It is with pride that I present the first of a serialized account of my recent adventures in the electrifying 21st Century Amusement Park. No, I don’t mean the ride in the Large Hadron Collider (although that final twenty-minute acceleration in the super proton synchrotron to the peak seven teraelectronvolts is worth every penny). With Labor Day right around the corner, it’s the rusty merry-go-round in the World of Employmentland. Or Non-Employmentland, as is the case for many of us. Some events have been invented for ease of understanding and to keep the narrative at a bubbly and high-spirited pace; others I left to burn with the unquenchable taste of truth. It is from these contrasts that create those magical moments for this Op-Ed columnist and imagery that resonates with familiar tones in his readership.

PART ONE

I had just set the controls of my personal airship, the Silver Pelican, on auto-glide over the Chesapeake Bay in preparation for another grueling session in front of the iMac, in my continuing, though heretofore unsuccessful quest to find a paying job. The internets, of course, are the preferred application procedure for almost every potential employer, putting as many obstacles between the applicant and hiring manager as possible. Meet or talk to a real person? In your dreams.

After pouring myself another mango and tonic (a variation on a Rum Rockeroo; more on this later), I loaded the Futami self-confusing artificial intelligence employment database software into the Mac’s hyper drive, punched up The Who Sell Out on the PA system, and began to waste another afternoon pretending I share Corporate America’s absurd notion that an $8.50/hr. job has as many qualifications and responsibilities as the vice president of the company. Hey–you’re advertising for a grocery clerk. Doesn’t matter though; they believe it. Sick thing is, it may. They just compensate it like it was 1910 instead of 2010.

We’re rolling back the wages and benefits for you!

I recently spoke with a career counselor who told me to re-do my entire documentation–resume, cover letters, all of it. She said at my age, seeing as how I’m looking at that “career change thing” (a nice way of saying that I’m really in the soup), I should chuck anything that doesn’t relate to the race-to-the-bottom jobs for which I’m applying. Unfortunately, I saw her point: they’re looking for young drones who will work for nothing, and expect less. Intelligent, creative types, especially those of us nearing retirement, are now applying against people less than half our age, not to mention half-way across the world, for entry-level jobs. We are little more than walking advertisements for Goody’s Headache Powder for HR Departments. I took out almost everything sophisticated relative to thirty year’s experience and replaced it with meaningless fluff like “team player,” and “takes initiative,” as if I was sixteen years old. My resume, my life, and my achievements, for what they’re worth, are now reduced to one page.

At least when I was sixteen, you could just walk into a place, actually meet the manager, and after briefly looking you over, they’d say something like, “Can you start on Monday?”

Near the top of my newly revised curriculum vitae, under my name and address, is a header for “OBJECTIVE.” After saving my latest high score on “Galaxy Girl” (part of an impressive video game collection on the Silver Pelican’s raid array), I decided to be honest with everybody right off the bat (they’ll figure it out quickly enough anyway), re-opened my resume and wrote “Apply range of abilities toward expanded career path.” Sounds credible, right? My career counselor liked it, but still felt it a bit dicey. She suggested adding something eye-catching like “Sales Associate” or “Customer Service Rep” after that. Has it really boiled down to this: at this moment in history, in the once-greatest country in the industrialized world, if you’re middle-aged and unemployed and don’t have a resume that confuses people with Albert Einstein, or don’t know him personally, you are basically hosed?

“Hey Mr. Buzzwell, check it out: another garden-variety middle-ager trying to get a lousy job here at USA, Inc. One more middle-class Dad who played life fair and square; close to retirement, and then we wiped out his job and half his IRA at the worst possible time. Now he’s just trying to find something to stay afloat.” “Sucks to be him, all right,” says Buzzwell. “Toss his paperwork out with the rest and tell him the usual– too many applications…wasn’t among the best qualified..all that crap. On second thought, don’t reply at all. Just ignore him. And then run and get me a triple-shot caramel machiatto cappucino with extra soy milk foam and cinnamon sprinkles. And make it a big one, will ya?”

The mass media touts the mature worker as a real asset to the employment ranks. Wise, stable, experienced, dependable, clocked in on time for thirty years, responsible, knows the drill. The truth is we’re annoying. We expect something fair for our efforts, and just a little protection for our jobs and our savings. The 98% of us who every day scrape off more imitation leather from the Chinese shoes offered at Lou’s Loafer Lounge still vaguely remember something about our once-enviable quality of life. What we are is expendable. And they’re trying to finish us off.

