between a rock and a hard place

Oregonians are faced with a tough decision this January with Measure 66 and Measure 67, and to be honest, I don't really like my choices. A no vote on both will hurt public sector employees (as well as shorten the school year and cut social services), while a yes vote on both will potentially hurt private sector employees, especially those who work for C-corporations with high volume sale but low profit margins. Either way, it's the working class who's probably going to feel the pinch in the long run.

But trying to get accurate information about the potential effects of each measure in order to make an informed decision hasn't been easy. Both sides are really going all out with their ad campaigns. The proponents, for example, constantly portray Measure 67 as simply an increase in the corporate minimum tax, but they often fail to point out that it also creates a new tax on gross sales for C-corporations. As Carol VanHouten explains: "Measure 67 says that C-corporations will pay the greater of the income tax on their net Oregon taxable income OR a minimum tax computed as a sliding-scale percentage of their gross Oregon sales."

I'm fine with the increase in the corporate minimum from $10 to $150, but employers who'll be affected by the tax on gross sales won't simply absorb the tax increase themselves—they'll either pass the increase onto the consumer by raising prices or make up for them by cutting employee benefits, bonuses, hours or employees.

The opponents, on the other hand, are making all kinds of wild claims, such as: "Politicians increase personal and business taxes to pay for their higher spending, including $259 million to fund state employee salary increases." However, according to Jeff Mapes from the Oregonian, "... state employees will not receive any cost-of-living increases in the 2009-11 budget and they must take between 10 and 14 unpaid furlough days. The state also deferred step increases for one year. The net of those changes is a $27 million pay cut for state workers." But what else would you expect from a group who calls themselves "Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes"?

As for the measures themselves, 66 would basically raise the personal income tax of individuals making over $125,000 and households making over $250,000, while 67 would raise the corporate minimum tax, corporate income tax (gross sales or other revenue minus deductible business expenses) and certain filing fees. I'm most likely going to vote yes on both, but I'm definitely not happy about it, mainly because I think Oregon's tax structure is a mess. In my opinion, Oregon relies too heavily on personal income taxes for revenue, which makes up about 87% of the state's General Fund (corporate income taxes account for just 6%). On top of that, in 1990 voters approved Measure 5, which reduced property tax rates and shifted much of the responsibility for funding public schools to the state’s General Fund.

Due to the recession and the state's high rate of unemployment (including underemployment), however, state revenue has declined significantly leaving a $4 billion hole in the state's $15 billion 2 year budget. But the money needed to fund things like firefighters, police, teachers, social services, etc. still has to come from somewhere. Unlike the federal government, the state doesn't have the luxury of running a deficit, so it has to have a balanced budget. And rightly or wrongly, the Oregon Legislature has decided that the needed revenue should come from the people who they think can most likely afford it while so many other Oregonians are out of work or underemployed.

For its own part, the Oregon Legislature has already cut $850 million from the 2007-09 budget and $2 billion from the 2009-11 budget while using "state reserve funds and federal dollars where possible." The state has also had to layoff social workers, teachers and other state employees. Not only that, but they've been forced to shorten the school year while packing even more kids into already crowded classrooms. Less revenue means more cuts, less days and even larger class sizes.

As far left as I am on the political spectrum, I don't like the idea of raising taxes in the middle of a recession, but I like the idea of laying off more teachers and social workers even less, especially considering how badly they're needed right now. And despite what some of the measures' critics are saying, I don't think it's just fear mongering on the part of the Oregon Legislature, I honestly think the state's in real trouble; and if we don't find a way to fix it, we're going to end up just like California. Measures 66 and 67 may not be the perfect solution, but frankly, I think it's better than the alternative.

avatar

Last night, I went with a group of people to see James Cameron's new film, Avatar. My initial thoughts: only James Cameron can take Pocahontas, throw in a dash of FernGully and a pinch of Dances with Wolves, and turn it into a wicked 3 hour anti-imperialist, pro-environmentalist sci-fi epic.

That's not to say the film's great — Cameron's formula is tired to say the least — but it's still pretty damn good despite its unremarkable plot. Make no mistake, the movie's a visual masterpiece. Cameron takes CG filmmaking to an entirely new level with his revolutionary VFX, which are nothing short of stunning. And believe me, the 3D helps a WHOLE lot.

