Cowtown Chronicles

Because apparently I can’t get enough of politics (despite the fact that I’m SICK to death of all the back and forth bullshit), the above is my genuine question.

If you’re not a Republican, but you’re still a “conservative,” please comment. I’m genuinely curious. Assuming I get a couple of responses, I’ll follow-up with a post on why I’m a “liberal.”

This is a serious question. Give it some thought. Don’t post answers like “Because Democrats want to take our guns!!!” That’s not a reason for being a conservative/Republican. That’s a reason (to you) for NOT being a Democrat.

KTHAKSBAI

This is the first of hopefully many guest posts by my friends and acquaintances — basically anyone who wants to submit something, if I like it, I’ll post it! — Pete

One Step Forward, Two Hundred and Thirty Two Years Back…

Has anyone noticed the gradual degeneration of civility that’s taken place over the past decade? I took a sociology course a couple of years ago in which we discussed the ramifications of post-industrialization. This is the first time in human history that a country has moved passed being agricultural or industrial based. I think that this shift in paradigms paired with the massive technological growth in the past fifty years has created a state of upheaval. People are always running to catch up. In addition, the emergence of personal cell phones equipped with more technology than the first vessels in space, text messaging, and ipods have created a schism in personal, intimate connections. There was a study conducted in Japan in 2006 that showed how language was actually breaking down into a rudimentary form more closely related to hieroglyphics than to a contemporary language. The students involved in the study also showed signs of an inability to recognize emotions in real time — meaning that they could tell if someone was happy or sad when using emoticons, but were completely at a loss when confronted with a live human being.

As I began thinking about this further, I realized its a combination of far more factors than simply technology and the type of economic structure into which the U.S. has evolved. We have such limitless options when it comes to information gathering. We can read twenty different newspapers, watch any number of local, national, and international news programs, and search any website in the world from our couches with the click of a button. Furthermore, we inundate ourselves with fabulous and over-glamorized celebrities who are a minute portion of the population, yet every 13 year old kid thinks that he has to be rich in order to be someone. “Cribs” has effectively created a socially acceptable pop-culture form of keeping up with the Jones’. When money becomes God who do people turn to when there is none? Self-perpetuating cycles of overspending, going into debt, and living lives far beyond financial means becomes the norm, and whole subsections of the population grow up on welfare and in poverty — and they accept it. There are women in this country unable to care for children they already have, and continue to get pregnant because they know the government will give them more money if they do. Those kids then grow up in an environment where it is reinforced, maybe not by words, but definitely by actions that it’s ok not to work. Just have more kids and at least you’ll be at this level of poverty that’s familiar. All the while there’s MTV saying here’s what living is — driving a Bentley and living on the beach in Miami. Things that most people will never achieve. So I ask, what makes that possible?

The government. I’ve placed a lot of blame on pop-culture, but our government is just as much to blame — perhaps more so. Politicians have essentially become actors, and have access to the same wealth as those celebrities featured on “Cribs.” The difference is that rather than setting an example for how to not just survive but thrive through their actions in office, they are teaching people how to exploit every resource until there are none. The U.S. national deficit as of right now is almost $9.5 trillion. What I want to know is if we have been the wealthiest most powerful nation in the world at least since WWII if not longer, why would we let our deficit get so high? Is our government setting an example for responsible financial planning? No. They are showing people that you can borrow as much as you possibly can and just let someone else worry about it because when the time comes to bite the bullet you won’t be around — either because you’re no longer in office or you’re dead. There’s a significant lack of personal responsibility. My sister has used an analogy any time I’ve really wanted to help or possibly over-extend myself because she knows I have a tendency toward this — I’ve had trouble saying no to people in the past. She says, “When you’re on an airplane what does the flight attendant say to do in case of an emergency? She says that oxygen masks will deploy and that YOU need to put yours on before you can help anyone else. YOU can’t help anyone else if you can’t breathe or are dead.” That’s how I feel about our country right now. How are we going to help third world countries if we can’t handle our own economic problems here?

