Obama's Bi-Partisan Cabinet

Now that the news has emerged that Obama will probably appoint conservative Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to be his Commerce Secretary, that would bring to three the number of Republicans in Obama's Cabinet, or 20% of the total, for those inclined to keep score.

In the months leading up to the Inauguration, many conservative friends predicted that Obama would not keep his campaign promise to govern in a bi-partisan way. They were wrong.

But our new President's attempts to gain GOP support for his administration's stimulus package has utterly failed to date. Are Republicans holding to principle because they feel the proposed legislation is no good?

Or, are they deliberately returning to the politics of polarization that have led to gridlock in Washington, D.C., ever since Newt Gingrich launched his disastrous "Contract with America," in 1994, just because that's all they know how to do?

The nation's prospects for real political change hinge on both parties being willing to cooperate. So far, the minority party seems unwilling to do so. A honeymoon? Apparently not for this President, despite all of his efforts.

If these early signs prove long-term, the Democrats should build on their majorities substantially in the next mid-term elections, in 2010, because the one in five voters who identify as conservatives will not be able to elect any Congressmen against the tide of reasonableness and moderation personified by Obama.

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Laid Off? Party On.

The proprietess of a popular club near here told me that the normal caelndar of holiday parties, office parties, and birthday parties have slowed to a trickle, but she has lots of "layoff parties" lined up.

Grim humor in a drinking town.

Continuing my "back to nature" theme these slightly idle days, the photo above is from Baker Beach, the nicest spit of sand in this city, which stretches from the swanky Seaside neighborhood, home to billionaires, to the rocky outcrop of the Golden Gate Pass.

Despite the placid looking waters, currents here can be deadly, as the Bay alternatively sucks the Pacific through this narrow opening or out-tides its daily detritus along the foamy, ever-shifting tideline.

The far end, near the bridge, is a well-known hangout for nudists, including, alas, those who really shouldn't be. The hillsides above are colonized by a colorful assortment of ice plant, Golden Poppies, and scrubby bushes angling into majestic Monterey Pines of The Presidio.

Over four decades ago, Otis Redding made his way out here from Georgia to write his classic "Dock of the Bay," while sitting on one in the pre-gentrified Sausalito. Above Sausalito sat the predominantly black Marin City, which had been constructed for wartime shipyard workers.

Another poet, rapper Tupac Shakur spent several years in Marin City in the 1980's, attending Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley for a minute. Other writers who lived here, albeit briefly, were white -- Jack Kerouac and one of my buddies of the early 1990's, Annie Lamott.

Today, the area has been redeveloped. Gone is the flea market; in its place is a super-sized shopping mall dominated by discount stores, such as Ross Dress for Less. The charming cottages form the 1940's, with hardwood-floors and million-dollar views of the Bay, have disappeared among hundreds of monstrously huge condos that march up the hill like voracious creatures dreampt up by nearby resident George Lucas.

One quality everyone named in this column shared except George was a degree of poverty for most of their lives. "Starving artists" was not a cute name for a moving company but a reality -- one that may soon return.

If indeed we are entering a Depression, who the hell is going to hire writers, musicians, and other artists? Who indeed?

But nature is free, though around these parts, extremely hazardous as well. There is always a rip-tide ready to sweep you away or a steep ravine to challenge your ability to cheat gravity. Little edible food can be gathered here, mainly little-known wild greens that few people (except chefs in exclusive restaurants and the very poor) can appreciate.

Though we have few biting insects, we have spiders that like to chew on humans any chance they get, including the dreaded Brown Recluse. It's politically incorrect to hunt birds, deer or other game; and most of the fish in the Bay are contaminated with toxins.

Hunting and gathering, thus, is not much of an option -- dumpster diving is probably a better alternative, given the amount of food we still waste.

That there is poetry in these activities is a given. I wonder how many will be on the road again soon...

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Among Big Trees, Comfort is Found

Sometimes, when your material circumstances have been diminished, the best thing you can do is to return to nature. When you are out of work in a city like this one, where so many still blithely drive around in fancy cars and eat in fancy restaurants, you can feel small.



But these are simply cultural feelings, not rooted in true physical reality but in the false comparative insecurities of an American middle class that remains hopelessly ignorant about how privileged we really are -- in or out of work, with or without savings, in possession or not of the latest electronic gadgets and tools.



Walk through a redwood grove (this one is in Muir Woods) and you will feel small in a much more healthy way. The air smells different under these giant trees -- cleaner, because they clean it.

The music of the creek that moves among these ancient beings will remind you of another place, somewhere sweeter and safer-feeling than the city with its boiling anger and tension, as the recession deepens.

