Teacher's Salaries Eat Public Education Budget

Teachers make too much money. They make more money than many of the parents who send their kids to the public schools and whose property taxes pay their salaries. There is no reason why a 2nd or even a 3rd year teacher should be pulling in $50k a year when many people don’t get that kind of money having been on the job to 10 years.

There was a time when being in the public sector was more about service and not much about the money. You had ample holidays and good hours but the pay wasn’t the draw. Now the teachers make so much and take so much of the public school budget that even basic supplies cannot be purchased.

But don’t take my word for it. When I was a kid in the Roslindale projects we went to Phineas Bates Elementary. Well I plugged that into Google and low and behold, there is a website. Here is the text unaltered from that site. I think it speaks for itself.

2013 Budget Requires Cuts to Bates ProgramsSubmitted by Dave Atkins on January 13, 2013 - 9:50am

Each January, Principal Kelly Hung is given an overall budget from the school district and required to submit a detailed budget proposal by January 22. Much of the budget is committed to teacher salaries leaving a portion that is "discretionary" and can be allocated to programs like Playworks, a school counselor, full-time intern teachers in the classrooms, instructional supplies and technology, professional development including staff training on how to implement the 7 Habits, and school contributions to programs like Making Music Matters that are partially funded through other means.

The 2013 budget increased slightly, but the discretionary portion of the budget has shrunk by 55%.

Principal Hung, in consultation with the Parent Council, is working to create a budget to meet this shortfall that has required eliminating the school counselor position, eliminating internship positions for new teachers, asking the Parent Council to fund Making Music Matters, and suspending any future technology purchases. The Playworks program will be retained. Some programs and positions such as the City Connects support coordinator are funded independently or through grants. Some programs like the Museum of Science visiting program are paid for by the Parent Council.

Additional changes include added support for science instruction. Unfortunately, the school-wide Spanish program will not continue, but Spanish instruction will continue in advanced work classes and we hope to have Spanish clubs.

These cuts mean the school will need help from the Parent Council and community to cover even basic supplies and fund any field trips or other enrichment activities.

The School Site Council will be discussing the proposed budget on Wednesday, January 16 at 5:30pm in Room 102. All parents and guardians are welcome to attend and learn about the choices being made. The budget must be submitted to the district by noon on January 22nd.

Don't let anyone blow smoke up your butt, the U.S. economy is still in recession. The GDP has shrunk and for many reasons like increased taxes, rising fuel costs and sky-rocketing healthcare costs associated with ObamaCare, people have less money to spend.

Yet the school budgets are increasing. The teacher contracts require the teachers to get raises even though many who work in the private sector have not gotten a raise for some time.

Here is an example where the teacher's salaries take precident over "even basic" school supplies.
The teachers are well paid, very well paid. So well paid their busting the bank. The school system may try to come back to the taxpayer for more money.

But right now it's hard to get blood out of a stone.

The End of Argentina's Economy

Argentina’s president, Christina Fernadez, and her Minister of Finance, Hernan Lorenzino, have just announced a nationwide freeze on prices to last for two months. They do this in a doomed-to-fail attempt at curtailing the runaway inflation that these to idiots have unleashed on their own nation because they can’t stop printing and spending money the nation does not take in and can no longer borrow.

Sound familiar?

Argentina defaulted on their national debt in 2001 and have been printing money to pay their debts ever since. In her effort to continue to buy the vote, Christina Fernandez has just let the presses go and has done everything she can to make the Argentinian people look the other way. But her attempts at distraction first by pointing a finger at England and the Faukland Islands and then the International Monetary Fund, are transparent and futile. Argentina doesn’t have the cash to wage a war over the Fauklands and doesn’t have anybody else to lend it money so their method of last resort is to freeze prices for two months.

This will do nothing.

Freezing prices does not work, has not worked and will not work. Two months will go by and prices will jump to where they were going to go all along but will happen all at once.  This is what the market does and although prices may be frozen, costs do not freeze just because a government says they do. In fact, regardless of what a government may impose and what people may believe, markets know no boundaries and are only under the consumer’s control. Freezing prices just shorts the seller and will only lead to less. If a product costs more to produce than what the manufacturer receives, there will be less of that product. The army can show up at the factory and attempt to make it run or even try to force the manufacturer to produce but history has shown that slaves are poor producers in comparison to adequately compensated workers. You can’t defy gravity for long and Argentina is just another in a long line of Socialist states that will find this out.

In 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price freezes along with other measures that moved the United States off the gold standard. What was initially a 90 day freeze turned into a 1000 day freeze and was a total failure brought on by a president who actually knew better but did it anyway and behold, it did nothing to keep down prices or inflation. Only cutting government spending and balancing the national budget can do this.

This is always the last resort of government.

Like the U.S. in the 70s and the U.S. in the future, Argentina has seen its share of shortages, deficits and hardship and they are not through yet. This will only cease if they can find a way to elect a real president with an economic education rather that the say anything, spend the treasury to stay in power charismatic despots they always seem to get.

Hmmm, that sounds familiar too.

