deconstruct this

NY Times ran an(other) article about women working outside the home -- this time it was women who made, like, half-a-million dollars a year, and then opted out of the workforce in the early 2000s to be home full-time with children and now are finding it difficult (or -- mildly challenging? or -- slightly uncomfortable?) to get back in.

To the workforce.

At the money they had before, after a 10 to 12-year gap.

I donnow about allthat.
Some of these articles are kind of worthless. ...

And what they tend to leave out is --
~~ there are some people (some of them women) who are always going to be complaining about something; and
~~ the "you have to have TWO INCOMES to raise a family!!!" fallacy:  ok, let's get this straight, two incomes of $40,000 per year each, are great because it's TWO incomes, and that's somehow better than one income of $200,000 a year.  That's bad because it's only ONE income. ... +
~~ the "follow the herd" mentality -- if other women are working outside the home, I have to, too! -- if other women are opting-out of the workforce, then me too!

people should think for themselves

Steve from San Diego Comments-In:
She gave up a quarter of her income to spend three extra days with her kids?  How about she took three days with her kids and only gave up 1/4 of her income?  What exactly are Americans chasing?  A good example is the Romney Family.  He's already earned enough money for 20 lifetimes for him and his family; yet, he still cuts corners on retirement schemes and offshore tax havens.  He is still putting Americans out of work to move jobs to China to gain an extra x% marginal profit.

For what?  A higher number?  Deconstruct this and that is the essence of the American Dream:  a higher number.  More square footage, more clothes, more expensive car, more exclusive clubs, more expensive scotch (OK, some do make sense).  In exchange we give up time with our kids, we give up seeing real trees, real rocks, real air in exchange for pseudo adventure in paper maché amusement parks with vanilla-scented mechanical breezes and artfully designed human cattle queues.

Everyone is racing around in search of numbers and we ignore the biggest, most important number of all:  the number of days of life each of us has and it is a determinant number -- no matter how many health drinks, exercise crazes and vitamins we consume.  That's the number we all are really chasing, like it or not, and that's the number one should consider when deciding one's priorities.  The rest of the numbers in our lives are just so much counting about nothing.

Live!

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without books or details

-------------------The Americana Suite, rooms 2150 to 2154 in the hotel of the same name, was less overdone than the rest of the place, but the décor still bordered on Mafia Tasteful -- the suite had, in fact, been used in the filming of The Godfather....

--------- [Convention excerpt]------------ Carter was in the bookless "library" of the suite talking with Representative Peter Rodino of New Jersey, one of the seven men he said he was considering as his candidate for vice-president.  Rodino, 67, was on the list for cosmetic purposes, to impress other Italian-Americans and to remind the country of his service as the chairman of the House Judiciary hearings during Watergate impeachment proceedings against former president Richard Nixon.  Still, the two men talked for 90 minutes, then went downstairs to a second-floor pressroom and told 200 reporters everything but the truth.

Rodino had told Carter upstairs that he was not interested in the nomination -- he knew it was not going to be offered to him.  Instead, the congressman wanted to give the speech placing Carter's name in nomination Wednesday night.  But the two politicians answered questions for 30 minutes, easily and smilingly discussing Rodino's qualifications for the office.

The press conference was one of the final acts in a Carter production that was part public relations and part common sense.  The vice-president plan had been originally designed to

give newspapers and television something to talk and write about --

the theory being that idle reporters are the devil's plaything during Convention Week.

[[I love that -- kind of like Day Care for the media]] 

But it had evolved into a serious attempt to avoid making the kind of mistake that the last Democratic nominee, George McGovern, had made in hastily selecting a running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was dropped from the ticket when it was revealed that he had been covering up a history of mental problems.

Now the Georgian was making a show of interviewing seven prospective running mates -- Senators Walter Mondale, Edmund Muskie, and John Glenn had gone to Carter's home in Plains, Georgia, and Rodino and Senators Frank Church, Henry Jackson, and Adlai Stevenson III were being interviewed in New York. 

All seven had also been asked to fill out a 17-question form (see Appendix B) that asked them things like:  "Have you ever had psychiatric treatment?" . . . "Without details, is there or has there been anything in your personal life which you feel, if known, may be of embarrassment in the presidential election this year?"-------------------------- [end ecerpt]

= = = = =
"Without details..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{Convention, by Richard Reeves.  Copyright, 1977.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  New York and London.}

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crawling through the candidate's suite

A political journalist named Richard Reeves wrote a flock of books in the mid-1970s.  (And the flock later became a herd, perhaps even a stampede....He's prolific.)