It’s a real self-esteem killer when you discover that even though you’ve had a good job for thirty years you evidently don’t even have what it takes to work at the box store. In the past year I’ve filled out applications at my friendly Bag ‘n’ Load, my neighborhood Bloat ‘n’ Go, the various marts – Wart Mart, Drain Mart and Cringe Mart, the Buy-Too-Much, and even our local Food Parts store. I recall one of them had a remarkably comprehensive application for a position that could have been competently filled by an common budgerigar.

In fact, get this: Julian, my pet budgie, applied at the Wag ‘n’ Bag, the big pet warehouse down the street as a part-time customer service associate and was actually scheduled for damn interview! These mecenaries parlayed a sweet tax deal with the county with the usual bogus promise of bringing more jobs and of course wiped out all the neighborhood mom and pop pet shops: Bob’s Budgie Barn, Cap’n Burl’s Bow-Wow Bunkhouse, Fish! Fish! Fish!, Patty’s Possum Palace, Cousin Carl’s Kitty Kat Korral – all gone.

Hell, those bastards at the Wag ‘n’ Bag never even called me back! I was so pissed I didn’t speak to Julian for a week, and that’s a big sacrifice for me, as I have more insightful political discussions with that plumed pundit  than with many human acquaintances. The only reason he didn’t take the job was because after meeting the pimply-faced department supervisor, an insufferable cockatiel named Boogie, it turned out they were really looking more for a cage cleaning associate than the toy demonstrator the ad had led Julian to believe. When you’re being paid in seeds, you can only tolerate so much.

At any rate, mighty slim pick’ins if you’re an unemployed human over forty. Over fifty? Are you crazy? Pushing sixty? We’ve always had age discrimination in this country but this feels deliberate. How could anyone survive on these wages in Cheesedale, let alone Manhattan?

I want to go up to some radiantly insipid hiring manager at a food store and ask him with a straight face if maybe some additional credits or classes at the community college would help. I know I’m skilled with vegetables and I’m strong on fruit juices–always have been– but all right, there are other areas in which I can no doubt improve, things like canned goods arranging and cereal box deployment. But does my future manager really think that’s what’s holding me back from getting a foot in the door in the exciting and competitive world of retail grocery clerking at this point?

I suppose I should take the Republicans’ advice and just unload one of my Aston Martins or sell off about twenty thousand shares of Goldman Sachs and be back on the links in no time. Or maybe move back in with my 80-year-old mom. How about move in with Newt Gingrich’s or Mitch McConnell’s mom instead? Certified, anti-american lunatic John Boehner wants to raise the retirement age to 70. Hey John, take a break from your golf game and have a look around at the conditions you and your corporate profiteers have created. America is just a worker’s paradise, isn’t it? Had we all not taken “early retirement” at 55, we’d just be drowning in good paying jobs at seventy.

Damn, I should have stuck around, and I can’t wait to tell my kids about Congressman Boehner’s fantastic job creation plan. Can you imagine the enthusiasm tingling through all the young people, minorities, middle-agers, and the rest of the deferentially-described “discouraged” workers (whose real unemployment figures are calculated at depression-level rates of over 20%), as this torrent of payroll checks cascades over their heads? Why not raise the age to draw Social Security to 80! And throw Medicare into the Wall Street casino while you’re at it, too. It’s just socialism for losers anyway, and Reverbo The Human Boy and 90% of the rest of his peers will be pushing up bindweed before they even see their first check. Let’s repeal the entire liberal agenda and privatize the whole damn thing. If you ain’t rich, you can’t afford it.  Corporatocracy at it’s most efficient. It will be jobs-o-rama here in no time. The conservatives can see it now: 100% employment finally realized in the USA under their watch. Welcome to Drain-Mart. Too bad we don’t pay you enough to buy anything we sell here.

They are trying to finish us off. I know I said that already but I like the way it sounds and I really believe it. It almost doesn’t matter that hardly anyone with an IQ above 12 takes these implausible ideas seriously, as long as the mass media keeps jamming microphones into the mouths of avaricious schemers who are actively promoting these destructive models.

