Posted on

Sequestration might not be such a bad thing for me, was it not such a bad thing

You know, I would kind of like the looming Sequestration was it not that I am squarely in its sights.

The runaway train of automatic spending cuts seems hell-bent on crashing somewhere even though the president has called the top Republicans a week before the magic date of March 1. I am just guessing but if Congress and the Obama administration do anything at all, they will kick the can down the road a little more and we’ll have to go through all of this stressful crap over again. Yes, I’m worried. And my dog is worried. Actually, I have no dog. But if I did have one, it would be worried.

My part-time job is my money-maker at the moment. I must find someway to supplement it or do something else. Of course, any of that is down the path. If furloughs hit if or when Sequestration comes it will be incremental, like death by a thousand paper cuts.

So you have federal guys who will lose nearly a quarter of their annual salary. Some government contractors — especially ones working for the Pentagon — could see their jobs go “poof.” The Sequestration will cause even more economic chaos than one might imagine with the loss of jobs and the loss of spending dollars for both working folks and the unemployed. You could see even longer lines going through security at the airport. Maybe stacked up flights. We may lose some of the gains made at controlling the borders because la migra might see furloughs. The job loss could cause economic panic, a return to 2008 and the almost-Depression, through a lack of spending and shattered economic confidence.

That takes me back to the lead. The Republicans have it all planned out. The Sequestration will make the deep cuts the GOP wants and they are already blaming it on the Democrats and especially Obama. But not so fast GOP. The Republicans might be good at running out the clock. Yet Obama still has the public on his side. Once the damage is done from the massive spending cuts, the ticked-off will look for someone to blame. That blame has an easy target nicknamed the Grand Old Party.

It will be a windfall for Democrats, of whom I am one. It will also be a disaster for those who will be hurt by Sequestration, of whom I also am one. So there you go — you’ve got your classic win-lose. And such a victory doesn’t look very sweet right now.

Posted on

Why so sad?

When something falls in the media’s lap it can make for some very, very happy people. People such as newspaper reporters and TV journalists and especially editors and news directors get downright giddy when something just appears out of nowhere and “poof:” Instant story.

So the media folk here where I live, Beaumont, Texas, must be jumping for joy at the release of a University of Vermont study that uses among other methods, a “geo-tagged data set comprising over 80 million words generated over the course of several recent years on the social network service Twitter … “ The conclusion lists the happiest and unhappiest states and cities in the U.S. The happiest state: Hawaii. It makes sense, it’s a pretty place and great temperature year-round. The saddest state is Louisiana. That’s kind of confusing when you have New Orleans rising back from near death. The happiest city: Napa, Calif. Think wine, spody-ody. And, drum roll, the saddest city: Beaumont.

Yes, Beaumont, Texas. Time to get busy local media. We’ve got big news right here in River City.

It’s funny these academicians which include mathematics and statistics professors as well as those in the computing field are able to study 10 million “geo-tagged tweets” over some 373 urban areas to determine who is the happiest and those who are saddest. What is sad is how they characterize their data field: “This corpus is a subset of Twitter’s garden hose feed, and represents roughly 10% of all geotagged tweets posted in 2011.” Huh?

Corpus, I get. I have no idea what a garden hose feed might entail.

The gist, if I may oversimplify it, appears to be that words were studied by geographical location on the social network Twitter. The appearance of certain words determine what’s happy and what’s not.

But Ma, I don’t even know what a Twitter is.

I have read some reporting of this story, specifically of Beaumont being the saddest city in the U.S. So far there is little local reporting. I did hear the story discussed on “The Blitz,” the goofy and enjoyable drive time show on sports talk ESPN 97.5 FM in Houston as I drove home this afternoon. The interest in Houston, besides being 88 miles away from Beaumont, is that even closer Texas City is No. 3 unhappiest in the U.S. To make matters worse for us, we have two cities in the same county on the Top 15 saddest. Behind Beaumont is lucky No. 13, Port Arthur, our south Jefferson County Golden Triangle center. Orange, in adjacent Orange County, is at the end of the third leg of the triangle. I have no idea how it fared.

I have lived here in Beaumont on and off for seven years. Am I sad? Yeah, but I have a lot on my mind what with suffering from chronic pain and with the lack of income staring me down due to the stupidity in Washington known as sequestration. I can also say Beaumont is a pretty angry place. Much of it has to do with wealth envy and race. Beaumont is majority African-American now. It didn’t use to be before “white flight” took place. I was in Lumberton today, a city about 8 miles north of Beaumont in Hardin County. I was shocked to see the Lumberton city limit sign. The place has more than 11,000 citizens now. I can remember when Lumberton was so small it was just a little dot on the map. Much of its growth can be tied to “white flight.”

Economics make people mad, believe me. This is very much a city, Beaumont, in which the divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” can be substantial.

We have a lot of problems here, like everywhere. I have been and even lived in much sadder cities than this, however, and I didn’t need Twitter to tell me. All one needs is a good hog. Then, if you’re happy and you know it slap your ham.

Posted on

A what-questration are you talking about?

This President’s Day off has been spent updating my resume. That task does not mean I am looking for another job. Rather, I am looking for additional jobs. I have to do something, considering the prospect looming only 10 or so days away when “Sequestration” could begin. Here is a handy-dandy little guide as to just what Sequestration is although I could give an answer in three words or less: “It’s a bitch.”