Well, we’ve put ourselves in the precarious position of policing the entire world, taking out loans from almost anyone who wants to be a lender, and we already have or are outsourcing anything tangible economically that we can sell. This is where our post-industrialization comes into play. We have a predominantly service economy meaning that we don’t make many goods any more. So, what would we do were we suddenly at war with China? My point is that we need to step back from our over-extension and reign in our global policing. Part of the reason why we were able to thrive after the Great Depression in the 30s is that we made our own goods. There were American jobs to be had and WWII solidified that. We also practiced this little thing called isolationism. Perhaps we as a nation should try to increase our GDP by making and buying our own goods rather than importing them from China, Japan, Taiwan, and India. At the same time place those things we can sell in other countries just as they have here. Such as Toyota building plants in the U.S. and selling enough of their cars here to become the top auto manufacturer. That should feel like the Cowboys getting beaten on their home turf — our home team is losing. Instead we welcome it — globalization! I do believe that globalization will be good for everyone eventually, but I think we’ve too readily and quickly sent all of our safety net away from our borders. So, if we can reclaim the notion that American made products are good, and become self-sufficient, meaning we stop taking out loans for trillions of dollars, we could start to improve the quality of life here. As that takes place, a portion of our GDP could be devoted to providing foreign aid for countries truly in poverty — not for political ideologies close to no one’s values except those of the politicians profiting from them. We then begin the long arduous task of repaying nearly $10 trillion in debt, but at least we could support ourselves by buying and selling goods in our own country. That would also help with the afore mentioned welfare problems because having industry in the U.S. would create new jobs. Also, we might be able to show the younger generations by example that appearances aren’t everything. Sometimes you have to live in reality and not where you wish you were. I yearn for a public official who’s bold and respectable enough to be a role model. I look back throughout our nation’s history and wonder what it must have been like to live when George Washington and our forefathers were founding this country. What it would feel like to have someone in a position to change things who you can actually look up to. Someone not controlled by partisan politics, but by his or her own principles. A true desire to make things better. I know this is me being idealistic, but I want to think that the world is still capable of change — otherwise what’s the point?

Back to my original thought, we have so many options I don’t think a lot of people know what to choose. I recently read a statistic, which I don’t know how they gathered their data, but it said that 16% of Americans said they were “Non-Religious.” Just from my personal experience I’ve spoken to more atheistic and agnostic people in the past few years than any other time in my life. The basis of religion isn’t my point, but that we don’t have guidance from our government, we don’t have guidance from religion, our schools are underfunded, and parents are too busy trying to keep up. So what do the new generations of kids have to look forward to? It looks like they have depression, ADD and ADHD, anxiety and a myriad of other medications to help them cope with the constant state of flux. That is if they don’t turn to illegal drugs and self-medicate. A life without meaning is quite an empty one. Money, cars, houses, and fame look great until you suddenly realize that you don’t know who you are or what you stand for. I think it all goes back to personal responsibility and stepping up to make a difference in people’s lives. The degeneration of civility I spoke of ranges from people flipping one another off — I was shot the bird by a 70 year old woman last week — to things as simple as not having the time or inclination to acknowledge another person on the street, or hold a door for a stranger. Try having a conversation in which you make eye contact with the other person 90% of the time. Most people I’ve spoken to in recent times avoid eye contact at all costs. Our public fronts are so frail that we fear anyone looking into our eyes and seeing past the facade. No wonder people have so many problems when they feel isolated all the time. That lack of interconnectedness makes it easy to be mean to someone else because they don’t matter. If you figure you don’t know them or have to deal with them to get what you want — your paycheck, car, house, clothes, etc. — why deal with them? Why bother going out your way to be nice? Well, just like Randal in Clerks II I’m taking it back, not his racial slur, but being nice to people. Hopefully it’ll catch on.

Anyway, it’s definitely a strange time in the world, and I think that either we as a nation will evolve and grow to create a new paradigm encompassing post-industrialization in a changing global economy, or we’ll revert back to industrialization because it’s familiar and something we can have a handle on. Either way I feel a major world change is coming and I hope someone comes along to help lead us through it.

I know you’ve all been wondering where the hell I’ve been lately. The sad truth is that I’ve just been too busy with work and trying to get things set up in the background at Panther City Media to write much of anything for either site.

I also got a new job this week, which I will be starting at on the 19th. I’ve been hired as an Apple Systems Administrator at TCU. That’s really nice, because I can ride my bike to work! I’m really excited to get started, and it looks like it’ll be a great environment, based on my interactions with the staff there so far.