Well, as long as my lighter-than-air account was still open at Harry’s Helium Hideaway, I was good for another week of cruising for income generating opportunities on board the Silver Pelican. I had just noticed an opening for a floor mat rotator at an airship salvage yard, when the weirdest damned noise suddenly came from somewhere aft of the aft ballast tanks. I can only describe it like a whooshing sound, as if the rear cargo hatch had sprung open. My investigation revealed the most surprising and delightful source of the audio phenomenon imaginable. Emerging from a luminous cloud of sparkles and beams, and attired in the latest in leisure blimp-wear, was none other than Ross Perot!

I stood there, stunned. He does look good in pastels; it seemed the appropriate response. The peculiar but prophetic 1992 United States presidential candidate shortly broke the silence. “Now Larry, you’re probably thinkin’…well, Ross, what are you doing here? What’s the deal on this? Well, the answer is on these charts I’ve prepared,” he said, taking out a handful of tables and graphs from an overstuffed briefcase. “Fix me one of them Rum Rockeroos that your drinkin’ and let’s set these up in your command pod, Larry. You and I are going to fire a bulls eye right into the whole job jugular vein. By the way, I. Love. This. Blimp. How come I don’t have about six of these?”

I thought of saying, “Ross, you could probably buy sixty of them,” but all I could think of while staring at this incredible vision, whose existence on my ship was unclear by all accounts, was, “Why is he calling me Larry?”

Next: Ross and Reverbo load an IGBB (Inter-Galactic Ballistic Bazooka) into the Pelican’s forward launch tube and blast 30 years of economic madness a new blow hole.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                 Critic-At-Large

August 27, 2010 By Tanya Somanader at 12:43 pm

With the election of President Barack Obama, the country heralded the coming of an age in which an African-American could overcome significant historical prejudice to ascend to the presidency. But while the country celebrates this collective step forward, a Nettleton, Mississippi public school is taking a clear step back. According to Nettleton Middle School’s rules, children running for certain class officer posts must meet a specific race requirement: to be president, the child must be white.

A school memo, obtained by MixedandHappy and The Smoking Gun, was passed out to every 6th, 7th, and 8th grader to inform them of the breakdown. The upcoming elections are divided between offices delineated for black and white students. Of the 12 offices for which students can compete, “eight are earmarked for white students, while four are termed ‘black seats.” The presidency is reserved for white students across each grade, but a black student is permitted to be the 8th grade vice-president or reporter, the 7th grade treasurer, or the 6th grade reporter. So, along with a “B” average and “a good disciplinary status and moral character,” a child hoping to represent his or her class must be the right race:

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The retail company Target just gave over $150,000 to buy ads supporting a far-right Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota.

That’s bad enough. But the stakes are much higher than one candidate and one company. If we don’t push back hard, this will just be the tip of the iceberg. Other corporations will learn that they can pour money into elections to buy the outcome they want. So we’re sending a message to Target’s CEO that we won’t shop there if Target continues spending money on elections.

Sign Petition Here

I am watching Richard Engel embedded with part of the 4th Stryker Brigade as it heads down the road towards Kuwait.  They are less than 20 miles from the border. Our guys in Iraq are coming home at last.

I’m going to go cry now for the over 4,415 soldiers who came home in a coffin.

UPDATE: There is a General waiting at the border and he is saluting the returning soldiers as they cross into Kuwait.

UPDATE: It is 7:08 PM Eastern time and Richard Engel can see the lights of Kuwait from the truck he is riding in.  He will turn his camera around to film the last combat soldiers crossing the border.

UPDATE: They are at the border.  The soldiers have unloaded their weapons.  The vehicle with Richard Engel has crossed out of Iraq and into Kuwait and they are SAFE!

UPDATE: The last of the convoy is coming across now, the drivers hitting their horns in  what can only be jubilation.  Some will be headed to Afghanistan in a few months,  but the rest are taking the first step in a long journey that will end at Ft. Lewis, Washington.

It is 8:51 Eastern time and the gate between Iraq and Kuwait has closed.  They are out.

Welcome back guys.  We’ve missed you.

Watch MSNBC coverage HERE

One war down, one to go……

The secret, evil plan to use George Soros’ money to give away free beer at Netroots Nation. At least, that’s my conclusion after interviewing strangers at the confab in Las Vegas for thirty minutes. Enjoy!

If you’d like to embed this, please use my code and not Veoh’s. Theirs sucks.