There Is No Shortage of Food in America

I never tire of breaking the news to people when this subject comes up in conversation but there is nobody starving in this country for want of access to food or access to free food in the United States.

We have plenty of food and many, many people, non-profit organizations and charities who are falling over themselves to give it away to almost anybody who shows up and wants some.

So, no, we don’t have people with an Access to Food problem in this country despite all that you might hear on radio and television "news". I see these organizations advertising on billboards and buying radio spots in their never ending search to find those elusive starving children.

What we DO HAVE in this country are too many people with a drug, alcohol, gambling and taking responsibility for their actions problems.

The problem we hear about, the “Children Starving in America” scenario that’s been fabricated to the point of believability is actually an “Allocation of Resources” problem with many parents and people in general who have a hard time getting up and going to work and like-wise getting up and going to a grocery store. Too many times these people end up in either a bar, a casino, a heroin den or a whore house. The money they SHOULD be spending on food is going somewhere else. 

The other  part of this issue is that these people don’t have a job and are most likely on some form of government assistance. Look at the EBT program. The people who are getting this assistance who are afflicted with the above mentioned vices are dealing their EBT cards for cash. These people will also sell their food stamps. Instead of having to actually GO GET A JOB, these folks have turned finding and converting public assistance benefits into cash into their "job". There have been stories published of people being pulled over in New York having EBT cards from both New York and New Jersey. We know the identity theft going on so that people with multiple identities get public assistance under several names. These are not isolated instances, this is chronic and systematic theft.

It is an open secret that the public assistance programs are overrun with grifters, drug addicts, gambling addicts and general run-of-the-mill do nothings. It is also an open secret that anybody who applies for assistance will receive it regardless of real need because a self-perpetuating welfare state will always be willing to make room for one more dependent especially when an election is coming up.

But the main point is that however well-intended this all may be, all these resources go to ANYTHING BUT food.. The resources these programs require to run with the hope that it may actually reach someone who actually really needs it is not only killing the taxpayer and the economy but also the chance for those people who really do want to earn their own way in this world of actually doing so.

So will throwing more money at this “Starving Children” problem change anything? No. It isn’t like we’re talking about Africa. They’ve been starving for decades over there despite all the food the U.S. has sent them over the last 40 years or so. The problem there is that they can’t grow enough food to feed their population between civil wars and government insurrections. This is not a problem in the U.S. We produce so much food that we not only export much of it but also give it away to nations in need.

So when I read or hear another non-profit organization pleading for money for the “Hungry Children” I just shake my head. No amount of money I or anybody else will give will make one bit of difference and who knows where the money is really going anyway. Anybody who is soliciting money in this fashion, with all the social programs hemoraging money for SSI, WIC, EBT and Food Stamps, is most likely just paying themselves or supporting somebody's political campaign. They always say more can be done and it truely just never ends.

These children, if they exist at all, won’t get fed unless their parents are provided an incentive to stay together, stay employed and stay contributing members of the American society. Right now, that is not happening and it hasn’t been happening for awhile. It’s an environmental issue and all the money you throw at it won’t result in a population without want.

These handouts are just wasteful wishful thinking designed mostly to buy votes and nobody in government seems to be concerned with the social consequences; the drugs, the crime and wasted lives.

It's time to do something different.

Obama's Kids Are More Important Than Your Kids

It's painful to see New Jersey Governor Chris Christie prostitue himself for the Federal Government all for the hope of getting yet another disaster handout from the Obama administration. Watching Christie dance to the Federal Overlord's tune is a distressful development since he was once a hope for change in how government has been treating the American taxpayer or as the Federal Government refers to us as: Our ATM.

While our Federal Coffers are filled with IOUs and Christie has played tough with his local budget, he has demonstrated no toughness at all when it comes to the Feds picking up the tab for his states shortfalls in the form of local disaster relief. Why buget for that since the Feds will ALWAYS write a check? Good question.

But now Christie's latest groveling to the Federal God has come in an alarming form: Making disparaging public comments about one of the few organizations that is actually looking out for the Bill of Rights, the National Rifle Association. The Federal Media has trumpeted this turn of events like they always do and try to turn it into a plus for their Federal Benefactor, the President of the United States.

The NRA has every right (for now) to point out the continuing hypocracy of President Obama's edicts and to include the disproportionate privledges of the political class.

But one good thing has come from this. We know that Chris Christie is not the man we thought he was. In fact we the public have been given the clearest picture of what he really is: A short-sighted useful idiot.

Whether Christie really believes the NRA was out of line with their ad featuring President Obama's children, we'll never really know.

What we do know for a fact, however is that Christie is a politician and as such his children, like President Obama's, also enjoy the trappings of government wealth in the form of the best private schools, the very best healthcare our nation can provide and armed personal protection as well as a fabulous pension plan and a guaranteed future.

And you, you stupid slobs, have the privledge to pay for it while you're skipping yet another traveling vacation, paying off your healthcare deductable in installments, worrying if you have enough gas to get to work and shopping at fucking Walmart.

