn’t look at all out of place. The first of the two bumper stickers contains the following message:
God is not a Republican or a Democrat
and the second of the two, placed squarely next to the first has
Obama ‘08
printed familiarly on its shiny surface. The two stickers are similar enough in color to suggest continuity, but not the same, as to suggest inseparability. The two messages are intended to imply difference and to suggest continuity.

I’m not qualified to advertise myself as a political scholar, but I immediately detect tension between these two messages. I will attempt to properly demonstrate this tension by setting forth this argument in logical increments. The illustration, as my representation of the texts of the bumper stickers, will be italicized.

God is not a Republican or a Democrat. Obama, who is running for the office of the President of the United States in 2008, is running on the Democratic ticket, and is therefore, for our intent and purpose, a Democrat. The man in the shiny black car supports Obama’s campaign for the Presidency.

Perhaps the tension is not as evident as I first supposed. Perhaps this man is merely stating his Atheism through controversial political channels. The problem with this supposition is that most people don’t make such bold statements of religious preference through coded bumper stickers which support either party’s candidate. Not to generalize, but I would dare go so far as to say that people from obscure schools in the Kentucky university system don’t think that far out of the box to make a theological statement of such proportions; and if they happened to be the type of intellectual who would, they would also be the type of intellectual to know that their message would fall squarely on deaf eyes, for the most part. No, if the intent was to establish the driver’s theological assessment, other, more suitable, bumper stickers would have served his in greater capacity.

Instead, my belief is that this man, this product of the Kentucky university system, is trying to tell me something much more sinister than his profession of Atheism; this man is trying to tell me, and anyone else who dares to pay attention to this stickered transmission, that his support for Obama transcends the traditional boundaries of intellectual party lines, and that only he (the driver of the shiny black car) and God possess the ability to understand how this new demarcation of party lines within the political spectrum is possible with Obama commanding the driver’s seat.

The choice for Obama is not one of standard political viewpoints. Classifying Obama as a Democrat is only necessary to allow lesser minds the ability to understand how he was allowed into the political race from the outset. Even if Jesus himself returned and decided to change the world through the accepted political process, he would have to declare a party stance before he was allowed to participate in any sort of election, or world changing activity. Obama, as dictated my this man’s intellectual superiority, and religious convictions, is less than Jesus, as Jesus is, after all, the son of God, and God has no need of children born two thousand years after his first born walked, died and was resurrected on this earth; and therefore Obama must pick a political affiliation just to appease the process.

I think that what this man, the driver of the shiny black automobile with the Kentucky tag, the Kentucky tag frame and the two pseudo-political/religious bumper stickers placed high enough for anyone to see, is trying to tell me, to tell us all, is a confirmation of his theological affirmation. Yes, God exists. Secondly, we should all ascertain that, Not only does God exist, but He is wise, and God’s wisdom transcends conventional human knowledge; and therefore, He can not be relegated within political party lines. By the simple act of acknowledging God’s wisdom, and by doing so with an oil based product designed to stick semi-permanently to his mid-priced vehicle, this man is asserting that his knowledge, perhaps the one ascertained from the obscure Kentucky university, is somehow inseparable from God’s wisdom. Why else would this man be the one chosen to remind us of God’s everlasting wisdom, which certainly transcends election year politics? This man’s support of Obama therefore violates accepted human knowledge and classification of political naming and becomes an evolutionary process of God’s very wisdom. This man has selected Obama as his choice for President, not based on established party lines, those lines are defined by man, and man alone. Obama is his choice for President because, through the gift of God’s wisdom, only available to him and anyone else blessed enough to have this combination of bumper stickers, he has seen through the political whitewashing of man’s definitions and gone straight to the source of absolute wisdom to determine who is best capable of leading our great country during the next four years of continuing crisis.
How do I know that our country is due for four more years of ongoing crisis? There exists a fairly well known outlet of intellectual superiority and theological declassification which tells me what I should know is happening in the world, and how Obama, despite never defining himself, his policies, or his desired actions to anyone’s satiable satisfaction; and this outlet is known simply and poignantly as “the news.” CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, . . . There is no shortage of network support for telling me what I should know and what is important to my day to day affairs. Newscasters, News writers (because nothing really happens in the world without being sensationally scripted), and News reporters are the new clergy– the new delivery method of God’s revelationary message.

