Mowing on Monday

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Last week, this income inequality report failed to get the attention of our mainstream media.  In a nutshell, the gap between rich and poor widened again – this time reaching record levels unseen in almost a century.  Top wage earners - the so-called 1% - raked in 19.3% of all household income during 2012, surpassing the previous all-time record of 18.7% last set in 1927.  The remaining 99% earned a mere 1%.  Why is this report so damning – and shocking?  History has shown: Income inequality drives Depressions and Recessions and brings massive social unrest.  Not a word on the evening news, but we see it everyday in our communities.

Every other day of the week is fine, yeah

But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes

You can find me mowin’ all of the time.

For some reason, everyone in my neighborhood prefers to relax on Sunday and mow the lawn on Monday.  For obvious reasons, I prefer to mow my lawn with the sprinkler system running – no explanation necessary.  Why every Monday but not Tuesday, you ask?  Bizarre, I have to admit. Perhaps it just turns out that way.

Good lawnmowers make good neighbors.  We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood.  Witness this daily exchange every time neighbors meet at the mailbox:

“Good afternoon, Mr. Briggs. How are you today?”

“Mighty fine, Mr. Stratton. And yourself?”

Although everyone in my neighborhood mows the lawn on Monday, not everyone mows in quite the same way.   Here is the odd part: Some of us aim our lawnmowers in straight parallel lines, while others tend to meander, zigzag, or form contour circles around their homes. Why should Euclid matter as long as the grass is cut!  Folks of different strokes, notwithstanding, good lawnmowers make good neighbors. We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood.

Until a strange thing happened! Suddenly Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles won the right to be treated as legal persons.  Then they secured easements that granted them special access rights and privileges.

You would think homeowners in the neighborhood might find common ground to form a Monday grass cutting alliance.  Oh no!  The Lampposts, in league with the Manhole Covers, started a PR campaign that warned the homeowners on Magnolia Street to beware the residents of Hawthorn, who now regard the residents of Dogwood with suspicion and sneer at the residents on Elm, who scorn the residents on Elder.

In short order, Lampposts convinced the homeowners on Magnolia to love the neighborhood more than their neighbors who dwell on Hawthorn, Dogwood, Elm, or Elder – all of whom no longer look like, act like, or think like ‘real’ neighbors, they claim.

The Manhole Covers think of themselves as ‘Job Creators’ (although any job that has ever fallen into an Open Manhole quickly disappears – never to be seen again).

Utility Poles accuse lawnmowers of engaging in class warfare.  Cutting grass no longer levels the playing field, they insist; and the teachers, nurses, and other working folks living on Elm are oppressing the Lampposts and Manhole Covers, they claim.

Meanwhile, the Lampposts and Utility Poles say: “If the residents on Elder lose their healthcare or pension benefits, they should consider themselves ‘empowered.’

Legal but non-living persons now rule the neighborhood.  They never created a single job but reserve the right to trample on our bushes and shine flashlights at night through our bedroom windows.

Years ago when a Lamppost burned out, a service truck came to the neighborhood and replaced a bulb. This year, the Lampposts say: “Buy your own bulb and replace it yourself.”  Then they demand a bonus, a pay raise, and a tax cut.  Last year, their service truck morphed into a Jaguar.  This year, their Jaguar morphed into a Rolls Royce.

The situation has set neighbor against neighbor, and I am starting to think garden vegetables now speak on behalf of homeowners.  Today, you can hardly tell the difference between a Lamppost versus a real person anymore.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood has gone to pot.  Everywhere ... overgrown grass, weeds taller than Utility Poles, short sales and bank foreclosures, and neighbors no longer talking to neighbors.  If there is one lesson to be learned, forget the Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles.   Forget the polemics, stalking points, and dog whistles. Oh, how I yearn for the smell of fresh cut grass, E Pluribus Unum, and a friendly neighbor exchanging friendly greetings at the mailbox again.

Oh, Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee

That Monday evening you’d still be here with me.

Reminder:  Tomorrow is Tuesday, the day we bring our trash bins to the curb.

Zen and the art of dismissal

So I hear these two guys talking on the radio. It's a conversation on the Amateur Radio 20 meter band, so half the world could be listening if conditions are right.

"I heard one of these protesters said he was there because 'Capitalism was taking over Wall Street' -- like it hasn't been Capitalist for over two hundred years! What an idiot!"

Well I'm assuming this guy isn't an economist any more than he might be a historian, and I'm assuming he got the information about what the "typical" loony-left and ignorant protesters are from some artisanal propaganda source like Fox News.

Yes, of course, there were protesters baring their breasts and preforming other charming acts having little to do with constructive criticism of laissez-faire Capitalism. While I'm the last person to discourage such acts, I'm also the last person to believe that this kind of New Yorky opportunistic revelry has anything to do with the reasons more qualified critics like Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz would lend support by their presence: reasons having to do with Wall Street practices, their relationship to the market crash, the credit crunch and the dire state of the world economy -- subjects the people who script and sculpt the news would rather mock, would rather have you mock, than discuss intelligently.

For someone who suffered through the late 1960's as an adult, the techniques political enterprises use to dismiss well grounded movements hold no novelty. I remember quite well how anyone openly questioning the benefits and reasons for maintaining an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia was told to "get a job" and had his personal hygiene questioned as well. Easier to dismiss someone, albeit clad in Brooks Brothers attire and obviously gainfully employed, as a silly, radical and stupid "hippie" than to answer disturbing questions as why killing peasants, bombing millions and stifling free elections was preventing the 'lights of freedom from going out in America' as was wrongly claimed by the Right. Then, as now, the real struggle was to keep the lights of reason off and it was fought with the same kind of smugly simplistic and fatuous fallacies the powerful always use to crucify the good.

But the dishonest selection of unrepresentative examples and illuminating them as "typical" is ancient and not the property of right wing extremists. It's the sort of thing our foul species does to advance our cults and parties that want to keep us in squalor and ignorance and the occupation of Wall Street isn't about the irrational or Communist inspired hatred of freedom or free markets, as you know, or you wouldn't have read this far. It's about corruption and the lack of rules and oversight that promotes private exploitation of free markets to the detriment of all. The occupation of Wall Street is just another station of the cross where the sidewalks are filled with mockery and abuse.

That unwitting clowns are flopping about in over-sized shoes, honking horns and mocking, is inevitable, given the well-fed smugness of the stupid. Their invisible rulers are very good at making them eager participants in their degradation and suffering; but failure isn't inevitable. It's tempting for old-timers like me to opt out of the circus, but perhaps there's hope, unlikely as it may seem, that enough people can be made to see how they're protecting the practices of the looters, pillagers and vandals on Wall Street and in Washington to do something about it. There's hope, but I'm not yet ready to bet on it.

Class Warfare

Number of teachers in New Jersey:

112,933

Number of millionaires in New Jersey:

228,442

NJ governor thinks the NJEA

(teachers' union) leeches off taxpayers.

Meanwhile, corporate tax revenues are at historic lows.

Declining union membership, shrinking middle class.