Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hooters a Sacrament; Breastfeeding Mothers a Sacrilege
In an age of being inundated with all things sexual, constantly bombarded with images of practically naked girls in thong bikinis leaving nothing to the imagination at almost every beach, swimming pool, and water park; it is breastfeeding mothers who are criminalized and discriminated against.
The shrews and shrills who harass, criticize, and abuse nursing moms in public claim that these moms are being "indecent" and thus are inviting such abuse. They have threatened, bullied, shamed, humiliated, and coerced breastfeeding mothers (and their infants) into filthy toilet stalls, back allies, and cars - regardless of sweltering heat or bitter cold. And they justify their shabby treatment of nursing moms in the name of "decency" under false pretenses, cloaked in the guise of "respectability" and "family values."
But none of these mother-bashers utter a Puritanical peep in clucking disapproval when images of women's breasts and scantily clad pre-motherhood bodies are pimped out by "Big Media" and their corporate sponsors to sell everything from aspartame-laden beverages to sports cars, and from genetically engineered "diet" food to blockbuster movies to Viagra. "Big Media" profits handsomely off of steamy sex scenes in movies and in "reality TV" shows. Yet "Big Media regards programs supporting breastfeeding mothers and shows depicting natural home births or unhindered childbirth (UC) for information purposes to educate women on ALL of their childbirth options as too "indecent" for viewers.
Women are only worthy and deserving if our bodies are good enough for amusement, if we're "eye candy" to be displayed in the act of sex or in suggestion of sex for the benefit of male gaze and profit; but too much of an "eye sore" to be seen as nursing mothers or in the capacity of fulfilling the magical and sacred role of unmedicalized/untechnicalized childbirth that is mother-centered.
The message behind this double standard is crystal clear: Our male dominated society and wealthy powerful corporate interests hate women and all realistic facets of womanhood that falls outside the realm of male entertainment and the fraudulent standard of beauty. They view women as status possessions whose only purpose and real value is if we can be shown off as "trophies." And sadly, these misogynist men with mommy-issues have a retinue of trophy wife Barbie Doll type of women agreeing with them, thus helping to perpetuate the status quo. Their mentality is not far removed from that of the "house Negro" in the antebellum South - the "Massa" has been good to them. The rest of us are just "uppity no-account bitches" who need to be kept "in our place."
The shrews and shrills who harass, criticize, and abuse nursing moms in public claim that these moms are being "indecent" and thus are inviting such abuse. They have threatened, bullied, shamed, humiliated, and coerced breastfeeding mothers (and their infants) into filthy toilet stalls, back allies, and cars - regardless of sweltering heat or bitter cold. And they justify their shabby treatment of nursing moms in the name of "decency" under false pretenses, cloaked in the guise of "respectability" and "family values."
But none of these mother-bashers utter a Puritanical peep in clucking disapproval when images of women's breasts and scantily clad pre-motherhood bodies are pimped out by "Big Media" and their corporate sponsors to sell everything from aspartame-laden beverages to sports cars, and from genetically engineered "diet" food to blockbuster movies to Viagra. "Big Media" profits handsomely off of steamy sex scenes in movies and in "reality TV" shows. Yet "Big Media regards programs supporting breastfeeding mothers and shows depicting natural home births or unhindered childbirth (UC) for information purposes to educate women on ALL of their childbirth options as too "indecent" for viewers.
Women are only worthy and deserving if our bodies are good enough for amusement, if we're "eye candy" to be displayed in the act of sex or in suggestion of sex for the benefit of male gaze and profit; but too much of an "eye sore" to be seen as nursing mothers or in the capacity of fulfilling the magical and sacred role of unmedicalized/untechnicalized childbirth that is mother-centered.
The message behind this double standard is crystal clear: Our male dominated society and wealthy powerful corporate interests hate women and all realistic facets of womanhood that falls outside the realm of male entertainment and the fraudulent standard of beauty. They view women as status possessions whose only purpose and real value is if we can be shown off as "trophies." And sadly, these misogynist men with mommy-issues have a retinue of trophy wife Barbie Doll type of women agreeing with them, thus helping to perpetuate the status quo. Their mentality is not far removed from that of the "house Negro" in the antebellum South - the "Massa" has been good to them. The rest of us are just "uppity no-account bitches" who need to be kept "in our place."
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Centralia, Pennsylvania: Our Largest Deposit of Back-Up Fuel Up In Smoke, Thanks To Government Ineptitude and Corporate Greed
By Jacqueline S. Homan
The picture at the top of the page is that of PA Highway 61 North near Centralia. The fissures you see are not potholes - they were caused by buckling and subsidence from the worst ecological disaster caused by indifferent government agencies and corporate greed: the underground mine fire of Centralia which has been burning for 46 years.
Centralia is nestled in the southern region of Pennsylvania’s Columbia County: home to the largest anthracite coal deposit in the world. It is approximately 120 miles northwest of Philadelphia, far removed from the hustle and bustle and situated in the Appalachian region of rural Pennsylvania. Centralia was once a prosperous coal mining town. In its heyday, the population was over 2,000. Today, it is less than 9.
Since the mid-1800’s, the anthracite coal industry was the principal employer in Pennsylvania’s coal region. Coal mining in Centralia continued well into the 1960’s until oil and natural gas cartels usurped the monopoly on the fuel market. Prior to natural gas and oil dominating the public’s need for home heating fuel, anthracite coal was king. Homes, businesses, and schools throughout Pennsylvania and much of the northeastern states mostly relied on coal for winter heating fuel. Centralia acquired the rights to the coal from the coal mining conglomerates in 1950 – the only Pennsylvania coal mining community to take advantage of a 1949 state law allowing such purchases.
Anthracite is a very hard variety of coal with a high luster. It also has the highest carbon content and least amount of impurities of all coal. It is also much rarer than the more common and much softer bituminous coal. Anthracite coal is of the highest metamorphic rank; its carbon content is between 92-98%. The metamorphic rank of coal corresponds to the amount of hydrocarbon vapors given off when the coal is heated below its ignition point. In other words, the higher the metamorphic rank, the cleaner the coal burns. Anthracite coal is very difficult to ignite, but once ignited, it burns with a short blue smokeless flame. The moisture content in anthracite coal fresh from the mine is less than 15%. The heat content ranges from 22-28 million Btu per short ton (26-33 per Mega Joules/kg).
