Back to music. I've often thought about what albums would be on my list of those which I would want on a desert island (for you kids, albums are what we used to call cd's before there were cd's. Oh, and cd's are what we used to call mp3's before there were mp3's). Of course, first on my desert island there would be electricity so I could listen to them, but perhaps I'm being a bit too literal.
Again, these are in no particular order and I'm sure there will be plenty I leave out.
Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams. This may be one of the most perfect albums ever recorded. Lucinda rips through a collection that streams pure emotion through every song. For those unfamiliar with Lucinda Williams's work, her voice is not the classical smooth poppy over-produced perfect voice that has become the preference of music these days. Her instrument can best be described as guttural, accented, sparse and sometimes harsh. But for those who get her, Lucinda's voice is a thing of beauty that transfixes listeners and brings them inside the raw emotions of the subject of her songs. No album of hers has better spotlighted Lucinda's signature voice than Car Wheels. The album starts with "Right in Time" and from the first notes of the twangy country rock guitar lick that begins the song you start the journey of this phenomenal work of art. Other gems on the album are "Drunken Angel", "St. Charles" and my favorite "Joy". But even as good as the parts of this album are on their own, the whole of the album almost indescribably transcends the sum of those parts. The emotions run the gamut from love, to lust, to heartbreaking loss and revenge. Most of Lucinda's work before and since Car Wheels is excellent, but never before or since has she come close to the absolute celebration of life in all its ups and downs that Car Wheels provides. Hell, I'm not sure that anyone ever could.
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Neko Case. Throughout her early career, Neko Case became the queen of the burgeoning alt-country music scene. Her early albums The Virginian and Furnace Room Lullaby were alt-country gems full of twangy guitars, pedal steels and most of all Case's incredible voice, which was at once both powerful and delicate. Her next albums "Blacklisted" and "The Tigers Have Spoken" (a live collection of new songs, a rarity in the new autotune obsessed music culture) built on this prior work, maintaining the country roots but expanding them into a more mainstream sound. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, however, marked a bold departure from the simple alt-country themes of Case's earlier works. On Fox Confessor, Case introduced a dark and ethereal sound that really transcends genre. It is neither country, nor rock, nor pop, nor alternative, but is also all of those in a way. I can categorize it only as Neko Case. The album starts off with "Margaret vs. Pauline", a look at class distinctions between two women (my favorite line is "Two girls ride the blue line/Two girls walk down the same street/One left her sweater sittin' on the train/The other lost three fingers at the cannery" showing the relative "tragedies" each suffer). Other greats on the album are "Star Witness", "Hold On Hold On", "That Teenage Feeling" and "Maybe Sparrow". The mood on this album is inescapably dark, but Neko's voice and the odd chord progressions make this album also beautiful. At the same time both scary and intriguing. Neko has continued this feeling on her later album "Middle Cyclone". Wherever her muse takes her, I will be willing to follow.
Kilroy Was Here, Larry Kirwan. Larry Kirwan is the lead singer of Black 47. Since Black 47 is my favorite band in the world, I was interested to hear his solo album as soon as it was released in early 2001. At the same time, I was a little worried. Why was Larry doing a solo album instead of another B47 collection? As soon as I listened, the reason was clear. This is one of the most personal albums I've ever heard. Kirwan delves deep into his own life in a somewhat mournful and self-critical fashion. In what is a huge strength for Kirwan's songwriting abilities though, which shine on this album as well as his work with B47, is that none of it is the least bit sappy or nostalgic. Kirwan bears his soul on this album. It opens with "Molly" which captures Kirwan's infatuation with James Joyce's masterpiece "Ulysses". Along the way we are treated to a remembrance of his father while Kirwan was growing up in the title song of the album, and then another deeply personal "Life's Like That Anyway" which recounts many deeply personal experiences of Kirwan's young life. There is also the hilarious "History of Ireland Part 1" featuring Malachy McCourt which serves as a comedic primer for anyone with an interest in Irish history. The album ends with the haunting "Fatima" about a star-crossed love between a young Christian boy and Muslim girl. The refrain of the song "things fall apart in America" took on an altogether new meaning nine months after the album was released.
Remain In Light, Talking Heads -- Talking Heads were my favorite band throughout my teenage years. Their music still ranks up there against pretty much anything put out today. Although my first experience with Talking Heads music was in their more popular "Burning Down the House" and after their live release "Stop Making Sense", Remain In Light is the band's best album by far (and most of the others are pretty darn good with the exception possibly of "True Stories"). This album, driven my hypnotic African rhythms and complex vocal layering and at times even chanting, helped me through some tough times. To this day, if I am feeling overwhelmed by the occurrences of the day, simply putting on Remain in Light acts as a brain reset and leaves me feeling relaxed and recharged. The big "hit" off of the album was "Once in a Lifetime" which is best known for its repetitive "Same as it ever was" refrain and its quirky video. Many of the other songs are less well-known but are among the best the band ever made. "Born Under Punches", "The Great Curve" and "Crosseyed and Painless" provide a frenetic energy which when put together with the later songs "The Listening Wind", "Houses in Motion" and "The Overload" induce an almost hypnotic state. Great music, great effect.
