SWF seeks good bank, must not have sub-prime loans

Or
Trickle down economic collapse

Well, I’m sure everyone has heard by now that Washington Mutual, a.k.a. Wamu, is defunct. If you haven’t heard (I don’t know which hole in the ground you’ve been sticking your head in) J.P. Morgan Chase bought up what remained of Wamu, with the help of the FDIC.

I could say many things about the collapse on Wall Street, including this is what no oversight or effective regulation will get you, and they’re greedy little bastards up there at the top, maybe it’s about time they had some sort of reality check. As for the $700 billion bailout, why don’t we spend it on making sure the base is solid? FDR and his advisors had a pretty good idea of how to handle this sort of situation. Make sure that the people at the bottom are taken care of and have a little extra money to spend and then you get trickle up economics. So far I have seen no evidence that trickle down economics is effective. Bailing out Wall Street isn’t going to help reduce the unemployment rate in the next month or is it going to get people who have lost their homes back into a stable position. I’m glad that the congress did not approve the bailout. Most of it would have ended up in the pockets of CEOs anyway. I’m glad that congress realizes that there need to be some restrictions and regulations to go along with that sort of bailout, but I am disappointed that there has not been a movement to reinstate the sort of regulations we used to have to prevent this sort of situation in the first place.

Deregulation has been the name of the game since Regan went wild with it in the 80s. In the name of a free market, and with a laissez-faire attitude the US government went about removing things such as Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This gave free reign for the banks and other large corporations to do what ever the **** they wanted. But the idea (allegedly) was that the market would regulate itself and everything would work out okay. I’ve always thought that was a fine idea, as long as there were no people involved, ‘cause you know, people tend to get greedy. Well, the same people who were on this deregulation and free market kick, suddenly are all for government intervention. Well, government intervention in the form of corporate welfare: it’s fine if the regulation stays gone. It’s very hypocritical and not enough people are calling them on it. If its free markets everyone wants then fine, let there be free markets and see what happens. Let the companies collapse, let them consolidate into monopolies, let them speculate and artificially raise prices. Don’t do anything to or for them, including bailouts out or FDIC brokered buyouts (the Indymac deal cost the FDIC a lot of money). I don’t think it’s going to look pretty for most of us.

Back to Wamu: my real disappointment in this situation is that I didn’t get around to writing about my horrible experience with Wamu over the past weeks before this all happened. It doesn’t have quite the same vindictive flavor or sense of warning as it would have early last week. I would hope for the newly assigned J.P. Morgan Chase customers, that Chase does not do business the same way as Wamu. But as long as banks can do as they please, who knows.