Pennsylvania is home to the largest deposit of anthracite coal in the world, home to 7 billion short tons of minable reserves. America’s anthracite coal use as an energy source began after it was experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel on the open grate of the fireplace in the home of Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on February 11th, 1808. From then onward until the 1960’s, anthracite coal was the most popular fuel. It burns with very little soot and delivers a very high energy output. After natural gas and oil supplanted the use of anthracite in the middle of the 20th century, use of coal became obsolete. As of June 2008, the going wholesale rate for anthracite was $150/short ton. Given the unaffordable prices of oil and natural gas, anthracite coal could be a very important energy source once more.
However, the state and federal government did not foresee this when they collectively wasted this valuable fuel resource. State and federal agencies bungled the salvage efforts of the precious coal from the devastating underground mine fire in the Buck Mountain coal vein that has been raging for the past 46 years; turning the once thriving hamlet of Centralia into a huge eco disaster and a ghost town.
The fire started on May 27th, 1962 during a routine trash burning. An exposed coal seam near the surface caught ablaze. Although the borough’s volunteer fire department extinguished the fire on the surface, it was unknown at the time that the subterranean Buck Mountain coal vein had ignited and was on fire underground. The fire migrated throughout the labyrinth of abandoned mines beneath the ground underneath Centralia. Closed mine shafts interconnected with the Buck Mountain coal vein ignited. The fire raging down below was not discovered until a week or two after the trash burning incident.
Extinguishing subterranean mine fires is tricky business. Anthracite coal ignites at around 225°C (437°F). Once ignited, it burns hot and steady. Some temperature readings above the Centralia inferno close to the Earth’s surface have reached as high as 447°C (805°F). The intense heat has caused subsidence and buckling, resulting in the permanent closure of PA Highway 61 North near Centralia. Underground mine fires typically must be extinguished by digging them out.
The Department of Environmental Resources (DER) began monitoring the fire in July of 1962 after a local gas station owner discovered the temperature inside of the station’s underground gasoline storage tanks were abnormally hot when he checked the fuel levels. He stuck a thermometer down inside the tanks, and the temperature registered 172°F. A member of the Centralia Borough Council called Clarence Kashner in the nearby town of Shamokin in Northumberland County, a neighboring county in the coal region. Kashner was president of the Independent Miners, Breakermen, & Truckers – an organization of small mine owners and proprietors of coal hauling businesses. He was the man to go to for extinguishing mine fires. In fact, Northumberland County commissioners relied on Kashner’s expertise for the organizing of emergency mine fire extinguishing projects. This was paid for by the county. So, the borough council in Columbia County’s sleepy coal town of Centralia conferred with Kashner.
When Kashner arrived at the scene of the mine fire which started in the garbage pit behind the Odd Fellows Cemetary, he observed a large hole and a potentially major coal vein fire. Years of experience told him that this was a recipe for disaster in the making. Kashner called Gordon Smith, an engineer at the nearest Pennsylvania office of Department of Mines and Mineral Industries (DMMI), which was located in the neighboring small town of Pottsville. Kashner described his observations and told Smith that the way to extinguish the fire was to dig it out. Kashner further told Smith that he could do it for the sum of $175. Smith gave Kashner the common bureaucrat response, putting Kashner off with lame excuses saying that the approval for the project would first have to go through the appropriate channels. Kashner, a well-respected expert in the realm of mine fires, was infuriated. He understood the ramifications of delay and that prompt action must be taken when dealing with mine fires. Kashner told Smith that if the project was delayed, the DMMI would have a mine fire on their conscience. The DMMI bureaucrat replied with the typical, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do” response.
While the DMMI twiddled its thumbs, the fire raged on. At the heart of the fire on the coal bed underground, temperatures exceeded 1000°F. As a mine fire migrates, it consumes the stabilizing timber supports in the catacombs of the mines. Once the support pillars are compromised, the heat destabilizes fill material and the ground above, causing subsidence. The result is an opening, a fissure, on the surface that spews toxic hydrogen sulfide gas and carbon monoxide. The depth and grade of the coal veins, the angle of pitch, make mine fires particularly difficult to control in the anthracite coal region as opposed to the bituminous coal region in southwestern Pennsylvania because bituminous coal veins are closer to the surface and relatively flat. Anthracite coal veins plunge deep, which provides a logistic hindrance to extinguishing a mine fire. This was all the more reason for DMMI to act fast as opposed to dilly-dallying with the usual bureaucratic red tape to solve the problem.
The two government agencies in 1962 that could have and should have helped Centralia were DMMI and the US Bureau of Mines (BOM). The BOM operates under the aegis of the US Department of the Interior. The BOM and DMMI were staffed with mining engineers with the knowledge and expertise in fighting mine fires. But very little money was allocated for mine firefighting efforts. Key elected state and federal officials in Harrisburg and Washington, DC respectively had little concern, and even less understanding of the seriousness of mine fires and other hazards associated with abandoned mines in the anthracite region of rural Pennsylvania.
Deputy Secretary of Mines James Shober, Jr. consulted with Charles Kuebler, the research director at the BOM Anthracite Research Center in Schuylkill Haven in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania on July 25th 1962. The two arranged for a meeting to be held at the Centralia mine fire site on August 6th. Representatives of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company and the Susquehanna Coal Company were invited to the meeting, but members of the Centralia Borough Council were pointedly excluded. The BOM and DMMI didn’t want to include local officials in the decision-making process, even though it was the locals who were immediately affected.
One attendee at the August 6th meeting was Alonzo Sanchez, a strip mine operator. Sanchez offered to dig out the mine fire at minimal to zero charge so long as he got to keep any coal recovered without having to pay royalties to Lehigh Valley Coal Company. Sanchez’s reasonable offer was rejected by both government and the coal companies, despite the fact that neither company was actively mining and had merely become absentee landlords since the coal industry gave way to oil and gas. Neither the government nor the coal companies wanted to pony up the cost for extinguishing the fire. On August 17th 1962, the contract was awarded to Bridy, Inc. – a contractor out of the nearby community of Mt. Carmel. Bridy’s bid was estimated to be around $20,000, although the records of the exact figure have been lost. Nearly all DMMI documents on the Centralia mine fire from 1962-1970 were conveniently “lost” by the DER.