So we as a nation can rejoice as Obama's children and Chris Christie's children enjoy their privledges and will grow up to go to great colleges and gain plum assignments in government subsidized non-profits or government owned media outlets, of course. All the while your own kids are out on the streets in the line of fire, shouldering the burden of paying back their student loans, facing rising taxes & fees and trying to find a job while companies that should be hiring them are still assessing how much all the extra taxes and fees they are constantly being hit with these days will allow them to even keep the people they have never mind hiring more.

The future of our children is being squandered and their right to protect themselves and to enter the professions they choose are diminishing daily under our ever present, ever borrowing and dictatorial regime.

The message here is clear: You're kids don't rate.

While the Feds are giving your money away to the Richest Poor People the world has ever known, you and your kids have to pay the full freight and live under conditions our Political Elite no longer even identify with and who enjoy protections most taxpayers can't even imagine. These are the people who are supposed to be  looking out for us?

Let's face it. To the Federal Government, you're not only not number one, you ain't even number two!

The Death of AM Radio: Call 1-800-888-8888. That’s 1-800-888-8888…

The AM band now only exists to sell you things. There is precious little content compared to the never ending commercial breaks. There are commercial breaks every 4 minutes and then go on for 12 minutes at the end of each hour. Many times they’ll come back from a commercial break and go into another commercial break. The streams of 800 numbers just run together after a while and are only broken up by the dot com ads. But whatever it is, I'm not buying.

It used to be you got the 800 number twice. Now you get it 4 times per ad. Once they start it’s just a stream of 1- 800 blah blah blah numbers and it’s just so annoying that once they start, I turn the radio off and leave it off. I'm off the AM dial for the most part these days. It's not that I don't like the shows but now I have lost my tolerance for all the extra bullshit you have to go through to listen to them. No program is worth listening to all these ads over and over. The more ads, the the quicker I turn it off.

And it’s the same 4 companies advertising on these channels so for any given 3 hours of programming you’ll hear the same ad 15 or more times. I mean, you would if you were still listening by that time.

Then on the weekends most of the channels have NO CONTENT at all since the entire weekend is now thrown over to paid programing which consists solely of either money management groups or herbal supplement companies hawking their wares disguised as radio shows. Think about it; for two whole days there is nothing but advertising. Each "show" is really just a three hour commercial with commercials in them.

I don’t know what kind of person calls these AM talk shows but they always get cut off by the host and hardly get a word in edgewise since their call only serves as a foil for the host who will pontificate about whatever it is the caller starts to say before they inevitably come up against a “hard break” meaning they're getting disconnected. Why would people do this to themselves? The world will not change by you calling a radio station, AM or FM, to complain about something and then getting cut off. Think about it.  

I don’t think these AM channels are making any money. Perhaps it’s the licensing fees they pay the FCC or the taxes or whatever it is but I think the margin is so thin these days for radio stations that they have to beat listeners over the head incessantly with advertising in order to cover their nut each month. I can think of no other explanation. Would they do things this way if they had a choice? I don’t know why I had put up with this crap for so long. 

It is reminiscent of how the cable companies continue to package a land line phone “for free” with your cable TV plan so that telemarketers can still have a way into your household. Nobody needs a land line phone anymore and even grandma can use a cell phone. Really, old people ain’t that dumb. It’s still a PHONE and they still work the same way they always have, just without the wires.

I don’t care what happens to these stations anymore. They've become un-listenable. If an AM station can't make money without spewing all these 800 numbers incessantly then sell it to someone who can since they must be in the wrong line of work.

It's a shame because I grew up with AM radio and actually enjoy radio more than television since you can actually do things while listening to the radio as opposed to having to sit and watch television. So the good old days of radio are gone and my tolerance for lack of content and non-stop merchandising has gone with it. 

I really toughed it out during the election cycle but now I'm OUT. 

Thank God! 

Republicans Go Wobbly As Obama Nullifies Congress And the Bill of Rights

President Obama has thrown down the gauntlet. He will breach the U.S. Constitution if he issues an Executive Order banning any kind of weapons. There is no power entrusted to the President of the United States under the Constitution that gives president Obama the authority to issue any proclamation to usurp any article of the Bill of Rights. But he’s going to do it anyway.

Why? Because there is no body or group that will actually try to stop him.

What's left of the Republican Party is playing the Washington Generals to Obama's Harlem Globetrotters. They just show up to lose. That's their job. Imagine just giving up the Bill of Rights because you're afraid that by defending it you'll look bad to the American public. This is a strategy?At least make a stand! Sigh.

The Republican Party is afraid they'll be voted out if they oppose the president but they'll be voted out anyway if they don't. They might as well fight since two years is a long time in politics and at least the people, the working "taxpaying" people, of this country will have a two year head start on their plans for survival in the coming takeover. Like Obama even cares what happens in the mid-term elections. He's taking power for himself right now.

As the climax of any action movie will tell you: This is it!

This is the moment the big business left has been working towards. The culmination of steady purchases of the political class and the wearing away of an individuals right to choose his own way in life. They care not that they rule a nation in ruins, only that they will rule. Stalin didn’t care, Mao didn't care, Castro didn't care. Obama doesn”t care.