Those on the margins now break into our cars, our houses, or they mug us, seeking survival funds to sustain bad habits adopted in lieu of doing the hard work of coming to grips with who each of us is in this complex society, the richest on earth, yet still filled with people so uncertain and so unused to sacrificing on behalf of their families or others that the slightest reduction in lifestyle is interpreted as a loss of entitlement.

I am one of those hurting, truly, in this economic downturn. I do not yet know how I can support my precious family going forward, and the resources I've been able to save are rapidly diminishing.

Radical action may be called for, perhaps even leaving this city I've called home for 37 of the past 38 years. But, whatever I need to do to survive and provide, I will gladly do.

Here are my current ideas: A bunch of chicken livers are cheap, unlike chicken meat. Salads can be grown; there is no need to buy lettuce here. Adult males don't need new clothes (females are another story); kids do need clothes but they can be purchased at second-hand stores. Almost all other consumption can be delayed until some future moment when resources become more readily available.

As for our biggest expense, can we really afford to continue living alone or in pairs? If you have enough space to sublet, you should do so quickly and reduce both your burn rate and that of your subletee.

This is an age for conserving what we have and consuming as little as we need. It is not a time to be concerned about what anybody else thinks. What is the minimum that you really need to get by?

As this is developing into possibly the worst depression of our lifetimes, this is the only salient question. Take only what you need, and leave the rest.

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Dream Lover

Ms. Tammi Terrell:



What a lovely woman, as she performed here with Marvin Gaye. Her eyes, her smile, her entire presence is magical.

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You'll Never Beat Old Ma Bell

I know, dear fellow boomers, you think she went away and would never come back. But AT&T is back, with a vengeance. Whether we were justified or not in our views, people my age remember this company as one of the most hated monopolies of our youth, right up there with IT&T, Dow Chemical, and Engulf & Devour.

:)

Our government supposedly broke up the nationwide Bell monopoly decades ago, but like pigweed, bad pennies, and that black-sheep cousin of yours, AT&T never really went away. It just went into hiding, like an evil spore.

When I moved back to California in 2000, after a brief respite in the Washington, D.C., area, the new baseball park was called PacBell, after the regional phone company. Now what is it called? "AT&T Park," and that sucks, big-time.

Might as well call it Ma Bell.

But that is not the point of this post. Somehow, when I moved into this flat in one of the dodgy corners of the Mission, the only land line supplier available was AT&T. So, I sucked up my ancient hatred, and signed up for the service.

Since then, the equally vile cable companies have moved in on Ma Bell's turf, so a while back I dumped Ma and switched to the same company that already deducts an arm and leg from me every month for my high speed Internet and cable TV access.

Would AT&T let me go? No way. Every day since, multiple times each day, my pathetic land line rings and the caller ID reveals that is is AT&T Customer Service calling to try and lure me back.

Tired of this monotony, I picked up one call one day after I was laid off and told the frightened sounding young woman on the other end of the line (no doubt in Bangalore) in no uncertain terms that I did not appreciate this harassment and would soon be alerting the authorities if it didn't cease!

Alas, it didn't cease. It continues to this very day. So I've just unplugged my phone. What good is a land line if it is unplugged? At least I don't need to hear those damned calls coming in, like clockwork, every other hour.

What the fuchs is wrong with these people?

That's not even the worst thing. The worst thing is that somehow in the exchange from one oligopoly to the other, my answering machine has gotten fuchsed up. As my 14-year-old and I discovered the other day, if you try to call me on that troubled line, you will get a message that says:

"If you wish to leave a message, call back later."

Think about that, will you? And get back to me, if you will. Just don't try the land line, you know, because it's unplugged.

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A New Idea for President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

As thousands upon thousands of us are being thrown out of our jobs, we are faced with an economy that isn't generating very many new opportunities. One alternative is for us to try and bootstrap ourselves by doing whatever it takes to get by.

We may be able to string together enough small jobs and projects to survive this period through "self-employment."

There is something you could do to help us along. Right now, we all have to pay self-employment tax on our freelance earnings, which at the bottom rungs of the employment pyramid seems downright unfair.

If a cleaning lady makes $20,000 a year through her enterprise and hard work, why should she have to pay any of it in taxes? I propose that the first $40,000 or so in self-employed income be exempt from any taxes, at least for the duration of this recession.

This exemption could be structured in any number of ways to reduce any negative impacts it might have on government tax revenues. The elimination of these taxes should reduce paperwork and labor costs at the IRS. The upper end of self-employed income earners ($250,000+) could probably afford to pay a higher tax rate than they do now.

