Benito is trying to find an under employed writer for the blog.  He hasn’t as of yet and for what it’s worth I don’t think he will.  Not because there isn’t an army of over-educated under-utilized talent out there but because to experience real under-employment is so violently traumatic that it’s hard not to store away what’s left of your soul and just remain dead on the outside. Even when you do this there is one thing that no matter how jovial a dance-for-the-man performance you put on on the outside you still can’t protect yourself from the knowledge of how you’re regarded by bosses who hold your livelihood in their hands…not to mention friends and family.

At least you have a job. Your job is easy. You went to so and so school for how many years just to become a [blank]. So and so is younger than you and he only has x degree from y school and he’s your manager’s manager’s boss? You better feed his cats while he’s in Hawaii and to hell with the fact that you live 35 miles away. That’s just for starters.

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We all know how I feel about Sarah Palin.  Also random, pointless atrocities are usually Icarus 30’s department.  So I felt no need to comment on the Tuscon Shooting and Sarah Palin’s supposed link.  I know we (and by we I mean I) stretch the premise of this blog to sort of talk about what we want to talk about BUT I actually do not see a link between mass-murder/mass-murder-suicide and student debt.  Sure, kids have no options, there’s no hope, yadda yadda yadda but let’s think about this people.  Anyone who is willing to roll over and take the constant abuse from the for-profit and student-loan industry probably just doesn’t have enough of the will to act, for good or evil, to either perpetrate or try and stop an attack like this.  But then as always…Sarah Palin rears her head and now I have to rant.  The day after the Dr. King holiday no less.

Look, Sarah Palin just got unlucky.  She put up cross-hairs on some congressmen and congresswomen and one of them actually got shot at a bad time for her.  She of course responds by accusing the shooter of being “Left-leaning.” Alright, that’s pretty reprehensible but here’s what REALLY urks me, Palin’s mention of Dr.  King in her most recent garbage memoir.

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It’s been a hell of a two weeks. The shooting in Arizona. The character and fitness failure of a public defender due to excessive student loan debt and somehow the whole OJ thing got stirred up again. Not surprising. I mean if we are going to repeal healthcare and the 14th Amendment while we’re at it why not?

While we’re on the subject of OJ, let this be a lesson to establishment types: if you do something wrong enough, it will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. When planting evidence to circumvent due process becomes the usual path to conviction, complete with dehumanizing racial slurs, eventually there is going to be a colossal fuck up.
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Sigh. I don’t really know how to respond to this. If it weren’t for the fact that Benito and Triforce regularly blog about the plight of a student debtor, I’d say they were experiencing the same type of denial that a graduate six months out feels. But surely, years after the fact, they must have come to accept certain realities…right? Wrong. Here is why they think they will succeed despite the odds and here is why I hope they fail, for their own good.

Sometimes a loss is so horrible that the grieving process, denial, anger, fear, self-pity/bargaining and acceptance literally just starts over from the beginning. Now I hate Elvis Presley. He was a racist son of a stupid bitch who stole music and dance moves from blacks. All he had going for him was his white face. However when he died, some of his fans literally couldn’t take it and so they started seeing his dumbass everywhere. Similarly, Benito sees a way out that’s not there. Mike Triforce suffers from a combination of this and his own ego. They are the death row inmate literally strapped to the chair who can almost hear the governor’s voice in the phone they are sure is ringing, the sound just hasn’t quite hit their ears yet.

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It’s perhaps the biggest cliche of the holidays: the ultimate letdown, going to all the trouble to unwrap a box only to find it contains socks and/or underwear.  These gifts aren’t sexy like electronics (video-games, ipods) big ticket items (3-D TVs, cars) or even useful (gift and gas cards).  Ahhhh, to be young and experience the bliss that is ignorance…and I am not talking about fat men in red suits.

Anyone who can relate to the above has never experienced any of the following scenarios: 1) worn the same pair of underpants/socks for more than four days continuously 2) put on a pair of underwear with elastic so worn-out you had to roll-down the top exposing your own ass-crack just so the draws will say on long enough to pull up your pants  3) put rubber bands around your ankles to keep your legs warm because all you had were short “summer” socks at your disposal 4) combined a pair of long socks with holes with a pair of summer socks for warmth 5) turned a pair of underwear inside out to be re-worn 6) “made” underwear out of a pair of women’s booty shorts 7) mentally checked in the summer wondering if you had underwear before zipping up your fly feeling special because today your socks match 9) wearing a jock strap as underwear 10) crying with gratitude when one receives a gift of socks…and underwear

Happy New Year Folks

Even I didn’t see this coming folks.  Obama makes a deal with the Republicans AND THEN it’s blocked by his own party.  This is…FANTASTIC!  It’s so good I hope this was done by design, but it could just be one of those things where a novice chess player in check wins the game for himself in the next three moves.  I for one hope a deal doesn’t get made and every single person’s taxes goes up Jan 1.  You can’t get a smaller paycheck if you don’t get a paycheck.  My foodtruck which deals only in cash I somehow think will be alright. As for the unemployed, I sympathize but if you are still eligible for any kind of benefits you are the newly unemployed and there are twice as many people out there whose benefits ran out, or for whatever reason (like not being able to find a job right of school) were never eligible in the first place.