But there will be a backlash OR perhaps not. Obama may succeed. After all the presidency has been gaining strength beyond the Constitution for decades. FDR took over once but was stopped in the courts. Obama already owns the courts.

The president has been able to start wars without the approval of Congress for decades. Even though it is specifically mandated that only Congress can declared war. Passing the War Powers act got past that one. Now the president is free to send troops into any conflict and in fact create a conflict without a care for 90 days. Obama, with his media accomplices easily knocked down any protest of his totally unconstitutional intervention in the Libyan civil war. He even violated the War Powers Act itself and nothing happened other than the radical muslim faction gained control of Libya.

The president has been able to borrow and spend money without the consent of Congress which is also specifically outlined in the Constitution. So much for the power of the purse that Congress is supposed to wield in times like this where the president is spending money like a sailor on shore -leave to prop up his array of payoffs to the public sector and their welfare brethren.

The Constitution is a piece of paper. That is all it is. But its words and ideas are the testament of the pinnacle of civilization. If government does not want to stick to its tenants, then we, the free working citizenry of this nation, have a fight on our hands the like the world has never seen.

Congress has been finally successfully circumvented and it is Congress themselves that gave away their Constitutionally granted power.  

This is it.

U.S. Government Remains Dedicated to Money Losing Energy Companies

Even while facing the much balihoo'd Fiscal Cliff, big government still clung tightly to the funding subsidies of it's failing green energy companies.  

The government will pick the winners and losers of American industry. And if they don’t win, the government will just keep throwing taxpayer money at them until they win.  And in the case of the government backed solar companies, they'll also impose tarriffs.

What next? Will government force us to buy General Motors automobiles?

They are already forcing citizens onto their Federal Health Plans. By forcing insurance providers to cover everybody regardless of ability to pay and by forcing healthcare providers to carry the illegal populous who do not pay a dime into the system, thereby driving up costs for health insurance, they will soon be the only game in town.

They’re already forcing the American public to buy mercury laced “energy efficient” light bulbs and will make sure they are the only thing on the market available by phasing out the “bad” light bulbs that we’ve been using for over 100 years. They may save a watt or two but they’re dark and where you going to throw them out? Their a light bulb the government can embrace because they can put warning labels on them and create a whole new bureaucracy around just disposing of them.

The government, by their taxing and regulating policies, is forcing people onto Unemployment Insurance. Where once stood a productive employee now stands a jobless government dependent. Millions now collect unemployment in an anonymous, almost secret fashion. Image if it were 1981 with this rate of unemployment. The lines would go for blocks and everyone would see how really bad it is. Nah, just pick up the phone and register, give them your bank account and routing number and your money will be sent straight to your checking account. No waiting.

The government is also forcing us to listen to endless propaganda via their media machine television stations: CBS News, New England Network News, Fox News, and CNN News. I was watching at my local fitness center how overjoyed CBS News was that “things were going well” with the unemployment rate ticking up to the “official” total of 7.8%.

There is no news. There is nothing to be believed anymore on the airwaves. It’s as though I’m living Terry Gilliam’s movie “Brazil” in real life. Oh, but it can’t happen here. But it has, hasn't it? 

But for all the governments promoting, funding and propping up, of all their inventive bureaucratic feats of conjuring government industry out of the need to have a government industry, all of their enterprises are very “lossy” propositions. They just lose tons of money. Why? Because nobody wants what they’re selling, that’s why. If they did, they wouldn’t need to be subsidized. They’re services and goods are too expensive are made poorly and delivered uncaringly and the increasing amounts of tax money it requires is not just killing the economy but stunting the growth and incentive of a generation.

Check the success rate of the City of Chicago’s public school system if you want to witness the trap of government industry. They won’t allow a voucher system for school choice so if you can’t pay twice, once for the public school you have no use for and again for a privates school you need, you’re stuck! Talk about no future. Perhaps they can all get jobs in the Illinois Public Works Department. A fine janitor you've raised there Mr. Smith.

This is why government has to force you to take their goods and services. This is why competition must be legislated and taxed out of existence. This is why the propaganda machine has to tell you that this is a good thing.

But we know it’s a lie. THEY know it’s a lie but it’s for your own good if you know what's good for you. You just don’t know any better. That’s why government is here to help you with your choices. By limiting your choices, the government will help you make the right one.

If you think this isn’t right, think again.

Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: Scotch & Sounds

The best Boston rock club that wasn’t in Boston was named Scotch & Sounds. Anybody who was anybody in Boston played there and even some big name New York groups you wouldn’t believe played there.

My friends Bill and Steve loved this place and we went there frequently during its run in the 1980s I’d have to say I saw some great shows there. Bill and Steve weren’t so interested in the music as there were in all the new chics each band would draw. The Sounds had hot and cold running chics! Bill and Steve were “regulars” and were on a first name basis with the entire staff which meant when I was with them there was no cover and the likelihood of being arrested if and when an altercation took place was low. This came in handy on more than one occasion.

