zed?

My late Mom was a working woman all her life, and never had a credit card. She finanaced only one thing, our house. She told me, kiddo, if you can’t buy it with cash, you don’t need it. She was right.

I honestly think this is a media issue–that CNN needs content, and so every single kid endangered event becomes national news. People are really bad at risk assessment–novel, rare risks are more frightening than routine risks. Seeing these stories leads people to think that they need to worry about their communities.

But it is strange that the way I spent my single and low double digit years, riding my bicycle all around the town I lived in–buying cigarettes for my mother, among other errands–is considered unthinkable now.

“And the disgusting thing about the Billionaire Boys Club that is the GOP is that they have used this fear — a fear which their own economic policies created — to stampede Americans to act against their own best interests.”

Uhm, yes. That’d be a feature not a bug of the whole conservative agenda…

The fun part? the cost of living in my area just went up, along with my rent. I do have the comfort of union spurred yearly raises. BUT here’s the kicker. I’m still not making living wages. I’m still under 10$ an hour and by the time i do reach 10$ an hour in another two years? The COL will go up AGAIN.

It’s a viscious cycle that so many people are stuck in. I’m considering changing jobs to work in a hospital pharmacy. But that’s going to take some doing as of yet. I also want some retail experience as a nationaly certified pharm tech. So for now, i’m stuck in the cycle too.

(and wow. my first zed!)

I think there’s another new reason for not wanting to admit (even to yourself) how bad your economic situation is — another gift from our radical “conservatives” and their you’re-on-your-own economy is the idea that wealth reflects moral success as well as material success, and if you’re not making it, it means there’s something wrong with you. Ranging from the “conservative” Christian “if you’re a good person God will make you rich” to the market-worshippers’ “the market rewards everyone who does their part,” the running theme is that if you can’t keep up, you’d better hide it or else everyone will know that you’re a defective person.

“and the fact that life for most of us generally isn’t as good as it was for our parents when they were our age?

I’m not sure that is across the board right. I think it depends on your age. It depends on how you view it. My mother stayed home once the kids arrived and survived on my father’s teaching salary, which was $2000 per year the first time they tried to buy a house, the house cost $3000 and the bank said my father didn’t make enough and wanted 40% down. He worked jobs in the summers and coached for a stipend to supplement.

Today I see college kids in brand new cars and people who won’t dream of living in a house less than 2500 sq ft. To sustain that lifestyle is very difficult.

Don’t get me wrong, my kids are 21 and 23 and still at home because there is no way they can afford the rents here in the Northeast. My lifestyle got better that my folks for a short time, but crashed in flames after my divorce.

Yes, it is very difficult today and the corporations and politicians beholden to them are making it worse. But to state a blanket statement that this generation is all worse off than your parents is probably off base.

But we do need a revolution in this country or they will drown the middle class completely. They have already outsourced most of our good paying jobs. The crash will come when there is no one left in this country to buy their wares, because we are all working in the service economy or not at all.

I guess I would distinguish between types of anxiety. Anxiety over one’s daughter being alone at a school bus stop on some cold, foggy, dark February morning just as some creep is driving by is well-placed anxiety, in my view. Abduction and molestation may be rare, but I’m not going to take that chance.

Anxiety about our economy and country in general? I have that in spades. The astonishment that I had about this country’s willingness to elect and put up with such abysmal leadership has given way to profound fear. We’re just one “I’ll show ‘em!” moment away from total catastrophe, with the big red button in the hands of an idiot cowboy.

This kind of anxiety is appropriate, too, I suppose, but mostly useless. My fretting is not going to prevent catastrophe.

On the other hand, this same anxiety drives me to sites like this, where I’m reassured that I’m not alone. In this gathering, there is reason. And hope.

As usual, the message convolutes the truth.

Roughly twenty percent of income goes to the top 1/10th of one percent. Just under fifty percent goes to the top ten percent. About half is left to be divided among 90% of Americans.

This disparity in income and prospects for the future is widening, made worse by policies that tax passive investment income at about half the total rate the manager of the local Staples pays on income earned working six days a week.

The fear Mr. Bush and his supporters stoke is not just about jobs, or war, or “enemies” who look or dress differently. It is about whether we have a future, and whether our children will have one.

They then squeeze us, to use Phoenix Woman’s analogy, by telling us to be afraid of what has little chance of hurting us, distracting us from what demonstrably will hurt us – George Bush’s disastrous economic policies.

They then send us into social psychosis by saying that whomever points this out is engaging in “class warfare”. Not surprisingly, that’s precisely what Mr. Bush has engaged in so successfully for six years and counting.