Little did I know that when I set out for work this morning that a messenger of God, a harbinger of eternal wisdom, would cross my path and instruct, by virtue of a single lane of traffic, that I follow him for several miles, and that he would bless me with the time and material for a new way of looking at the upcoming election.

Or perhaps I merely found myself trapped behind some jackass who accidentally found two unrelated bumper stickers that he hoped would make him appear less ignorant than his vocalization of his political views would allow.

© 2008 Le Meme War

Auto-tele-mated

091708

Someone recently sent me a picture of Uncle Sam, the notorious I want you! finger pointing pose with the phrase, This finger wasn’t meant to push 1 for English! splashed in angry red letters across the bottom.
Pressing “1” for English or “2” for Espanol, or whatever combination exists, is hardly the end of the options on most telephone calls these days. I barely remember my grandparent’s having an old rotary dial phone in their living room. Imagine circling a number rather than just pushing a button! Dialing “0” for an operator would easily take several seconds for the rotary spinner to get back around and if you had to stop for any reason with your finger in mid spin, a different number might register, but I’m only speculating on this as a potential pain in the ass.
My job requires me to spend a great deal of time on the telephone on any given day. Most companies have an extensive list of options beyond the simple English or Spanish. The phone calls I have to make usually are layered, meaning that once I’ve selected an option, whole new menus of options are presented. I can spend several minutes on the phone and never speak to a live person, which I think is most people’s main gripe about what I term auto-tele-mated.
Auto = Self. Tele = phone. Mated = joined. This isn’t such a bad thing. As someone who is required to use the phone extensively, I can assure you that there are times when you just don’t want to speak to anyone. Talking to the wrong person can be even more frustrating than talking to no one at all. Imagine the following scenario:
There is no auto-tele-mated-ness and you are calling your computer manufacturer to find out what is wrong with your computer.
You: “Hello?”
Them: “Computer Company, can I help you?” (You would be so fortunate to get someone so chipper and helpful, but that remains the point to be made.)
You: “My computer isn’t working right.”
Them: “Oh, so and so usually handles that, but she’s out today. Let me see if I can find somebody.”
You: “Thanks.”
A few minutes later (again, if you are very fortunate and haven’t rubbed your bad day off onto the guy who answered the phone) someone else picks up, maybe a guy.
Him: “Hey, this is so and so. What can I do for you?”
You: “I told that other guy, but my computer is broken.”
Him: “Great! Let me get some information from you and I can set you up with a new one.”
You: “I don’t want a new one. I want mine fixed.”
Him: “This isn’t tech support, I work in Sales.”
You: “That’s great, but I don’t want a new one. I want mine fixed.”
Him: “Do you have some kind of special attachment to that computer?”
You: “Nothing out of the ordinary, but it has all my stuff on it.”
Him: “Mmm hmm. Yes, but it’s broken so you can’t get to your stuff anyway, right?”
You: “Yeah, but that’s why . . .”
Him: “Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Yours doesn’t work, I can sell you one that works, we’re all happy. Now if I can just ask you . . .”
Hopefully, you hang up the phone.

That’s actually not a bad scenario. You might have reached someone in accounting or human resources, or worse, the CEO who would insist that nothing is wrong with her company’s products.
Being auto-tele-mated allows you the chance to decipher the company’s babble-speak and figure out for yourself to whom you’re willing to speak. Imagine participating in the above conversation with a Spanish speaking operator when you only know English!
Uncle Sam, with his stoic sneer and accusative finger, may have one time been able to prompt a feeling of low self worth which could blossom into a despotical brand of patriotism by following his finger to the neighborhood recruiter’s office and signing your personality away on the dotted line, but what kind of message do we get about the top-hatted fogey when he’s too lazy to press a freakin’ button on a telephone? A button that will ultimately make his dutiful life easier and spare an excess amount of people from having to listen to old Uncle Sam reiterate how things were better when he was a young fogey. I’m sure that bony old finger has plunged angrily into more than a few rotary dials to tell Mabel that he needs to speak to Sheriff Taylor, “pronto.”