The Dreaming, Kate Bush -- This album shows the value of second chances (and why first impressions aren't always correct). I first was introduced to Kate Bush as many in America were with her ultra successful "Hounds of Love" album and the hit song "Running Up That Hill". I had listened repeatedly to the cassette tape of that album to the point of wearing it out. I had read many glowing reviews of Bush's previous album The Dreaming, which drew, especially in its title song, from the Aboriginal Australian tradition of walkabout, and its trance like state in which one was led to search deep into one's mind and find inner truths. Since I enjoyed Hounds so much, I figured I would also love The Dreaming. When I first listened to this album I hated it. Really. Wouldn't even give it a second listen. I was jarred by its experimental nature with odd rhythms, instrumentation and literal screaming of lyrics by Bush. I couldn't understand how anyone could write such glowing reviews of the album. A few months later I forced myself to listen again and in an instant I got it. This was like nothing I had ever heard, and despite my initial revulsion, I now understood the triumph that this album was. Songs like "Sat Up In Your Lap", "There Goes a Tenner" and "Get Out of My House" portray a fast paced anger. On the other side of the spectrum are beautiful love songs like "All the Love" and "Houdini" which still stands as one of the saddest yet incredibly romantic songs I've ever heard.
Fire of Freedom, Black 47 -- I am eternally indebted to Larry Kirwan and the band Black 47 for kindling my love of Irish history. Fire of Freedom was the band's first album released in 1993. It contained their biggest (and only) hit song "Funky Ceili" and actually saw pretty heavy airplay both on alternative and even some mainstream pop stations and MTV. The album, produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars, more than anything tells the tale of the Irish immigrant in the U.S., from many different perspectives. Woven throughout the album is the haunting air of the classic Irish tune "The Foggy Dew" but with lyrics that tell the tale not of the doomed revolutionaries of Easter Week 1916, but the doomed immigrants forced to work as domestics for the wealthy while looking for human attachment in the pubs at night. This culminates in the album's final song "Living in America" which incorporates all of the previous Foggy Dew excerpts heard throughout the album. The song "Black 47" tells the tragic tale of the Irish forced to emigrate on coffin ships during the Great Hunger of the mid 1840s to early 1850s. There are no punches pulled on this song, as the band lays the blame where it should be -- at the hands of the British who allowed the Irish to starve rather than doing anything to save them ("God's curse upon you Lord Trevalyn/May your great Queen Victoria rot in hell). "Fanatic Heart" tells the story of a young Republican in Northern Ireland separated from his love after being kidnapped during marching season in the North and tortured never being the same after. The title song is a song of complete defiance written about the struggles of Republicans in the face of oppression at home and abroad (it would go on to a new meaning following 9/11 as a cathartic anthem following the tragic events of that day). "James Connolly" is an unflinching anthem honoring the Irish Labor leader and revolutionary which would go on to become one of the band's signature songs. There are also plenty of lighthearted songs as well. The previously mentioned "Ceili" tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young Irish musician who after being fired from his bank job, finds his lover is pregnant and flees to America under threat of castration by the girl's father. "Maria's Wedding" tells the hilarious tale of a young Irishman crashing his lost Italian love's wedding in Bensonhurst. "Forty Shades of Blue" is a down and out tale of an Irish immigrant down on his luck with his "tongue hanging out for some Irish Rose" who'd "sell his soul for a cigarette". And the uproarious "Rockin' the Bronx" tells the tale of the band's early years trying to break into Irish pubs that were more used to hearing lilting versions of Danny Boy than the drum machine driven loud guitar and uillean pipe fare that was being torn out by the band.
Mind Bomb, The The -- I don't know exactly what it is about this album that makes me keep coming back to it time and time again, but it made a deep impression on me in my late teens and early twenties and still stands up today. The The unleashes an angry, deeply emotional epic on Mind Bomb that is possibly unparalleled by any other I've heard. In "Armageddon Days are Here (Again)", the band takes on modern organized religion head on and delivers a deeply emotional and frighteningly haunting diatribe. Starting out in a play on the party rock anthem "Ballroom Blitz" with the lines "Are you ready Jesus?, Buddha?, Mohammad? Well, let's Go!" and has the angry refrain "If you think that Jesus Christ is coming, honey you've got another thing coming/If he ever finds out who's hijacked his name/He'll cut out his heart and turn in his grave". Certainly there are many who would find that offensive, but even if you do, the song is worth a listen for the raw emotional argument it puts forth, even if the singer's point of view is not one that you would buy. "Kingdom of Rain" with Sinead O'Connor lending her amazing voice, is one of the most honest break up songs of all time, with the simultaneous emotions of love, anger, revulsion, loss and mourning all coming together as they do when suddenly the person whose bed you shared is no longer a part of your life. "The Beat(en) Generation" is as true today, if not moreso, than it was 20 years ago when this album was released -- telling of the feelings of disenfranchisement many youth feel. "Beyond Love" ends the album on a high note, telling graphically the hope of new love and new life which carry us to the future. Mind Bomb is an album that makes you feel that you belong even when everything and everyone feels they have left you behind.
