If You're Going to Complain

If you are from California then you probably are aware of our current budgetary issues. Governor Brown did exactly what he said he was going to do: pass a “balanced” budget (there is plenty of debate on just how balanced it is, but it's certainly the closest we've come in a long, long time). Unfortunately he could only do this by deeply cutting a lot of things that effect all of us since he was not allowed to do much of anything to increase state revenue.

As a result of this “austere” budget, we are facing cuts to our police, fire departments, schools, courts, the DMV, schools, universities, etc are all facing severe budget cuts which mean, in the case of universities, increased fees, and in the case of pretty much everything else a cut in services and lay-offs. These changes are not something the public at large is finding pleasant, and the fact of the matter is that it's going to get a whole lot worse.

I'm not writing to talk about the budget cuts per say, nor about who I hold responsible (although if you want to know, I think the issue is that we need to increase revenue, so you can probably guess who I give the lion's share of the responsibility to); instead I want to talk about the public's reaction to this.

Everyday the news has stories now about people whinging about these cuts and tuition increases, at least they do when they can find space between talking about Jaycee Dugard, that Anthony woman (Guilty? Innocent? I don't care), and the recent royal visit. They show footage of protests at universities, upset members of the community who don't like fire station brown outs, or police cuts, and of course there's always teachers ready to yell for the cameras.

No protestors to show? Well, the news has a back-up plan when this happens. When there are no indignant members of the public to show, they simply focus on how much the heads of various agencies make. The head of one of the State Universities makes four-hundred thousand a year? Yeah, that's a lot, probably too much, but do you know what the effect of cutting his pay would be on the tuition of individual students? No, neither do I, but I know it's not going to be more than a few dollars, which is to say that it's only a drop in the bucket.

Now I'm not saying that drops in the bucket don't count, enough drops can eventually fill a bucket, but that if you, my fellow Californians, wish to complain, at least complain to the right people. Who are those people you ask? The legislators. You know, the folks who actually passed the budget. The folks who were not willing to compromise at all. The folks who had the opportunity to at least let us vote on continuing already existing taxes, but would not. The folks who are more interested in trying to make their political opponents look bad than they are in doing what is best for their constituents. The folks we voted for!

In the interest in full disclosure, I am a government employee, and my agency has been heavily hit by these cuts. Even our agency head (who is undoubtedly overpaid, but even if he worked for free it would not fill the budget hole) has said that layoffs are likely, so now we get to wait and see what comes of discussions between the agency and the union (both of whom still seem more interested in making the other look like the bad guy than anything else) to see if I, and a lot of my co-workers, get to keep our jobs.

Still, I'm not writing this to get your pity (although if you have an opening for a smartarse writer, let me know), I've just grown very tired of seeing the news completely miss the point about what the real problem is. It's not unions, it's not overpaid management (they are a problem, but at this point it's like complaining about a leaky faucet while the stove is on fire), and it's certainly not the workers. It's the people who control the money, so stop protesting against the wrong people, and let your elected officials know that you are not happy, and what you are willing to do about it. Are you happy with reduced police protection, longer lines at the DMV, the courts, and wherever else you may wait in line? Then let them know you're cool with it. Are you willing to pay a little more in taxes to continue receiving the services you're used to? Let them know that. It may not ultimately do any good, but at least you'll be bitching out the right people.

Of course this wouldn't be a ramble if I did not put something completely off-topic into it, and that usual off-topic thing is my writing. I am still in process of working on a second draft of the Typewriter Challenge story.

Yes, that would be the story I intended to finish the second draft of back in May, but I am not finished with the first half of the climax, so there's only about ten pages to go, then I just need to come up with a better title. I am happier about the final conflict in this version, as I totally had the scale of the scene off originally (and I was not about to retype four pages to fix it at that point). As for the title, it is currently called “That Type of Adventure”, but I really want to come up with something better.

Finally, for now anyway, it's state fair time here in California, and the weather was really nice for the start of it this year. I may or may not do a proper blog post about it later, but I do have a growing collection of pictures from it on both my Facebook and my Google+ if you are interested.

I guess that's about it for now. Remember to tell your friends to read “Mallville”, as it's still up there in all of its first draft gloryt, and until we talk again: don't trust the darkness.

Prop 8: the Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Don't Vote!

If I Had 700 Billion Dollars

Let me start this by saying that I am no economist (which I’m sure would have been very clear shortly anyway), I’m just an average person who is observing the financial goings on in my nation. Luckily, in America at least, you don’t have to know what you are talking about to have an opinion on it (see Kevin McCullough or Cooper Lawrence).

The topic of the day, and indeed month, seems to be whether or not we should bail out all the financial institutions that, through their own immoral, at best, behaviour has found themselves in a bit of a pickle that threatens to bring down the nation’s economy.

What I have found amusing during all of this is the people who were all for the “free market” and “de-regulation” that allowed these companies to get into this mess in the first place are now the ones screaming loudest for government intervention. Suddenly all of these fiscal conservatives have become downright socialist. What happened to the free market taking care of itself? I thought that the idea was that if a company couldn’t hack it, they should fail.

All of that aside, I’ve been doing a little (very little) looking at these bailout ideas. The most popular one seems to be the government spending $700 billion that it does not really have to buy the bad debt off of the people who so willingly incurred it in the first place. It seems to me that we are talking about rewarding people for stupidity at best, fraud at worst. I think I have a better idea.

My idea is, instead of giving the money directly to the banks, we funnel it through the homeowners who were given loans they never should have qualified for in the first place. Homeowners should be able to apply for a piece of the bailout money to be put towards paying off part of their current loan and then refinancing the lower amount at a new fixed rate that they actually could afford.

I know this is still rewarding people for doing something stupid, but in the cases of many of these debtors they really did not know any better. They were told that they should take out all that they could; after all home values are just going up, up, up! I know this happened because it happened to me; I’m just far too stingy to have fallen for it.

The last time I refinanced my home, the loan broker told me that I qualified for a much larger loan, which is horse-crap as over half of my monthly income (maybe a third of household) goes just to the mortgage payment. I would like to buy nice things, but not if I’m going to lose my home in the long run.

Keeping people in their homes is good for American, so I do not think that any bailout plan should not involve keeping Americans in their homes. Look around your neighborhood, there are the houses with ‘For Sale, Bank Owned’ signs in front of them, and they look like crap. They’ve been vacant for months and they look it; brown lawns, leaf covered ground, and just a general look of abandonment to them. They are eyesores, and the current plans look like they would all lead to more of that.

In the end, the banks will still get their money, and would still be saved whether they should be or not, but it could help more Americans get to keep their homes. The current plans don’t look to me like they are going to benefit the 99% of American home owners who are at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure, so why bother?

I’m sure my plan has flaws to it, but none of the plans suggested up to now can really be said to be perfect either. There are people who are much smarter than I am who could make this idea work, who could fill the holes, and work on the specifics.

If the government does not want to institute something that will help a large number of Americans, then screw it. Let the banks fail, the government can just take them over. The money in most people’s accounts is backed by the government anyway, so there is little risk to the average American if this happens. Alternately, a financial institution that was not stupid/greedy enough to get themselves into this mess in the first place will buy them up.

Remember, it’s supposed to be all about the free market, the market will regulate itself. If the market cannot keep itself in check, then maybe there should be some regulation again. It worked before.