A Ford, Not a Lincoln (in the era of President Gerald Ford).
Old Faces of 1976
and then
Convention.

Convention is about the Democrats' nominating convention held in the summer of 1976 in NYC, where Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was named the party's presidential candidate, to run in the fall election.

The book is not a standard recounting of history -- it's more sort of a "happening."  A "you are there" sort of style, and the author involved a wide variety of people in his coverage.

[excerpts]---------------------
Clare Smith arrived at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 6:40 on Sunday morning, July 11.  She had gotten out of bed at 3:50 A.M. to make American Airlines flight 38 from Cleveland at 5:20 A.M., saving $40 by flying night coach rate.

"Hey, excuse me," a young man called to her in the terminal.  "Aren't you the youngest delegate to the Convention?  I saw your picture in People magazine."
"Yeah."

--------------- Jimmy Carter had come to town the day before landing in his chartered Boeing 727 at the isolated Marine Air Terminal on the far side of La Guardia Airport.  It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and he was early, as usual. 

After walking down the ramp carrying his own suitcase, as usual,

and waving to television cameras, Carter was led into an empty operations office to kill ten minutes so that he would not arrive too early at a 4:00 P.M. rally in front of the Americana Hotel.  In the office, Carter took off his shirt, and Secret Service agents helped him into a bulletproof vest for the rally.  It was the first time the candidate had ever worn one, but the Secret Service had convinced him that he was beginning the most dangerous week of his political life.

There were 4,000 people waiting for Carter around the entrance of the Americana, a shiny 50-story piece of Miami Beach plunked down on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, between 51st and 52nd Streets.  Inside the hotel, a technician named Richard Wilker was crawling through the candidate's suite, using a small mirror to check under doors for electronic listening devices -- Carter's staff was convinced that reporters would try to bug his rooms.

----------------------- Floor fights!  Robert Schwarz Strauss had dedicated three and a half years of his life to figuring out how the Democratic party could meet in

unified convention,

quiet convention. 

He had become Democratic national chairman on December 9, 1972, determined that, while he was in charge, his party would not meet in riot, as it did in Chicago, nominating Hubert H. Humphrey for president in 1968, or in fiasco, as it did in Miami, nominating George McGovern in 1972. 

"I'm not going to deliver a candidate to the party," he said that December.  "I'm going to deliver a party to the candidate."

------------ Representative Morris Udall of Arizona was applauded warmly, sometimes tearfully, as he appeared at his last rally before 1,000 people at the Roosevelt Hotel on East 45th Street near Grand Central Station.  He reminded his faithful, including most of the 330 or so delegates he had won in primary elections and precinct caucuses, that he had been an announced candidate for president for 20 months, traveling to every part of the country, entering 22 primaries -- and losing every one of them.

"The people have spoken -- the bastards!"

It was an old line but a good one, and the audience laughed appreciatively, as Udall's crowds often did -- he was a nice man, for a politician, and his image had been softened by nine heartbreaking second-place finishes to Jimmy Carter.  The man who had first used the line was in the crowd, wearing a floppy Panama hat and a grin wider and warmer than Carter's -- Dick Tuck had defined the electorate as bastards 20 years earlier after losing a State Senate race in Los Angeles. ...
-------------------- [end excerpts]

{Convention -- Richard Reeves -- Copyright, 1977 -- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London}

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truth, goodness, beauty, and justice

"We are better than this."

That is the insistent, persistent, consistent thought that I have, when I hear something bad.  In the news, or whatever.

I just think -- "we are better than this."

By "we" -- do I mean -- Americans?
Yes.
Do I mean all-humans-on-the-planet?
That, too.

And for some reason there's a connecting thought-thread which leads to
Gene Kelly dancing and singing, "Singing in the Rain"
and
Tina Turner dancing and singing, "Proud Mary"
and
Fleetwood Mac
and
others...those moments, glimpses, those knock-down-drag-out-undeniable times when you see God working through somebody or something to
make us feel good
help us make things better
inspire us
lift our spirits --
or
I don't know
I can't articulate it, the feeling...

yesterday when I was reviewing the listener Comments I had copied from You Tube, written by people who were listening to the Jim Croce album, I got to this one Comment & thought, that person is on the same Idea-Chain as me -- feeling like somehow art leads us, or helps us, to a higher "plane" of existence -- it makes things better -- he wrote:

"OUTSTANDING Talent I would have loved to have seen how High we would have risen had he survived..... 5 stars!"

