Saturday, August 6, 2011

Observations from the Window 8.6

I tried, I tried so hard to stay away from politics for now but like a junkie needing its fix I just couldn't do it any longer. When every economist says this is the worst time for the government to cut spending we have massive spending cuts. The debt ceiling debacle, sorry I meant deal, could actually end up cost 1.5 million jobs. In July the illustrious Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said on the senate floor that the poorest and not the richest Americans need to pay more in taxes. Where the money for said higher taxes is to come from he did not say.

Living and working here with Ash makes my situation hard to explain. I live in the highest rent area in the world yet pay almost nothing because that is how Ash pays me for the work I do for her. Because of the gallery and some photo work I have money for the things I need and some things I want. I save some money by doing a lot of work on Foxy myself but I get killed on health insurance because of my history. I shouldn't complain at all because my situation involves choices that have made in my life and I could be saving if I had taken another path but I choose to do this. I just wish I was saving more so when that Paris opportunity arrives I'm ready for it but it is what it is.

Than you have my brother who graduated from Penn State in December with a degree in environmental science that included two minors. Six months later he is still waiting tables at place near my dad's and he thinks the recent national debt bullshit will probably kill his one recent hope because it involves government funding. The sis will be starting at State later this month and was just hit with a 4% tuition increase due to cuts in state funding to the university. The Department of Education already listed Penn State as the most expensive four year public college in the nation.

So where are we going in this country? Polluted water, smoggy skies, falling bridges, less education funding, and unhealthier Americans seems to be the direction. I'm proud Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States, I'm proud I voted for him, and I can say right now I will again. But Obama boasts that we will now have the lowest domestic spending levels since Eisenhower was President yet fails to mention that spending in Afghanistan avoided the knife entirely.

When I heard him say that all I could think was I wonder how the first black President of the United States would have liked living in the Eisenhower era.

Manchester Orchestra - Virgin