Anyway, since I no longer am no longer vengeful, I will make this short(er). A couple of weeks ago I deposited two checks. One from my insurance company, a reputable company, and my payroll check, which I have deposited on a regular basis for quite some time. I was given a receipt from the teller that showed that the money was in my account. Everything appeared to be in order. I went out and spent the insurance check, which I was waiting on for a particular purpose. Everything was still fine. I still had plenty of money in the bank according to my online bank statement. Two days went by and I went to a drugstore to get just a few small things and found that my bankcard was rejected. I went home and checked my online statement again and I had a -$1700 available balance! I had no idea what was going on, because the running total showed that I should still have plenty of money left in my account. The checks were listed there as deposited and their amounts credited towards the running total. So I went into the bank to find out what had happened. The lady who I ended up talking to told me all kinds of ridiculous things. First, my account was to new so they had to hold my checks. This was untrue. My account had been open for well over the thirty-day new account period when you have to wait a few days before checks show up in your account. And if this had been the case they would have been on hold immediately not a couple of days after already being in my account. I asked if this was the case then how come the tellers never said anything to me when I made my deposit, and why did I not find out anything about this until I came into the bank. Then I was told that they couldn’t verify whether or not the checks were good. The reason being that my payroll check was hand written. BS. My last five payroll checks have been hand written and were deposited without a problem. The woman told me that I had to get letters from the other banks to prove that the other checks were good. I actually at one point went to one of the other banks, which happened to be across the street. They told me that they don’t do that, ever. When I went back to Wamu, the woman told me there was nothing she could do. I’ll admit I was upset. I actually started crying earlier, when she told me that I wouldn’t have any money for a week. The woman was so patronizing about it too, which made me even more upset. She started saying every time she got someone new on the phone from the main office, “we have a problem situation here.” I was already stressed out, and then to find out I couldn’t buy groceries or gas to get to work for a week, yeah I was upset. But when became apparent that they were just ****ing with me, and that nothing was going to get fixed unless a made a bigger fuss, I did. I yelled. I think I actually told other bank customers to get out while they could. This whole time I kept trying to call my payroll person and my insurance claim person. It turned out that the insurance person was gone for the day, so no help there. The woman finally asked me to leave, if I was going to yell. She threatened to call security on me. So I left. At this point I finally get a hold of my payroll person who tells me that no one ever tried to reach her to find out if the check was good. She says that it very strange that they would be doing this. Usually, she says, the bank just calls her up if they have a question about a check and she verifies it end of story. She said that usually the employee never even hears about it. So I go back into the bank with her on the phone and try to hand her over to the woman to verify at least that check. She won’t at first, but I insist and finally she takes the phone and talk to my payroll person, but only gets her phone number to give to the main people. So I sit there and wait at this woman’s desk, trying to get her to do something about this. After awhile I get a call from my payroll person wanting to know what happening because she is still waiting for a call from the bank. At this point I get really upset. I start asking this woman if she is planning on buying me dinner. When she says no, I tell her that she better fix things so I can eat. I start to raise my voice again, and she says that she will see what she can do, just don’t scream in the bank. I tell her, “Don’t screw me and I won’t scream.” I also made her promise that I wasn’t going to get any over draft fees, which is what I’m sure they were counting on. How many people get screwed this way and don’t do anything about it and then end up owing the bank a couple hundreds of dollars because they got screwed. Also earlier, this important later in the story, I told her I was waiting for my rent check to go through and it shouldn’t be bounced because I technically do have the money to cover it in my account. And she told me that it was fine, there was no record of the check coming in yet. So, gets on the phone and while she is on hold, we have a few minute a stare down with her saying don’t scream, and me saying I won’t if you don’t screw me. I said it in a very nice voice. She talks to someone on the phone for a minute and she turns to me and says it’s fixed. Magically all the reasons and things I was supposed to do went away. I thanked her, wished her a better day, went home and immediately printed out a statement that showed the money in my account and the available balance matching the running total.

So a week goes by and everything appears to be fine. I am at this point contemplating getting a new bank account, but I am waiting for my rent check to clear. When I check my mail, I find a letter from Wamu, dated the same day that I was in the bank, that my rent check was bounced. I go into my rental agency the next morning and they don’t know anything about it yet, so I figure it might be a mistake, since the oh so nice woman at the bank told me that it would be fine. So I go home and to take a look at my online balance to see whether or not the check had actually gone through. But I can’t log on. So I go down to a Wamu bank to see if I can check my balance at an ATM, but all it does is spit my ATM card back out at me. I go into the bank to talk to someone to find out what is happening. The young man I ended up speaking with was very nice, but he had no idea what was going on. So he calls the main office and talks to them for just and minute and then hands me the phone saying they want to talk to me. The woman on the phone says to me in a very snotty voice, “we no longer want to do business with you.” She told me that my account had been stopped two days earlier, and that the man I was with at the bank would give me all my funds. When I asked her why all she would say was, “we no longer want to business with you, “ in a very hostile voice. I also asked her why this was the first time I was hearing about this, to which she gave me the same answer. When I asked her if it was because of the other woman I dealt with previously, and tried to explain to her what happened, during which I used the word bullshit to describe the things the other woman said I had to do, she snapped at me and said, “don’t use that language with me.” I apologized and told her I was just trying to explain the story and not trying to be rude to her. I just thought they should look into how this other woman was treating customers, and work on communication with customers so that they have time to deal with things. Otherwise you are going to have a lot of unhappy customers. Again she replied, ‘we no longer wish to do business with you.”

