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Me? I’m Just a Blogger
By David Glenn Cox
There are times when I struggle to write the things that I write. Not because I struggle to find stories but because of the overabundance of stories. First there's the crooked media, unworthy of the title “media” but more generally deserving of being called a propaganda organ of the state.
Then there's our federal oligarchy, now ruled by a Democratic neo-con who has begun a new war after promising to end the old wars. He has ended neither and the media, especially the media on the left, has been particularly silent while drones operated from Nevada kill civilians thousands of miles away in Pakistan.
I am overwhelmed as our economy collapses into a red dwarf while we continue to bail out those at the top while abandoning all others. We present a dog and pony show called health care reform while lobbyists spend $1.4 million a day on Capitol Hill to make sure the only thing you get is screwed.
It is hard to write about these things as just raw numbers, because I seek to put a human face on them. I seek to put a human face on them so that you will say, yes, I see that, too. The numbers themselves are staggering; they make Hurricane Katrina look like an arts festival, and yet the media, left, right and center, ignore the story as if it isn’t even there.
The unemployment numbers are now equal to the entire populations of Nevada, New Mexico and West Virginia. If you include discouraged workers, add Idaho and Maine.
Home foreclosures by the end of the year will surpass the entire population of New York City. Twice the population of the city of Chicago are being made homeless in one calendar year and the media consider it a story for the back pages. It’s news when two million Pakistanis are made homeless in the Swat Valley in our war du jour. It is even occasionally mentioned that four million Iraqis were displaced by George W. Bush’s war to show daddy his penis. But for God sakes, think about this: 1.8 million foreclosures in the first six months and an estimated 1.6 million more before Christmas. With four people to an average household, that’s 13.6 million people!
California has the largest state population in the union, and because of its size and because of its economy it is a microcosm of American society. California is on the verge of collapsing into an abyss, paying with IOU's to prevent a complete breakdown of social services. The Republican-proposed budget cuts would end public healthcare in California. Many of you are parents and know already that if you can’t provide immunizations for your children they will be turned away from the school house door. If you don’t have a permanent address, what school should your children attend?
Every day in the media I see some Howdy Doody happy-ass story about how we’ve turned a corner. A chicken in every pot and a new car in every garage. But I want you to read the next paragraph carefully, because this is how the banking industry reported it to the Federal government on June 10th.
“Manufacturing activity declined or remained at a low level across most Districts. However, several Districts also reported that the outlook by manufacturers has improved somewhat. Demand for non-financial services contracted across Districts reporting on this segment. Retail spending remained soft as consumers focused on purchasing less expensive necessities and shied away from buying luxury goods. New car purchases remained depressed, with several Districts indicating that tight credit conditions were hampering auto sales. Travel and tourism activity also declined. A number of Districts reported an uptick in home sales, and many said that new home construction appeared to have stabilized at very low levels. Vacancy rates for commercial properties were rising in many parts of the country, while developers are finding financing for new commercial projects increasingly difficult to obtain. Most Districts reported that overall lending activity was stable or weak, but with mixed results across loan categories. Credit conditions remained stringent or tightened further. Energy activity continued to weaken across most Districts, and demand for natural resources remained depressed. Planting and growing conditions varied across Districts as did agricultural input costs.”
Did you see those green shoots they keep talking about? “As consumers focused on purchasing less expensive necessities.” In plain English that’s called food.
“Labor market conditions continued to be weak across the country, with wages generally remaining flat or falling. Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco reported that businesses were cutting or freezing wages, and Boston cited wage freezes in the retail sector. The Chicago District reported that the downward pressure on wages was abating somewhat there, as firms turned instead to cutting hours or jobs outright to contain labor costs. Firms in the Atlanta and Dallas Districts also reported having to cut hours to reduce costs. In addition, the Boston and San Francisco Districts also mentioned employers' plans to scale back employee benefit programs.”
Obama’s not sure whether we really need another stimulus package. The first package promised 2.5 million jobs and the economy lost 2.5 million jobs before Congress could enact the bill. The whole fabric of American society is being torn asunder, and the media doesn’t think that it is worth a notice.
Sunday my son came by to take me out to lunch, nothing fancy just Krystal hamburgers. As we walked in, a woman in her thirties stood at the counter with two children in tow. The clerk said, “That’ll be $19.65.”
The woman, seemingly shocked, answered, “Twenty dollars! For junk food?” She then took the youngest by the hand and said, “Come on,” as they headed for the door. The kids cried, “But, mom!.” As she passed me she still had her money in her other hand, a ten, a five and three ones, and I'd wager she had no more.
The hardhearted and less understanding among us would say, "She should have gone to the grocery store with that money." It is true, provided you have a refrigerator or a stove or gas or electricity. But it was her feigned outrage that gave her away. It was a way for her to make an escape and to count pennies at the next fast food outlet.
Grocery store sales were down in May; gasoline sales were down 33% from a year ago. Diesel fuel stockpiles were the highest in sixteen years. We sat in the front of the restaurant where we could see the four-lane highway that feeds into downtown Lawrenceville. As we ate, a man with gray hair, who looked to be in his sixties, rode past on a bicycle which had a milk crate jerry-rigged on the back where he was carrying groceries, and it put those gasoline sales numbers into focus.
I was looking at want ads recently, and I saw an ad for a writer for a local circular, you know, those papers that they throw in your yard whether you want them or not. It was very clear, "Wanted Journalist (No Bloggers Please.)" I admit that at first I was offended, it was I imagined as my own mother felt when she saw the signs that said, “No dogs or Irish.” But then after I thought about it a little I felt better and chuckled to myself at their ignorance. For what journalist today doesn’t have his own blog? So I asked myself, what then is the difference between them and I?
It's simple, they write what they are told to write and I write what I damn well see and feel and think. They write for their employers, but I write for you. And I won’t do any otherwise because it is just as Woody says:
“The songs that I sing are made up, for the most part, by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more, and the ones that make you think you’ve not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow." —Woody Guthrie
Me? I’m just a blogger and I’m one of you, not one of them. I don’t have a journalistic pedigree or a suit and a tie. I’m more like Woody; I call 'em as I see 'em. Like me or hate me, you know that whatever I write is what I believe to be the truth, not because someone told me to write it or not to write it. The late Tim Russert once said, “Credibility is for paupers,” and I answer that selling it is for whores!
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