Armed Forces, Elvis Costello and The Attractions -- On his third studio album in less than three years, released in 1979, Costello turned out a triumph. Armed Forces has remained one of my all time favorite albums, and grew in popularity for several years benefiting from heavy rotation of several videos made of its songs on the newly created MTV. Costello grew out of the late 70s punk movement, but was more talented a musician and songwriter than many of his contemporaries (something he was criticized for at the time). Starting with the lush and complex "Accidents Will Happen", the album weaves through politics ("Oliver's Army", "Goon Squad", "Senior Service") and the politics of relationships ("Two Little Hitlers", "Green Shirt", "Chemistry Class"). The American version of the album cut the song "Sunday's Best" (a good move) while the original UK version left out "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding", which has become the albums best-known song and one of Costello's most identifiable songs. This album has stood the test of time and it would likely be just as welcome if it were released today as it was in 1979.
Back to Black, Amy Winehouse -- Although I am writing this entry the day after her sad and inevitable death (I started this post in early June) and literally fighting tears as I do, my inclusion of this album is not intended as a reflection on her untimely demise but as a celebration of her unmatched talent. Many of those who came to know Winehouse through the tabloid pictures and celebrity media depictions of her ongoing struggle with addiction probably saw her as simply a target of derision or a victim of her own success. But what grabbed me was the music itself. There are very few who can take a genre of music -- 1960s girl group soul and pop -- and turn it into something new and fresh. Although the sound and style hearkened to an earlier time, Winehouse transformed the music and owned it. There was nothing derivative in her music, as odd as that may sound. Back to Black was one of the best albums put out in decades. Period. The songs that were well known such as what would become her ironic anthem "Rehab" and "You Know That I'm No Good" only give a glimpse into the genius that was contained in this album. Songs like the title track and "Some Unholy War" express deep emotion and honesty not often heard in modern pop music (I have had the chorus from the title track going over and over in my head the past 24 hours "We only said goodbye in words/I died a hundred times/You go back to her/and I go back to black"). While others actually seem to celebrate lost love ("Me and Mr. Jones", "Tears Dry On Their Own"). Very few could sing as honestly and openly about sex, drugs, lust and loss as honestly as Winehouse could. I will always regret not hearing more of her talent and I would have been willing to give up hearing another note of her beautiful voice if she just could have found peace and wellness in her life.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
What Happened to Citizenship and the Common Good?
Recently I was told by an individual who disagreed with my feeling that it is not only acceptable, but expected that we help take care of those in our society who are unable to care for or help themselves that his only responsibility was to himself and his family and no one else. Needless to say he identified himself as belonging to the Tea Party. However, his philosophy seems to have permeated not just the crazed right wing political activists who have been led by Billionaires to stand in opposition to their own economic and political interest, but to society as a whole.
In the most recent political drama coming out of Washington, the Democrats, yes the Democrats, have adopted this philosophy in agreeing to and even championing cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other benefits to the aged, the poor and children. Democrats have even adopted their opponents language in referring to these as entitlements, an unnecessarily pejorative word.
It used to be that taking care of those that were less fortunate than ourselves was not only encouraged, but expected. It was a badge of honor that we would not let our sick, our children, or our elderly suffer through their misfortune. Taxes were seen not as something forcibly extracted from the government against one's will, but as the price that one paid for the privilege of taking part in this great nation of ours.
So what the hell changed? When did we go from a great society that offered a hand up to a nation of greedy misers taking everything we can get our hands on and hanging on with all our might to every last cent?
We shouldn't really be that surprised when we look at who it is that is running this country now. Just as the generation that survived economic calamity in the depression and suffered even more deprivation as they banded together under government imposed rationing to win World War II has become known as "The Greatest Generation," the baby boomers that came after should go down as "The Worst Generation."
The Worst Generation in some ways couldn't help it. They were raised enjoying all of the benefits that came from their parents' and grandparents' sacrifices without ever having to sacrifice themselves. They gained a self-proclaimed soul during the 1960s when they marched against Vietnam and joined the "counter-culture." But really for most of them, it was just a way to get laid and not have to fight a war that they were all to happy to let their poorer uneducated brethren battle. As soon as the war ended, they continued their excess through the 70s fueled now by cocaine instead of pot and LSD. Then in the 80s, they cashed in, championing deregulation and irrational and excessive wealth.