Three days later I received another letter from Wamu. This time it told me that as of September 26 my accounts would be closed, no reason included. This date, by the way, is two business weeks after they actually shut down my accounts.

What did I learn from this experience? If you aren’t submissive and take it up the rear, they don’t want you. Actually, what I suspected at the time was that they new they were going under and were making a last ditch effort to gain funds through creating situations where they could rack up overdraft fees. I heard somewhere, though I can’t verify it, that banks make around 35% of their revenue from fees.

As for what this has to do with bailouts and economic collapse, I think it is our governments job to make sure everything is running properly and that its citizen are being taken care of and not taken advantage of. Its job is not to pay off those who screwing it all up. By the way, the people responsible are doing just fine, and are already walking away with billions.

Gimme Shelter

According to the Associated Press, tent cities are growing fast. The housing crisis is more than a few foreclosed homes and greedy banks going under from bad loans. It's time for our government to step it up, and I'm not talking about a bail out, unless it's directly for those without homes, who can't find work because jobs are disappearing left and right. More later.

I am fascinated by wikiHow. It is a collaborative how-to website with the most bizarre range of how-tos. I've been clicking on the link to a random article and so far have read how to: "Help Prevent Forest Fires," "Make a Gift Bag," "Hand Draw a Maze," "Get Low Cost Dental Work," and "Lean Like a Cholo." My favorite so far is how to "Make a Mini House in Your Backyard," in case you want to move out of your parents house, but not too far. It is recommended to add a roof if you don't want to be rained on. Check it out.

It has come to my attention that I have recently been using the word "hell" too frequently in my posts. What the hell does that say about my upbringing (and my tendency towards repetition)? I will henceforth only use the word hell when speaking of the actual location, as in, "I am planning a nice trip to hell this weekend." I will decide on a replacement expletive when the occasion arises.

I took this picture from an airplane window. I've never posted a picture before, so I thought why the hell not? Plus, sometimes it's good to have an aerial view .

Just another little something...

When I close my eyes I see visions of last night’s dreams. An endless, expansive night, swimming though temperature-less pools with you standing there watching, and as I wander down dark pathways, you follow, accosting me in empty corners. When I open my eyes again it is all gone.

When I awoke this morning, I realized once again that you were gone, still. I lay in bed unmoving, closing my eyes again trying to recapture those fleeting moments of subconscious.

Eventually, I had to move again. Return to my life, my reality.

Everyone has their own narrative for their life. A story that they tell themselves that makes sense, that leads them where they want to go. This may change over time. You may think now that five years from now you’ll have a family with three kids and working a full time job. But next year you might decide, “in five years I think I want to be sailing around the world.” But the day-to-day narrative generally stays the same: this is who I am, this is what I do, and if I continue to be and do these things this is where I’ll go. Yesterday, I was at work. Today, I’m going to work. Tomorrow, it’s the weekend, so I think I’m going to do projects around the house. The fact that you have a house is part of your narrative. The fact that you work is part of your narrative, and all of it is carefully described in your mind so that it’s understandable and controllable. The problem happens, not when things change subtly over time, but when they change suddenly. When that narrative is broken, when a trauma occurs. Suddenly things are no longer understandable. Things aren’t under control. You have no idea what you’re going to be doing tomorrow or the day after that. There is no concept of five years from now. Where you were yesterday has no relation to where you are today and tomorrow. That is what the human psyche cannot deal with. There needs to be a concept of continuous, linear identity and story. When that changes there is a sense of being lost. Being in an uncontrollable situation. Which drives a lot of people mad.