Scotch & Sounds resided at the Westgate Lanes bowling plaza at the Westgate Mall in Brockton, Massachusetts, about 22 miles from Kenmore Square which, to me, was always the epicenter of the Boston Music Universe of the 80s. the legendary Rathskeller was there, the two most popular discotheques in town, Celebrations and Narcissus were there just across the square from "The Rat" where the BU bookstore now resides. The Paradise rock club sat just up Comm Ave and Lansdowne Street was a short walk around the corner where other Boston clubs like The Metro, Spit and that "$5 dungeon" called 9 Landsdowne St all resided in a row. There was no other place you had to be to catch a band from Boston.

Except for Scotch & Sounds.

This place was too different to be in Boston but they loved booking Boston bands. It was actually a NICE PLACE to go. You could even dress up and not be out of place there and people did. It was a big room, had a thoughtfully lit interior, tables with lights, lots of glass and wood, a nice bar, an open center placed stage, a good sized dance floor and while writing this now, I don’t think they ever had a night when I was there that the sound was bad.  They had door men, a coat lady, waitresses and they served a stiff drink in a real glass. It was a classy joint in those classic cocaine days of the mid-to-late 1980s, a real nightclub where people came to meet and see what they otherwise would have had to travel for. They also had a police detail for when things got out of hand. If there was a full moon, it was best you get out in the parking lot first to watch the fireworks.

Robin Lane and the Chartbusters played there often. I was told this was after Robin had previously left the band to go back to California to be “discovered” and apparently she wasn’t so she was back and the band dropped what they were into to reform. I had never seen them previously so I don’t know if they were different from before but judging by the Scotch & Sounds shows, although well played, lacked the intensity of their best selling albums that had been out for about 6 years by that time.

Part of the problem could have been that a few times they were put on the same night with the Neighborhoods who would make anybody else following them look low-fi. Having won the inaugeral Rock & Roll Rumble in Boston in 1979, I've seen plenty of "Hoods gigs and I can say with all honesty I’ve never seen them play or sound better than when they played The Sounds. One time they were opening for Til Tuesday and there were tables and chairs already set up on the dance floor for the headliner's crowd which drove the ‘Hoods lead man, David Minehan, to announce to his audience who were looking for room to dance, “I don’t give a shit, come up and dance on the stage!” And they did and it was great! There were so many people pogoing on and around the stage while the band weaved through them playing, it was a riot! They blew anybody else on the bill off the stage when they played Scotch & Sounds and that included Robin Lane and Til’ Tuesday.

David Johansen of the New York Dolls played Scotch & Sounds with his band not long before he became “Buster Poindexter”, had his big hit “Hot, Hot, Hot” and was in the movie “Scrooged”. He looked and dressed like a regular guy and put on a real professional show and the Dolls hit “Personality Crisis” was a memorable highlight.

There was a local southern rock cover band that played  The Sounds regularly called “Midnight Traveler” and they would play “Whipping Post”, “Rambling Man”,  “Freebird” and any southern rock song you can think of note for note like the record. I wasn’t into cover acts much at the time but they really jammed and were the best southern rock band I've ever seen before or since. Other than that, where they came from or where they went, I know nothing about. 

The Boston band The Lines played the Sounds as did the The Drive and if anybody didn’t know, The Lines were a popular Boston band and I remember WBCN had put their picture up on a bill board in Kenmore Sq for awhile but there was some sort of split and some members left to form The Drive. The Drive was the far more dynamic and popular act after the split, had catchier tunes and released a big Boston hit called “Doing the Countdown”. The Lines had sort of disappeared by that time. I know for a fact that the guitarist/singer Jaime Walker and the bass player Paul Kochanski are still out there as part of The Swinging Steaks, an original country band and having seen them play a number of times, they’re really good.

Charlie Farren played the club regularly with both his post-Joe Perry Project acts, The Enemy and Farrenheit. There weren't many "hooks you could hang your hat on" and I couldn't tell you one name of any of his songs but Charlie Ferren was wildly popular and his bands were fucking LOUD!

Jon Butcher was another regular and his live performance of “Ocean in Motion” I can still see if I close my eyes. Anybody who’s every caught one of his shows knows how dynamic a musician he was in those days and he really worked the stage and the crowd.

Berlin Airlift played Scotch & Sounds of course! And I was there every time. One memorable moment I can think of was one time Rick Berlin asked the crowd, “Did you ever throw up a little but catch it in your mouth and swallow it? Well that just happened to me.” A Berlin Airlift gig would find Rick playing the keyboards, singing and dancing and fronting one of the tightest acts Boston ever produced. Two keyboards, bass, drums, Steven Perry on guitar and everybody sang. Rick Berlin is certainly one of the most insightful lyricists to ever come out of the Boston music scene. And his tenor voice on “Can I Fall In Love?” would just rip your heart out. Steven Perry would bring 6 guitars to every show and was the first guitarist I ever saw who had guitars handed to him between songs. Just who the hell is this guy, needing a different guitar for a song? They were on a different level in my mind.