See, that guy's on the same track...as if the music (or the beautiful picture, or the beautiful moment...) can help us toward being better...("we are better than this!!") -- to celebrate pleasantness, civility, beauty of moment & experience...

He wrote, "I would have loved to have seen how High we would have risen had he survived..."

he was writing about Jim Croce -- take out the name Jim Croce, and plug-in President Kennedy - ! (smile -- all due respect) -- throughout the remainder of the 60s, you heard people say Things would have gone better, if he had lived -- Kennedy would not have got us into Vietnam, etc. ...

the You Tube comment person felt that way about Jim Croce -- "how High we would have risen" ...(??)  Would we all be a better society, and world, if singer-songwriter Jim Croce had not died in an airplane accident...?

maybe some people would say that's far-fetched, but not really...
he was saying that by making the music and sharing it with us, Croce improved the world, lifted the human experience.
Thank you.
You're welcome.

Like -- while you're listening to the music, your life is improved, and then even after the song is over and you have to go do something else, the improvement lasts and continues -- it makes everything better....

(I just have to keep typing until I get some kind of handle on what I am talking about. ...)
But I heard it -- read it -- in that Comment on You Tube. 
How much better life (civilization / society...) would have been, had Jim Croce lived.
Skeptics might scoff,
but seriously Everything that makes Anything better is worth it.

(One thing -- I would not want to hear President Kennedy sing "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" -- all due respect -- and I think JFK would be the first to agree ... let everybody do the thing they can do, to contribute...)

My father used to say, "Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Justice" as the basis, for how to measure things, and how to aim our efforts....  Now, I don't know if Jim Croce recordings were exactly what he had in mind...but -- I say, Whatever Works. 
It's a "big tent"...

he got a tattoo on his arm that say, 'baby'
he got another one that just say, 'hey'
but every Sunday afternoon he is a dirt track demon
in a '57 Chevrolet...

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good people on our street

Last week, on this site, was thinking-and-typing about
California Governor Jerry Brown
and
the fact that "fat cat" campaign finance contributors probably don't in essence buy much actual influence, if any, with elected officials -- it's more a thing you do for a little status, because you're in the bracket to afford it -- like having an expensive car....

Then found a reference to this idea and Jerry Brown -- linking the two....

In a book titled Old Faces Of 1976, it says,
--------- [excerpt]------He [the then-freshly-elected governor of California in 1976, Jerry Brown] refuses to answer the calls of his largest contributors -- "He thinks we're unclean because we gave a politician, him, some money," one said.-----------{Old Faces Of 1976, by Richard Reeves.  Copyright, 1976.  Harper & Row, NY, NY}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"jim always in our hearts"

Recently, with access to You Tube, listened to Photographs And Memories -- hit songs by Jim Croce...(of the "steadily depressing, low-down mind-messing, working at the carwash blues", etc....)  I enjoy reading Listener Comments -- people from all over this planet...!

comments

Ohhhhh I love this.

me and my mother would listen to this on 8 track on trips from Atlanta to Pensacola and back.  I miss her.  She was such a wonderful person.

his music will never die

I love him...he was such an awesome, sensitive and feeling singer-songwriter...

Thanks for uploading this album...!!!

you say you love the baby then you crucify the man

love this dude.  died way too young.

I have this record, you can't truly enjoy the character of his music until you hear it in a scratchy old record music to my ears

They don't and never will make music like these anymore

he was really a builder / labourer who loved to write and play the guitar.  A lovely story.  A lovely man.  RIP Genius Jim

So true!

I miss that 8-track

the world lost a great talent when he died.  Another underrated musician is / was Nilsson.  Both these gentlemen could tell a story.

right on man

His words hit with every note he strummed & he was taken away way too early for people to be lucky as I have been, to get to listen to him.  He's burned into me until I die & all his music has such relevance to my life & millions more.......so many missed him, though!

Great writer, simpler times, simpler productions, Great heartfelt songs

Goooood memories!

lol..My very first concert..A dinner show at the Tropicana in Las Vegas where my Mom was living / working at the time..I was about 10..awesome, even still.
Shalom

Thank you for reminding me how music is supposed to be.

I listened to this album twice back to back

Perhaps the most underrated musician of all time.

this record yes that's sounds old but it played a lot were I lived, on the box and I have it on record I still turn up my old amp and all of the people around me never say a thing.  there for when they play there records I never say a thing good people on our street

Yes the 70s kiddies where the ultimate in music masters, rock, Motown, disco, country, u f-----g name it..this generation was the pinnacle.....this was the generation of music.