The key to recovering from a sudden break, a sudden trauma, is to be able to reincorporate it into the narrative, to make it part of who you are, to claim it as who you are, and integrate it into who you were before, and were your story was going previously. That’s why changes over time, those subtle changes about where you are going, don’t really have much of a negative effect. The fact is that we’re constantly integrating, reintegrating and reevaluating and we have time to figure these things out, to make it part of our story to write, and rewrite our story. The sudden break the break in the story causes the most problems when it’s not recovered, when the story line isn’t picked up again and linked to the past.

There is also the mass narrative that we have to contend with, the societal narrative. What it is to be a member of this society? What is an appropriate story to have? What’s an appropriate identity? Where should you be going and where should you have been from? These are all issues to contend with. When there’s a break in the narrative, there is also often a break with the mass narrative. Reintegrating that trauma into your story and picking up the pieces, picking up the story line again is difficult when it doesn’t quite match with that overall narrative, when you are constantly faced with the idea that your story is no longer their story. The human instinct is a tribal one, we all want to fit in, we want to be a part of this group, and we want to be accepted by others. When you no longer fit in and when you have something that’s off, that doesn’t connect with that larger story, it makes it even harder to integrate your own story, because it sets you apart. But if the trauma is denied if it isn’t integrated then the person is not whole.

The worst thing that could happen is to forever be caught in that moment, forever be obsessed with that point in time. For those who continue dwell, living only in that moment unable to integrate it into a whole identity, it becomes their identity. That moment in time becomes their story. They become the victim, not just someone who was once victimized, always repeating that role of the victim. They are always reliving, maybe not in the exact same way, but reliving the trauma, the break, there is no continuation, just an endless cycle. Until they can figure out how to break the cycle and pick up where they left off and start over again, well not start over again, but integrate, integrate is the key word.

This is my theory, at least, and this is what I’ve been trying to do. And it might be a little easier if it weren’t for the damn dreams.

It was the third time in two weeks that I was late for work. Fortunately, I have an overly understanding boss. Though, my plan is to not push it with a fourth time. Getting over the urge to curl up in a little ball and stay in bed has been the hardest part of this whole ordeal.

This morning I was just in time for an HR meeting. I don’t mind meetings, especially now. I’m not that important to the proceedings, so I can let my mind wander. But maybe that’s not such a good thing.

“Cady…Cady?”

“Hmmm…oh, yes?”

“I just wanted to know how long before that performance report is going to be done,” said my boss, Linda.

“I think I can have it to you by the end of the day.”

“Good. Sarah, how are we on the development side?”

The meeting continued around me as I drifted back into my thoughts of things not right. I would get the report done. Most of it was finished already. I was working on it before, when I was in my old reality.

After the meeting it was time for lunch. Like I have done since I started working in my current position, I took my bag lunch that I had put together the night before, and went to the park two blocks down and one block over from the office. It’s a tiny little park, maybe half a square block. It has a curvy cement path that cuts it diagonally and on either side is grass and a couple of large trees that have probably been there forever. Alternating sides down the edge of the path are benches, the metal coated in black plastic kind, with the tiny crisscross pattern, so that if you sit on them with shorts you’ll have crisscrosses on the back of you thighs when you stand up. I like to sit on the very first one, right when I enter the park. It is a good place for people watching. I can see the people walking past the park, through the park, and into a tiny little café across the street. On nice days the café has tables outside on the sidewalk.

When I got to the park, I sat down on my usual bench. I opened up my lunch bag and pulled out my juice box, the 100% juice kind that are supposed to be for kids, and my turkey and cheese sandwich. I left the piece of the fudge my grandmother gave me in the bag for later. It was the same piece of fudge I had been leaving in the bag until later since my grandmother brought it over a couple days after it happened. Well, at least she would be happy I was eating the sandwich. I remembered how difficult it was to eat anything for the first couple of days.