Arguably the biggest band to play the Sounds was John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band who sounded so much like Springsteen you wouldn’t believe but who also had those two Eddie & The Cruisers albums they recorded go triple PLATINUM and GOLD respectively and yeilding two number one hits (C.I.T.Y & Dark Side).  The Beaver Brown band was what I call one of those “12 year overnight sensations”. They had been gigging the East Coast regularly all those years and finally hit it big. Very professional act and they would come out and sound just like the record.

The Outlets and O Positive played the Sounds on a couple of occasions. Neither were memorable sets as I recall and they were "go get a beer and try to talk to chics" bands.

I don't know if anybody remembers the pop metal band L 88 but they had a big local hit with "I Want You" or rather "I...Want You". They played a couple of shows at the club and were both tight and entertaining. They didn't take themselves too seriously and looked every bit like they enjoyed their time on stage.

Digny Fingus of "Girl with the Curious Hand" fame played on at least one occasion that I can remember. Scotch & Sounds at most times had quite a diverse mix of patrons but my impression was that Fingus and the people that followed them somewhat weirded out the locals a little bit.

The Ramones played The Sounds near the end of their career and it was a mob-scene! Never saw a crowd that big in the place and it was most likely way over legal capacity. It was an impenetrable mob of Ramones fans and getting close to the stage wasn't going to happen unless you were prepared to fight for it.

Occasionally the Sounds would have a comedy night and none other than the late, great Sam Kinison himself did a show. He drank two bottles of champagne during his routine which included his Ethiopian jokes “If I could, I'd get a bunch of trailers and I'd take ‘em to where the food is! Look, this is SAND! Nothing grows here, asshole!” and he did his song he said he wrote about his ex-girlfriend, enough said.

I’m not 100% sure when Scotch & Sounds bit the big one but I believe it was around 1989. By then the owner, Mr. "I can’t remember his name” most likely succumbed to his habits and the club changed hands. As I recall, he was a classic nervous club owner who ran a club in one of the biggest cocaine trafficking areas in the state. There was a lot of Blow and the Bickford’s Breakfast Restaurant was always packed from 2 to 5 am after a full evening of music.

Yep, Scotch & Sounds was quite a place and it was quite a time.

Another Disappointing Doomsday Prediction

Can’t anybody get this right?

Just once I’d like to see these people predicting the End of the World to get it right. Just once.

But they never have. What a gyp!

And so many people fall for this game every time it’s played. You’d think they’d learn a thing or two from the whole experience. They get us all worked up, get our hopes up and BAM, they let us down.

First one I can remember is all the planets lining up in 1983 or something and it was going to pull the oceans up on top of us with monstrous tides with the flooding and the cataclysm and the whatnot…didn’t happen.

Then it was the Harmonic Convergence with the Mayan “Hell” cycles ever 52 years which ended in 1987…never came.

More recently there was that crock of shit called Global Warming that was going to do so much damage until it was discovered that the Earth is actually getting cooler and then it turns out that all those Brown Shirt scientists were cooking the numbers. Thanks Wikileaks! This is the real reason the U.S. government is after that Julian Assange guy, he outted the world global warming cabal among other seedier elements of governments everywhere.

Of course there's always been that crack-pot Nostradamus who not only alledgedly predicts WW III and when the world will end but continues to publish new books and "predictions" every year even though he's been dead since 1566. I'd say the real trick would be to get your hands on his FIRST book and see how well he did with the predictions. I'll bet his track record isn't nearly as good as anybody you've met down at the dog track.

More recently there was the Oakland, California Pastor, Harold Camping, who predicted the world would end May 21, 2011 for no apparent reason other than he said the Bible said so.  Just more wishful thinking as far as I’m concerned. The government media just loves the distraction of a long count-down and so all this optimistic talk of the world ending just left me and a boat-load of other people sorely disappointed. Damn! Wrong again.

What an empty feeling it is to be waiting for the end of the world and then nothing happens and you have to go to work the next day. Bummer!

So now it’s back to the Mayan Calendar again because, well, that’s all they got left. And, since I’m putting this out on the “Day of” our latest predicted end and you’re reading it, well, you get the idea. Another letdown, that’s what!

So I’m swearing off the whole Doomsday thing. Never again I say. I’m not taking any more days off from work just to hunker down in the back yard bunker. It just never happens so I’m going to save my vacation time and go someplace nice next time.  

So now the end of the world will just have to happen without me. I’m not buying into it anymore. How many times do these people think I can be fooled?

Now what am I going to do with 7 years’ worth of military Meals-Ready-to-Eat?

The Decline and Fall of the American Socialist System

Rather than recent events being a triumph of the Leftist agenda to transfer the assets of successful people to those less successful and of Governments attempts to gain unrestricted control of the nation’s economy, we are actually seeing the final downfall of Socialism in the world.

Much like other totalitarian regimes before it, the takeover of the Federal aspect of the United States by the Liberal Left is failing just ahead of what many are pointing to as its greatest triumph: Total responsibility for what is produced and not produced in the nation.