The benefit also might be structured as a "loan" from our future tax obligations, when we all get back on our collective feet again.

As an additional request, I believe unemployment benefits, which are of course awarded through the state, should also be exempt from federal income tax. This is not employed income but unemployed sustenance. California is no doubt one of the most generous states in these benefits, but the most one can receive here is $450/week. (Housing costs are such that that barely covers most people's rent.)

I'd just like to see the most oppressive taxes that so unfairly punish working people in society lifted for a while. We all just need a break.

Thanks for listening.

-- DW

One Man Speaks Out as Many Listen

The most remarkable move in a series of remarkable moves by our new President to date was his decision to sit down today for his very first television interview not with one of the big American networks but with an Arab station.

In a message that surely is being wisely distributed throughout the Muslim world tonight, President Obama is reaching out to people on the basis of shared values, as opposed to Bush's rhetoric about a Crusades between civilizations.

This will not in any way diminish the difficulty of brokering peace in the Middle East, for example, or of solving our difficult breach with Iran. But, he may be able to further isolate al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist elements from the broad mainstream of modern Islamic culture. If so, he will have made our world a much safer place.

The hateful gap between the West and Islam is not preordained. Obama's understanding of this historic opportunity presages an administration that may be able to mend ancient wounds, and push former enemies into the common search for a peaceful future.

Idealistic? Perhaps so. But troubled times demand great leaders, and I suspect we have one in Barack Obama. God knows, we need one.

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Jagged Edges

We have lots of friends here, many of whom, admittedly, are fictional, like this sweet fellow. Which raises the issue of where the line between fiction and non-fiction resides. Not to mention how to delineate the far more confusing connection between dreams and real life.

My 14-year-old had a dream last night. In his dream, I was dying and in a lot of pain. His Mom, my ex-wife, made a decision to put me out of my misery by slitting my throat. But she did so in such a way that no blood appeared, in his dream, and that helped me, because I professed that I suddenly felt much better.

Nevertheless, her method proved effective, because as he checked my pulse, it faded away to nothingness, so he knew that I indeed was dead. His overwhelming sense of sadness at losing his Dad woke him up, whereupon he discovered it was all only a dream.

Meanwhile, in my bed, I was having my own dream. In it, my parents were still alive, which is always one of the most comforting yet unnerving aspects of any of my dreams. We were all staying in one of the houses I used to own, before I lost them all, but my parents were so very different from the way they actually were when alive.

My mother, for example, was having an affair with a guy in Florida, and couldn't wait to get back to him. My father was lying on the couch, gossiping with his girlfriend over the phone.

I was trying to sort all of this out when I awoke to the relief that none of this had actually happened, except, of course, that the dream represented a strange parallel with the experiences of my children, including my son who would soon be sharing his dream with me.

Thus, I realized, my dream had inserted me into his shoes (and those of all my other dear children). Okay. But, so far, I have not been able to figure what his dream meant. I'll tell you this much. My throat remains safe tonight, and whenever any ex-wives show up, I'll be sure to hide the sharp knives.

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The Silent Toll

Everywhere we gather, the conversation turns, among all the parents I know, to how are we possibly going to make it? Of course, the same question is being asked by those without kids, those with grown kids, those living alone or in couples.

The extent of the recession/depression is only slowly taking hold in our imaginations. As we pay the bills, watch our checking account balances shrink, and find no relevant job listings, it is starting to feel like this is the way it is going to be for a long time.



Around here, the parents of 14-year-olds worry about where our 8th graders will go to high school this fall. This, like many big cities, has lots of public high schools still, but most of them suck, big-time.

They are mired in constant budget cuts, layoffs, and trying to serve students, most of whom speak English, if at all, as a second language, and who have had few of the advantages middle-class bestow on their kids -- especially when it comes to education.

There are excellent private schools here, but they charge tuition that is greater than the maximum unemployment benefit offered by the state.

The other day, one parent of school-aged kids I know had his first doctor's appointment in over three years. He's been employed about three-quarters of that time, but in jobs where to take time to visit a doctor required him to file a PTO (Paid Time Off) forms.

This, of course, drew down on his already miniscule vacation balance (new employees always get the minimum benefits, even if like him, he's in his 60s and deeply experienced in his field.) And he really wanted to save those few vacation days to spend with his kids over summer vacation.

During the unemployed periods, he couldn't go to the doctor because of the loss of affordable health insurance benefits. This guy has just gotten laid off again, but this time, he got so sick he really had to go the doctor.

"Shame on you!" the doctor's assistant told him when he showed up for his appointment.

"What did you find out," I asked him.

"The doc says I have high blood pressure -- very high."

I cannot begin to imagine why...

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