But sadly, the film falls flat in almost every other area. Don't get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned action/romance once in a while, but a film as visually groundbreaking as this deserves an equally groundbreaking script. Instead, Cameron appears to have played it safe with cliche after predictable cliche, presumably to make it appealing to as wide of an audience as possible.

And while I appreciate its centre-left politics, I feel Cameron does them a bit of a disservice by disseminating them through simplistic stereotypes that almost ridicule themselves, e.g., idealized natives with, as a my friend once quipped, "a utopic level of peace and harmony with nature and each other," over-the-top American-style imperialism, a greedy corporate exec who cares more about his company's quarterly earnings than his conscience, etc.

Nevertheless, the movie as a whole has such an incredible impact that it mostly makes up for its unoriginal storyline and one-dimensional characters, as does the solid performances by Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and the rest of the cast. As many faults as this film has, they didn't stop stop me from enjoying it, and that's what I think makes it worth seeing in the theatre.

how are you oppressed by the capitalist system of production?

Today I was asked by a young house painter, Can you tell me how I'm being oppressed by the capitalists who run the company? That's a difficult question to answer, but I told him the short answer is, (1) the capitalist — or employer if you prefer — profits far more from your labour than you do (exploitation), and (2) the product of your labour doesn’t legally belong to you (alienation).

Labour creates wealth (surplus value). But in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, the product of your labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism).

Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from your labour into their company while you, the labourer, are forced to spend your meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.

So from one perspective, an individual might look at it like, "Wow, some guy will pay me a few bucks an hour to paint houses; now I'll have some money for rent, bills and food." But from another, wider perspective, there’s an entire class of people who’ve been created by the capitalist mode of production who must sell their labour in order to survive while others thrive by exploiting that labour.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the employer is necessarily the "bad guy," or even consciously in charge of this exploitation, since, as a friend of mine points out, "... the logic of the system seems to force the hand of the bourgeoisie as much as that of the proletariat" due to what Marx calls the "coercive laws of competition."

That's why some people want to see a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production. The question is whether such a system exists, and if so, how it can be successfully implemented.

the war (read "blunder") in afghanistan

Listening to President Obama explain how he's going to fulfill his promise to win the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 additional troops reignited my political activism. I couldn't disagree more with the decision to send in more combat troops to support one of the most corrupt governments in the world, nor do I see how escalating the war in a country that's practically stuck in the stone age will make us any safer from global terrorism.

First of all, we can't simply occupy every unstable country with ties to al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. What about Somalia, for example? Or the border regions of Pakistan? Should we invade them too? And what about stable countries who're openly hostile to the U.S., or at the very least, harbour extremist groups who are? Military might alone can't win a war of ideology.

Secondly, while I can appreciate the argument that just pulling out of Afghanistan now will allow the Taliban and al-Qaeda to once again turn Afghanistan into safe haven for terrorism, what has our occupation achieved in the last 8 years? We've failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, we've pushed the Taliban and al-Qaeda into Pakistan, further destabilizing it, and we're arguably escalating a decades long civil war with our support of what's widely seen as a fraudulent government.

As Malalai Joya, a former member of the Afghan parliament, has repeatedly pointed out, the tribal warlords and drug lords in parliament are one of the main problems facing Afghanistan. Add to that crushing poverty and you have a situation that no amount of foreign troops can solve, especially in a region where foreign invasions are commonplace. I'd love to go into all the instances where we've created bigger problem with our meddling (e.g., Project FUBELT, Operation Ajax, Operation Cyclone, etc.), but the bottom line is that we should be helping to rebuild their society instead of supporting a corrupt government and expecting them to do it for us.

My thoughts about this are summed up best by a friend of mine who said:

But as to the current troop surge, my point is that until we start to address the essential criminal nature of the regime there, we can't "win". But I suppose that depends on what winning is. Right now I don't think we are on the way to a stable [Afghanistan] with a thriving civil society where there are schools and opportunities to build a life, make art fall in love, raise a family: to make dreams come true.

The type of "win" we'd both like to see, which is ultimately what I think Obama's pushing for, is a stable and thriving Afghanistan; but like my friend, I don't think the current troop surge is the best way to achieve this goal. For whatever reason, Obama seems to be ignoring the real problems, as well as their solutions.