Of course this all hasn’t happened overnight. Economic historians can point to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and broad powers of administration for not defeating the depression but prolonging it by almost a decade. Imagine what would have only lasted 3 or 4 years was stretched by bad policy to 13 years. Then WWII came along and we HAD to dedicate resources to making stuff again. But that demand came without the means of actually paying for it so the debts began to pile up.

Later President Lyndon Banes Johnson provided us with The Great Society, a war on poverty in America! But as always happens, his war on poverty only cause poverty to increase. The rewards for not being successful started to gain on the rewards of actually being successful. Coupling this with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really was a wealth of positive information for the Socialist Left of this nation: They discovered that they could make the slaves love their slavery.

These “Movements” have nothing to do with actually taking care of people or caring for their economic situation or even “Fairness” since statistically their situation overall doesn’t improve. It only means that the beneficiaries of the Welfare State don’t have to work as hard or educate themselves to stay where they are. And it’s all about making people happy to be where they are even if it’s comfortably poor. These people actually think they’re getting away with something. The joke is on them.

But at any rate, bad policy takes decades to manifest itself in the shaping of the collectivist mind, the attitude that the common good outweighs the rights and successes of the individual. What’s yours is also mine. It’s that air of entitlement that the left needs so much to drive its mobs of newly uneducated.

This is why it was imperative to take over the National School System and to buy its way into public media, to control the message and to control the mind.

So now they have 51% of the vote. But here is the fatal flaw in their newest plan: It Doesn’t Work!

It can’t work. Every new set of Leftists throughout the recent history of Karl Marx think that this NEXT TIME will work, that every time before there was something done wrong and that THIS TIME they will make it work. They will take from the successful and buy their influence with the majority of less successful or just plain unsuccessful. Of course government has helped those less fortunate from actually being successful in so many ways by controlling access to capital, providing the standard, sub-standard education and by taxing money out of your pocket so that you can’t do anything with it yourself. BUT they’ll lend your money back to you if you want to go to college. Just as long as it’s the government hand you go running to for your sustenance, it’s good.

But subsequently the Left is always doomed to failure unless they can force you to stay and take it. This is why the Soviet Union had to build wall around the entire country and put people with guns in towers. But even doing that, people never stopped trying and dying to reach the other side of that wall. Why? Because they’d rather die than live the way they were living.  And this is the end-game of all totalitarian Marxist regimes.: Shortages, Hardship and Financial Ruin.  

When have you ever heard of a CAPITALIST PURGE? Never? That’s because freedom doesn’t need a purge. Joseph Stalin is “credited” with killing up to 50 MILLION Russian people during his bloody reign. Mao Tse-tung? He leads the way with up to 70 MILLION Chinese people. Then there was Pol Pot who only managed to kill 2 Million Vietnamese in his quest for a Communist farming society.

And who did these purges target? Smart People! If you had any brains or education you were TOAST! They didn’t want a guy/gal like you around telling people things. You were out in a bad way.

Knowing this, how can anybody speak in admiration of these killers? Yet Mao and Stalin are actually revered by the left. The Chinese totalitarian regime, though decidedly more Capitalist than Communist is still a totalitarian regime. No one has a vote and no one gets to decide how they are to be governed. They are told what to do and what to make. The government decides what it wants and it takes it. Just ask the people of Tibet. Way to go China!

But ultimately the Socialist Systems always crumble because they lack imagination and the freedom to pursue an idea. An idea like a personal computer or a new way of drawing oil from a place previously thought impossible. A Socialist System cannot think like this. It draws resources but cannot replace what it has taken nor increase its production since many times it will make what people don’t want. It ignores the Strongest Force in the World: The Market. And without that swirling force of ideas, risk, failures and triumphs, Socialism cannot stand.

So as of right now, The Federal Government has spent 17 times the country’s Gross National Product and has nothing to show for it. It has artificially held up its public workforce with tax money that has yet to be earned. But even the United States cannot defy gravity. Now Obama’s government owns the economy. Who can they blame?

It’s a shame that freedom loving peoples all over the world have to endure such misguided ideology and hardship but such is freedom that it has to be savored and revered to survive. It’s when people trade their freedom for the promise of a Pot o’ Gold is where the figure of man so imperfect still stumbles from time to time.

People will find alternatives. They'll join the underground economy and step away from the taxed goods. They'll vote with their feet and the successful will move to the red states. The country will stratify and there will be successful states and very, very unsuccessful states. The Federal overlords will eventually capitulate to the forces of the Market since the Government will be totally broke and the dependent class without it's mother's milk.

The wheels are already in motion.   

