Dragonfly's Open Salon Blog

I have a Purple Heart in the War on the Middle Class

Wed, 2 Mar 2011 14:03:55 -0500

For several years, I thought I had it made. I was working for a large hi-tech corporation making good money and good benefits. I worked hard, earned the respect of my coworkers and bosses and was rewarded for my hard work and dedication. I earned enough so that my husband didn’t have to work and he dedicated himself to raising the kids and cooking wonderful food.

We didn’t live high on the proverbial hog. We lived in a good neighborhood with decent schools. The house was not huge, 1756 square feet, hardly McMansion dimensions, but it had 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, so it was good enough. Our cars are decent cars. The Kia minivan is 8 years old. Mr Fly’s Chrysler is 12, purchased used from my parents. My Chevy is a couple of years old, but it has a lot of mileage, and it was purchased primarily for its fuel economy. You will notice that none of these is a luxury nameplate.

So, we had a good life, not a great life, but comfortable enough to afford modest contributions to my 401k and an occasional jaunt to Disneyland with the kids. Then, the War on the Middle Class came home.

First it was little things. The cost of our health care went up, and up, and up. Every year was a little more. Then the company decided to cut back on the amount it would contribute towards the company stock purchase plan. Then they stopped subsidizing the company cafeteria, so the cost of eating lunch went up. The number of celebrations declined, along with the quality. Christmas Party? What Christmas party? And they took away the modest company pension, forcing us to contribute more to the 401k. Then came the 5% pay cut.

Every year we lost little more ground; but hey, it was better than lay-offs, we told ourselves.

Then the layoffs hit.

Every day I came into work, I heard about another person I knew who was given the pink slip, Keep in mind that these people where not bad employees who deserved the boot, these were honest, hard working, smart folk who were simply on the wrong project at the wrong time. Your project got canned? Well so did you.

Thus I found myself out of a job after 20 years of service, with no idea where my next mortgage payment was coming from. It was my little contribution to "sharing the pain".

I was in luck, sorta. I found another job, but it pays a third less than my previous one, and I still have the bills of someone who makes my previous salary. We are struggling to pay the bills, living paycheck to paycheck, a new experience for me. Those occasional trips to Disneyland have dropped to non-existent. We are unable to help our son with college. We are considering walking away from our modest house if the bank won’t work with us and drop our interest rate a point or 2. I am dealing with the fact that I will probably never be able to fully retire like my parents did, since I haven’t been able to afford to contribute to my new company’s 401 or participate in the new stock purchase plan.

While all this was happening, I was helpless. Hi-tech workers are not unionized, so there was no one to speak for me and my fellow workers. We had no way to fight back, or even to negotiate, with our corporate masters. We just had to bend over and smile for them; all the while being grateful we had jobs. We worked for companies that were raking in BILLIONS, not some state government that is millions in the hole, but we still lost wages and benefits. We had to “share the pain.” My future is trashed, have I shared enough pain now?

So I stand behind the workers in Wisconsin and other states as they fight for their collective bargaining rights. Without such rights, it’s just too easy for the power players to take away from their workers to balance budgets and inflate corporate profits. I know firsthand how the people in power treat the average worker, and it ain’t pretty. Anyone who is watching this must understand the long term implications of this war, and understand that if you are not in the top 2%, you could be next casualty.

When CEOs go down in flames

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:08:53 -0400

Since I have already outted myself has a former HP employee, I guess it’s safe for me to comment on the resignation of HP CEO Mark Hurd.

First off, let me acknowledge that I was laid off under Hurd’s watch. This hardly makes me unique, I actually have a lot of company there. However, I can’t tell you how much company I have because Hp long ago stopped announcing lay-offs and coming clean with the stock holders and the public as to how many people they were shedding. Oh sure, they would occasionally announce a few lay-offs here and there, mostly after they acquired another company, but I can tell you from personal experience that they have laid off far more people than they have ever announced. How a publicly held company can get away with that lie of omission, I’ll never know.

