Chinese Professor

Chinese Professor Commercial

So, in the age of digital video recording, it has, apparently, taken me over a month  to see the Chinese Professor commercial put out by a group called Citizens Against Government Waste. I was aghast when I first saw the spot, which permeated my senses during a bit of time where the television was just on for background noise. I paused said commercial, called the husband in for his take (as one might do for a good play during a football game) and then I just had to consult the other half of my two-person never ending salon,. I felt like I had to tell everyone about this Orwellian prognostication that was so bold that it  felt like fire and brimstone was certain to be raining down upon my future, 50 year old self.

My political best buddy and I have enjoyed years’ worth of political/ socioeconomic discussions and while we have rarely agreed on the causes of our nations’ abundant problems, or even the possible solutions, we have always agreed on the necessary outcomes. That’s why our conversations have always given me such hope for our nation, because while he and I often find ourselves at the opposite ends of the political spectrums, we agree that a financially solvent, socially and environmentally responsible nation should be the number one focus of our legislators.

When I first asked my friend for his thoughts on the commercial, he exclaimed that it was, “so right wing!” My head thoughtfully tipped to the side after that comment, as I hadn’t even noticed whether the commercial had a bias. The commercial, in my estimation, was basically emphasizing a very basic principle in managing a budget. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, it’s generally not responsible to spend more money or, you are gonna get yourself in trouble. Pure and simple.

So, as a nation, we have gotten ourselves in trouble, financially, well, except for the uber wealthy, that is. The whole three class infrastructure is in trouble, soon there will be only the rich and the poor and then the rich can just pick up and move somewhere, like China, and exploit more hard working people, squeeze them dry and soak every last bit of sweat out of them. Maybe a sequel to the China commercial will be in 2130, when the working class Chinese decide they want to work for sustainable wages and healthcare benefits, and safe working conditions, and maybe a retirement fund. But, just cause you are a wealthy person, or a wealthy corporation, does not mean you are necessarily exploitative. There’s nothing wrong with reaping rewards from ingenuity, hard work and sound business decisions.

We need a balance in this country. Corporations need to make money, the working class needs to make money and the poor need to make money. As we operate today, the Chinese Professor commercial is 100% inevitable. If all we do all day is point fingers at one another, saying you are wrong cause you are a democrat, or you are wrong because you are right wing, all we are going to have accomplished at the end of the day is an overworked pointer finger. NOTHING ELSE!  

It is our duty, as responsible citizens in this union of states, to hold our governmental representatives, the individuals that we HIRED to make decisions on our collective behalf, accountable for their choices in spending our money. It doesn’t mean we need to cut preschool education programs or the programs designed to aid the elderly and disabled, it just means they need to make responsible, pragmatic decisions with our money. It means the legislators do have to answer to us and they need to start earning their own astronomical paychecks with their astronomical benefits. Would we pay a cleaning person extra if they came into our homes and made a mess? Would we pay a realtor that sold our homes behind our backs or a financial advisor that took our money and just gave it away  or even a gardener that ripped up all our pretty flowers and dumped oil in the soil?

There’s nothing right wing, or left wing, or democratic or republican about remembering that our legislators work for US (pun intended there.) There’s nothing partisan about expecting accountability and responsibility from our government. We have been divided amongst ourselves for entirely too long. These problems WILL not be solved by finger pointing, they will not be solved by people forming special exclusive clubs (political parties) with multi-million dollar membership dues or any other playground stupidity. If we continue to remain divided, we will indeed be conquered, if not by the Chinese, then assuredly someone else. It is time, instead, to unite and stand up for the principles upon which this country did once achieve greatness- hard work, integrity and perseverance. We are way past the point of the  time wasting blame game. All the pennant waving and button wearing does not balance our budget or cut into our deficit and it’s certainly not in the job description of any governmental representative. So maybe all of our representatives, left and right, need come front and center , put down their toys, stop their pouting and do what their electors hired them to do, or pretty soon, the next time someone cries while reading the Declaration of Independence, it will be in Chinese history books!