Washington State Legalizes Pot: One Week Later…

Overheard from a local advocate for the legalization of pot in Washington State:

“Oh man, my head! I’ve been smoking bombers for a week and I can’t think straight. Where are my keys? I can barely open my eyes. I’ve got to cut down on this shit. “Wheeze”, I can’t make it up these stairs! Why did I get a 4^th floor walk-up? Man, I think I’ve gained 20 pounds this week. I’ve gotta start back at the gym. I think I’ll take a couple weeks off of smoking Hoot. Where are my keys!?  Man, I’ve gotta start taking better care of myself. “

Once the novelty of marijuana being legalized wears off, people will return to normal and life in Washington State will go on. Yeah, people will go a little crazy but within a week or so it will all blow over except for maybe some saber rattling from some federal agency or another. It certainly won’t be Eric Holder; he’s in enough hot water what with conspiring to run guns to Mexico, conspiring to undermine the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution, being an accessory to the murder of a federal agent and many, many innocent Mexican citizens and lying about the whole thing. Mr. Holder and the federal government have lost the moral high ground, I would say.

Legalization of pot is just the first step. In order to kill the illegal drug trade and to dry up its resultant illegal money that is almost impossible to track and which has funded terrorist organizations all over the world including al-Qaida, we must legalize it all.

But more people will do drugs, comes the cry of the misinformed right wing which has much to lose if such a scenario should finally come about.

The answer is: No they won’t.

There could be an increase in experimentation but it’s not like anybody who wanted to get their hands on drugs couldn’t do so before. It’s almost literally on every street corner. Kids are exposed to drugs at a very early age, weren’t you? Are you a drug addict? I first saw marijuana in the 6^th grade which coincided with the first visit to our class by the local police drug education officers. Don’t know if they still do this sort of thing anymore. They still should.

Nobody grows up wanting to be addicted to drugs yet here they are and we as a society still don’t do the right thing to handle the situation. Although drugs are illegal, thanks to the bourgeois capitalist principle of supply and demand, they are everywhere and even the cops know their job isn’t to stop them but to make them pay. We have a judicial system in this country that’s only in it for the money. They can find you a jail cell but can’t find you a bed in a rehab center. That’s not the job of the State.

Let’s not pretend that people aren’t dying by the cart-load in this country because of illegal drug trafficking because they are. Good people, law enforcement people, innocent citizens and, of course, drug dealers. All because what they sell has been branded as illegitimate by the government.

This is a waste of resources and lives.

With what we spend on the multi-billion dollar corrections industry every year, which has the most people behind bars in the world, we could fund rehab for people who want it and need it. We could also watch terrorist organizations try to hold telethons to raise the cash they won’t be getting because people would be able to buy their drugs legally.

Although care should be taken to ease the nation into this, let’s not wait another 35 years for government to finally realize what most people already know.

The War on Drugs was a giant and wasteful failure.

Raising the Capital Gains Tax Hurts Every Working Person

For all you “Soak the Rich” types, one thing that should be explained is that everybody has something in the stock market. There are millions of small investors when compared to the super rich we keep hearing about. There are municipalities across this nation that have money in the stock market whether it be in floating bonds to pay for school systems and local infrastructure or town and city pension plans. They’re in there. And the small investors, people who have under $100,000.00 in scattered across different stocks like Verizon and Columbia Gas, aren’t exactly what you call wheeler-dealers in the stock market. For most people it has taken a working career to accumulate this sum.

Utilities are highly regulated and their stocks don’t swing far up or down but remain a steady source of income for retired people who have worked their whole lives to build up a nest egg. Many retired people have at least part of their savings in the stock market and it’s not particularly big money but along with a 401k and their Social Security, retired folks can live the way they were living prior to stopping working.

I want to add that these were also the people who the government stiffed out of their savings by taking over General Motors and royally screwing the small investor while practically handing the GM Union the company. Not rich people by any stretch of the imagination and actually many retired GM employees to boot!

It is the middle class investors who are the people most hurt by taxes on dividends and capital gains taxes, not the super-rich or the just plain rich who can either afford to pay the tax or more likely avoid them altogether. It’s Ma and Pa that are afraid to sell when capital gains rates go up or get whacked when they have to pay the higher rates on their dividends.

If you’re working and contributing to a 401k, you are going to see higher administration costs and fees. If you’re a small stock holder, you’re going to see a tax increase bite into your investment.

What’s that you’re saying? You don’t own any stocks in rich Wall Street traded companies so screw all the people who do? Here’s news for you:  Stock investment has been very easy for people for quite a while now. With an initial $250.00 a person can buy a big or small company’s stock direct without a broker and reinvest the dividends to purchase more stock so when it comes time to retire, they can then start to draw dividends to subsidize their other retirement savings. Many millions of people, regular middle-class people with jobs, have taken advantage of this savings option. If you have a bank account, you can have a stock account.

Plus, your private 401k as well as your teacher’s pension, your DPW pension, your Police and Firefighter’s pensions are in the stock market.

Now the government is going after this too to fund their unwieldy and on the verge of collapse welfare state.

But even if they do, it won’t be enough. Once the government gets their tax hikes, it won’t do anything to bring down the massive debt it has accumulated in just the last year, never mind the last 8 years. Even if the government declares everybody with a job “rich”, it won’t be enough. There just aren’t enough rich folks to take care of everybody else.

So when you hear people in government talking about raising the capital gains tax rates, they’re really talking about YOU.

Who did you vote for again?