Hurd was the darling of Wall Street because he was a cost cutter. By cost cutter, we mean he laid off thousands of peopl, and off-shored every job he could, despite the fact that HP was making obscene profits. His “cost cutting” made Wall Street very, very happy, and the board of directors, happy that Wall Street was happy, rewarded Mark richly. He is reportedly getting a $28 million pay out on his way out the door. That’s not a golden parachute, that’s a platinum, diamond encrusted one. No word on whether or not they are Blood Diamonds, but I do have my suspicions.

Oh, did I mention that Mark slashed severance packages for laid off employees during his tenure? Guess that doesn’t extend to the top. Wonder how much severance a lower level employee who got caught lying on their expense reports so they could travel with their little cuddle-bunny would have gotten? Yeah, we know the answer to that one. Training in the Standards of Business Conduct was a yearly requirement for HP employees, I guess someone didn’t get the memo, despite the fact he wrote it.

HP used to be one of the great companies. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built a Fortune 50 company on the HP Way, one of the cornerstones was treating the employees like the a valuable commodity, rather that interchangeable parts made in India and China. HP fumbled when it moved away from the HP Way under Carly (Epic Fail) Fiorina. Wall Street claimed that Hurd got the company back on track, but he ignored the HP Way as well. Since HP was no longer the desirable place to work, HP was unable to hire the best and the brightest, and thus HP’s ability to innovate and invent was severely compromised. Apple and Google get the best and the brightest now, and we know how well they are doing. That used to be HP.

So a cautionary tale for our times. The moral of the story: when looking for a CEO for a high tech company, pick the guy who stresses innovation over the guy who stresses cost-cutting.

Armed Society, Part 3, Another One Bites the Dust

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:07:31 -0400

I have been remiss in not posting more about the case the of the woman who was killed by police after she aimed at gun at a census worker and then the cops. My previous posts are here and here.

A few weeks ago the corner determined that the woman had mixed alcohol and anti- depressants. She had also apparently talked of suicide, though the corner stopped short of calling this a suicide by cop. However it does not take a genius to know that mixing drug and booze is a very, very bad idea.

Now we have the census worker’s side of the story. Basically, the census worker was just trying to do her job and had the crap scared out of her by a drunk, belligerent, armed nut case.

Just what was going though that woman’s head as she pulled a gun on an unarmed Census worker, we will never know. Was she afraid of crime? Is that why she carried a gun to the door? Or was she a Fox News fan who had been whipped into a frenzy of antigovernment hatred and pulling a gun on one of THEM gave her some small feeling of power when she was basically feeling powerless?

Prior to this article, many commentators had put forth the theory that the dead woman was simply protecting her property. Unfortunately, the gun lobby has many people convinced that there is a criminal around every corner and behind every bush, despite the general crime statistics that say crime is down. The fiction that one must be armed and ready at all times is going to lead to more incidences like this. This attitude has resulted in armed and untrained people are wandering the streets, convinced that if any bad thing should happen they can go all Dirty Harry on some perp’s ass. Unfortunately the lack of training means that they couldn’t recognize a real perp without a nametag and think whipping their gun out is the solution to every problem.

The other theory is that it’s Glenn Beck’s fault. This area is so Red it’s more like vermillion. Tea Party rallies are a popular past time, and my family likes to joke that President Obama only got 3 votes in this county, mine, Mr Flys’ and our son’s. Despite the fact that the local air force base is the major employer, and a sizeable percentage of the population is retired military, this is anti-government territory, and it will be until the black guy isn’t running things anymore. Since the dead woman made the remark that they weren’t doing the census, this theory might hold some water.

Regardless of her reasons, a depressing number of commenters on the newspaper’s forum think that the woman didn’t do anything wrong; that it’s perfectly OK to point a gun at someone in your home. Frankly, I think the world is little bit safer now that one of them has taken one for the team. I know the dead woman is not the kind of person I would want as neighbor. Hopefully a few of these people will be forced to confront their idea that a gun is the solution to every problem before someone blows away a kid selling wrapping for the school fundraiser.