Every song on this record is a hit.  Solid stuff.

I could listen to this music all day.  I think of it as my life, as it seems like I have lived it all at one time or another.  RIP Jim Croce.  Sure bring memories back.  Would like to live most of them over.

I first heard jim croce when I was a little kid, 40 years later still listening to him, the seventies had some of the greatest songwriters ever

There was a time when we were blessed with so many awesome singer / songwriters and bands....those men and women wrote their own lyrics and music and used their own instruments to create songs....sadly, not many musicians are left to entertain us today.  Instead, we have no-talent "entertainers" who are pumped up by the record companies....

Too bad time slips out of our grasp but why not LIVE while we're ALIVE?

Good album!  Can't be beat!

extraordinario

Outstanding poet.

OUTSTANDING Talent I would have loved to have seen how High we would have risen had he survived..... 5 stars!

I love his songs it helps me to practice my English and somehow reminds moments of my life fotograph and memories for examp, jim always in our hearts

beautiful music Jim wherever you are, we're still here listening, a thousand years and you will still be here.

they just don't do it like this anymore

very few successful pop artists, even in the era of the singer-songwriter, could weave a tune and get so deeply into your heart, as did Croce
favorite Croce tune, New York's Not My Home

just happened to FIND this....Speechless....so Beautiful..

Beautiful music that still stands up.

the music stands the test of time

Gracias, con él siempre recuerdo mis primeras fiestas cuando niño de 10 a 12 años imaginando lo lindo de la vida y sin saber donde estaria un dia como hoy.

CLASSIC beautiful

This is my sister's favorite artist. ...Thanks for sharing this wonderful album.

so very Classic, no-one has ever matched a single sound or tone, thoughts, and writing as this Man....as though as many years are gone backwards, to hear & listen, the Sound still ring so true today....

-30-

united in our calm determination

Jerry Brown is Governor of California.

Again.

He was governor of the Pacific Coast state from 1975 to 1983.

I thought that was an interesting development.
I hadn't been following California scene, so this information kind of sneaked up on me.  (Snuck?)

----------------[excerpt, Convention, by Richard Reeves] -- ...New Orleans and Kansas City simply did not have enough hotel rooms; and Los Angeles -- the city of angels was ruled out because the Democrats were convinced that the governor of California was crazy.

Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr., was not crazy at all.  He was a clever politician with a talent, at least as impressive as Jimmy Carter's, for reaching people, especially young ones.  Trading smartly on the name and connections of his father -- former California Governor Pat Brown -- he had barely won election in 1974, but had become phenomenally popular since. 

A former Jesuit seminarian who was inaugurated to the chants of a Sufi choir, Brown captivated Californians by circumventing liberal-conservative dogma and by wittily espousing an evolving, cerebral mix of the teachings of Saint Ignatius and Thomas Aquinas, Buddha, the existentialists, and Machiavelli.

...Jerry Brown arrived in New York as a serious presidential candidate, having won 320 or so delegates in a series of spectacular late primary victories.  He started too late to stop Carter --

the Georgian was a declared candidate before Brown took office on January 1, 1975,

and the Californian was forced to wait a while before flashing his ambition.  But in the stretch, Brown badly embarrassed the front-runner.  He out-Cartered Carter -- Brown became the fresh face, the mysterious outsider, and Carter was the Establishment figure trying to consolidate his holdings.

Even after Carter had clinched the nomination by winning the Ohio primary on June 8, Brown refused to quit, traveling the country needling the Georgian and picking up a few loose delegates here and there.  Now, as usual, no one was sure what the hell Jerry Brown was going to do next. ...

On Carter's floor of the Americana and on Strauss's floor of the Statler Hilton, the fear was that Brown would try to address the Convention and perhaps spark a movement for himself as the vice-presidential candidate.  It was a measure of the pull of Brown's vague rhetoric about a new generation of leadership and planetary realism that both Strauss, and Carter's senior adviser Charles Kirbo, agreed that everything possible should be done to prevent Jerry Brown from getting near the podium.

...[at the end of Convention, Jimmy Carter's acceptance (of the Dem. nomination) speech]...
"All my life I've heard promises about tax reform, but it never quite happened.  With your help, we are finally going to make it happen, and you can depend on it!

It's time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than the humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double standard of justice.  I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free, and the poor ones go to jail.

We have an America that in Bob Dylan's phrase is busy being born, not busy dying....

We will go forward from this Convention with some differences of opinion, perhaps, but nevertheless united in our calm determination to make our country large and driving and generous in spirit once again; ready to embark on great national deeds and once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell with pride to call ourselves Americans.