So there’s this “artist” in Costa Rica who’s “art” installation consisted of a dog tied up in the corner of an art gallery, then left to die (supposedly) of starvation. As if that weren’t enough, he’s been invited to represent Costa Rica (in the celebration of art) at the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American.

Seriously? That’s fucking art? What if I took some cow’s blood and jacked off in it, then pressed it between two sheets of plexiglass, would that be art? Uh-oh. It already is. Damn, I guess I’ll have to come up with something even more disgusting, although I think Senior Habacuc has already completely destroyed the boundaries on that one.

A little more digging casts some doubts on the actual outcome of the situation. The gallery owner says the dog was well-fed, but that’s a tough argument to make considering its apparent condition in the photos. The gallery owner also claims that the dog escaped in the night and was never seen again, and that it was only tied up for the 3 hours or so that the exhibit was open.

The “artist,” of course, refuses to confirm or deny what happened to the dog; relishing the attention and seeking to promote his message.

It’s pretty clear that he’ll go to any lengths to promote himself and his work. It’s up to civil society to make sure that we don’t let him benefit from this cruelty, and send the message that doing something heinous, even with the excuse of “it’s art!” is unacceptable and WILL be punished, if not by law enforcement, then by making sure that his other pieces are completely worthless on the art market and choking his source of income.

More importantly; Nicaragua has no animal cruelty laws on the books, so what he did to this dog (whether it resulted in the dog’s death or not) was perfectly legal there. And people wonder why Americans have the assumption that countries to the south are “backwards.” (I know that this is a gross stereotype. Please don’t bother emailing me or commenting to point it out.) In this case, the “artist” in question is from Costa Rica, which DOES have animal cruelty laws, so this act of torture would have been illegal in his home country.

Art nerds? Care to defend this one?

If you followed the trackback link from Roughly Drafted and wound up at this blog that seems to be about Fort Worth, it’s okay, you’re in the right place.

This is my personal blog, where I write about things I’m interested in, like politics, personal finance, Macs, and sustainability.

I also co-write a blog focused exclusively on Fort Worth called West and Clear.

Most recently, I’ve started focusing on building a Macintosh-centered consulting business for small and medium businesses in North Texas.

If you’re looking for help with your all-Mac network, are considering a switch to Mac for your business, or have a group of Macs that have never quite fit in with your Windows network, I can help you find the best way to achieve your goals. For more about my experience and how to contact me, check out the “Hire Pete!” page.

The answer to that question is that in the vast majority of cases, yes, it most certainly is.

It’s time, though, to move past our national snobbishness toward tradesmen/women. Not everyone who forgoes college winds up flipping burgers. Not too long ago, nearly all of those people went into some kind of trade. Now those jobs are less available due to immigration and less desirable because every level of our education system is focused on pushing kids into a 4-year university.

Jenna was telling me the other day that it’s almost impossible to find a non-immigrant (legal or otherwise) drywall installer in Texas. It’s a skill bordering on an art form, and since kids coming out of high school aren’t choosing that path for employment, there are fewer people here to do it.

Let’s get over our national obsession with pushing everyone into college. We need tradesmen/women just as much as we do computer programmers and marketing folks.

I’m proud of the discussion we’ve been having about the national election and the viability and relative benefits of the various candidates. (Okay, we haven’t been talking about the Republican candidate, and I don’t expect us to.) I composed this post initially as a comment response to Suzette’s comment on the “Am I Sexist Because I Support Obama?” post.

Go read the full comment thread, but I’ll copy Suzette’s most recent comment here for your convenience:

Evidently, we have “differences of opinion” on several levels and several issues here. On a side note, now we can understand WHY politicians don’t say how they “really” feel about people and things because if they did they would always offend somebody, somewhere. That’s why they all talk in that “politically correct” carefully thought out lingo. I have called Obama “Bama Rama” and all sort of, what I think, are funny names. To me it’s deserving. I suppose I coulda shoulda have put the “O” before “Bama” but I have such little respect for the dude that…….I can’t bring myself to do that. I didn’t think my comments were “tacky” and as far as them being “offensive,” that’s sort of like beauty…it all depends on the individual who’s looking, reading and/or hearing. Like I said Pete, on the Presidential Candidates, I think it’s fair to say, “we see and hear things very differently.” However, I am glad we can express it here and hope I don’t wear out my welcome. I’ll understand though, if what I say, becomes “too much,” tacky, offensive or whatever. Life goes on.

