Author: photog

The Reckoning

photog Current Events ,

I am fascinated by the spectacle of the deep blue states like California and New York.  These places are something like 60% Democrat, 40% Republican so there is no meaningful hope of conservative policies being enacted.  Even when they elect a Republican as governor it’s with a Democrat super-majority in the legislative houses.  So, nothing will change the social policies and even the ruinous fiscal policies can only be tweaked slightly because the public sector unions won’t allow their gravy trains to be interfered with and these entitlements make up an enormous part of the state’s fiscal burdens.

And with all that said, it looks like the days of reckoning may finally be upon these places.  I watched the New York State Governess Hochul begging former New York billionaires who’ve moved to Florida to forgive her and her exorbitant business taxes and ruinous environmental policies and absurd energy costs and come back to New York.  Pretty please with sugar on top.  This was during an interview on Politico about the eroding tax base and its impact on the progressive agenda that New York City Mayor Mamdani was proposing and for which he needed Hochul to approve even more ruinous increases in taxes on corporations and the wealthy.  She tried to explain to the doofus from Politico that places like Florida and Texas don’t have state income taxes and lure corporations like J P Morgan and Tesla out of New York and California by letting them keep most of their money in exchange for bringing jobs and prosperity to their neighborhoods.

And I noted that the two highest ranking candidates in the field for the California governor’s primary are both Republicans.  And since they’ve combined all parties in the primary and then allow only the two highest vote getters into the general election it’s possible that no Democrats will get on the ballot.  Now of course the Democrats in a place like California will do whatever they have to do to rig the election so I’m sure they’ll have a Democrat on the ballot.

But that’s neither here nor there.  The interesting situation is that both of these states (and several other deep blue states) are staring down a complete fiscal meltdown of such mammoth proportions that junk bond status for their state debt is the least of their worries.  And honestly if the Republicans had any brains at all they would refuse to even run any candidates for state office at all.  They should just walk away and let this catastrophe hit their states right between the eyes.  There are so many facets of their situations that are dysfunctional that the next four years may finally wipe out all trace of credibility for the Democrat party.  With the banks leaving New York and the tech companies abandoning California I foresee all those public union retirement funds going completely unfunded very soon.  And with all those baby boomers retiring it will sound like a convention of scorched cats outside the offices in Sacramento and Albany for the foreseeable future.

So, Republicans, get wise to the situation and just step back and watch these bozos get what’s coming to them good and hard.

23MAY2019 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

When the time of danger comes, all Americans, whatever their social standing, whatever their creed, whatever the training they have received, no matter from what section of the country they have come, stand together as men, as Americans, and are content to face the same fate and do the same duties because fundamentally they all alike have the common purpose to serve the glorious flag of their common country.

Theodore Roosevelt

The American Path

photog Current Events, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , , , ,

I was thinking about some of the comments on yesterday’s post “Persistence of Memory.”  It was about detachment, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”

And I replied, “You are correct about the path. We’ve atomized our existence. We’ve monetized our lives to such an extent that we almost don’t exist except as consumers. We’re just cogs in the machine. It’s inhuman.”  And that stuck in my mind.

And today I got a call from a friend whom I knew from high school.  He lives in Hawaii and only comes home to Brooklyn once a year at Christmas.  And we talked about meeting up next Christmas.  Now I haven’t seen him in thirty years.  I wonder if he would even recognize me.  And we’ve managed to speak on the phone every Christmas but we haven’t interacted other than that.  Well, I sent him a copy of my book and he called me up today and it was like a time machine.  He was laughing and saying how he always thought one day I’d write a science fiction story.  He was very complimentary and said he really liked the story and of course that was very gratifying.  But in the back of my mind, I was thinking what a strange world we live in.  Here was one of my best friends in the world and I hadn’t seen him for almost half a lifetime.

And so that conversation reinforced the statement, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”  Our way of life is somewhat related to the nomadic existence of herders.  They move to follow the grazing grounds of their herds.  There is no one home.  But our way is even worse.  Because the herders live in tribes or at least extended families that move together from place to place.  But we separate into at most nuclear families and often just single individuals, moving from job to job and city to city without anyone permanently included in their “tribe.”

I’m pretty sure that none of this is sustainable.  And maybe that’s why corporate America is backing a policy of wholesale immigration to provide a steady supply of new workers that Americans are no longer providing from their own descendants.  After all, how do you produce a family when all you are is a nomad living from job to job without a family to prop you up and give you help when things get tough or you need the resources to get married or buy a house or pay for expenses associated with children?

And this gave me an idea for my next book after “The Sniper.”  It should have to do with the smartest and richest guy in the world trying to fix “the American path.”  If someone powerful enough wanted to restore our country to viability, what would he think to do?  Maybe he’d redefine the partnership between communities and corporations.  Would it be a feudal system or a socialism?  Or neither.  I haven’t figured out what my “utopia” will be based on.  Maybe I’ll wave “artificial intelligence” around as my deus ex machina.  But I do want to think about it a little.  How do you go about fixing the world?

Persistence of Memory

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

I was at my mechanic’s shop to have the rear brakes replaced on my “new” car.  Well, long story short, getting replacement parts from Toyota was going to take longer than expected so I couldn’t wait around.  I called Camera Girl for a lift home.  While I was waiting for her, I started reading some of the stuff he had on the walls of the shop.  There were photos of the cars the shop was selling and the first one was from 1930.  That’s ninety-six years ago.  And the place has had the same last name all this time.  Now Steve looks to be about my age.  That means his grandfather was probably about thirty years old in 1930 (in that ballpark).  Looking at those photos and illustrations from the 1930s was interesting.  His grandfather and probably his father and maybe his uncles have been working at this business for generations.  That would explain why he seems unflappable with respect to mechanical problems.  You probably see almost everything when you’ve been working around cars your whole life.

And here was this company in a tiny town in southern New England lasting for generations and serving a community that know each other from birth to death and beyond.  And that got me thinking of where I came from.  The Brooklyn neighborhood where I was born was just as solid to my eyes when I was young.  The people had been there for generations.  They had their traditions and institutions and a sense of community.  There was a feeling of permanence.  But that was an illusion.  All it took to annihilate that illusion was crime and poverty.  And over the course of time that entire neighborhood disappeared without a trace.  I’ve been back there, mostly for funerals.  And that’s the funny thing.  The Catholic church is still there although it has all the masses in Spanish now.  So, the old people come back for their funerals and then they’re driven out to be buried in Long Island.  And then their children and grandchildren disperse back to the four corners of the Earth.

So that’s the difference.  New England still has towns and those towns still have families that live here for generations.  Maybe not everyone stays put.  But enough so that you can feel like you come from a place that isn’t just going to blow away when the wind shifts.  And I think that’s actually something worth having.  We’ve been programmed to believe that we can drift across the continent finding work where it happens to be and move our kids and expect that everything will be like it was when we were kids.  But I don’t think it works that way.  You don’t have traditions without permanence and you don’t have a neighborhood when you don’t even know who your neighbors are.  And if you only see your family at weddings and (worse) at funerals, then how quickly will family become strangers?  Well just something I thought about while waiting for a ride.