The Diary of A Simple Man

A couple of days ago the closing song "Still Alive" from Portal popped up on my main Pandora station. I liked it so much that I looked into buying the game. Best Buy didn't carry it, according to their website. Game Stop did, and had it available as an instant digital download - for $20, plus a mandatory $3 surcharge for being able to download it again (if it got erased) for 18 months from the date of purchase.

So I went directly to Valve, the company that makes Portal, and downloaded it for $9.99. Game Stop are crooks!

I suppose this could be considered political, so ( on with the political chastity belt again! (Read more) )
You think 79% is high? The effective annual interest on many payday-loan-store loans is over 800%.

Okay, this is a political post which is NOT filtered. I'm putting it behind an LJ cut, instead. Those who don't like my political posts, DON'T READ THIS.
( Read more... )

I lost my temper in a discussion of salaried and exempt employees over on Askville.

"I'm exempt (salaried) employee in CA, I'm suppose 2 work 8-6 w/1 hour lunch, which means 10hr day is that illegal?"

---

"Be glad you even have a job right now."

What I hate about that sort of statement is that it could be used to excuse any kind of abuse by an employer.

"My boss makes me work nights and weekends." "Just be glad you have a job."

"My salary got cut in half but my boss got a bonus." "Just be glad you have a job."

"My boss raped my wife." "Just be glad you have a job."

"My boss is forcing me to donate all my organs to his family, even the organs I need to live." "Just be glad you have a job."

At what point can we STOP being glad, and start getting angry? "Just be glad you have a job" just perpetuates the worst kind of treatment of employees by abusers. Shutting up and being "glad" just means that things will get worse and worse. There are companies out there that would gladly kill their employees and sell their bodies for dog food if it would make a ten-cent profit in their bottom line. How much are we supposed to endure? At what point can we insist that our lives and time have value that's measured by more than money - that's we're human beings, deserving dignity and fair treatment?

I ended up writing a letter to Salon about the "Infinite Debt"/Dateline NBC takes on debt:

There's another article on the same topic which absolutely horrified me recently: "Infinite Debt" by Thomas Geoghegan in Harper's. It lays out in stark detail how the abolition of usury laws in the US (under the tender ministrations of credit-industry lobbyists and our corrupt Congress) allowed the financial sector to produce profits for their investors of 300% or more. With that sort of profit to be had, is it any wonder that investors ran away from the manufacturing industries - industries which would normally produce 3-5% profit?

There's a great deal more in the article, which is well worth reading. Unfortunately, it's only available to subscribers (and by coincidence, I got my subscription to Harper's for renewing my Salon subscription). It's well worth looking up. If you can't afford Harper's, try to see if you can find it in your local library; it's the April 2009 issue.

But I ran into an odd juxtaposition last night: a story on NBC's Dateline about the "Debt Trap". I thought it might shed an interesting sidelight on the insights raised in "Infinite Debt". And it did - but not in the way that I hoped or expected.

Rather than report on the wholesale usury of the financial sector and the complicity of Congress in abolishing age-old protection for the public from financial wolves, Dateline instead focused on some sleazy debt collectors who used "questionable" practices. They - gasp - lied to the people they were calling! Watching these lower-class employees chatting and smoking on secret camera in their parking lot, I couldn't help but be reminded of the "bad apples" like Lyndie England who carried the Bush Administration's torture policies and ended up taking the fall for them.

Dateline thoughtfully announced that everyone filmed by the secret camera had later been fired.

But it was the management of that debt collection company that really must have run up the Dateline dry-cleaning bill. The producers must have ejaculated into their pants about twenty times over when they found that the owners of the company were all black "gangsta"-types. Thugs and criminals, to be sure. But very minor criminals indeed compared to the real criminals: the respected members of Congress, the titans of industry, and the media who all cheered as organized labor was broken and the game was rigged in favor of a financial sector whose sole purpose was to shear the sheep - the public - to the bone.

The maximum interest rate allowed used to be 9% plus a small additional percentage. And now...there IS NO maximum. We have been turned into nothing more than beasts to be slaughtered in the financial stockyard. And the "winners" of society, obscenely wealthy and virtually all-powerful, continue to hold the reins of power firmly in their hands - and by all signs, they always will.

It's a bitter pill to swallow.

One of our shower curtains was getting pretty grungy. It might have been mold, or soap scum...I don't know. It was a translucent gray-black stain that covered four or five square feet.

It was a decent shower curtain, a $3.99 one instead of one of those cheap $0.99 ones from the dollar store, so I decided to see if it was cleanable. To tell you the truth, money wasn't a factor; I just felt like giving it a try, and since the vinyl was on the heavier side, I thought it might survive the experiment.

First try: Formula 409 and paper towels.

I took the curtain down and spread it on the bathroom floor (it was dry, of course). I squirted it with 409, waited 30 seconds, and then went over it vigorously with paper towels. Result: dirty paper towels, and some reduction in the grime, but the curtain still looked pretty dirty.

Second try: dishwashing detergent and scotch-brite.

I put a few drops of dishwashing detergent on the curtain, wet an old piece of scotch-brite, and scrubbed fairly gently with a circular motion. Result: the grime came off like magic, instantly, with no visible damage to the curtain. The whole thing took less than two minutes. I put it up again, rinsed it off in the shower, and it has been fine for days.

I also found that dishwashing detergent works great for cleaning the toilet, the bathroom sink, and the tub. It just takes a few drops, too!

Jeeze. How do I end up making posts like this?

I'll try to make this short, because it's late and this is another boring water filter post.

Our last Pur filter didn't last a week. We got about two pitchers of water out of it before it died. I'm starting to wonder if our cold water might actually have occasional bursts of warm or even hot water; that would explain the incredibly short life of all our Pur filters.