It can't be denied that Afghanistan played a major role by harbouring Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda’s leadership, as well as terrorist training camps, but is war really the solution? War might be able to bring about the necessary changes we'd like to see in Afghanistan, but let's be honest, positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun.

Al-Qaeda itself is an extremely mobile group of individuals and cells scattered throughout the world. Those who weren't already captured or killed in Afghanistan at the beginning of the war are thought to have fled to Pakistan or other neighboring countries and are still free to spread more of their brand of terror. On top of that, most of the resistance we're currently facing is from insurgents recruited (or conscripted) by the Taliban to defend Afghanistan from foreign invasion and occupation, not al-Qaeda. Many of these people are young, poor and often illiterate, and they see themselves as defending their homeland from yet another foreign invasion by non-Muslims (i.e., the Brits, the Russians and now us).

Although I think the Taliban themselves are a horrible, disgusting bunch (especially their views toward women), I can sympathize with the average Afghan who (deludedly) joins them to defend their country and their faith. That's part of the reason I think we need a different strategy. The more we fight, the more we're going to potentially radicalize the local population. I think building roads, schools and other infrastructure will do more to win them over than what we've been doing so far, but most of our resources are still going to counterinsurgency missions, often with innocent Afghans caught in the middle.

The way I see it, sending in more combat troops means a lot more good men and women are going to die for no good reason. When it comes to the "War on Terror" and fighting al-Qaeda, I think we should be focusing on intelligence gathering to find them and disrupt their plots, nation-building to help prevent places like Afghanistan from becoming havens for terrorism and specialized strikes, in collaboration with local governments when possible, to neutralize imminent threats to our security, not this gigantic military blunder.

all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

It's complicated. I have all these thoughts and emotions swirling around inside my head that I can't get out. They haunt me with their feelings and ideas. They possess me with their relentless ferocity. I want to let them out, to set them free by giving them a voice, but they don't seem to want to leave. I confuse people with my words. I say things I'm not even sure I mean, or if I do, it's not quite like how it sounds. I want them to understand, but I'm not sure if they can.

Now I understand why I was the way I was in high school. I want to be that way again. To close myself off from everybody and express myself in other ways. My art. My poetry. My anti-social, self-destructive behaviour. To be as tormented on the outside as I am on the inside.

It's nobody's fault. I don't know why I'm the way that I am. I don't have some deep, dark secret about my childhood. No abuse. No real trauma to speak of. I'm not mentally ill (at least not medically speaking anyway). And yet, here I am, trying to give a voice to these ghosts of what once might've been my humanity. But then, I'm just being overly dramatic. Of course I'm human, whether or not I feel that way. I'm just like everyone else, except I don't have much of a stomach for this thing called life.

Life's a play (without much of a plot it would seem), and we're nothing more than actors putting on a show before the curtain comes crashing down. And most of us either think there's some big playwright up in the sky watching us and waiting to reward the good performances with heaven and punish the bad ones with hell, or we think the play itself is all there is and that we might as well have as much fun with our roles as we can before the curtain falls.

But what of those who think neither? The ones who throw away their masks in disgust? The ones who set fire to the stage and tear down the curtain with their own two hands? The ones who see the play for what it is and want no part of it? What of us and our bitter scorn?

And still my heart wages war against even this! It battles with love and compassion for all the actors on the stage, and with admiration for the beauty of the play itself. The turmoil just another act playing itself out on an internal stage, and wouldn't you know it, I'm playing my role despite myself! What a clever creation, so perfectly insidious in its designerless design. Maybe one day I'll find a way to exorcise these phantoms, these thoughts and emotions that won't give me any peace. Maybe one day I'll find a way to make people understand.

meaningful connections

Sometimes I think I think too much, but every once in while, those thoughts provoke some interesting questions about life. On the way home from attending a talk at PSU, for example, I sparked an interesting discussion on Facebook/Twitter with the tweet: "Technology has made the world smaller, yet we're more alienated than ever: how can I feel so alone when the world's at my fingertips?"

The next morning, my friend, Erica, commented on Facebook:

Our monkeyselves need meatspace, no matter what we can sit and stare at.