Bridy was unsuccessful at extinguishing the fire. For many years afterward, no one with the resources, private or public, cared about the fire underground. No one cared about the ecological and health hazards caused by the toxic emissions cocktail of hydrogen sulfides and carbon monoxide. No one cared about the fact that the largest deposit of the “forgotten” fossil fuel was going up in smoke – literally. No one cared until Centralia was catapulted into the spotlight of the national media.
On Valentine’s Day of 1981, 12 year old Todd Domboski decided to take a shortcut across his grandmother’s back yard when the ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way to a yawning chasm that was 150 feet deep. Todd narrowly missed death as he clung to an exposed tree root. The heat from the inferno of the fire on the coal vein below and the toxic gases would have killed him had his 16 year old cousin not been there and pulled him to safety.
After the media fanfare, the government crunched the numbers and determined that the cost to extinguish the fire would cost $663 million, but the cost to relocate the residents and businesses of Centralia would only cost $42 million. The residents were offered a buyout. The state declared eminent domain, condemning the entire town in 1992. In 2002, the US Postal Service revoked Centralia’s zip code.
The government now owns all the property in Centralia, including the homes of a few stubborn old timers who refused to move. Although they no longer technically own their homes, they’re still required to pay property taxes on them.
The raging fire underground is headed towards Shamokin. By the time the fire burns itself out, a total of over 3700 acres of anthracite coal will be gone, up in smoke. There is estimated to be enough coal to fuel the fire for well over a hundred years. Yet, the government does not feel it is important to try and save this fossil fuel in light of the fuel poverty caused by unaffordable gas and oil prices. Solar and geothermal energy are solutions which only affluent home and business owners can afford. But 75% of Americans are renters; they cannot afford to own a home – let alone a brand new home with a geothermal/wind/solar energy system. Furthermore, renters have no say as to what energy they’re hook up to because it is the landlord’s property. Until renewable and environmentally responsible energy can be provided at affordable prices to the majority of people, having a reserve of anthracite coal as a back-up could mitigate much unnecessary hardship and suffering. It would buy us time to make solar, wind, and geothermal more widely available to the majority of people, and ease the hardship for those most vulnerable to fuel poverty.
The picture at the top of the page is that of PA Highway 61 North near Centralia. The fissures you see are not potholes - they were caused by buckling and subsidence from the worst ecological disaster caused by indifferent government agencies and corporate greed: the underground mine fire of Centralia which has been burning for 46 years.
Centralia is nestled in the southern region of Pennsylvania’s Columbia County: home to the largest anthracite coal deposit in the world. It is approximately 120 miles northwest of Philadelphia, far removed from the hustle and bustle and situated in the Appalachian region of rural Pennsylvania. Centralia was once a prosperous coal mining town. In its heyday, the population was over 2,000. Today, it is less than 9.
Since the mid-1800’s, the anthracite coal industry was the principal employer in Pennsylvania’s coal region. Coal mining in Centralia continued well into the 1960’s until oil and natural gas cartels usurped the monopoly on the fuel market. Prior to natural gas and oil dominating the public’s need for home heating fuel, anthracite coal was king. Homes, businesses, and schools throughout Pennsylvania and much of the northeastern states mostly relied on coal for winter heating fuel. Centralia acquired the rights to the coal from the coal mining conglomerates in 1950 – the only Pennsylvania coal mining community to take advantage of a 1949 state law allowing such purchases.
Anthracite is a very hard variety of coal with a high luster. It also has the highest carbon content and least amount of impurities of all coal. It is also much rarer than the more common and much softer bituminous coal. Anthracite coal is of the highest metamorphic rank; its carbon content is between 92-98%. The metamorphic rank of coal corresponds to the amount of hydrocarbon vapors given off when the coal is heated below its ignition point. In other words, the higher the metamorphic rank, the cleaner the coal burns. Anthracite coal is very difficult to ignite, but once ignited, it burns with a short blue smokeless flame. The moisture content in anthracite coal fresh from the mine is less than 15%. The heat content ranges from 22-28 million Btu per short ton (26-33 per Mega Joules/kg).
Pennsylvania is home to the largest deposit of anthracite coal in the world, home to 7 billion short tons of minable reserves. America’s anthracite coal use as an energy source began after it was experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel on the open grate of the fireplace in the home of Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on February 11th, 1808. From then onward until the 1960’s, anthracite coal was the most popular fuel. It burns with very little soot and delivers a very high energy output. After natural gas and oil supplanted the use of anthracite in the middle of the 20th century, use of coal became obsolete. As of June 2008, the going wholesale rate for anthracite was $150/short ton. Given the unaffordable prices of oil and natural gas, anthracite coal could be a very important energy source once more.
However, the state and federal government did not foresee this when they collectively wasted this valuable fuel resource. State and federal agencies bungled the salvage efforts of the precious coal from the devastating underground mine fire in the Buck Mountain coal vein that has been raging for the past 46 years; turning the once thriving hamlet of Centralia into a huge eco disaster and a ghost town.
The fire started on May 27th, 1962 during a routine trash burning. An exposed coal seam near the surface caught ablaze. Although the borough’s volunteer fire department extinguished the fire on the surface, it was unknown at the time that the subterranean Buck Mountain coal vein had ignited and was on fire underground. The fire migrated throughout the labyrinth of abandoned mines beneath the ground underneath Centralia. Closed mine shafts interconnected with the Buck Mountain coal vein ignited. The fire raging down below was not discovered until a week or two after the trash burning incident.
Extinguishing subterranean mine fires is tricky business. Anthracite coal ignites at around 225°C (437°F). Once ignited, it burns hot and steady. Some temperature readings above the Centralia inferno close to the Earth’s surface have reached as high as 447°C (805°F). The intense heat has caused subsidence and buckling, resulting in the permanent closure of PA Highway 61 North near Centralia. Underground mine fires typically must be extinguished by digging them out.