If You Want to Be in OUR Club…

Political Spectrum Quiz

Be honest- ya know ya wanna take it! In a world where we are often too busy to even form a complete thought, burning five minutes on a self analyzing quiz gives us time to breathe, time to talk about ourselves and provide answers (most, albeit for entertainment purposes only) to many of life’s unanswerable questions.

This quiz, however, requires no “Facebook credits” or no “completion of this quiz” for answers and does more than predict when you are going to die or who you are going to marry. It reminds us of  a completely overlooked complexity of United States politics.

Officially, the United States in a representative (republican) democracy. The democracy part means that every citizen has equal representation and an equal voice in decisions made regarding this country. The representative part means that we acknowledge that it’s all but unfeasible to expect that every citizen in this country could efficiently vote on every issue facing our nation, and still have time for a normal life. So we democratically elect representatives to do the decision making on our behalf. Back in the old days, part of this was because information moved so slowly that decision making for every individual citizen meant doing so with limited information. NOW, there is such an information overload, that the average citizen has simply no time to analyze it all and make an educated decision. We have lives, and jobs, and families. Basically, it’s not much different than hiring a cleaning lady or a dog walker. We delegate the responsibility of making these decisions to people that we think would make the best decisions on our collective behalf.

When I first registered to vote, to be able to make an individual decision about each and every person that would represent my interests, I registered as a Democrat, because of the region in which I live. I loved being able to vote and the area was so predominantly Democrat that those who registered as Republicans hardly ever had a chance to vote in the Primary elections. Times have changed, there are now more Republican candidates in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but my registration has not for no other reason than the whole concept of political parties reminds me of the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.


Would I be a bad Democrat if I was to assert myself as pro choice? Would I be a bad Republican if I wanted to help the poor? How many dissenting opinions am I allowed to have before you kick me out of your club?  I like the idea of uniting for a specific cause- that kind of unity is what birthed our country. A bunch of people, upset about taxes and lack of representation, banding together to declare their freedom- that there’s some good stuff! But being part of a club that gives you a checklist of how you are supposed to feel on any number of otherwise unrelated issues (well, aside from the fact that everything really is interconnected) just seems wrong. If I wanted to be told how to make decisions for myself, I would go back to being five years old and asking my mommy.

Is it possible that the exclusive decision making that’s done by today’s political parties is what has disillusioned so many Americans regarding politics? Is it possible that citizens have just gotten sick and tired of being told what to do and how to feel or being made to feel like we are sitting alone at the lunch table cause our we don’t fit in with the people in the club?

My quiz results were surprising to me. As a registered Democrat, I found that I lean to the right regarding economic issues, am considered non-interventionist regarding foreign policy and am socially a libertarian. There were questions on the quiz, that I felt, deserved more than a multiple choice response from me, but alas, online quizzes rarely have an essay portion.  What I liked about this quiz was that it blatantly illustrated (with a cute little graph) that politics is so much more than black or white, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative and that these labels put us in a position where we are getting lazy, sitting back and letting others tell us how to feel and how to vote. Granted, in this economy, it’s very easy to delegate that thinking to someone else, especially when were are all running around like chickens with the heads cut off just trying to break even at the end of the day, but sadly, these are the times when our decisions matter most and when we must remember that the great decisions in our country’s history came from regular people, not hired bureaucrats. The decisions that formed out country came from the people that thought outside the box in which the establishment told them to blindly stay. They united for a cause, and that cause was freedom- freedom from oppression and freedom to choose for themselves.

Maybe, it’s time we remember that, or maybe not. You decide.

Gas...It's a Fact of Life

So, we HAD to quench the thirst of our [free for a legitimate reason] ‘96 Ford Winstar today. It was painful, it shattered my begrudging hopes that the economy would indeed rebound (at least for us working class folks.) For the first time in my life, I yelled to my husband, “Don’t fill it!” I knew full well, that we had to fill it, cause eventually, we would just be refilling it again and probably at a higher price! It was already $3.43/ gallon!