Here is my response:

I have no problem at all with you saying what you really feel, Suzette. I was just disappointed that your real feelings for your party’s potential candidate for President are so low that you’ve resorted to calling him childish names.

I’d like it if you could explain those feelings to me. No one has been able to successfully explain to me why Clinton is a better candidate than Obama using facts and reasoning based on their proposed policies and statements.

Where you see waffling and double-dealing in Obama, I see unprecedented truthfulness and pragmatism. For example:

This week, Clinton has been bashing him because his former foreign policy adviser (who has been right WAY more often than she’s been wrong if you go back and read her policy papers and books) told the truth in an interview. She said that Obama would evaluate the situation on the ground in Iraq once he takes office and has access to more information than he can currently get as someone who’s not in the administration, and make his decisions about troop withdrawal based on that information.

Clinton says that means Obama is not serious about his stated goal of getting our troops out of Iraq in 16 months. In fact, her stated position is in most ways NO DIFFERENT from Obama’s. The difference is that she is unwilling to commit to timetables, unlike Obama.

So, does that mean that Clinton will NOT listen to her advisers and the military leaders on the ground and will just yank people out of Iraq as soon as she takes office? I hope not. She’s telling people what they want to hear in order to get elected. Period.

If she doesn’t intend to listen to her advisers (which she has made comments to the effect of), then that frightens me for two reasons:

1. If she’s the kind of president who is “the decider” and doesn’t surround herself with or listen to people who disagree with her and provide her with honest and accurate assessments of situations, then I fear we’d be in for another 4 years of Bush-like autocracy.

2. If she’s the type of leader who says “This is going to happen.” and then proceeds to make that thing happen regardless of means used to achieve it, then again, we’re in for another 4 years of autocratic rule.

You know what pisses me off about Bush more than ANYTHING else? It’s not the fact that he’s destroying our public school systems in favor of public funding for religious schools, nor that he’s systematically neutering regulatory agencies by appointing industry lobbyists to lead them, although those are two of the many things.

What pisses me off the most about George W. Bush is that he COMPLETELY and BLATANTLY ignores the will of the People of this country. People he’s supposed to serve. The People to whom he’s ostensibly accountable, although that accountability goes through a cowardly Congress which is unwilling to check his power because they ALL want a piece of it.

Hillary Clinton comes from that tradition. The tradition of ball-busting, winner-take-all politics that has gotten us into the multiple messes we’re in now. She has demonstrated repeatedly that her own personal ambitions are more important than ANYTHING else. She has demonstrated that the ends (winning the Democratic nomination) justify the means (her scorched-earth tactics against Obama) in her campaign, and I think that’s a pretty good indicator of both what her administration would be like, and how she would approach policy decisions, both foreign and domestic.

No one in their right minds, including Barack Obama, is going to deny that he’s ambitious and seeks power. That’s the nature of people who run for any national-level political office. The difference is that he hasn’t demonstrated that he’s willing to destroy everything in his path to get there, which Clinton has repeatedly done. She has been DIRECTLY CONFRONTED (as usual it’s buried at the bottom of the article) about her misstatements and occasionally outright mistruths about Obama’s past and his policies, and she has brushed off those challenges as “difference of opinion.” This is the same logic that Bush has used to ignore global climate change, among other things. Bush sees FACTS as opinions upon which people can disagree. Apparently Clinton does, too.

To me, Hillary Clinton represents the old guard school of politics. I see her bringing more of the same partisan conflict (with the added bonus of infighting within the Democratic Party) with her presidency. I don’t think she has the political will to fight for REAL progressive initiatives, because I don’t think that’s what she sees as important. To her it seems the only important thing is that she be in power and that her party gets the opportunity to exercise the same kind of stranglehold over the legislative process that the Republicans have for the last 12 years. That’s not how politics should work.

So, there you go. I’ve laid out part of why I prefer Obama over Clinton. None of it has anything to do with “he inspires me!” or “he’s a great speaker, I’m under his spell.” I think both of those sentiments are valid, though, just as my generation’s parents did with regards to John Kennedy.