While humourous, her reply hit upon an idea echoed by friend, Matt, on Twitter:

"Different medium, same old problem. Connecting with someone still requires effort from two people."

I replied to both:

And therein lies the dilemma. Sometimes I think we're like galaxies in an ever-expanding universe: drifting off into oblivion. As the world appears to get smaller with advances in technology, we seem to be drifting farther and farther apart.

And then added on Facebook:

I don't know. Maybe I just feel that way because I'm so socially awkward, but as I was sitting on the bus last night — watching all the people listening to their MP3 players and playing with their cell phones (not to mention me with mine) — the alienation was palpable.

Perhaps I've been reading too much Marx, but I can't help but feel this invisible barrier between me and my fellow bipedal primates, a barrier that doesn't feel natural at all.

I feel like the cow tongue of meatspace; nobody likes cow tongue, they'd rather have their Matrix-steak.

Less than 10 minutes later, Erica responded with:

Well, 20 years ago on the bus folks were doing their very best to ignore each other in an analog fashion (newspapers, books). I really think the invention of the suburb and the television have done much more to isolate ourselves.

I think a lot of us feel that barrier, just not everybody admits it. I think it is a common longing of a social animal that no longer lives in communal spaces. That's why I throw myself into whatever food rituals I can, get out into nature whenever I can, go out on a limb to make connections no matter how minor (smiling at the grocery store at the smallest end of the spectrum, having a child at the greatest end). You do what you can. Most of us have cow-tongue and are relieved when we find out the truth, that others do too. Matrix steak just doesn't have the nutrients.

I was kind of taken aback by how much she seemed to get where I was coming from. At this point, my friend, Brian, got involved by pointing out the role technology has played in connecting people with one another:

You can't blame technology; I know many people whose social interactions and lifestyles have improved because of increased connectivity. Think of how many new friends YOU personally have BECAUSE of technology and the internet. It's probably in the high dozens, perhaps hundreds.

Your friend Erica nailed it: It's always been this way, as long as we've been a society of suburbs. It's not like there were these rousing and engaging conversations on city buses or subway cars before cell phones, dude.

He brought up a great point, one that Matt had also touched upon via Twitter in response to my “ever-expanding universe” comment:

Says he who didn't want a mobile. We Twitter / txt more in 2 days than we communicated all last year between your visits.

I couldn’t argue with either of their points, but then again, I wasn’t referring to simple connectivity as much as what I saw to be an erosion of meaningful social interactions and relationships in general. Attempting to address this, I wrote:

I completely agree. And just to be clear, I wasn't blaming technology, simply commenting on the fact that I can still feel so lonely despite having the "world at my fingertips" via technological advances that have made the world so much smaller. (Seriously, it's hard to get all philosophically complex in just 140 characters. You know how I usually write. :p)

For example, just being able to communicate with others via things like the internet doesn't necessarily make those interactions truly meaningful on a deeper, more intimate level. I think there's more to it than that (e.g., being able to tear down those invisible barriers, etc.).

I mean, I'm not denying that increased connectivity has improved the social interactions and relationships of certain people (hell, I was at ICOK: meaningful social interactions were off the hook!), but I think it's also made some of them more artificial (for lack of a better word), and even somewhat shallow.

As for the origin of the kind of alienation I was referring to, I didn't mean to imply that technology was the cause. In fact, I agree with you both that no longer living in communal spaces is one of the major causes. But I also believe that there are other factors involved, factors which have directly contributed to our no longer living in communal spaces (e.g., Marx's Theory of Alienation).

In the end, I still don't have any concrete answers, but at least I've been reminded of some things I forgot along the way. The most important one being: we're all more alike than we often realize.

Like Erica said, we're social creatures, and we all feel isolated at times, even if it's not always easy for us to admit it. But that shouldn't stop us from doing what we can to reach out and make connections with other people, whether it's by smiling at the grocery store, starting a family or responding to a friend's tweet.

my 4 seconds of fame

Yesterday must have been a slow news day in PDX (read "nobody got shot"). KOIN Local 6 was at P & L doing a story about how health care costs are affecting small businesses. I even got some air time. My 4 seconds of fame (1:36):



I'm a perfect example of what Marx called an "appendage of the machine." :p