Update to previous Armed Society post

Thu, 27 May 2010 11:05:42 -0400

This is an update to my posting from Tuesday.

The boyfriend of the woman killed by the Yuba City police has been denied a decrease in bail.The judge finds that the charges do not warrant dropping bail down to $5,00 and being released on his recognizance. Oh, and his attorney admits he “might have been drinking” the night in question.

Color me not shocked. Booze + guns = Bad Things.

It has been an education in paranoia reading the various comments in the local rag. There are those who insist he being held in jail because the police don’t want his story getting out. They are upset because the judge won’t lower bail. Seriously? He drank, he pulled a gun on an unarmed census worker, and he’s the good guy? Do these fools want Drunk Armed Guy living next door to them?

They claim she was protecting her home. From what? Yuba City ain’t exactly the ‘hood in Oakland. The census workers are easy to identify and so are uniformed police officers. She lived in safe middle class neighborhood and home invasions are about as rare as T-Rexes around here.

People, I, a middle aged white woman, has passed through some pretty bad neighborhoods, at night, by myself, without a gun and NOTHING HAPPENED. There is no reason for any person in predominately white, middle-class neighborhoods in sleepy little bedroom communities feel the need to arm themselves to answer a knock on the door at 7:45 in the evening.

It would be funny, if I wasn’t stuck living in the Wild West.

An Armed Society is a Dumbass Society

Tue, 25 May 2010 12:05:34 -0400

A few nights ago, a tragic shooting in one of the local bergs took life of a 67 mother and grandmother.

The really awful part is that it didn’t have to happen, and this is a pretty clear case where the fact that the victim had a gun escalated the minor situation into a deadly one.

The basic facts are this: a census worker knocked on the door of the home in question. This home is in a nice neighborhood, not the kind of place where gangs run rampant or crime is much of an issue. (My son dated a girl in this neighborhood, I am familiar with it, and it is the kind of place I would have no trouble being by myself at night.) For some reason, one of the residents in the home decided to answer the door with a gun in their hand. Instead telling the census worker to buzz off and slamming the door in her face, like most sane people who don’t want to answer census question would do, they decided to point the gun at the unarmed worker. This started the whole chain of events, and it was completely unnecessary. But some yahoo used gun in a situation where no gun was called for or needed.

The census worker left and reported the incident to her supervisor. Someone in the Census chain of command decided to call in Yuba City’s finest. This is a perfectly sane and reasonable decision when there is some yahoo with a gun threatening unarmed people. If you are dumb enough to wave a gun at someone, expect a visit from the police.

So the cops come knocking on the door of the gun-toting, census hating citizen. Note that these were uniformed cops in a clearly marked patrol car. Still, the man answers the door, gun in hand. The cops, are not amused. And now the residents are trouble because they are not dealing with unarmed census workers, they are dealing with armed cops who spend many hours pumping lead into targets shaped like people holding guns. It does not take a genius to see that waving a gun at a cop is not going to end well.

But we are not dealing with geniuses here. The woman aims her shotgun at the cops and does not drop it when ordered to do so. The result is predicable; we all know what happens when you point a gun at armed police officers and don’t drop it when they order you to do so; the cops shot her and killed her.

Score one for Darwin.

The really sad part is that this did not have to happen. There was absolutely no reason for the residents to have threatened the census worker with a gun. If they had told her that they didn’t want to answer any questions and shut the door, everyone would be alive. But, no, someone had to wave their metal penis substitute around to prove how rough and tough they are.

I think this story illustrates the weakness of the whole “Armed Society is a Polite Society” meme that the right is so fond of. A gun was brought into a situation were no gun was needed, and now someone is dead. That’s not polite, that’s stupid.