Those of us born in the early years of the baby boom are in or approaching our 70s and that's scary shit. Can we say the world is a better place than we discovered it in our teens? In some ways, yes. But then we got older, had families, got corporate, and lazy. Now it feels like we're again staring into the abyss, and I wonder what, if anything, we're going to do about it.
Sending in my last estimated tax checks for the year. Never fun but particularly painful the past two years. I’m helping to pay for that insane person in the white house and all the terrible things this government has done in the past two years. At least with the budget impasse many of them aren’t working and can’t do any more harm. Unfortunately many good people are also not working.
I think we should all just say no more tax payments until the tramp is gone.
I always thought that as I got older Life would make more sense, but just the opposite happened
The horizon is nearer and the options and possibilities are fewer.
It was reported today that a massive mass transit project in our neighborhood is over one year behind schedule and 10% over budget. And this is less than 9 months after the project started.
The consortium of construction companies that are involved are the same ones that nearly bankrupt the transit system a few years ago with massive overruns in cost and time on another project. Yet they were hired again. Why?
Politics and greed. Pure and simple.
The companies make big political contributions. They take the politicians and the bureaucrats on lavish trips. They dramatically underbid the project to get the award. And you know they have a timetable for when they will announce the predetermined overruns that will eventually get them to where the bid should have been in the first place (but they never would have gotten the job with an honest bid).
This happens everywhere and we just roll our eyes and let it slide.
Wake up people!
I was just looking through some old idea books/journals and got depressed that so much that’s wrong with the world hasn’t changed in the past 10, 20, 30 – 50 years.
Greed, racism, intolerance, child and spousal abuse, environmental neglect, crime … all as bad today as in the late 1960s when I graduated from college as part of a generation that was sure it would make a difference. We made some superficial changes but we certainly haven’t changed anything fundamentally. And in fact with the current mad man president we’re seriously regressing.
Entry from August 3, 1991: “We have grown so cynical with politicians, and the examples of corruption and self-interest are so extensive/pervasive that they seem to have lost all impact. Would have to be truly heinous to have any impact and maybe not even then.”