I sat there taking bites of my sandwich and sips from the juice box, watching the people across the street. The tables were out at the café today. I wondered what their stories were. Were things going as they planned? Or had any of them, like me, experienced sudden stops along the way? I’m sure they had. As I’m sure we’ve all been told, things happen. I know things happen, but it knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. There was a woman sitting alone at one of the small round tables reading a book, and sipping something from a small white mug. At her feet was a small terrier of some sort, sitting quietly, appearing to do what I was doing, watching people walk by. The woman was pretty with long sleek blonde hair, good bone structure, and, by her bare arms, a muscular body. She was very well dressed and was wearing fashionable sunglasses. I couldn’t tell from where I sat if they were designer or not. I imagined things were going well for her. Her life was probably going exactly as she had always planned right down to the well-behaved dog to carry around in her tote as she went around town pretending to do errands for her well off husband. But I suppose she could have had some tragedy in her life as well. Maybe she couldn’t have children and that’s why she got the dog.

Another person caught my eye walking up to the café, an older man. As he walked into the café I could see that he was tall and husky, a little on the chubby side with signs of good beer drinking showing on his belly. A blue truckers hat, the kind with snaps on the back, covered his graying hair. His blue t-shirt was faded, but looked fairly clean. His cotton shorts were also faded, green, with what looked like small bleach stains and small holes speckled over the front. He went inside and came back out a couple of minutes later with a mug and sat down at one of the tables. He was facing me and I could see his face clearly, though he didn’t seem to notice me looking. His face was like one you’d often see somewhere on a Midwestern farm, and his 80's style glasses were changing from clear to tinted, underlined by a mustache any man would be proud of. He crossed his legs and I could see that his white socks were speckled by gray lint. Or maybe that was just the design. The socks climbed halfway up his bare calves, the bottoms of which were covered by sturdy looking brown shoes. His life I imagined not exactly full of roses. He was trying. His clothes were clean if worn, and he liked to treat himself to a cup of good coffee when he had his lunch break, or maybe he didn’t work. I tried to imagine what kind of job would let you dress like that, probably not a corporate office. Maybe he was an artisan, fine woodworking maybe, with his own little shop down the street. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t seem to fit but I thought for sure he looked like someone who had had a lot of bumps along the way. I don’t know why, but for some reason I feel better after imagining hardship in someone else’s life.

I finished my sandwich and juice, picked up my brown bag, and headed back to the office. I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the performance report. It felt like tedious mindless work that didn’t really mean anything, which was perfect. I couldn’t really put my all into anything yet. I was finished with it by five and emailed it to my boss. I walked down the hall to her office to make sure she had received it.

“ Just a second, let me check. Yup, there it is,” she said, “I’ll look it over first thing in the morning and let you know what I think.”

“Thanks.”

“How are you holding up, Cady? You know, if you need to take another day or two off, I’ll be happy to sign off on it. I know how tough it can be.”

“I’ll be okay. I’m going to try not to be late anymore,” I said.

“Well, I’ll let it slide for another week and then we’ll talk. But remember to take care of yourself. Go home and get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she turned back to her computer.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and then head back to my desk to get my things.

At home I fixed myself a small salad and then sat down in front of the T.V. It had definitely been a good friend recently. I never appreciated mindlessness so much before. When it was time for bed I got up, turned the T.V. off, and put my dishes in the kitchen sink. I went and put on my pajamas, and brushed my teeth. All the routine things. Then I got into bed and here am thinking.

I wonder if Linda really does know how tough it can be. She is an attractive woman in her late 40's. Beautiful shoulder length dark brown hair and a perfect complexion. She is very successful in her work. Everyone loves her. She has a good husband and children. It’s a story that I’m sure many people are aspiring to. Did she have a different story once upon a time? And what happened to break it? Well, obviously she recovered quite well. Me? I’m still working on my theory, on integrating, on recovering my story line. I doesn’t seem to be going too well at the moment. I still feel lost. I’m just happy I made it through the day. And I’m hoping I won’t have any more dreams tonight.

Just for the hell of it, an old school paper...