	Manchin	Hechler
1.Used Car Salesman Good Looks	Advantage: Manchin
2.Actual experience in Washington		Advantage: Hechler
3.GREAT Hair	Advantage: Manchin
4.Trans-generational Wisdom		Advantage: Hechler
5.Fawning obsequiousness to Big Coal	Advantage: Manchin
6.Unimpeachable commitment to Human Rights		Advantage: Hechler
7.Yachting Experience	Advantage: Manchin
8.Educational Experience		Advantage: Hechler
9.Motorcycling Experience	Advantage: Manchin
10.Tremendous accomplishments in Congress on behalf of working West Virginia families		Advantage: Hechler
11.Ability to saddle WV with Earl Ray Tomblin as Governor	Advantage: Manchin
12.Saving the lives of mining families		Advantage: Hechler
13.Likely to vote in U.S. Senate more like a Republican than a Democrat	Advantage: Manchin
14.Unimpeachable commitment to Justice		Advantage: Hechler
15.Shares views similar to those of Kentucky GOP Senate nominee and Social Security despiser Rand Paul	Advantage: Manchin
16.Courage of convictions		Advantage: Hechler
17.Will make sure planet continues to get hotter,and Hotter and HOTTER and West Virginia gets flatter, and Flatter and FLATTER	Advantage: Manchin
18.Shares views in-line with a majority of West Virginia voters		Advantage: Hechler
19.Will make sure WV waters become more poisonous and West Virginians keep getting sicker.	Advantage: Manchin
20.Eminently qualified to sit in the U.S. Senate (a body named from the Latin root word meaning “old men”)		Advantage: Hechler
21.Privatized WV Workers Comp; likely to think the same way about Social Security	Advantage: Manchin
22.Less likely to be indicted during term in Senate		Advantage: Hechler

Executive Summary

As you can see, the head-to-head comparison is almost dead-even.  Only with a closer examination of the metrics may we see what the data genuinely discloses.  While Joe Manchin clearly has it all over Mr. Hechler in the things that really matter in American politics, things like hair, yachting and those used car salesman good looks, we really cannot ignore the fact that Mr. Hechler has what the old-timers liked to call “substance.”

Consider the candidates’ commitments to social justice.  While it’s true that Joe Manchin has had opportunities to actually do social justice, he really hasn’t shown much interest.  Why else, when tens of thousands of people around the world begged for a new Marsh Fork Elementary School, did he and his former staffer (and recently appointed senatorial seat-warmer), Carte Goodwin, actively oppose it?  Why did Joe have to wait until “outsiders” came in to finally get on the right side of justice and history?  On the other hand, as he noted at the time, when many members of Congress jetted away to Cape Kennedy for some NASA event, then-Congressman Hechler chose instead to risk arrest, beatings and even death to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma.  To me, it’s clear that Mr. Hechler’s contribution to the betterment of our nation as a whole far outpaces Mr. Manchin’s tepid attempts at what he likes to call “balance.”

It is impossible to disagree that Mr. Manchin surely owns the field when it comes to courting the money.  How many politicians do you know who can hoodwink Labor into thinking he’s for working folks at the same time he’s blithely taking fistfuls of corporate cash from folks who loathe people who earn by the sweat of their brow?  Ken Hechler couldn’t do that in a million years, and never even tried.  He stood with working people, literally making possible entire next generations of mining families with his advocacy for mine safety and health legislation.  His part in the struggle for Black Lung benefits, alone, foreclosed any of the kind of love Joe Manchin gets from Corporate America.

If you work for A.T. Massey or any of the other non-union coal giants, I won’t be surprised when you vote for Joe Manchin, although Don Blankenship would far prefer you vote in the GOP Primary, what with its slate of “free-market” (read: anarchist) luminaries.  Frankly, to Mr. Manchin’s dubious credit, you really can’t tell the difference between him and a Republican, so I understand the confusion.  By comparison, Mr. Hechler is likely thought, for this day and age, quixotic for his dedication to the Democratic Party principles that made this country great.  Then again, what would you expect from a man who was on a first-name basis with an American Hero like Harry S. Truman?