In the 1990s they came into power and we have been on a downward slope ever since. Bill Clinton offered the hope of a new generation of leadership and many of us, including me, bought into it. While cloaking himself in the idealistic language of the Age of Aquarius (and Fleetwood Mac), in reality he was much more comfortable in the company of bankers than he was in the company of beggars. Claiming faulty liberal credentials, he foisted possibly the greatest long con ever executed on the largest collection of marks ever gathered -- the entire American public.
Assisted by a period of unequaled economic growth and prosperity, instead of using this as an opportunity to enact legislation to shore-up the nation's safety net and insure equality and shared prosperity, Clinton instead enacted legislation which benefited the wealthiest of his donors while setting in motion the machinery that would lead to the immense economic inequality we see today. Without much attention, Clinton not only signed but championed two pieces of legislation -- the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. GLB did away with the Glass Steagall Act which had prevented financial companies from becoming Too Big to Fail and CFMA insured that the destructively complex instruments collectively known as derivatives would remain completely unregulated. These two acts together have combined to lead both to the huge bubbles in both tech stocks and real estate during the 2000s and the inevitable collapse and subsequent bailout of 2008-present.
Oh, and he signed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Some liberal.
In 2000, the second President of the Worst Generation was elected. In some ways at least George W. Bush was more honest than Bill Clinton. He had all of the same anti-equality, pro-bankster policies as Clinton with none of the pseudo-Liberal pretext. Bush was a different part of the Worst Generation. Just as Clinton before him, Bush managed to avoid having to serve in Vietnam (Bush by using his high-powered political connections through Daddy and Granddaddy to join the National Guard), he just didn't feel guilty about it. I picture Bill Clinton putting daisies in GWB's M-16 during an anti-war protest at Harvard.
What Clinton started in his pro-banker legislation and deregulation of financial weapons of mass destruction (Warren Buffet's words, not mine), Bush put into overdrive. Bush one upped Clinton much to the delight of his wealthy donors. Not only did he continue the rash of deregulatory policies and threw trillions upon trillions of government money into the pockets of corporate backers in order to fight two wars (at least one of which was completely unnecessary) but he enacted the largest tax cut in history to boot. This was the epitome in a way of the entire Baby Boomer philosophy: take everything you can get, as quickly as you can get it, and have everyone else pay for it.
Corporate irresponsibility was not only allowed, but it was encouraged, even endorsed with a government seal of approval. Economic irresponsibility quickly spread throughout the nation. Why should we live within our means? Nobody else is. Suddenly, migrant workers making $10,000 a year were buying $750,000 mansions. Cocktail waitresses were purchasing three homes, each with no money down. Consumers were encouraged to buy more than they could ever hope to afford, lured in by complex mortgage products such as interst-only loans and mortgages with low introductory teaser rates which blew up into huge adjustible rates.
And who could blame those entering into these deals (except the blow-hards on CNBC)? They were acting the same way as the traders on Wall Street who were, thanks to deregulatory legislation, leveraging themselves 10, 20, even 40 times their reserves in buying up securities based on these worthless loans. Of course when it all came crashing down, the bankers got bailed out by the government they paid for, while the marks got foreclosed.
The financial bailout was the inevitable and ultimate conclusion of the philosophy of the Worst Generation. Referred to during the 1970s as the "Me Generation," this collection of spoiled brats never allowed to suffer or know real failure, always bailed out by their parents was simply acting in the exact same way they have been taught. The Worst Generation believes that there are no consequences for their irresponsible behavior, that what is good for them is the only measure of what is good, that the benefits conveyed by the previous generation are theirs to consume without any responsibility to provide benefits for the next generation.
This of course brings us to today. As the Congress and the President debate, as The Onion so adeptly put it, whether or not they should destroy the nation's economy, all of the proposals being floated in one way or another take this philosphy even one step further. Cutting Social Security benefits, cutting Medicare and Medicaid, slashing discretionary spending, all with no tax increases, a corporate tax holiday for corporations who have been stashing their money overseas to avoid taxes, and new measures of inflation which guarantee to continue to pound the lower class over and over and over again (more on this later), are all just the latest version of the "me first" philosophy which has permeated the baby boom generation for decades. Is there any wonder why Paul Ryan's budget proposed phasing out Social Security and Medicare only for those under the age of 55?
The "Me Generation" has become the "Me and Only Me The Rest of You Be Damned" generation. There is no more concern for the common good. There is no expectation that we will take care of the weakest and most vulnerable among us. It is a take what you can get, no holds barred race to oblivion and the one with the most toys wins.
In the most recent political drama coming out of Washington, the Democrats, yes the Democrats, have adopted this philosophy in agreeing to and even championing cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other benefits to the aged, the poor and children. Democrats have even adopted their opponents language in referring to these as entitlements, an unnecessarily pejorative word.
It used to be that taking care of those that were less fortunate than ourselves was not only encouraged, but expected. It was a badge of honor that we would not let our sick, our children, or our elderly suffer through their misfortune. Taxes were seen not as something forcibly extracted from the government against one's will, but as the price that one paid for the privilege of taking part in this great nation of ours.