We’ve suffered through 8 long years of crushed dreams, disappointment, misery, and death. What’s wrong with some hope for a change? Why does the candidate who reaches out to people to help them up get made fun of for being “deluded” and “naive?” Isn’t that “hand up instead of a hand out,” as Obama puts it, all that Americans have been asking for since we rose up against King George III?

Editor’s Note: This is one in an infrequently recurring series on personal finance and my plan for getting ours in order. I am not a financial planner, but I think this is common sense advice that anyone can follow, no matter your financial situation. Don’t sue me if you try it and it backfires.

It’s important to understand that nearly everyone in the United States has debt of some kind. You’re not alone. And if you’re overwhelmed by the amount of debt you’re carrying, you’re also not the only one out there.

Think about your debt. Do you have a credit card? Several credit cards? Student loans? Loans for other things, like cars or a boat? Do you own your house outright, or is it mortgaged? Now think about the people you know. That guy down the street with two really nice SUVs and the 58″ plasma - do you think he paid cash for all of that? If so, good for him, but chances are he didn’t.

Debt is neither good nor bad. That sounds really touchy-feely, but it’s true. Buying things on credit gives us the opportunity to live a good life and enjoy things that you wouldn’t be able to pay cash for all at once. There’s no way I could have come up with the money to buy my house with cash, at least not within the next 10 years. For one, I don’t have the kind of discipline that would make me able to save for that long, but also, the availability of a mortgage makes it unnecessary.

Having said that, however, while the availability of debt may be convenient, it’s not always a good thing. It’s VERY easy to overextend yourself with so much debt that it gets out of control.

I see some forms of debt as not as bad as others. Student loans and mortgages, in my opinion, are not as damaging financially as consumer debt. Consumer debt is debt that you take on to pay for STUFF. (I don’t consider your house to be part of that STUFF, since you need to have a place to live.) Student loans truly are an investment in your career and future. Study after study shows that a college degree is the ONLY trait that separates high earning people from low earning people. Family status or situation, whether you were from a single-parent or nuclear family, none of that matters when it comes to your lifetime earning potential. As I stated before, while real estate is NOT a guaranteed money-making investment, you need to have a place to live anyway, and it’s nice to own your own house.

(more…)

And also some complete losses of reason.

Once again I’ve given in and read the comments on a story at the S-T’s website. The story happens to be about how the increase in gas prices is affecting commuters around the city. Generally the people quoted in the piece are handling it like adults, taking responsibility for their actions and choosing to modify their behavior or downsize their vehicles. (Huh. Proof that the markets really do work!)

But the comments are where the REAL action is. Take this nutjob for example:

Conservation CANNOT solve the problem. Congress should stop taking money from the Environmentalists and pass legislation to unplug wells first and then allow drilling in Alaska and off California and New England and the building of refineries on fast track (minimal environmental restrictions). Most of all Americans need to get over this national guilt conplex over using Earth’s resources.

*
Posted by: Tired of the stupidity of the ignorant masses

Apparently it’s the ENVIRONMENTALIST lobby that’s been raking in all those massive profits on oil and funneling that money directly into the pockets of legislators. Damn! How could I have been so stupid?

I hope this isn’t a commonly held opinion in conservative circles, because it (obviously) couldn’t be more wrong. (It’s a “guilt conplex” that’s making us want to protect and conserve Earth’s resources? Apparently we’re all stupid because we don’t want to breathe poisoned air or drink poisoned water.)

I agree that conservation cannot solve the problem (although I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the root of “Conservative” is “conserve”), at least not alone. Conservation combined with exploration of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, etc. IS the answer. Clinging to dirty, destructive energy sources like coal and petroleum JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE CHEAP is a ridiculous position.

If someone said “I’ll give you this truck, but I have to take one of your legs in return,” would you make that deal? That’s essentially what we’re doing when we refuse to give up environmentally damaging things solely for convenience or frugality’s sake.

We’re poisoning ourselves slowly and causing untold damage to our ecosystems, but at least everyone has a car, right?

(I had initially titled this “The Best Argument For Why I’m For Obama, and while that is true for all of the reasons that Grayson lays out, he’s really laying out the argument for why Hillary doesn’t really understand what the country wants when they demand change. Her offer of change is simply for a change on the letterhead, from Bush to her. Obama is offering REAL change to our country’s policies and outlook on the world.)

Grayson Harper puts it best on his blog. Seriously, how much talent and insight can one person have?