The Department of Environmental Resources (DER) began monitoring the fire in July of 1962 after a local gas station owner discovered the temperature inside of the station’s underground gasoline storage tanks were abnormally hot when he checked the fuel levels. He stuck a thermometer down inside the tanks, and the temperature registered 172°F. A member of the Centralia Borough Council called Clarence Kashner in the nearby town of Shamokin in Northumberland County, a neighboring county in the coal region. Kashner was president of the Independent Miners, Breakermen, & Truckers – an organization of small mine owners and proprietors of coal hauling businesses. He was the man to go to for extinguishing mine fires. In fact, Northumberland County commissioners relied on Kashner’s expertise for the organizing of emergency mine fire extinguishing projects. This was paid for by the county. So, the borough council in Columbia County’s sleepy coal town of Centralia conferred with Kashner.
When Kashner arrived at the scene of the mine fire which started in the garbage pit behind the Odd Fellows Cemetary, he observed a large hole and a potentially major coal vein fire. Years of experience told him that this was a recipe for disaster in the making. Kashner called Gordon Smith, an engineer at the nearest Pennsylvania office of Department of Mines and Mineral Industries (DMMI), which was located in the neighboring small town of Pottsville. Kashner described his observations and told Smith that the way to extinguish the fire was to dig it out. Kashner further told Smith that he could do it for the sum of $175. Smith gave Kashner the common bureaucrat response, putting Kashner off with lame excuses saying that the approval for the project would first have to go through the appropriate channels. Kashner, a well-respected expert in the realm of mine fires, was infuriated. He understood the ramifications of delay and that prompt action must be taken when dealing with mine fires. Kashner told Smith that if the project was delayed, the DMMI would have a mine fire on their conscience. The DMMI bureaucrat replied with the typical, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do” response.
While the DMMI twiddled its thumbs, the fire raged on. At the heart of the fire on the coal bed underground, temperatures exceeded 1000°F. As a mine fire migrates, it consumes the stabilizing timber supports in the catacombs of the mines. Once the support pillars are compromised, the heat destabilizes fill material and the ground above, causing subsidence. The result is an opening, a fissure, on the surface that spews toxic hydrogen sulfide gas and carbon monoxide. The depth and grade of the coal veins, the angle of pitch, make mine fires particularly difficult to control in the anthracite coal region as opposed to the bituminous coal region in southwestern Pennsylvania because bituminous coal veins are closer to the surface and relatively flat. Anthracite coal veins plunge deep, which provides a logistic hindrance to extinguishing a mine fire. This was all the more reason for DMMI to act fast as opposed to dilly-dallying with the usual bureaucratic red tape to solve the problem.
The two government agencies in 1962 that could have and should have helped Centralia were DMMI and the US Bureau of Mines (BOM). The BOM operates under the aegis of the US Department of the Interior. The BOM and DMMI were staffed with mining engineers with the knowledge and expertise in fighting mine fires. But very little money was allocated for mine firefighting efforts. Key elected state and federal officials in Harrisburg and Washington, DC respectively had little concern, and even less understanding of the seriousness of mine fires and other hazards associated with abandoned mines in the anthracite region of rural Pennsylvania.
Deputy Secretary of Mines James Shober, Jr. consulted with Charles Kuebler, the research director at the BOM Anthracite Research Center in Schuylkill Haven in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania on July 25th 1962. The two arranged for a meeting to be held at the Centralia mine fire site on August 6th. Representatives of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company and the Susquehanna Coal Company were invited to the meeting, but members of the Centralia Borough Council were pointedly excluded. The BOM and DMMI didn’t want to include local officials in the decision-making process, even though it was the locals who were immediately affected.
One attendee at the August 6th meeting was Alonzo Sanchez, a strip mine operator. Sanchez offered to dig out the mine fire at minimal to zero charge so long as he got to keep any coal recovered without having to pay royalties to Lehigh Valley Coal Company. Sanchez’s reasonable offer was rejected by both government and the coal companies, despite the fact that neither company was actively mining and had merely become absentee landlords since the coal industry gave way to oil and gas. Neither the government nor the coal companies wanted to pony up the cost for extinguishing the fire. On August 17th 1962, the contract was awarded to Bridy, Inc. – a contractor out of the nearby community of Mt. Carmel. Bridy’s bid was estimated to be around $20,000, although the records of the exact figure have been lost. Nearly all DMMI documents on the Centralia mine fire from 1962-1970 were conveniently “lost” by the DER.
Bridy was unsuccessful at extinguishing the fire. For many years afterward, no one with the resources, private or public, cared about the fire underground. No one cared about the ecological and health hazards caused by the toxic emissions cocktail of hydrogen sulfides and carbon monoxide. No one cared about the fact that the largest deposit of the “forgotten” fossil fuel was going up in smoke – literally. No one cared until Centralia was catapulted into the spotlight of the national media.
On Valentine’s Day of 1981, 12 year old Todd Domboski decided to take a shortcut across his grandmother’s back yard when the ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way to a yawning chasm that was 150 feet deep. Todd narrowly missed death as he clung to an exposed tree root. The heat from the inferno of the fire on the coal vein below and the toxic gases would have killed him had his 16 year old cousin not been there and pulled him to safety.
After the media fanfare, the government crunched the numbers and determined that the cost to extinguish the fire would cost $663 million, but the cost to relocate the residents and businesses of Centralia would only cost $42 million. The residents were offered a buyout. The state declared eminent domain, condemning the entire town in 1992. In 2002, the US Postal Service revoked Centralia’s zip code.
The government now owns all the property in Centralia, including the homes of a few stubborn old timers who refused to move. Although they no longer technically own their homes, they’re still required to pay property taxes on them.