As a career, part-time worker for Sam I face the possibility of as many as 22 days on furlough. Just what that means to me I am unsure. I don’t work every day. I don’t work the same hours every day. Thus, I don’t make the same amount of pay each week, or more importantly, every two weeks. Two is when I get my paycheck. Except when there is a banking holiday like today. I have to wait an extra day to get my pay then.

Unless you work for the government or are somehow tied to the government of Sam, then you may not have thought much about Sequestration. The talking heads on TV speak of it as just another concept to debate. I have hoped for a last-minute deal between the administration and Congress as in the past. But it doesn’t seem to be coming. Sequestration may have what some Democrats think are positive consequences. I think the President may figure if an economic calamity comes he can blame it on the GOP. The Republicans don’t seem to care. A sequester might possibly make the cuts to government that all the little knot-headed Tea Party people want. A win-win as politicians might say.  It may also drive us into another recession or depression. If such does not happen on a national scale surely it will on a personal level.

So when your stock prices start falling like flies into a pesticide fog, remember what happened. Oh that sequestration thing. I think I spoke to some homeless guy on the street a while back who told me that it was what had caused his slide.

Yes, I imagine that had something to do with it, and thank you for your concern, a**hole!

Posted on

Asteroids keep falling on my head …

The Ural Mountain region near the Kazakhstan border was the site of undoubtedly many freaked-out Russians Friday as a meteor estimated at 11 tons crashed into Earth. Some 1,100 people were injured from damage caused by shock waves. It was the most powerful such event since 1908 when a meteor fragment hit the Tunguska area in Siberia.

The early 20th century event struck with the power of from five to 30 megatons of TNT, according to scientists. That blast equaled about 1,000 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. An estimated 80 million trees were destroyed by the Tunguska event.

Massive numbers of windows were knocked out with shattered glass causing the majority of the injuries from the blast Friday. Many of the damaged buildings were in the town of Chelyabinsk. Scientists said the asteroid affecting the Ural region were unrelated to the DA-14 asteroid which was passing the Earth by 17,500 miles today.

Both the 1908 asteroid and the one falling to Earth today shows our planet with some incredible luck, provided DA-14 doesn’t go wildly off course. Both Russian events occurred near sparsely populated areas. Population also was not a factor with some asteroids through the Earth’s history which which were believed to have had a major influence on the planet ranging from vast changes in fauna to geology.

An asteroid almost 60 million years ago crashed into Earth, forming a “so-called” impact crater, in what is now quiet pasture land outside of Marquez, Texas, (pronounced “mar-KAY”). The town is about 20 miles west of the intersection of Texas Hwy. 7, and Interstate 45, roughly halfway between Dallas and Houston. A good friend of mine wrote a 2004 story about the long-ago asteroid. The story quotes a scientist as saying the Marquez asteroid came crashing to earth with the power of between 10 and 100 hydrogen bombs. It created a crater about 8 miles in diameter and a mile deep. Over time, receding seawater and marsh filled up the crater and turned it into an uplift, or as Professor Arch Reid of the University of Houston said in the story, the crater became turned inside out. There are scientists who believe that a meteor about six miles in diameter killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

These occurrences remind us Earthlings that we are just sitting on piece of rock amongst countless others out there in the universe. Space specialists can estimate when a chunk of cosmos might be heading near us, like the DA-14, but pieces from asteroids do not need a humongous size to mess up the rest of our day, or, rest of our whatevers.

Posted on

Coming near you: The Big “S” for Sequestration

There are a number of reasons to fear “Sequestration,” the automatic delete switch that flips on U.S. government finances come March 1. Sequestration sounds kind of like “castration.” Perhaps it will not be as painful as castration, but if it happens it surely will bring on some real hurt of its own.

The majority of the public doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass whether these painful cuts hit the federal government itself or its workforce. Among the possibilities are 22 days of furloughs set over a particular period for federal employees. That won’t happen immediately and it will not happen consecutively. Still, being deprived of almost three-quarters of a month’s salary is not a pleasant prospect, particularly for those whose general schedule (GS) are toward the end of the scales and especially for those in that situation who work part-time. Let’s just say “I know a little ’bout it,” as I always like to bring up some song lyrics from the good ol’ days such as that one from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Happy memories from a rockin’ tune sometimes makes the hurt go away for 3 minutes or so.

I don’t ask anyone to feel my potential pain but here are a few points to ponder if we get s**t-slapped by the “Big S:”

Watch as it hurts fiscal oversight. What oversight you say that is, boys?

¡Buenos dias, la migra! What’s a few million more illegal immigrants?

Cuts to training for 80% of American Army ground forces. Over hill, over dale, we will just sit on our tail …

And not just the Army. The wolf is at the door of the U.S. Armed Forces, says deputy SECDEF

Oh this is just folks with a vested interest crying wolf, you say. Well, read on …

It’s happening, says GOP senator Coburn!

Yes, I agree with Coburn. At least with his saying: “It’s a stupid way to govern … ”

Screw the poor, again, right? Right. And whomever else happens to be in the Republicans’ way.