The question in the title is not middle class paranoia.  I have spoken of the class warfare going on, here in the U.S. and throughout the world, of how there is a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich.  

I think we’ve lost the war.  The head of the Financial Products Division of AIG is laughing at the government (read: us, the taxpayers) while he vows he will never return to the U.S. to be questioned by the FBI.  The CEO of GM steps down, happy to get rid of the stress and enjoy his $20 million parachute.  It’s the Savings and Loan debacle all over again, except this time the amount of money is much, much greater.

(more…)

A lo largo de la historia compleja y turbulenta del America Latina el hombre comun ha mantenido cierto aprecio para el dictador pomposo y narcissista.  Excluyendo los muchos del siglo diecenueve, los siglos veinte y veintiuno han tenido buenos ejemplos:  Somosa, Castro, Rojas-Pinilla, Pinochet, Noriega, Chavez y Peron, para nombrar algunos.  Garcia Marquez en su novela El Otono del Patriarca nos presenta con un dictador quien agrupa todas las malas calidades de estos personajes y otros.  Aunque el sujeto de la novela sea la soledad del General, mientras que lei el libro me sientia que el autor tambien tenga aprecio para el viejo dictador y lo compartia, pero al fin el desgusto me gano.  Asi el autor me ayuda entender el odio sentido contra tales figuras, pero no su aprecio. 

(more…)

All during the complex and turbulent history of Latin America the common man has maintained a certain admiration for the pompous and narcissistic dictator.  Excluding the many from the 19th century, the 20th and 21st centuries have had some good examples:  Somosa, Castro, Rojas-Pinilla, Pinochet, Noriega, Chavez and Peron, to name a few.  Garcia Marquez in his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch presents us with a dictator who brings together all the bad qualities of these and others.  Although the subject of the novel is the loneliness of the General, while I read the book I feel that the author also admires the old dictator and I joined in the admiration, but at the end disgust overtakes me.  Thus the author helps me understand the hate felt for these figures, but not the admiration.

(more…)

The steps taken by the Obama administration and the Bush administration with its last dying gasps have been breathtaking.  I’ll give Mr. Obama and his economic team credit – they stuck to the plan announced three weeks ago.  At that time the stock market fell 400 points while Mr. Geithner was speaking.  Today, same plan, just more details, and the stock market rises nearly 500 points.  Go figure (I lost an office bet).

It’s all part of that March rally, a different kind of “March Madness,” that my genius brother was predicting.  Today’s rally seems to be a sigh of relief from Wall Street that the government (read: the great middle class) is taking over all that toxic paper the banks had on their books, knowing very well it was worthless all along.  Do you think Mr. Madoff’s scheme was criminal?  His $50 billion is paltry compared to the transfer of wealth going on from the middle class to the bankers.  No wonder the SOBs are happy.

(more…)

No, this is not a tribute to Lennon’s magnum opus (which can either be called extreme hypocrisy or a simple case of “practice what I preach, not what I do” – Lennon was living in a plush Manhattan apartment with his wife and fur coats at the time – kind of chilly sitting around naked I guess).  This is a clarion call – actually one with backup from a full Wagnerian orchestra – to keep the child within you well nurtured and for our schools to go beyond teaching to the average to teaching imagination.

 First, the clarion call (maybe from a Wagnerian tuba).  In the wonderful days of radio, there were radio dramas and comic books that stimulated a child’s imagination.  Shows like The Green Hornet or The Whistler often had only a few actors but marvelous sound effects.  A kid’s imagination had to fill in the rest.  He would also have comics – some bad, some good, but both doing a job of creating alternate worlds of imagination while teaching basic reading skills.  We need to get back to that because, out of imagination, comes creativity.

(more…)

In scifi novels dealing with time travel, time is often treated as a river.  To go backward or forward, you hop out of the river, dry yourself off, walk some distance upstream or downstream, and jump back in.  There’s usually some gimmick to actually get you out of the water.  For H. G. Wells it was actually called a time machine.  For Dr. Who it is a red telephone booth, one of those London ones that are timeless and boring, just like the Queen.  For Asimov’s eternals, it’s more like stepping into an elevator (maybe the river analogy should become a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk analogy).  For Lost (ABC) enthusiasts, it’s a wheel in a cave.

(more…)

Here’s a thought about the whole AIG snafu: if the American taxpayer owns 80% of AIG, why can’t we just fire the incompetent idiots that are getting the bonuses?  

Fact: these bonuses are not merit pay.  Fact: they are going to executives in the Financial Products Division, the very division that is responsible for bringing AIG down.

(more…)

In the past the Soviet Union was run by the gangsters of the Politburo.  It was a Mafia superstate that had little regard for human life while presenting to the world infinite drivel about an economic system doomed to failure.  Now it has shrunken in size to mostly the original Russia.  But the bear, while lean, is just as mean.  Mr. Putin, shrewd ex-KGB agent that he is, has continued the megalomaniac ways of his predecessors, killing where necessary, sabre rattling where convenient, and holding world peace hostage at every turn.

His puppet President Dimitri Medvedev has spoken of his determination to improve Russia’s attractiveness to foreign and domestic investors by attacking the criminal element and re-establishing the rule of law.  Of course, he means Putin’s law, where opponents are assassinated at home and abroad.  Recent cases offer sound evidence that the Mafia superstate still exists.  The Soviet Union did not fall.  It is alive and well.

(more…)

After more than a year of writing posts to this blog, I have developed some readership, but few comments.  Either you just don’t want to see your name in print, or you agree with me, or you just don’t have the time.  Which is it?  I too read a lot of blogs and the old-style forums as well (and you thought blogs were old-fashioned compared to Twitter!).  I’ll admit I just can’t find the time to comment on everything I read, so if this is the problem, I’m sympathetic.

However, both my writing and blog posts contain a lot of discussion of social issues (I think it makes my fiction different – agents and main publishing houses are straying away from any fiction that might be considered controversial).  I would like your reactions.  A short comment to a post keeps me in contact with other opinions.  If you don’t want to see your name in print, send me an e-mail.

Your comments and e-mails are appreciated.  I’ll accept just about anything as long as it’s relevant to the website, not obscene or erotic, and does not contain 95% obscenities or death threats (these will probably be reported to the proper authorities).  I may or may not reply to your comment or e-mail, depending on time and inclination (for example, just saying “I disagree with you completely” or “I agree with you completely” might make it through to the website, but will probably not get a reply). 

In short, I hope that most people can find something of interest in this blog, even a precocious fifteen-year-old, if he or she is so inclined and has time to spare from Facebook, Twitter, etc (I don’t participate in these because my posts are generally not one-liners).

Take care, and keep reading.  And I’ll just keep writing.

My novel Full Medical has as backdrop an extrapolation of our current medical coverage crisis to an intolerable point in the future.  The situation can be prevented if we act now.  Indeed, President Obama seems intent on moving this along.  Doing nothing when the present system is broken is inexcusable.  But the carpentry adage of “measure twice, cut once” should be applied.

Unfortunately everyone is hung up on the negatives of European socialized medicine (and the positives, for that matter).  May I suggest that it’s time for Americans to do some original thinking and come up with a paradigm shift, a solution to healthcare that is all our own.

(more…)