I tried to test it out a bit, and it did seem that for the first thirty seconds after I turned on the cold water, there was some variation; even what I would call mildly warm water. I don't know if it was enough to destroy a filter, but it might have been. After thirty seconds, though, the water became unmistakably cold. It occurred to me that if we only used the filter after a full 30-second wait, the filter might last. On the other hand, Pur had cost us a crapload of money, and no other filter system had given us so much trouble.

So I headed over to Wal-Mart to consider my options.

There were Pur filters, of course, but I was already inclined against those. A single replacement filter was $18.34! There was a Brita system, but we'd tried that before. I don't remember why we dropped it, but we must have had a good reason. The only other brand being sold was one I hadn't seen before (not on a water filtration system, that is), DuPont.

There were two DuPont systems: one that was around $36 dollars, and one that cost $16.87. The expensive one was electronic, and actually had an electronic readout to record the number of gallons that had been filtered. It also came with a filter that had twice the capacity of Pur and Brita filters, 200 gallons!

But I didn't know if the system would be any good, and money was, as always, tight. So I bit the bullet and bought the cheap DuPont. It didn't have any lights or electronic readouts, but it came with a 100-gallon filter - and both the system and filter together were cheaper than a single 100-gallon Pur filter. I noticed that the 200-gallon filters were $13.84, which was interesting. As far as I could see, the cheap system could use the 200-gallon filters too.

The Pur system took a pair of pliers to uninstall, but I managed it. The DuPont went on easily, no adapter needed. So far, it seems to work very well. One odd thing is that both the unfiltered and filtered water come through the filter system; Teri doesn't like that, because the unfiltered water is much more aerated than it was using the old system. She says that the filtered water is aerated too, but I don't see that. The water tastes fine, as good as any of our previous filters. So far the system is working well. Eventually, I may get the more expensive system; maybe Teri would like that better.

But if we have problems, you can be sure that I'll write about them here.

I hate having to defend Democrats, these days. They don't fucking deserve it. They've betrayed every single one of their supposed principles, and didn't even gain a mess of pottage in exchange.

But some idiot over on Askville just posted a "question" blaming Obama and the Democrats for the failure of the bailout bill. I had to say something.

---

60% of House Democrats voted for the bill.

The Republican leadership in the house also agreed to support the bill before it came to a vote. John McCain heroically suspended his campaign and didn't go to the Presidential debate in order to "save" it (well, he didn't do either of those things, but at least he made the effort to lie about it to the American people). Senator McCain announced his glorious victory in saving America yesterday morning, you may recall.

And then the House Republicans spoiled all the fun by voting against the bill, 133 to 65. House GOP leadership claimed that a "partisan" speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hurt the feelings of their rank-and-file, causing them to change their votes to "No". We don't know if any of them cried and stamped their feet in rage.

Seriously, the Democrats fulfilled their obligation to support the bill, and that includes Obama. The Republicans did not, despite Senator McCain's specific efforts and claims to the contrary. So trying to turn this around and blame it on Obama and the Democrats is...just the kind of sleazy lying that the nation has come to expect from the Republicans, I'm sorry to say.

And it's pretty clear that the nation is starting to tune it out.

Personally, I'm pretty dubious about this bailout bill. I'm not at all sure it's a good thing for the middle class; the Bush administration and Republicans got us into this mess with their sociopathic regulation-cutting over the past 28 years, and now the American people have to bail out their Wall Street billionaire buddies? That's just wrong. That money should come out of Halliburton, the Bush/Cheney family fortunes, and the pockets of all their campaign contributors; every single one of them should be on WELFARE before the rest of the American people have to shell out one dime.

But in any case, for Republicans to blame DEMOCRATS for the failure of the bill to pass is such blatant black-is-white, up-is-down, in-your-face lying that I simply couldn't let it pass without saying something. It takes real contempt for the intelligence of your readers to post that sort of bare-faced lie!

---

I have to wonder if the post will be deleted as being too insulting...which is why I posted a copy here.

I wrote this in as a comment to a question over on Askille which suggested that the economy was really better now than it was fifteen years ago, because we have faster computers, better internet connections, and more texting options on our phones - among other things.

---

A slower internet connection and computer fifteen years ago means that our economy is better now?

That's pretty disingenuous. EVERYBODY had slower computers and internet connections fifteen years ago! The same goes for texting.

The fact is that technology advanced...but that's what technology does, and you can't credit that to politicians. If that's what you're trying to do.

The real measure of the state of the economy for the individual is the amount of personal debt, plus the ratio of expenses to income. And by that reckoning, most of us are in big trouble.

If you're trying to say that Americans are whiners who should be happy because of all their new-technology toys, well, I don't agree with you. A faster computer and a broadband connection doesn't make up for the economic security we've lost over the past seven years. And that's not even factoring in the $700 billion we're all about to be tapped for...and the many other, even larger bailouts that will almost certainly be carried out in the months and years to come.

This is the worst economy since the Great Depression, and it almost certainly hasn't hit bottom yet. Virtually every economist agrees that we're in enormous trouble. And you're arguing that we should feel better because our cell phones have new texting options?

It's an interesting line of argument. Good luck with it.

Couldn't resist making a cynical comment over on a Washington Post article about "Main Street" people who are whining and complaining about the trillion-dollar bailout.

A Sense of Resentment Amid the 'For Sale' Signs

Sheep exist to be sheared. Let them baa! They should just be glad that most of them will be allowed to live on, financially, and spend the next 20+ years rebuilding from this event...in order that they be ready to be sheared again later, for the benefit of the NEXT generation of hyper-rich owners.