But even if a deal does go through it’s still beautiful for Obama.  Republicans now have to choose between what Republicans hate most: agreeing with a black president or agreeing to a tax hike.  If  you’re a Republican both of those are simply non-starters.  I take no small measure of personal inspiration from this – if the President could turn a choice between a tax break for the rich and no more unemployment benefits and turn it into this then maybe I have a chance of someday leading a normal life complete with front door, non-bipedal transportation system and people my age or younger related by blood, marriage or adoption.

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As inmates in debtors prison we are an ignored constituency due to several factors that make us unlikely to vote, particularly in non-national elections. Still, it is useful to look at certain political deals in the making and ask “how does this further screw me?” Case in point: tax cuts for the rich in exchange for unemployment benefit extensions.

It’s a brilliant win-win for the Republicans politically. If the President agrees he looks weak and further exacerbates the deficit. It will also piss off Federal employees who just got their pay frozen for two years. If he doesn’t agree then taxes go up for everyone and the Republicans will bitch about that.

Sadly, unemployment doesn’t affect us much. To receive unemployment you need to have worked for a certain period of time and have made a certain amount of money. Obviously, we’re in the same boat as far as taxes are concerned. You can’t be taxed on jack shit. So, does this mean we shouldn’t care?

If you’re like me you have some crab tendencies. I’m in this barrel, why the hell should you crawl out? The crab philosophy says it’d be better for ALL taxes to go up rather than none…but the crab philosophy also says if the American dream is out of reach for ME it may as well be out of reach for as many people as possible, so let’s cut taxes, sell the rest of the country to the Chinese, and be done with it. The point is crab tendencies could lead to two different conclusions depending on how much patience one has.

But what if we are motivated by something other than spite?Well there is the deflected glory theory – that your life’s meaning comes from the accomplishment of your generation, ours being the election of President Obama. But as I just explained unless the lameduck Congress forces through a bill that extends middle class tax cuts while letting the others expire the President is likely to take some shit for whatever happens.

I think the reason I care so much about politics is that even though it exists in an alternate inside the beltway universe of fancy dinners and trust funds it still resembles my and all other student debtors lives…in that the common sense answer is the only one certain not to happen. Why is it that my leaders must choose between letting the unemployed twist in the wind while the country builds itself back up or giving them a mere subsistence while giving millions in tax breaks to the rich and thereby preventing a return to federal fiscal responsibility?

Probably the same reason I could never find a conventional job.

I would hate to be Sarah Palin’s child. I love my parents, especially my mother and I don’t relish the feeling of hating the person who gave birth to you. Worse, what if I turned out to be like 99% of people and overlook the fact that she is a morally bankrupt, sociopathically insecure, parasitic American Disgrace leaching the very marrow from the bones supporting the American infrastructure simply because she’s my mom and in doing so I guarantee myself a life of wealth, comfort and relative significance? What a dilemma! [note to critics, please take notice to how I am feeling sorry for someone else, not myself].

But then I realized that the Palin brood has something in common with us here at Debtor’s Prison. There lives are all or nothing. Read on to see what I mean.

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I came across the following comment reading an online article today:

Plot Synopsis: Sarah Palin’s Alaska: Episode 2 – Todd Strikes Back

When we last left our boy Toddy, the evil liberal writer next door had poked his head over the Great Freedom & Liberty Fence and caught old Toddy porking his favorite old pet goat (again) like a piston engine out back behind the snow machine shed. The old Granny Griz was none too happy about that you betcha. Toddy rallied the Greater Alaskan Frozen Tea Bag Patrol to help him build an Even Greater Freedom & Liberty & Patriot Fence so he could really git’er done Toddy style. Toddy told the Patriotic Patrollers that if they built our boy a bigger Even Greater Freedom & Liberty & Patriot Fence that he’d let them have a turn with his old goat… and after that they could have a shot at the four-legged one too….

I posted this mostly because it’s funny as hell, but there is a deeper point too that must be discussed.

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Roy Jones Jr. is a 16 year-old engineering protege who decided to attend The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, an HBCU, over ivy-league institutions and since has suffered ridicule for his courageous, brilliant and right decision. He exemplified honor, discipline and pride throughout the ordeal and has responded admirably to his critics. It is high time someone commended this young man and help him up as an example of someone who has acted with audacity, pride and power.

The implication for this blog is obvious. Mr. Jones chose the school that offered him the best scholarship, education and experience. He demonstrated wisdom beyond the grasp of 18 and 19 year-oldsters, citing the quality of his specific program and his recognition that many of the schools that accepted him are prestigious in name only. Mr. Jones is not a clown or a performer. He is not here to amuse or impress you because you don’t have a job for him. You can’t afford his services. Mr. Jones has impressed Lockeed Martin. Perhaps you’ve heard of them – they are one of the many employers unimpressed with your over-academic pedigree and has yet to respond to your unsolicited job application.

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