In his book An All-Consuming Century, Gary Cross tells us that “visions of a political community of stable, shared values and active citizenship have given way to a dynamic but seemingly passive society of consumption in America, and increasingly across the globe”(1). It seems, though, today we live in a society where consumerism has not only replaced the idea of the ‘active citizen,’ but also has come to be equated with it. This can be seen in the growing importance of the consumer in the political world, as well as the way the consumer approach to life has come to dominate other aspects of life as well.

The beginnings of our movement towards citizen as consumer can be seen in the 1930s with the realization of the importance of the consumer. Maintaining the ability of people to consume was seen as the way to a healthy economy. This meant keeping the consumers happy, giving them some voice in how things were run.

Consumers, Lizabeth Cohen explains in A Consumers’ Republic, were a recognized category of American citizen’s before this time. The Progressives of the late 1800s and the early 1900s had as a part of their campaign what could be considered the beginnings of a consumer protection movement. But, as Cohen says, “few Americans during these years considered consumers a self-conscious, identifiable interest group on a par with labor and business whose well-being required attention for American capitalism and democracy to prosper”(23). The recognition that consumers did need attention came during the Great Depression of the 1930s and grew steadily more important as time went on.

The 1930s saw the birth of several government agencies set up, as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal plan to deliver the country from depression, to deal with the issue of consumer protection. Among these agencies were the National Recovery Administration and the Consumer Advisory Board, both of which were created to “include representatives of the ‘consuming public’ along side business and labor”(Cohen 19), and give these consumers a voice in the government. Cohen places these organizations in a category she calls the ‘citizen consumers.’ She says that they “were regarded as responsible for safeguarding the general good of the nation, in particular for prodding government to protect the rights, safety, and fair treatment of individual consumers in the private market place”(18).

This category also included non-government groups of citizens, such as the National Consumers’ League. They used their power as consumers to make sure manufacturers were not abusing their employees. They advocated buying only products that assured they were manufactured “under morally acceptable and sanitary conditions”(Cohen 22). Other groups organized boycotts and helped strikers against corporations they felt to be in violation of these standards.

At the same time as the notion of ‘citizen consumer’ sprang up, so did the notion of ‘purchaser consumer,’ people who contributed to the welfare of the nation and economy simply through consuming. This was a role that corporations promoted, because it was not critical of their role in production and it was easily made attractive with the promise of higher standards of living through consumer goods. Mass consumption was also seen as the real way to revive the economy. “It was the buying power of consumers in the aggregate, not the protection of the individual consumers in the marketplace, that manufacturers like General Motors, along with a growing number of economists and government officials by the late 1930s, thought would bring the United States out of depression and ensure its survival as a democratic nation”(Cohen 20).

Through the development in American ideology of the consumer as the savior of the economy, we can begin to see the primacy it takes in the list of responsibilities of the citizen. Cohen explains that, “by the end of the depression decade, invoking ‘the consumer’ would become an acceptable way of promoting the public good, of defending the economic rights and the needs of the ordinary citizens”(Cohen 23). Consumerism is both the way for citizens to assert themselves politically, like through boycotts, and to improve the economy and raise the standard of living for everyone. The main goal of the New Deal was to bring our country of depression by making sure that more people had this ability to consume, saving democracy and making sure everyone had better things. Robert S. Lynd, a member of the Consumer Advisory Board established in 1933, reflected this view. Cohen quotes him saying, “Nothing less than the viability of American democracy was at stake, Lynd insisted. ‘The only way that democracy can survive… is through the quality of living it can help the rank-and-file of its citizens to achieve,’ not simply an adequate standard of living”(19).