If it was up to me, I would never drive again! I would be perfectly happy walking kids to school, walking to the grocery store and the pharmacy- it would be GOLDEN! But, alas, we have our own Indy 500 just a block away, which is NOT conducive to a 2 week grocery order and 2 preschoolers in tow. I hate winter, especially, with all of it’s snow and ice and such. I hate driving.  There are rude people on the road- old and young

But, the kids are 3 and 5, and they have little legs. Could they walk two miles to school? Sure. Could they function the rest of the day? Probably not. Really? Is this what the “Greatest Generation” bequest to us? It’s not totally their fault though. Not really their fault at all. They didn’t  make the choices their legislators made.

We are in a bad place. We are dependant on oil from a place that is NOT here. It COULD be from here, but it is not.  Why do we need the oil? Being dependant on someone else for our livelihood isn’t American, but it IS Global.

So, the total  cost at the gas station was about sixty dollars. It doesn’t sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, especially with the prices of everything else escalating, but sixty dollars DOES matter to me and I can probably think of about sixty reasons WHY we shouldn’t be paying $3.43 for one gallon of gasoline. I am not going to delve into them all here, but I will touch on a few:

Alternative energy vehicles-  There’s an inventor in the Philippines who has come up with an electric car that has solar charging capabilities: Solar Car and there have been a number of other people that have retrofitted their vehicles to run on water and used vegetable oil and such. Also check out List of Alternative Fuels that lists almost 20 different options for fuel that would work in most vehicles currently on the roads today.

More local shops!- There’s a glorious time of yore when there was a market, local beer garden and church literally down the block from every home in the United State. Back then, there was little unemployment, children and adults alike COULD safely walk where they needed to go, so the occurrence of obesity was far lower, there was no hole in the Ozone Layer, because people only really “needed” to drive for special occasions like Sunday drives or  vacations to the shore during the summer. Local shops COULD easily repopulate and create a sustainable living for the owners by tapping into modern technology for some help. Grocers can create little eating areas, like counter top seating and a couple of café tables and invest in wi-fi for their establishments to encourage patrons. They easily create a Web site that would allow for access to an international customer base and send shop specific specialties far and wide.

Think trains not trucks! Much of the country is still covered in at least remnants of the glory that was rail travel and, of course, a number of trains STILL function quite well as a form of transport that’s less dependant on oil and exceptionally cost efficient. Jobs could be created in order to bring the lost tracks back to fruition. Truckers could be retrained to work trains (yes, I am proud of that alliteration there!) We COULD be as bold as to go back to steam engines, but our technology  just isn’t quite there yet with an alternative energy source for vehicle as large and fierce as a train. It’s still a possibility though..

Embrace the cyber world! If we really think about it, a ridiculously absurd amount of office jobs, really anything not specifically requiring manual labor, can be done from the home of anyone with HSD, a computer and access to Skype. For the cost of a computer, a wecam/ speakers/ microphone, internet service and Skype (or any Voice Over IP service like Vonage) we could avoid the costs of commuting, as well as work fashion, as well the need for a brick and mortar office building, aside from, at MOST a customer accessible little hub of a building. Secure networks allow for a virtual office for the handling of any level of sensitive information. Online chatting allows for contact with coworkers and superiors when there’s a need for escalation of an issue and/ or customer interaction. Even old fashioned phone customer service can be done from home with a quiet room and the other aforementioned prerequisites. Imagine a world with no more traffic jams, no road rage, no need for fast food (when ya got your own kitchen a couple of yards away.) I could go on and on about the benefits. And then, guess what? We won’t need petroleum products to keep ourselves functional, well, not to anywhere near the degree of necessity that we currently have.

According to Wikipedia, the first car was produced in 1902. Human beings have lived, survived and prospered for approximately 500,000 years prior to 1902, according to NASA. Something tells me that a world without petroleum products just might still be feasible.

So, maybe we need to respond like the innovative, frugal and resourceful Americans of the past, and change our own corner of the world. Your bank account will surely thank you.