Dare to be Stupid: 11/14/06

LitBrit, writing over at the Shakespeare’sSister blog (always a good spot for something stuipd) gushes all over Judith Warner’s NYT editorial that gushes all over Nancy Pelosi.

The editorial is a whining diatribe for Pelosi to “step up to the plate on behalf of the rest of America’s women – and their families.”

You can probably guess where this heading; socialized medicine, mandatory employer paid daycare, unearned pay raises all the way around and loads of vacation/sick time.

Litbrit whines on further

Finally, someone in the mainstream media has the nerve to say what many of us have been lamenting for years: we have lost sight of, and hope for, the notion that a normal, not-rich, American middle-class family can actually have time together, can actually enjoy their lives–and enjoy each other–on a daily basis as opposed to working nonstop all week, every week, and squeezing in bits and pieces of togetherness at holidays for the sake of the photo album. And we’ve abandoned the notion that getting sick or injured doesn’t have to mean going bankrupt, along with the notion that being paid enough to support a family without both parents having to work 60-hour weeks is something realistic and healthy.Worst of all, we’ve set aside the notion that there is something more to life than the Almighty Dollar, and we’ve had to do this. Not because we have coldly chosen the Almighty Dollar over the pleading eyes of kids who want an impromptu soccer game with Dad or a bedtime story from Mama, but rather, because the cost of living (rent or mortgage, food, health insurance, car payments, and clothing spring immediately to mind) in most metropolitan areas is so high, it simply isn’t possible to support even a small family–hell, an individual, in many cases–on a single income any more. Forget six-week vacations every summer, something the middle-class French family takes for granted. American families consider themselves lucky if the repo man isn’t darkening the door.

To start with, LitBrit completely ignores the fact that people put themselves in situation and that it is the duty of neither the government or the employer to bail them out of their oh-so-busy lives. If mom and dad can’t make ends meet because of the mortgage, car payments, credit card bills, etc, then maybe they should cut back on something.

One of the things I see in my co-workers (especially the Teamster ones) is the over extension of funds. During the summer time, our industry can’t keep up. Quite literally, we do not have enough drivers to cover the workload and we turn down work. The guys are eating up the OT like cake and buying all sorts of new toys. Then winter hits and we send guys home early. You can always tell the guys who need to pay their bills, because they are begging the senior drivers to go home so they can stay and earn money.

Is this the employers fault? No, the drivers are grown men and should be able to make a financial plan and stick to it. As every American adult should be able to. But every year it is the same. We’re not slow just yet, but once it gets past Christmas, woo-doggy, there’ll be some heated discussions in the parking lot as to whom has worked the most hours the week before and needs to go home early so that other guys can get some hours in.

As for illness/injuries, I don’t know of a single hospital in this area that doesn’t have a financial aid office with programs for people to make payments. This is just a shill line to try and convince people that they shouldn’t have to pay because they got sick or were injured.It is usually followed by the line “I mean, you didn’t plan on getting sick/injured, did you? So why is it your fault you can’t pay?”

What really kills me is that in the second paragraph of her diatribe she decribes what Kos got caught doing when he was looking for a house: Bitching about how expensive cities are to live in.

Let me give LitBrit a clue: The tighter you pack people into a given area, the more each square foot of said area is going to cost. If you don’t want to live the suburban life, then you have to pay for your choice (which is an abhoorent idea to a Liberal/Progressive person, I know).

I moved out of Seattle and down to Tacoma. I doubled my commute time, tripled the milage, but even with commuting costs added in, I was able to get into a bigger and newer house in a better neighborhood for the same or less money that I was paying in Seattle. Why is the cost of living so much higher in Seattle: Location, location, location.

That and Seattle is run by liberals/progressives. Tacoma, while having no shortage of liberals, isn’t overrun with the fucks. The city council is currently in the process of revitalizing the image and cityscape of the town and are using market proven techniques (lower taxes, licensing fees B&O taxes, etc) to attract businesses and residents.

Imagine that! A non-federal government non-program that works! How novel! And again, abhorrent to liberals.

Personally, I think it is abhorrent to raise a child in an urban envronment. Parks are no subsitute for a small yard, and a small yard is no substitute for a half-acre yard. But the liberals/prgressives don’t want people “sprawling” into suburbia, they want them packed into cities so as to reduce their “footprint” , and so the cycle of the liberals wanting what they won’t let themselves or anyone else have continues, along with their bitching about it.

I do love her inclusion of the French model of economics though. Six week family vacations, paid of course, after dad and mom work their 28-32 hour work week.

Nevermind that the french economy is sliding down so fast that they had to bend the EU charter rules in order to stay in the Union. They’re GDP is non-existent and their debt vs GDP ratio is laughable. Or how about that their real unemployment rate (not the fake one where they only count people who worked last week/last month) is so high that they can’t show it to the EU. And nevermind that the employment laws in the country make it almost impossible to fire a habitually late or absent/non-productive/abusive co-worker once they have their tenure in.

If she knew what she was talking about, I’d say she was crazy, but since she doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue, I’m just going to say that she Dared to be Stupid.