So what the hell changed? When did we go from a great society that offered a hand up to a nation of greedy misers taking everything we can get our hands on and hanging on with all our might to every last cent?
We shouldn't really be that surprised when we look at who it is that is running this country now. Just as the generation that survived economic calamity in the depression and suffered even more deprivation as they banded together under government imposed rationing to win World War II has become known as "The Greatest Generation," the baby boomers that came after should go down as "The Worst Generation."
The Worst Generation in some ways couldn't help it. They were raised enjoying all of the benefits that came from their parents' and grandparents' sacrifices without ever having to sacrifice themselves. They gained a self-proclaimed soul during the 1960s when they marched against Vietnam and joined the "counter-culture." But really for most of them, it was just a way to get laid and not have to fight a war that they were all to happy to let their poorer uneducated brethren battle. As soon as the war ended, they continued their excess through the 70s fueled now by cocaine instead of pot and LSD. Then in the 80s, they cashed in, championing deregulation and irrational and excessive wealth.
In the 1990s they came into power and we have been on a downward slope ever since. Bill Clinton offered the hope of a new generation of leadership and many of us, including me, bought into it. While cloaking himself in the idealistic language of the Age of Aquarius (and Fleetwood Mac), in reality he was much more comfortable in the company of bankers than he was in the company of beggars. Claiming faulty liberal credentials, he foisted possibly the greatest long con ever executed on the largest collection of marks ever gathered -- the entire American public.
Assisted by a period of unequaled economic growth and prosperity, instead of using this as an opportunity to enact legislation to shore-up the nation's safety net and insure equality and shared prosperity, Clinton instead enacted legislation which benefited the wealthiest of his donors while setting in motion the machinery that would lead to the immense economic inequality we see today. Without much attention, Clinton not only signed but championed two pieces of legislation -- the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. GLB did away with the Glass Steagall Act which had prevented financial companies from becoming Too Big to Fail and CFMA insured that the destructively complex instruments collectively known as derivatives would remain completely unregulated. These two acts together have combined to lead both to the huge bubbles in both tech stocks and real estate during the 2000s and the inevitable collapse and subsequent bailout of 2008-present.
Oh, and he signed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Some liberal.
Clinton signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall
What Clinton started in his pro-banker legislation and deregulation of financial weapons of mass destruction (Warren Buffet's words, not mine), Bush put into overdrive. Bush one upped Clinton much to the delight of his wealthy donors. Not only did he continue the rash of deregulatory policies and threw trillions upon trillions of government money into the pockets of corporate backers in order to fight two wars (at least one of which was completely unnecessary) but he enacted the largest tax cut in history to boot. This was the epitome in a way of the entire Baby Boomer philosophy: take everything you can get, as quickly as you can get it, and have everyone else pay for it.
Corporate irresponsibility was not only allowed, but it was encouraged, even endorsed with a government seal of approval. Economic irresponsibility quickly spread throughout the nation. Why should we live within our means? Nobody else is. Suddenly, migrant workers making $10,000 a year were buying $750,000 mansions. Cocktail waitresses were purchasing three homes, each with no money down. Consumers were encouraged to buy more than they could ever hope to afford, lured in by complex mortgage products such as interst-only loans and mortgages with low introductory teaser rates which blew up into huge adjustible rates.
And who could blame those entering into these deals (except the blow-hards on CNBC)? They were acting the same way as the traders on Wall Street who were, thanks to deregulatory legislation, leveraging themselves 10, 20, even 40 times their reserves in buying up securities based on these worthless loans. Of course when it all came crashing down, the bankers got bailed out by the government they paid for, while the marks got foreclosed.
The financial bailout was the inevitable and ultimate conclusion of the philosophy of the Worst Generation. Referred to during the 1970s as the "Me Generation," this collection of spoiled brats never allowed to suffer or know real failure, always bailed out by their parents was simply acting in the exact same way they have been taught. The Worst Generation believes that there are no consequences for their irresponsible behavior, that what is good for them is the only measure of what is good, that the benefits conveyed by the previous generation are theirs to consume without any responsibility to provide benefits for the next generation.
This of course brings us to today. As the Congress and the President debate, as The Onion so adeptly put it, whether or not they should destroy the nation's economy, all of the proposals being floated in one way or another take this philosphy even one step further. Cutting Social Security benefits, cutting Medicare and Medicaid, slashing discretionary spending, all with no tax increases, a corporate tax holiday for corporations who have been stashing their money overseas to avoid taxes, and new measures of inflation which guarantee to continue to pound the lower class over and over and over again (more on this later), are all just the latest version of the "me first" philosophy which has permeated the baby boom generation for decades. Is there any wonder why Paul Ryan's budget proposed phasing out Social Security and Medicare only for those under the age of 55?