It really saddens me when I hear my friends with kids talk about arranging play-dates (these are not toddlers) because they would never let their kids just run around the neighborhood. When they say casually “it’s so much more dangerous than when we were growing up” it’s all I can do not to scream “No, it’s not!”

(I do try to get the idea across without the screaming, but the extent that parents will accept it from people without kids is limited.)

It used to be that you could have $400 in interest income before you had to pay taxes on it. That was in the 60s, when interest on a passbook savings account was about 4%. They decided that we needed to pay taxes on everything (except whatever a good accountant or lawyer could hide), and that tax break went away, along with most of the incentives for saving.
That was about the same time that the ‘bottom line’ mindset started taking over businesses and then government: the idea that profit is the only important thing.

Part of the problem may be due to the fact that we’re so wired and connected around the world. Back when I was a child, I’m sure there were stranger abductions and all sorts of nasty things going on but we never knew about them as the news stayed local. Now, all the world knows about the missing child in Florida or the missing 18 year old in Aruba or whatever crime against a (mostly) white person grabs the corporate owned media’s fancy. And it becomes so sensationalized, that it scares the be-jaysus out of all the small town folks wherever, no matter how secure their local environs may be.

With Republicans and/or the DLC in control, at least for the forseeable future, these ARE the good old days.

As jayackroyd says in #3, it’s all about the media — I think the economic musings are missing the point.

But it’s not about them *needing* content. As if they couldn’t fill a 24-hour period with serious news.

It’s fear of the remote, plain and simple. That’s why they go with the lurid. Every cable and local news channel operates on the theory they could lose their audience for good — at the next commercial break, at EVERY goddamn commercial break. Because the outfit down the street is perfectly willing to throw endangered children, or naked starlets, up on the screen, grab that LCD viewer and never let go.

The extended, thoughtful remarks about generational income are obviously valuable. They’re the kind of thing I’m sure the news shows would chew on — if you could guarantee them and their bottom-line advertisers a stable audience. But you can’t.

People fault the news shows’ repertorial judgment all the time. But it has not the slightest thing to do with judgment. They’ve got all the judgment, talent, expertise needed to bring us a solid day’s news coverage every day. They just don’t think they can afford to.

My sense is that a lot of the parents most obsessed about abduction by strangers are doing better than their parents. I know people who live in very toney neighborhoods who won’t let their children play in their front yards. (And I assume it’s not because of the restrictive covenants that prohibit trucks and other unsightly objects from the fronts of houses . . . which, now that I think about it, could include children.) I have long suspected that this particular fear is tied more to increased anonymity and mobility in society than to economic instability.

The telling battle will be on the eventual expiration of the Estate Tax cut, if the Dems can’t hold the line there and have it go back into effect for everyone about at least a Million or two then we’ve simply lost this generation to the forces of human greed and avarice.

Latest FaBlog: When Alger Met Edie

Okay an analogy: at one time you could hitchhike across the country and even families would pick you up. Not often but definately it could happen. You might be wedged in the back seat (no seatbelts) with a couple kids half asleep as Dad and Mom smoke away in the front seat and country music came over the AM dial.

Mostly though you met good people. Sure you might have a close call now and then but mostly it was ‘mostly’ safe.

Then a few years later it became obvious that anyone picking you up hitchhiking was……..um………a nutbar.

definately the situation had changed.

I don’t see why that same ‘ism’ doesn’t apply to safety issues for children.

Another factor in the fear equation is that taking steps to protect your child from a non-existent abductor feels like doing something. It seems like you’re taking concrete steps to ward off disaster. It’s an illusion, but a seductive one.

But even if you’re keenly aware of the structural flaws in the rich-get-richer economy, there’s not much one person can do about it, and nobody likes to feel helpless. It’s not that nothing can be done; look at this site, or the Muckraker. The concerted actions of a lot of committed people is a powerful force, but a rather abstract one, emotionally. Unless you’re a stone-cold policy wonk and politics addict (anyone here?), it doesn’t seem as real as taking your little boy by the hand and walking him two doors to the schoolhouse.

As regards the economy one big thing I have noticed is that the gov’ts figures on inflation seem to have little to do with the cost of living and the prices we pay.

Look at the cost of gas, up at least 100% in the last 3 years, other energy costs, like electricity up 70% here in CA over five years, food, up at least 20% over the last two years alone (check out the price a a bunch of green onions, or apples, or even chickens) not to even mention housing costs which for buyers have risen 100% in 5 years (although that will soon be adjusted) and for renters at at least 5 to 7% a year. Of course sneakers from China are still cheap and if you are buying a 42 inch flatscreen that price is down by a half in the last 18 months alone. But how many HDTV’s do you buy a year, vs. how many heads of lettuce or gallons of gas? OH, and what are you paying for health insurance? It’s up an average of 10% a year, as well. I won’t mention the cost of higher education.