Consumption was not what everyone was thinking about during the 1930s. Gary Cross says that the depression put in many people’s minds the value of frugality. He says, however, that, “many Depression-era Americans were unwilling to abandon the ‘luxuries’ of the 1920s”(69). He cites the fact that many Americans continued to take vacations in their cars, even though money was tight and gasoline prices were rising. For Cross the fact that consumerism was able to develop in such a significant way during economic depression was a sign of the power it has over Americans. He says that “the Depression led to a frustrated consumerism more than a rejection of the capitalist system”(71), which had allowed the economic collapse to occur in the first place. It was also this power of consumerism that, perhaps, allowed the government to be so successful in promoting programs to increase the ability to consume and promote the purchaser consumer.

Cohen writes that “the new expectations that Americans developed during the Great Depression for how consumers should contribute to a healthy economy and polity would leave a legacy for World War II and the postwar era”(20). During the postwar era mass consumption reached a new level of expansion. In order to transfer from a war economy, where the demand for military supplies fueled production, to a peace economy, where there was no longer that demand, the government once again began to promote the idea of the purchaser consumer. Mass consumption was once again seen as the savior of the economy and the duty of American citizens.

At the same time, with the dawn of the Cold War and the rise of anti-communist sentiment, consumerism was used as a way to show America’s superiority to Communist nations. The consumers’ freedom of choice was equated with the democratic principles of political freedom. In 1959, Richard Nixon, then vice-president, proclaimed that “the variety of goods available to American consumers” was “symbolic of ‘our right to choose’”(Cohen 126). This equation of consumer freedom with the rights of citizens and the push for people to consume as part of their American duty led to a consumer fervor that Cohen says resembled a sort of religion. Cohen claims that, “faith in a mass consumption postwar economy hence came to mean much more than the ready availability of goods to buy. Rather, it stood for and elaborate, integrated ideal of economic abundance and democratic political freedom, both equitably distributed, that became almost a national civil religion from the late 1940s into the 1970s”(127). Indeed, at this point we can see how, as Cross says, “consumer sovereignty in the market place had replaced consumer rights in political life”(139).

As people began to embrace their roles as consumers, they also began interacting with other areas of civic life in the same manner as they did when consuming. Politics itself began to look like a function of the market. People began to vote for candidates as if they were deciding between consumer goods. And politicians, in response, began campaigning using the techniques that advertising used to promote consumer goods and consumption. A telling sign of this development is the statement that, as Cohen quotes Rosser Reves as saying,“ ‘a man in a voting booth hesitates between two levers as if he were pausing between competing tubes of toothpaste in a drug store. The brand that has made the highest penetration on his brain will win his choice’”(332). I believe this shows literally the equation of consumer with citizen. Politicians looked to the markets to tell them what people wanted and how to approach and sell themselves to these consumers.

In the 1980s, the voice of the consumer became the preferred method of interacting within the political and civic arena. Thanks to the deregulation efforts of President Reagan there was hardly any alternative. He dismantled many of the government agencies set up to regulate the industry in order to protect consumers. Instead, the market was supposed to be the regulator. The way for Americans to voice discontent with the corporate world was through the market, through how they chose to consume. Cohen says that through this process citizen/consumers “increasingly related to government itself as shoppers in a market place”(396).

Today we have the citizen consumer, not the one described by Cohen as striving for the protection of the people from the corporations, but as described by Toby Miller, in The Well Tempered Citizen, as “loyal citizens who learn[ed] to govern themselves in the interests of the cultural-capitalist polity”(ix). These are citizens that don’t question their roles as consumers or the ideologies behind consumerism, and faithfully accept the freedoms of consumerism, to choose between products, as the replacement for the freedoms of a citizen. This is what it means to be a citizen in the United States. Miller says that for a capitalist democracy, with a need to generate industry and a preference for the private sector and management, to continue it must produce two kinds of citizens, “the selfless, active citizen who cares for others and favors a political regime that compensates for losses in the financial domain; and the selfish, active consumer who favors a financial regime that compensates for losses in the political domain”(130). Our society has certainly succeeded in producing the latter kind of citizen.