The raging fire underground is headed towards Shamokin. By the time the fire burns itself out, a total of over 3700 acres of anthracite coal will be gone, up in smoke. There is estimated to be enough coal to fuel the fire for well over a hundred years. Yet, the government does not feel it is important to try and save this fossil fuel in light of the fuel poverty caused by unaffordable gas and oil prices. Solar and geothermal energy are solutions which only affluent home and business owners can afford. But 75% of Americans are renters; they cannot afford to own a home – let alone a brand new home with a geothermal/wind/solar energy system. Furthermore, renters have no say as to what energy they’re hook up to because it is the landlord’s property. Until renewable and environmentally responsible energy can be provided at affordable prices to the majority of people, having a reserve of anthracite coal as a back-up could mitigate much unnecessary hardship and suffering. It would buy us time to make solar, wind, and geothermal more widely available to the majority of people, and ease the hardship for those most vulnerable to fuel poverty.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Baby Boomers Ask Why Gen-Xer's and Gen-Yer's Resent Them
People my age and younger have every right to be angry and blame the Boomers for the current economic mess this country is in. Boomers dominated the social and political scene of this country before my generation was even old enough to vote! Once we were old enough to vote, our votes didn’t count: we were hugely outnumbered by the Boomers. The votes and social influence of that "Me" generation brought us nothing but eviscerated social safety nets, a global Serengeti economy, a policy of blanket denial for miserly SSI benefits for the disabled, NAFTA, cuts in student aid, elimination of subsidized employment programs for the poor, and the elimination of subsidized housing and Medicaid-funded birth control. The Congress-critters and presidents who rode into power on Boomer votes brought us a job market that is a rat race to the bottom where the number of jobseekers vastly outnumbers the number of middle class jobs by 100 to 1.
The lovely George W. Bush job market and economy we now have began under the watch of a president whose claim to fame, other than being a racist and a B-rated actor, was telling Soviet Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” The “Peace, Pot, and Microdot” body-painting, free sex, draft-card burning generation would never have launched a massive peace movement protesting the Vietnam War if it was only the poor, the “gang-bangers” and “trailer trash”, coming home in body bags or coming home missing limbs only to then have the government deny them benefits. What can you expect from the generation that swapped their ponytails for Armani suits, their urban hippie squats for upscale suburban homes, and their tofu for exclusive dining club memberships?
As a 41 year old Gen-Xer, I remember how the bootstraps got sliced by the Reagan Revolution. And it was not my generation who did it. We were vastly out-gunned at the voting booth by the political sway of the Boomers who outnumbered us. I remember being young and poor and consistently told by financially secure, decently employed Boomers that I had no right to “whine” about my poverty and inability to get any chances for basic economic security, and that I was "worrying for nothing because I was only young".
Boomers acted like they were the only ones entitled to good jobs and the American Dream. They didn’t care that most Gen-Xers weren’t working for “pin money” – we needed to be able to support ourselves because many of us were on our own. Add to that a real estate bubble in the late 1980’s caused by the hippie-turned yuppie Boomers that left many of my generation one rent increase away from eviction – with no job security or opportunity to earn a living wage, and shredded social safety nets. But self-absorbed Boomers dismissed our needs and values by calling us “slackers” and telling us to “stop whining” because “we were only young.” Well, my generation didn’t stay young forever and now we find as we are entering our 40’s that we’re still crowded out of chances for the few remaining good jobs and a chance to enter the middle class – we’ve been passed over and are now being crowded out by wealthy Boomers’ kids that were born after 1980.
And when you have no health and dental care whatever your age, illness, injury, and cavities don't wait to occur until you finally get lucky in getting a middle class job with health benefits and paid sick days. And when you can't get a chance while you're young (which many of my generation didn’t), chances for good jobs are a hell of a lot slimmer at the onset of middle age due to age discrimination. This is evidenced by the countless poor Gen-Xers who are STILL unable to secure decent employment and attain home ownership as we are now entering our 40’s after getting crowded out for chances during our youth. Now that we’re approaching middle age, no one wants to hire us for the few remaining jobs left that haven’t been off-shored. As a result, most Gen-Xers are unable to afford home ownership, or the wherewithal to save any money for our own old age - which we face without even the safety net of social security. Many people my age foresaw this back in the 80’s, but our concerns as well as our votes were brushed aside by the “Me” generation that brought us Wall Street Gone Wild and the second disastrous real estate bubble within 20 years.
We were outvoted. Our generation is only 30 million strong. We didn’t count. We were “whiners” who were constantly told that if we couldn’t get a chance, that was our own tough luck. The Boomers were doing well, so they didn’t care about those of us who had nothing and very little chance of ever getting to have anything.
The Boomers had security and good jobs with benefits, and retirement accounts to boot, while most of my generation wasn’t that fortunate and never will be that fortunate! They had McMansions, we rented crappy apartments. Middle class Boomers didn't care about the poor of MY generation who graduated from high school and entered the workforce in the mid-1980's recession with a hell of a lot less opportunities than the previous generations enjoyed. Boomer votes brought us cuts in Pell Grants courtesy of the Gramm-Rudman Bill under the watch of Bush, Sr. while a college education was becoming increasingly vital to getting jobs. Boomer votes precipitated the castration of workers' rights starting with Reagan's firing the air traffic controllers. Boomer political influence resulted in the elimination of CETA (a federally subsidized jobs program for the underprivileged of ALL ages) by Ronald Wilson Reagan - a Howdy Doody president (twice elected) on the backs of the poor who were demonized for no reason other than to lend credence to unbridled greed. The Boomers kicked the ladder out from us – and the younger generation today.
But the Boomers had theirs so they didn't care. They could afford to save in 401(k)’s, while living the high life including fancy TV’s to watch shows like “Dynasty” that glorified America’s rich and shameless. Boomers arrogantly drove cars with bumper stickers that read "I'm spending my children's inheritance", and “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”
This "Me" generation told poor Gen-Xers, who were totally on their own without parental support or opportunity while trying in vain to get a chance back in the 1980's, that we should "stop whining". We were called the slackers by the Boomers who had all the good jobs while we couldn’t get a break to save our lives. Greedy Boomers told us, while we struggled on ramen noodle diets and busting our humps without time off at unstable McJobs without security, that “no one owes us a job.” Pretty hypocritical considering that these same selfish Boomers expected us to do it all on our own without a fraction of the privileges and advantages that they themselves had. Now these same self-absorbed spoiled Boomers want sympathy because they have to work past age 65. But they have no sympathy for those of my generation that never got a chance for any jobs other than minimum wage fast food, high-pressure telemarketing, or commissions-only paying sales jobs.
Without enough good jobs for my generation, we were somehow still expected to be able to make it, and if we couldn’t, oh well too bad. We were told by the “Me” generation that we were responsible for making our own opportunity in life if there was a lack of job opportunities for us; even though opportunities were rapidly sinking like the Titanic due in no small measure to policies of avarice championed by Reagan (elected twice on Boomer votes) followed by another “Greed Is Good” president, George Herbert Walker Bush.