The "Me Generation" has become the "Me and Only Me The Rest of You Be Damned" generation. There is no more concern for the common good. There is no expectation that we will take care of the weakest and most vulnerable among us. It is a take what you can get, no holds barred race to oblivion and the one with the most toys wins.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
A Fraction of Fiction
It happened gradually. So gradually, we barely noticed. We were the proverbial frog placed into a pot of lukewarm water, not noticing the rise in temperature until our blood was boiling. All it took was the wrong people being put into power, running on a platform of fear and freedom conning a scared public into believing they were a legitimate way out of the economic morass in which we found ourselves.
The first thing they did was eliminate the minimum wage. This was hailed by elites in both of the political parties existing then as a huge improvement that would bring prosperity and production back to our country. It was promised that with the removal of artificial controls on wages that wages would actually increase due to the so-called invisible hand of the free market economy.
At first, this had some positive marginal effects. Some low wage jobs actually did see increases. But after a while, wages started decreasing. What used to pay $10 an hour started paying wages of $5 an hour. Then, the pay became less and less. Eventually, most of us found ourselves working for $2 or $3 a day. But, the jobs did come back. We were manufacturing again, making textiles, furniture, cars, all sorts of items that used to be made in Mexico or China or Indonesia. And profits soared as corporations could now get the benefits of American work ethic and efficiency on the third-world wages they used to pay the Mexicans or the Chinese or the Indonesians.
The next thing they did was eliminate the EPA. Announcing that global warming was a myth created by radical environmentalists to ransack the holdings of American corporations, the elimination of the main environmental regulator was again seen as a huge step forward for the free market and the nation as this would further allow us to add jobs and increase our domestic financial output. Looking back, it would have been better just to nuke ourselves.
As temperatures continued to rise, more and more of the polar ice caps melted raising sea levels. Record snowfall melts swelled rivers to never before seen levels. Most of the Midwest is now the world's largest inland lake, effectively separating the eastern and western halves of the country. Most of Florida is gone. Sacramento is now an Oceanfront paradise, as most of the West coast is under water.
Next they eliminated the Department of Education. This was hailed as huge victory for freedom. No longer would local school boards be subjected to the whims of a government bureaucracy handing down orders willy-nilly to its subordinates. Of course, with most of the former middle class earning less than $2,000 a year, there was little for most school districts to do to raise money. Resources ended up being slashed, and then when there was little choice left, the localities started lowering the age which required compulsory education until some eliminated the requirement altogether.
This was fortunate for many of the new manufacturing giants, however, as the federal government next did away with the job-killing child labor laws. With the newly freed young fresh bodies no longer required to attend schools against their will, children as young as 10 were signed up for jobs in the new textile mills, working 10-12 hour days, six days a week. Their families, with no money on which to survive, had little choice but to not only allow, but require their children to do so.
All of this led to America becoming an economic juggernaut, of course. The nation's exports increased exponentially. The owners of the factories and especially their bankers raked in billions of dollars a year in profits. The nation had its first Trillionaires. The stock market reached heights no one could ever have imagined. Of course, very few but the most wealthy in the nation benefited from this, not that this mattered since they controlled every politician through their purse strings.
As for me, the road down was a steep but unsurprising one. My profession -- lawyers -- was the most despised of the new leaders. A whole new set of rules were implemented making it harder and harder for the masses to reach the scales of justice. First they capped civil awards -- initially at $250,000, then at $100,000 eventually capping the award for an individual in any civil suit, to $25,000. Of course, this only applied to claims for personal injury, not to actions on behalf of corporations for breach of contract or for money owed on loans or foreclosures. Class action suits were outlawed. In a stunning limit on free markets, the same leaders outlawed the use of contingency fee contracts. Lawyers had to work for a fee agreed to and paid ahead of time. Awards of attorney's fees were no longer allowed by the Courts as part of damages or costs.
Needless to say, this put most plaintiff's attorneys and small town lawyers out of business.
I was a prosecutor, so it seemed my job was safe, as the jails were filling with more and more violent offenders, willing to risk everything to get whatever they could at the barrel end of a gun. The leaders stacked the courts with judges willing to overturn well established laws that were seen to clog up the gears of justice. Miranda warnings were tossed away. The right to counsel was deemed unnecessary and the appointing of private attorneys and public defenders offices declared a restraint of trade. Most of the cases I handled now were against individuals unrepresented by counsel and unfamiliar with the workings of the court system. Where I used to look forward to going up against a talented, smart, tough defense attorney and would spend hours pouring over my files and researching the law on all of the potential legal questions that could be raised, now my job bored me. There was no challenge sending away an uneducated, poor teenager to decades behind bars in ever alarming prison conditions.
As time went on and trials became fewer and fewer as court was merely a formality as we ushered hundreds upon hundreds of unrepresented defendants through the courts in record time, the need for prosecutors became less and less. Seeing us as nothing other than glorified office clerks filing paperwork, our funding was cut further and further and our ranks and salaries dwindled along with everyone else's. Inevitably, one day the news came that it was my last and I packed my few office belongings in a small box and left the courthouse which had once represented all that was good with our justice system without giving it a second glance.