Cross is right when he says “consumerism redefined democracy, creating social solidarities and opportunities for participation that transcended suffrage rights or political ideologies”(2). What the government, and the industries it supports, want us to believe is that consumerism is the best way for us to be citizens. “In the context of consumerism, liberty is not an abstract right to participate in public discourse or free speech. It means expressing oneself and realizing personal pleasure through goods”(Cross 3). It will keep our economy strong.

Works Cited
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic. Vintage, 2003.
Cross, Gary. All Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. NY: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citzenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993.

This is outrageous!

According to the Michigan Messenger, in Macomb County, Michigan, if you happen to unlucky enough to be dealing with a home foreclosure, you are also unlucky enough to not be considered a real citizen. The G.O.P. is planning on blocking people in foreclosure from voting. And isn't the right to vote a key part of being a citizen? So basically, here is the Republican philosophy, if you are suffering from economic woes, you don't count. I know, I know, this isn't anything new, but it's still outrageous.

If a group of people could collectively go through Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief, I wonder where our nation would be in terms of 9/11? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance? Certainly not real acceptance? Would a group that had reached the stage of acceptance continue to allow the Bush administration its continuing use of the event for warmongering and jingoism? Or would they instead look for real understanding and peace? Seven years later we are still hearing Bush’s battle cries of “Evil doers” and “war on terrorism,” without any concrete or even slightly substantial evidence that continued war is actually protecting us or bringing us or the rest of the world any closer to peace. A day of remembrance is a good thing, because, hopefully, remembrance also means reflection. But as I listen to the speeches of politicians and the pontificating of pundits on the news, I don’t hear any real reflection, or even true remembrance of the lives lost. I just hear more of the same thing I’ve been hearing for the last seven years: We’re gonna get them! You’re with us or against us! Let’s get them before they get us again! (This is paraphrasing of course.) They say that they are remembering the lost, but then they say aren’t we glad we went to war. Is that really remembering? Could a nation still caught up in these rallying cries be said to still be in the anger stage?

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, from the New York Times, wrote this about the President’s speech:
“Mr. Bush’s speech was short, just seven minutes, and the president used it to declare the memorial ‘an everlasting tribute to 184 innocent souls,’ and to remind his audience that ‘there has not been another attack on our soil in 2,557 days.’ His words served as a parting message, of sorts, from a president who, after two wars, believes fiercely that he has done what was necessary to keep the country safe."

Obviously, there is still more on his agenda then remembering the victims of 9/11. I don't necessarily agree with her wording that he "believes fiercely ." It should be he "appears to believe fiercely."

Read this article, "Poverty, Health and Political Priorities: 2000 to 2007," for a better understanding of economics and health care issues.

I am unable to sleep with the fan running and only a sheet to cover me, but not necessarily because of the heat. It’s just that sometimes reality gets to me. I should stop watching the 9 o’clock news. The unemployment rate is at a five year high (though our government is still insisting that our economy is “resilient”), the rate of foreclosure and people behind on mortgage payments are up to 9.2%, there were a couple more murders in the mission yesterday, and right at the start of the news there was an earthquake. Not such a big earthquake, but enough to realize that no matter what else is going on, the earth has her own agenda. I’ve been worried about all kinds of things this past month, but at least I still have a job and don’t have to worry about losing a home, and if there was a “big one" tomorrow none of it would matter anyway. It’s just one of those moments when I have to stop worrying, wallowing, etc., and realize what’s good in my life. Though, I’m not going to dismiss the trouble either, especially if it can be fixed. But in case anyone is interested here are some things in my life that I am thankful for: Parents that I can talk to, friends I can count on, a boss(es) that I like, a place of my own to lay my head at night, access to good beer on occasion, that fact that there is no one currently in my life who I feel like yelling at as much as my neighbor does, creativity, long walks around the lake, being able to read, having a body healthy enough to do most of what I ask of it, BBC’s Mystery on Sunday nights, living in a place with so many interesting people, and I guess I’ll end with the fact that I am still alive and have not died in a horrible accident or earthquake. Now I suppose I should try getting to sleep again.