Count Clinton and the Shrub in, too. It was Clinton who signed NAFTA and House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s draconian Welfare Reform Act into law in 1996. The economy for anyone not in the top 10% got even worse under the direction of the Shrub – another worshipper of corporate greed that rode in on wealthy Boomer votes.
Now my generation is entering our middle age years a hell of a lot poorer with a hell of a lot less hope, economic security, and opportunity than any previous generation since World War II. And who the hell is going to take care of us after we’ve been cheated out of opportunities all our lives so we couldn’t get on our feet, let alone save money? Yet we, along with the younger Gen Y-ers aren’t supposed to be bitter and angry. It wasn’t our votes that elected America’s biggest Scrooges like Presidents Reagan, Poppy Bush, and now the Shrub; plus all the woman-hating, rich white male alpha dipshit Congressmen like Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich who brought us this mess by sticking it to the poor (especially to women) with welfare cuts while simultaneously limiting access to birth control, and then Balkanizing what’s left of a disappearing middle class with unfair “free trade” policies.
Boomers are crying because they think their “golden years” suck. Everything is always all about them. But they never cared about those of us who will probably be spending our old age starving and homeless out on the streets because there won’t even be social security to fall back on for those of us not lucky enough to have good jobs to be able to save anything to begin with. Instead of being called Generation X, we should be called Generation Fucked.
The lovely George W. Bush job market and economy we now have began under the watch of a president whose claim to fame, other than being a racist and a B-rated actor, was telling Soviet Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” The “Peace, Pot, and Microdot” body-painting, free sex, draft-card burning generation would never have launched a massive peace movement protesting the Vietnam War if it was only the poor, the “gang-bangers” and “trailer trash”, coming home in body bags or coming home missing limbs only to then have the government deny them benefits. What can you expect from the generation that swapped their ponytails for Armani suits, their urban hippie squats for upscale suburban homes, and their tofu for exclusive dining club memberships?
As a 41 year old Gen-Xer, I remember how the bootstraps got sliced by the Reagan Revolution. And it was not my generation who did it. We were vastly out-gunned at the voting booth by the political sway of the Boomers who outnumbered us. I remember being young and poor and consistently told by financially secure, decently employed Boomers that I had no right to “whine” about my poverty and inability to get any chances for basic economic security, and that I was "worrying for nothing because I was only young".
Boomers acted like they were the only ones entitled to good jobs and the American Dream. They didn’t care that most Gen-Xers weren’t working for “pin money” – we needed to be able to support ourselves because many of us were on our own. Add to that a real estate bubble in the late 1980’s caused by the hippie-turned yuppie Boomers that left many of my generation one rent increase away from eviction – with no job security or opportunity to earn a living wage, and shredded social safety nets. But self-absorbed Boomers dismissed our needs and values by calling us “slackers” and telling us to “stop whining” because “we were only young.” Well, my generation didn’t stay young forever and now we find as we are entering our 40’s that we’re still crowded out of chances for the few remaining good jobs and a chance to enter the middle class – we’ve been passed over and are now being crowded out by wealthy Boomers’ kids that were born after 1980.
And when you have no health and dental care whatever your age, illness, injury, and cavities don't wait to occur until you finally get lucky in getting a middle class job with health benefits and paid sick days. And when you can't get a chance while you're young (which many of my generation didn’t), chances for good jobs are a hell of a lot slimmer at the onset of middle age due to age discrimination. This is evidenced by the countless poor Gen-Xers who are STILL unable to secure decent employment and attain home ownership as we are now entering our 40’s after getting crowded out for chances during our youth. Now that we’re approaching middle age, no one wants to hire us for the few remaining jobs left that haven’t been off-shored. As a result, most Gen-Xers are unable to afford home ownership, or the wherewithal to save any money for our own old age - which we face without even the safety net of social security. Many people my age foresaw this back in the 80’s, but our concerns as well as our votes were brushed aside by the “Me” generation that brought us Wall Street Gone Wild and the second disastrous real estate bubble within 20 years.
We were outvoted. Our generation is only 30 million strong. We didn’t count. We were “whiners” who were constantly told that if we couldn’t get a chance, that was our own tough luck. The Boomers were doing well, so they didn’t care about those of us who had nothing and very little chance of ever getting to have anything.
The Boomers had security and good jobs with benefits, and retirement accounts to boot, while most of my generation wasn’t that fortunate and never will be that fortunate! They had McMansions, we rented crappy apartments. Middle class Boomers didn't care about the poor of MY generation who graduated from high school and entered the workforce in the mid-1980's recession with a hell of a lot less opportunities than the previous generations enjoyed. Boomer votes brought us cuts in Pell Grants courtesy of the Gramm-Rudman Bill under the watch of Bush, Sr. while a college education was becoming increasingly vital to getting jobs. Boomer votes precipitated the castration of workers' rights starting with Reagan's firing the air traffic controllers. Boomer political influence resulted in the elimination of CETA (a federally subsidized jobs program for the underprivileged of ALL ages) by Ronald Wilson Reagan - a Howdy Doody president (twice elected) on the backs of the poor who were demonized for no reason other than to lend credence to unbridled greed. The Boomers kicked the ladder out from us – and the younger generation today.
But the Boomers had theirs so they didn't care. They could afford to save in 401(k)’s, while living the high life including fancy TV’s to watch shows like “Dynasty” that glorified America’s rich and shameless. Boomers arrogantly drove cars with bumper stickers that read "I'm spending my children's inheritance", and “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”
This "Me" generation told poor Gen-Xers, who were totally on their own without parental support or opportunity while trying in vain to get a chance back in the 1980's, that we should "stop whining". We were called the slackers by the Boomers who had all the good jobs while we couldn’t get a break to save our lives. Greedy Boomers told us, while we struggled on ramen noodle diets and busting our humps without time off at unstable McJobs without security, that “no one owes us a job.” Pretty hypocritical considering that these same selfish Boomers expected us to do it all on our own without a fraction of the privileges and advantages that they themselves had. Now these same self-absorbed spoiled Boomers want sympathy because they have to work past age 65. But they have no sympathy for those of my generation that never got a chance for any jobs other than minimum wage fast food, high-pressure telemarketing, or commissions-only paying sales jobs.