The only legal jobs left were with large firms representing the behemoth corporations that were revelling in the new booming economy. These firms were growing and paying huge salaries to their young eager legal eagles who would come up with ever more elaborate ways to guard their clients against the teeming masses that might otherwise try to claw back some of the fortune that their overlords were amassing. However, these jobs inevitably stuck to a strict system of rewarding the families and friends of their clients and political supporters. Little time was given to resumes from former small town prosecutors who obviously had not played the leaders' game or else they would have chosen another career track long ago.
Before long, I, like most of my neighbors was behind in my bills. Unable to pay my bills, I quickly fell behind in my finances. The bank foreclosed on my home, a mere formality. Of course, with so many of us out there no longer able to pay mortgages, the banks were unable to find many buyers for the homes. Many of us, myself included, simply stayed in our homes, challenging the banks to do something about it. Eventually, faced with an overabundance of "empty" homes with no possibility of selling them, the banks started simply razing the homes leaving empty land where once stood the American dream.
One day inevitably my family and I were met at our front door with a bulldozer. We were given five minutes to grab what we could and vacate before the giant smoke belching machine began knocking down that which we had worked for years to maintain. Within an hour it was all gone.
Fortunately, we were able to salvage some camping equipment and found some empty land on which to pitch a tent and at least have some protection against the elements. Both my wife and I found jobs in one of the mills for a couple dollars a day. The biggest perk of these jobs was that they served a relatively good meal during our half hour break of a meat sandwich and some sort of potato along with a beverage, usually caffeinated. This wasn't done out of any kind of charity or beneficence, but merely so that we would have enough sustenance to maintain our energy to complete our shift. But we took what we could get.
Winters had become harsher and harsher as the climate had become ever more out of balance over the years. So we knew that we couldn't survive in the tent. As many others had, we did what we could to dig shelters in the sides of hills, shoring them up with what scraps of wood and what scrap metal escaped the hands of looters to protect ourselves from the elements. It was just enough to keep us from dying of exposure.
Eventually someone had the idea to occupy abandoned basements that had been left after the banks' bulldozers had done their business. It was then that I found myself occupying the basement of a house I used to own. We shared it with two other families. We were able to mock up a makeshift roof which mostly kept out the rain. Since we were underground, it more or less kept itself cool during the hot months and lukewarm during the cold months. It beat a dugout in the side of a hill any day.
We started referring to ourselves as the Cellar Dwellers and the name became an ironic badge of honor for millions of us who had quickly slid down the tracks of the downwardly spiraling American reality.
The first thing they did was eliminate the minimum wage. This was hailed by elites in both of the political parties existing then as a huge improvement that would bring prosperity and production back to our country. It was promised that with the removal of artificial controls on wages that wages would actually increase due to the so-called invisible hand of the free market economy.
At first, this had some positive marginal effects. Some low wage jobs actually did see increases. But after a while, wages started decreasing. What used to pay $10 an hour started paying wages of $5 an hour. Then, the pay became less and less. Eventually, most of us found ourselves working for $2 or $3 a day. But, the jobs did come back. We were manufacturing again, making textiles, furniture, cars, all sorts of items that used to be made in Mexico or China or Indonesia. And profits soared as corporations could now get the benefits of American work ethic and efficiency on the third-world wages they used to pay the Mexicans or the Chinese or the Indonesians.
The next thing they did was eliminate the EPA. Announcing that global warming was a myth created by radical environmentalists to ransack the holdings of American corporations, the elimination of the main environmental regulator was again seen as a huge step forward for the free market and the nation as this would further allow us to add jobs and increase our domestic financial output. Looking back, it would have been better just to nuke ourselves.
As temperatures continued to rise, more and more of the polar ice caps melted raising sea levels. Record snowfall melts swelled rivers to never before seen levels. Most of the Midwest is now the world's largest inland lake, effectively separating the eastern and western halves of the country. Most of Florida is gone. Sacramento is now an Oceanfront paradise, as most of the West coast is under water.
Next they eliminated the Department of Education. This was hailed as huge victory for freedom. No longer would local school boards be subjected to the whims of a government bureaucracy handing down orders willy-nilly to its subordinates. Of course, with most of the former middle class earning less than $2,000 a year, there was little for most school districts to do to raise money. Resources ended up being slashed, and then when there was little choice left, the localities started lowering the age which required compulsory education until some eliminated the requirement altogether.
This was fortunate for many of the new manufacturing giants, however, as the federal government next did away with the job-killing child labor laws. With the newly freed young fresh bodies no longer required to attend schools against their will, children as young as 10 were signed up for jobs in the new textile mills, working 10-12 hour days, six days a week. Their families, with no money on which to survive, had little choice but to not only allow, but require their children to do so.