© 2008
Le Meme War Press

Parking Ticket

091708

What I’m about to relate doesn’t happen often, but I must mention it because it has happened at least once. My local government surprised me in a good way. This was City level local government, which made the surprise all the more genuine.
The quick rundown:
I parked my work truck in an alley between two buildings. Other work trucks were parked in this alley, but on the other side of the alley. I had to unload two DLP monitors, so I pulled to the wrong side of the alley, parked, ran inside and met my contact. A few minutes later my boss called and told me to move the truck; he had received a few angry phone calls. I went to move my van and found a pretty parking ticket stuck underneath the windshield wiper. I moved my van anyway as I have firsthand experience that they will ticket you even if you already have a ticket from just a few minutes ago. The best and brightest of our esteemed public school system do not compete for the prestigious position of Meter Maid, so arguments are futile. Having a ticket only means that you’ve been illegally parked for more than a few minutes and were too stubborn to move and most certainly deserve another citation. Everyone wants revenge on society and when you’re illegally parked, even questionably parked, you are the target of that revenge, you are society.
Printed on the ticket, along with your illegibly scrawled vehicle information is a website (click the link if you get really bored) to remind you that the city of Atlanta has in fact caught up with the cyber age. According to the ticket, you can even pay it online.
If you pay your ticket within seven days you pay one fine. (Mine was $25.) If paid after the seven days the fine doubles. After searching through the website, I finally found where I could pay my ticket online and I found it well within the seven day limit.
I entered my ticket number and tag number and received an error message that my ticket was not found. One could hope that the ticket was lost, but it’s best not to take such chances with Atlanta’s best and brightest parking officials. I called the telephone number well after business hours and heard the automated message, “It may take up to seven days for your ticket to be entered into the system.”
My first, and recurring, thought was What a scam! Of course it takes them seven days to enter the ticket. If you want the convenience of paying online, or even on the telephone, you’ll have to pay the doubled amount. Unless you’re willing to drive down to City Hall and pay the ticket in person. If you choose this option, you will pay at least $10 for parking, miss at least two hours from your day by standing in line listening to other people who are there to “fight” the wrong done to them by getting a ticket when they were completely innocent or “just a minute past the meter.” I know a lot of guilty people who never receive tickets for their misdeeds, but I’ve never seen an innocent person get a ticket for parking legally. I also see the prestigious Meter Maids (yes, many of them are men, but the name sticks) and know that they aren’t nearly fast enough, nor can they speed read well enough to catch a meter just as it expires. They are slow, but they are efficient.
Parking to pay my ticket and taking a two hour lunch break didn’t seem to be the best option for me. My day isn’t so busy that I don’t have the time, but I just didn’t want to. Besides, who gets the $10 I pay for parking in the city lot? $35 for parking illegally? No thanks.
I called again during business hours and subjected myself to the rigmarole of the auto-tele-mated system. (See blog in Technology.) I pressed “0” to speak to an operator which was an option I was only supposed to use if it had been more than seven days and my ticket still hadn’t been entered. I took my chances.
The operator asked the date of my ticket and scolded me because “it’s only been five days, honey. It takes seven to ten days to enter the ticket into the system.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t want to pay double just because it takes you a week to type seven digits into your system.”
Her silence indicated that either she wasn’t amused by my insane demand, or that she had hung up the call. She finally spoke and said, “No, you have seven days after the ticket is entered to pay. Even if you came down here, we couldn’t accept the payment because it’s not in the system.”
Not wanting to miss my chance to peeve her again, I said, “Great! Can you give me a call back when my ticket has been entered so I’ll know when the seven days begin?”
The click which immediately preceded the new silence told me that she had hung up the call.
Yes! I had peeved the peever! To top it all off, I was also pleasantly surprised by a city official.

© 2008
Le Meme War Press