Without enough good jobs for my generation, we were somehow still expected to be able to make it, and if we couldn’t, oh well too bad. We were told by the “Me” generation that we were responsible for making our own opportunity in life if there was a lack of job opportunities for us; even though opportunities were rapidly sinking like the Titanic due in no small measure to policies of avarice championed by Reagan (elected twice on Boomer votes) followed by another “Greed Is Good” president, George Herbert Walker Bush.
Count Clinton and the Shrub in, too. It was Clinton who signed NAFTA and House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s draconian Welfare Reform Act into law in 1996. The economy for anyone not in the top 10% got even worse under the direction of the Shrub – another worshipper of corporate greed that rode in on wealthy Boomer votes.
Now my generation is entering our middle age years a hell of a lot poorer with a hell of a lot less hope, economic security, and opportunity than any previous generation since World War II. And who the hell is going to take care of us after we’ve been cheated out of opportunities all our lives so we couldn’t get on our feet, let alone save money? Yet we, along with the younger Gen Y-ers aren’t supposed to be bitter and angry. It wasn’t our votes that elected America’s biggest Scrooges like Presidents Reagan, Poppy Bush, and now the Shrub; plus all the woman-hating, rich white male alpha dipshit Congressmen like Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich who brought us this mess by sticking it to the poor (especially to women) with welfare cuts while simultaneously limiting access to birth control, and then Balkanizing what’s left of a disappearing middle class with unfair “free trade” policies.
Boomers are crying because they think their “golden years” suck. Everything is always all about them. But they never cared about those of us who will probably be spending our old age starving and homeless out on the streets because there won’t even be social security to fall back on for those of us not lucky enough to have good jobs to be able to save anything to begin with. Instead of being called Generation X, we should be called Generation Fucked.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Food Wars
In the wake of unaffordable fuel and energy prices, the price of food has skyrocketed - aided by the promotion of ethanol. The poor in Third World countries such as Haiti are starving, attempting to stave off hunger by eating dirt cookies while their government does nothing. Approximately 80% of Haitians live in abject poverty. Haiti's poor demonstrated with empty plates shouting, "We are hungry!" as they marched onto the grounds of the presidential palace. The UN Security Council dispatched "Blue Helmets" - the UN Peacekeeping Forces - to quell the riots. Instead of distributing food to the starving via the UN World Food Programme, the UN troops shot the protesters. The official count reported in mainstream media was 5, but independent journalists report a much higher number. Hundreds were injured by UN bullets.
Meanwhile, here in the USA, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Medical has waged another type of food war, specifically targeting American women. Their collective femicide agenda has convinced women to hate themselves and their bodies by promoting an unrealistic standard of beauty and social acceptance. As a result of being deluged with this standard, women aren't much better off emotionally, socially, politically or economically than they were in the middle ages. Women who fail to measure up to this airbrushed ideal on the cover of Vanity Fair are routinely denied good jobs, are unemployed longer, and are paid 12% less than their thinner trimmer peers.
Men are also convinced to devalue women. Men expect their partners to be "ideal", to live up to the image of what is desirable - size 0 with perky breasts, no stretch marks, scars, or pouches of excess loose stomach skin (mommy pouches). The result is an increased severity in body image issues and self-hating caused by media promotion of unattainable ideals in magazines, on TV, and in Hollywood. The majority of younger generation women recently polled admitted to avoiding pregnancy out of fear of getting fat and incurring other permanent childbirth battle scars such as stretch marks, varicose veins, deflated/sagging breasts, and loose stomach skin that never regains elasticity. Men are increasingly dumping their partners for superficial reasons because they're often in denial with the realities of things such as metabolism, mobility limiting injuries, and...pregnancy.
They forget that pregnancy does not entail going to Montgomery Ward and selecting the genetically perfect embryo with a matching Gucci bag to carry it in during gestation. They are disappointed with common permanent changes to women's bodies from pregnancy and birth. And many men are less than kind about making new moms feel inadequate if she can't hit the gym immediately after delivery. Women's fear of being dumped during or after a pregnancy (especially if they're unmarried) is not unfounded. Consequently, many women are avoiding pregnancy altogether. Of those who do choose to get pregnant, an increasing number are eating-disordered and/or extreme dieters while pregnant according to new studies by the World Health Organization. Eating-disordered pregnant women struggle to achieve the Hollywood starlet "perfect pregnant body." Staring or making comments like "you're so huge" reinforces poor body image issues in pregnant women.
Women are increasingly stressed due to being scrutinized, whether they're pregnant or not. Many young men in the age 21-35 age bracket admitted that emotional and sexual intimacy was difficult because of women's hang-ups. But the reality is that a woman who is bombarded with daily messages that her thighs, butt, or belly is "ugly", is a woman who has difficulty relaxing and opening her legs when naked - whether to make love without being inhibited by her partner looking at her, or for routine pap smears, or to give birth with minimal stress.
The link between body image issues and eating disorders is undeniable. Eating-disordered women develop critical medical conditions that are costly - both in terms of the price of health care and in terms of human casualty. Most girls are no longer aspiring to be the next Emmy Noether, Admiral Grace Hopper, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Alice Walker, Angela Mayou, or Toni Morrison. Instead, they're aspiring to be the next Jessica Alba, Kate Moss, or Lindsey Lohan. Being a Nobel Laureate counts for nothing if you don't have the "perfect" body: size zero, cellulite-free thighs, perfect breasts, and able to wear a bikini. This is the message being sent to women and girls every day by society.
Corporate scion Donald Trump recently reduced Miss Universe to tears by threatening to take her crown away because she was, in his myopic opinion, "too fat." She is thin as a rail. If she were thinner, she'd have the figure of a pubescent boy - not that of a grown woman. It never occurred to this geriatric gas bag that he might need his eyes examined (and his attitude adjusted). Donald Trump never learned that it is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open his mouth and remove all doubt. With his track record of dumping women after they fail to meet his trophy wife standard, Donald Trump is a far cry from a good catch - regardless of his wealth and fame. His newest wife is almost young enough to be his granddaughter. But rich, self-centered alpha dipshits like the Donald have a lot of company in this war against women: The fashion industry, big media, a society that values women only on their looks acting as final arbiter in beauty and social acceptance, and plastic surgery "professionals" hawking their wares like snake oil salesmen.