All of this led to America becoming an economic juggernaut, of course. The nation's exports increased exponentially. The owners of the factories and especially their bankers raked in billions of dollars a year in profits. The nation had its first Trillionaires. The stock market reached heights no one could ever have imagined. Of course, very few but the most wealthy in the nation benefited from this, not that this mattered since they controlled every politician through their purse strings.
As for me, the road down was a steep but unsurprising one. My profession -- lawyers -- was the most despised of the new leaders. A whole new set of rules were implemented making it harder and harder for the masses to reach the scales of justice. First they capped civil awards -- initially at $250,000, then at $100,000 eventually capping the award for an individual in any civil suit, to $25,000. Of course, this only applied to claims for personal injury, not to actions on behalf of corporations for breach of contract or for money owed on loans or foreclosures. Class action suits were outlawed. In a stunning limit on free markets, the same leaders outlawed the use of contingency fee contracts. Lawyers had to work for a fee agreed to and paid ahead of time. Awards of attorney's fees were no longer allowed by the Courts as part of damages or costs.
Needless to say, this put most plaintiff's attorneys and small town lawyers out of business.
I was a prosecutor, so it seemed my job was safe, as the jails were filling with more and more violent offenders, willing to risk everything to get whatever they could at the barrel end of a gun. The leaders stacked the courts with judges willing to overturn well established laws that were seen to clog up the gears of justice. Miranda warnings were tossed away. The right to counsel was deemed unnecessary and the appointing of private attorneys and public defenders offices declared a restraint of trade. Most of the cases I handled now were against individuals unrepresented by counsel and unfamiliar with the workings of the court system. Where I used to look forward to going up against a talented, smart, tough defense attorney and would spend hours pouring over my files and researching the law on all of the potential legal questions that could be raised, now my job bored me. There was no challenge sending away an uneducated, poor teenager to decades behind bars in ever alarming prison conditions.
As time went on and trials became fewer and fewer as court was merely a formality as we ushered hundreds upon hundreds of unrepresented defendants through the courts in record time, the need for prosecutors became less and less. Seeing us as nothing other than glorified office clerks filing paperwork, our funding was cut further and further and our ranks and salaries dwindled along with everyone else's. Inevitably, one day the news came that it was my last and I packed my few office belongings in a small box and left the courthouse which had once represented all that was good with our justice system without giving it a second glance.
The only legal jobs left were with large firms representing the behemoth corporations that were revelling in the new booming economy. These firms were growing and paying huge salaries to their young eager legal eagles who would come up with ever more elaborate ways to guard their clients against the teeming masses that might otherwise try to claw back some of the fortune that their overlords were amassing. However, these jobs inevitably stuck to a strict system of rewarding the families and friends of their clients and political supporters. Little time was given to resumes from former small town prosecutors who obviously had not played the leaders' game or else they would have chosen another career track long ago.
Before long, I, like most of my neighbors was behind in my bills. Unable to pay my bills, I quickly fell behind in my finances. The bank foreclosed on my home, a mere formality. Of course, with so many of us out there no longer able to pay mortgages, the banks were unable to find many buyers for the homes. Many of us, myself included, simply stayed in our homes, challenging the banks to do something about it. Eventually, faced with an overabundance of "empty" homes with no possibility of selling them, the banks started simply razing the homes leaving empty land where once stood the American dream.
One day inevitably my family and I were met at our front door with a bulldozer. We were given five minutes to grab what we could and vacate before the giant smoke belching machine began knocking down that which we had worked for years to maintain. Within an hour it was all gone.
Fortunately, we were able to salvage some camping equipment and found some empty land on which to pitch a tent and at least have some protection against the elements. Both my wife and I found jobs in one of the mills for a couple dollars a day. The biggest perk of these jobs was that they served a relatively good meal during our half hour break of a meat sandwich and some sort of potato along with a beverage, usually caffeinated. This wasn't done out of any kind of charity or beneficence, but merely so that we would have enough sustenance to maintain our energy to complete our shift. But we took what we could get.
Winters had become harsher and harsher as the climate had become ever more out of balance over the years. So we knew that we couldn't survive in the tent. As many others had, we did what we could to dig shelters in the sides of hills, shoring them up with what scraps of wood and what scrap metal escaped the hands of looters to protect ourselves from the elements. It was just enough to keep us from dying of exposure.
Eventually someone had the idea to occupy abandoned basements that had been left after the banks' bulldozers had done their business. It was then that I found myself occupying the basement of a house I used to own. We shared it with two other families. We were able to mock up a makeshift roof which mostly kept out the rain. Since we were underground, it more or less kept itself cool during the hot months and lukewarm during the cold months. It beat a dugout in the side of a hill any day.
We started referring to ourselves as the Cellar Dwellers and the name became an ironic badge of honor for millions of us who had quickly slid down the tracks of the downwardly spiraling American reality.