One of the great successes of the modern Republican Party lies in its ability to have convinced a great number of Americans that Social Security is either dead or dying, even though the facts don’t support the conclusion.  If you’re one of those folks who believe that piece of shiny, sparkly misinformation, it will not shock me in the least when you vote for Joe Manchin on August 28.  After all, given the fact that Joe Manchin dismantled West Virginia’s government-run Workers Comp system and replaced it with a lumbering, profit-driven Frankenstein’s Monster, privatized version, you won’t be surprised when Joe Manchin starts mumbling about the need to find “balance” in privatizing Social Security.  What you’ll get from Mr. Hechler, however, are the facts: to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of Social Security’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.  It is, at present, with absolutely nothing done to augment it, wholly, fully, completely funded through 2037.  Mr. Hechler will act and vote accordingly.

Polling data has indicated that a majority of West Virginians oppose the practice of Mountaintop Removal coal extraction.  The people who make money doing it, however, are not a part of that majority, and they can be expected to vote en masse for Mr. Manchin, since he’s been consistent in his ongoing struggle to seek “balance” between his need to curry favor with the coal industry and the will of the people of West Virginia to end Mountaintop Removal.  Even though Mountaintop Removal coal accounts for less than five percent of the less than 45% of America’s electricity provided by coal generally, Mr. Manchin has continued, day after day in his dogged, determined, lonely quest to find that ”balance” between what’s good for him and what’s good for the people of the State of West Virginia.  He is a tireless seeker, Mr. Manchin.

Mr. Hechler, on the other hand, is just tireless, and refuses to hold Mr. Manchin’s youth against him.  Mr. Hechler has shown that tirelessness (not to mention courage) in his willingness to be beaten by thugs on a march to commemorate the Battle of Blair Mountain (which, interestingly, Joe Manchin helped de-list from the National Register of Historic Places and, he hopes, from West Virginians’ collective consciousness, as well), not to mention being arrested in his effort to stand up for little children being poisoned by a coal prep plant next to an elementary school.  Come to think of it, where was Joe Manchin that day in June 2009 when Ken Hechler was standing up for little children?  Probably out hunting that elusive “balance.”  I hear it likes to nest with snipes.

Not to be outdone in Civil Disobedience, however, Mr. Manchin is on yet another quest.  If elected to fill Robert C. Byrd’s unexpired term, we may well see him cross that Finish Line in the next two years.  Mr. Manchin will not allow Mr. Hechler to outshine him in the Getting Arrested Department.  We may yet see the fruits of Mr. Manchin’s labors if he is, in fact, shown doing the now-all-too-familiar “perp walk” into the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston (Irony!) following the Federal Grand Jury Investigation of his administration that is presently under way.  Bravo, Joe!  We all admire initiative in such a balanced man!

So it is that we see a comparison much closer than I’m sure Mr. Hechler would prefer.  Granted, compared to the half-century of public service Mr. Hechler has rendered to the people of both his nation and his state, Mr. Manchin’s resume must look a little, well, thin, and wanting in gravitas, but I’ve never known Mr. Hechler to take an election cycle for granted.  More than anything, Mr. Hechler’s long experience in public service gives him a sense of perspective that no amount of that elusive balance can surmount.  He understands that this isn’t simply a statewide election; that, in fact, this election holds in the scales the fate of a nation.  West Virginia literally powered the Industrial Revolution.  Now, West Virginians will decide how we power the 21^st century.  Will we power it with compassion, courage and vision, the hallmarks of Mr. Hechler’s entire life, or will we power it with the heady-but-toxic fuel of lobbyist-delivered Corporate Money that flows like what Dr. King called “a mighty river” into Joe Manchin’s campaign, potentially influencing his senatorial votes on the issues of our day, not the least among them the pressing question of whether we will continue to cook ourselves right off this planet?  What kind of “balance” is there between the frying pan and the fire?

For the answer, and if you prefer not to cook your own goose (and that of every other American) in either frying pan OR fire, go to the polls Saturday, August 28 and cast your ballot for Ken Hechler.

Bob Kincaid is a broadcaster and activist living in West Virginia.  He was recently recognized as one of the Top 50 internet broadcasters in the country by the industry publication “Talkers” magazine.  He can be heard nightly around the world from 6 to 9 p.m., Eastern Time at www.headonradionetwork.com

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First Posted: 08- 4-10 04:45 PM   |   Updated: 08- 4-10 04:48 PM

Proposition 8 has been overturned by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, reports CNN.

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