All of these powerful interests have collectively launched wholesale femicide; convinced women to hate themselves and their bodies by promoting an unrealistic standard and a flawed premise for personal self worth. Women are dumped by mates and denied jobs by employers when they fail to meet the "eye candy" standard of being thin and flawless. Social exclusion is a powerful weapon. It is powerful enough to cause an increasing number of women to make themselves sick by starving themselves and ingesting chemically loaded Frankenstein diet food. It is powerful enough to make those women who have $20,000 to spare to go under the scalpel, risking disability and death in order to correct flaws - for the benefit of male gaze and profit.
What does all of this mean? Women in Third World counties like Haiti don't want to starve - they want food. They don't fret over gaining pregnancy weight, they worry that they'll die in childbirth from being severely malnourished. They don't worry about whether or not they'll be able to prance around in a thong bikini after giving birth, they're worried that their child won't live to see it's 5th birthday. The global elite seeking to reduce world population by 80% (or more) won't need to contrive food shortages here in the US to starve people in order to thin the herd - they've already used mainstream media and Hollywood to convince American women to starve themselves to oblige them.
Copyright 2008 by Jacqueline S. Homan. All rights reserved.
Meanwhile, here in the USA, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Medical has waged another type of food war, specifically targeting American women. Their collective femicide agenda has convinced women to hate themselves and their bodies by promoting an unrealistic standard of beauty and social acceptance. As a result of being deluged with this standard, women aren't much better off emotionally, socially, politically or economically than they were in the middle ages. Women who fail to measure up to this airbrushed ideal on the cover of Vanity Fair are routinely denied good jobs, are unemployed longer, and are paid 12% less than their thinner trimmer peers.
Men are also convinced to devalue women. Men expect their partners to be "ideal", to live up to the image of what is desirable - size 0 with perky breasts, no stretch marks, scars, or pouches of excess loose stomach skin (mommy pouches). The result is an increased severity in body image issues and self-hating caused by media promotion of unattainable ideals in magazines, on TV, and in Hollywood. The majority of younger generation women recently polled admitted to avoiding pregnancy out of fear of getting fat and incurring other permanent childbirth battle scars such as stretch marks, varicose veins, deflated/sagging breasts, and loose stomach skin that never regains elasticity. Men are increasingly dumping their partners for superficial reasons because they're often in denial with the realities of things such as metabolism, mobility limiting injuries, and...pregnancy.
They forget that pregnancy does not entail going to Montgomery Ward and selecting the genetically perfect embryo with a matching Gucci bag to carry it in during gestation. They are disappointed with common permanent changes to women's bodies from pregnancy and birth. And many men are less than kind about making new moms feel inadequate if she can't hit the gym immediately after delivery. Women's fear of being dumped during or after a pregnancy (especially if they're unmarried) is not unfounded. Consequently, many women are avoiding pregnancy altogether. Of those who do choose to get pregnant, an increasing number are eating-disordered and/or extreme dieters while pregnant according to new studies by the World Health Organization. Eating-disordered pregnant women struggle to achieve the Hollywood starlet "perfect pregnant body." Staring or making comments like "you're so huge" reinforces poor body image issues in pregnant women.
Women are increasingly stressed due to being scrutinized, whether they're pregnant or not. Many young men in the age 21-35 age bracket admitted that emotional and sexual intimacy was difficult because of women's hang-ups. But the reality is that a woman who is bombarded with daily messages that her thighs, butt, or belly is "ugly", is a woman who has difficulty relaxing and opening her legs when naked - whether to make love without being inhibited by her partner looking at her, or for routine pap smears, or to give birth with minimal stress.
The link between body image issues and eating disorders is undeniable. Eating-disordered women develop critical medical conditions that are costly - both in terms of the price of health care and in terms of human casualty. Most girls are no longer aspiring to be the next Emmy Noether, Admiral Grace Hopper, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Alice Walker, Angela Mayou, or Toni Morrison. Instead, they're aspiring to be the next Jessica Alba, Kate Moss, or Lindsey Lohan. Being a Nobel Laureate counts for nothing if you don't have the "perfect" body: size zero, cellulite-free thighs, perfect breasts, and able to wear a bikini. This is the message being sent to women and girls every day by society.
Corporate scion Donald Trump recently reduced Miss Universe to tears by threatening to take her crown away because she was, in his myopic opinion, "too fat." She is thin as a rail. If she were thinner, she'd have the figure of a pubescent boy - not that of a grown woman. It never occurred to this geriatric gas bag that he might need his eyes examined (and his attitude adjusted). Donald Trump never learned that it is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open his mouth and remove all doubt. With his track record of dumping women after they fail to meet his trophy wife standard, Donald Trump is a far cry from a good catch - regardless of his wealth and fame. His newest wife is almost young enough to be his granddaughter. But rich, self-centered alpha dipshits like the Donald have a lot of company in this war against women: The fashion industry, big media, a society that values women only on their looks acting as final arbiter in beauty and social acceptance, and plastic surgery "professionals" hawking their wares like snake oil salesmen.
All of these powerful interests have collectively launched wholesale femicide; convinced women to hate themselves and their bodies by promoting an unrealistic standard and a flawed premise for personal self worth. Women are dumped by mates and denied jobs by employers when they fail to meet the "eye candy" standard of being thin and flawless. Social exclusion is a powerful weapon. It is powerful enough to cause an increasing number of women to make themselves sick by starving themselves and ingesting chemically loaded Frankenstein diet food. It is powerful enough to make those women who have $20,000 to spare to go under the scalpel, risking disability and death in order to correct flaws - for the benefit of male gaze and profit.
What does all of this mean? Women in Third World counties like Haiti don't want to starve - they want food. They don't fret over gaining pregnancy weight, they worry that they'll die in childbirth from being severely malnourished. They don't worry about whether or not they'll be able to prance around in a thong bikini after giving birth, they're worried that their child won't live to see it's 5th birthday. The global elite seeking to reduce world population by 80% (or more) won't need to contrive food shortages here in the US to starve people in order to thin the herd - they've already used mainstream media and Hollywood to convince American women to starve themselves to oblige them.
Copyright 2008 by Jacqueline S. Homan. All rights reserved.
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