Thank you very much.  God bless you."

Bob Strauss bounced up to the microphone and began a long final cheer of unity, his unity, calling name after name and waving Democrats to the podium:  "Senator Scoop Jackson . . . Congressman Morris Udall . . . Senator Frank Church . . . Governor Jerry Brown . . .

... Jerry Brown walked back to the McAlpin along West 33rd Street, smiling when a teenager called out:  "We want you for president, Jerry!"

"Well, keep it in mothballs," Brown yelled back.------------------- [end excerpt]

=========== First you love me,
then you get on down the line...
(Fleetwood Mac)

------------------------------
{excerpt from Convention, written by Richard Reeves.  Copyright 1977.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  New York and London.}

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miffed by the swift grift

Letting thoughts about the SAC story and Reader Comments float around in head, last night:

thought --

pure grift
pure.  grift.
"Hedge funds bring NO productive benefits to the US economy, it's "hedge I win, tails you lose".  It's

pure grift

for the wealthy."

= = = = = pure grift
(true grit)...
pure grift -- grift comes from impure dealings -- so the complete and utter corrupt nature of the deal -- the grift -- is pure....the lack of purity is -- pure. ...

And some of those ga-zillions of dollars made in hedge funds etc. has gone toward supporting candidates in both parties, sometimes -- maybe even usually, or always -- from the same donor....

A Commenter last week wrote in -- "So The Citadel Group is involved.  They gave $1 million to Obama in '08, and then went over to the Republicans.  The parasitic psychopaths club is exclusive and non-partisan."...and we've been over that in this blog -- how they give to both parties -- and can give $$ donations to opposing candidates -- some to Obama, some to McCain, for ex. -- (which, in a way, would cancel each other out...but -- the contributor is not desperate for one or the other candidate to win, the contributor wants to have the position of being a significant donor.  Regardless of who wins.

-- in our June 25, 2013, post -- "a genuinely weird campaign"...[bcl excerpt]---------The fat-cat action is still one of the most dramatic aspects of a presidential campaign, but even in this colorful area the tension is leaking away -- primarily because most of the really serious fat cats figured out, a few years back, that they could beat the whole rap -- along with the onus of going down the tube with some desperate loser -- by "helping" two candidates, instead of just one.--------------------[end BCL excerpt]
{Hunter Thompson -- Fear and Loathing:  On the Campaign Trail '72}

Campaign donations are hyped in some quarters as being a Big Bad Thing -- I don't think it is, let Cohen, Madoff, et. al. give money to candidates, I can't afford to....that's their "job"....
And I don't think it means they "own" the politicians.  The politicians (public servants) can still do what they want.
(There's a wonderful scene in the film Nixon which illustrates this -- Pres. Nixon goes to Texas to visit J.R. Ewing -- oops, I meant a character in the movie played by Larry Hagman [sorry] -- and Larry Hagman gets on a roll of basically, the world's changing around me, I'm gettin' older and growlier and I'm rich why can't I have my way every minute, all this environment stuff... and he sort of tries to "muscle" the president, who sets down his teacup and -- let's just say ends the visit.

What the Larry Hagman character has purchased is the "idea" of influence  -- an idea which the contributor "sells" to himself.

Contributors don't own our public servants.  There's a story-line -- "narrative" -- that says they do, I do not think it is a true one....)

====================
And so if hedge funds cheat on the stock market, what are the reasons why that's bad?
1.  did they actually "wreck" the economy? -- if so, then that IS bad
2.  the insider trading causes a situation where the "average investor", or "individual investor" is essentially being ripped off.  the game is, in that case, rigged... and
3.  not only individual investors, but a lot of working people who have IRAs, and don't control where their money is invested...

...do the people investing the IRA money know the insider information, in order to make the playing field level?  well probably not or they'd be arrested too, right?

back to the essential perspective that every time someone
Makes Money
on the stock market, others
Lose Money

and so if some of these folks are cheating, then it's the other investors (both individual, and IRA contributors) who are being cheated -- that's a lot of people....

--------------------------------
There's a received wisdom that you have to invest your money, so that you will "have your money Working For You."

Of course this received wisdom is usually being received
from
a stockbroker or financial planner
who is a person with a job, who's trying to make money from you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jay Leno:  "They say we're supposed to get our money working for us. ....I kind of feel like -- I'll work -- let the Money rest."

Gerald O'Hara in Gone With The Wind:  "Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts."

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