My point — real income is down even more than these figures would suggest. One last happy thought, with the slow bursting of the housing bubble and its ancillary effects, get ready for a recession on top of all this.

The numbers ARE the game. The emotional issues are what distract us from playing it by demanding changes in governors, representatives, senators, presidents and policies.

The emotional issues are also what frighten us into granting tax rebates and giveaways to new local investors who need none of it, but who wrench it out of communties because they can.

That’s the philosophy the numbers hide, starting with those in the White House. The things that can hurt us are not far away.

Robert Chapman @ 16

My sense is that a lot of the parents most obsessed about abduction by strangers are doing better than their parents. I know people who live in very toney neighborhoods who won’t let their children play in their front yards. (And I assume it’s not because of the restrictive covenants that prohibit trucks and other unsightly objects from the fronts of houses . . . which, now that I think about it, could include children.) I have long suspected that this particular fear is tied more to increased anonymity and mobility in society than to economic instability.

I agree. The young kids who I see running around completely unsupervised don’t look to me like upper middle class kids. At all.

I would argue that the obsession with child abduction is a luxury that well-off parents can afford to fret about. Their material needs are taken care of. Most other things in their lives, they are in control of. They want an absolute guarantee of safety and wellbeing for their kids, too. Poor parents are probably so worried about where the next rent check, heating bill, and month’s worth of groceries are going to come from that the notion of a child molester four blocks away, frankly, falls lower on the list.

strangers brainwashed me long ago and forced me to spell definitely with an a.

Stranger abduction: 9 year old Sarah Pryor was abducted [and killed] within walking distance of our home. Our school district had been “exquisitely safe” until that day.

It’s all so safely theoretical, and easy to criticize, until it happens in YOUR community. Have mercy.

I had to scare my 3 year old to death by saying she couldn’t leave the house without us knowing because the bad person hadn’t yet been caught. This is still part of her psyche. A great deal of evil can be done by a single person.

jayackroyd @3

But it is strange that the way I spent my single and low double digit years, riding my bicycle all around the town I lived in–buying cigarettes for my mother, among other errands–is considered unthinkable now.

Did we grow up in the same town? ;-) My Mom used to send me out on my bike for cigarettes too. Ah, growing up in a small town…

Oklahoma kiddo @
2

My late Mom was a working woman all her life, and never had a credit card. She finanaced only one thing, our house. She told me, kiddo, if you can’t buy it with cash, you don’t need it. She was right.

A house in Rancho Cordova by the American River. Valued now at $400,000.00

Oklahoma kiddo @ 2

My late Mom was a working woman all her life, and never had a credit card. She finanaced only one thing, our house. She told me, kiddo, if you can’t buy it with cash, you don’t need it. She was right.

Yup. My mom’s the same way.

But it is strange that the way I spent my single and low double digit years, riding my bicycle all around the town I lived in–buying cigarettes for my mother, among other errands–is considered unthinkable now.

That brought a grin.
I pedalled for smokes too, when I wasn’t fetching beer and getting up to change the channel for my old man.
*g*

I’m not worse off than my dad. I’m not dead from an Asian ground war. And there were people a paycheck away from ruin 50 or a hundred years ago. That’s not new.

But the abduction fear thing is BS. There has always been a thread of worry about low-probability threats in America, and I’m not sure why.

egregious @ 25

Stranger abduction: 9 year old Sarah Pryor was abducted [and killed] within walking distance of our home. Our school district had been “exquisitely safe” until that day.

It’s all so safely theoretical, and easy to criticize, until it happens in YOUR community. Have mercy.

I had to scare my 3 year old to death by saying she couldn’t leave the house without us knowing because the bad person hadn’t yet been caught. This is still part of her psyche. A great deal of evil can be done by a single person.

Thing is: Are there more stranger abductions now than before, or are we paying more attention to them now?

Life was better for our Parents for one simple reason. They were not ruled by Republics. Things have gone bad as Republics seized and held power. There is no way for them to spin that. For most people, that would be reason enough to change their ways. However, it won’t be for Republics. They never accept responsibility for anything.

Egregious, why didn’t you just terrify her with the prospect of a spanking? Frankly, what would a child that age even comprehend about ‘abduction’? A spanking is WAY more comprehensible, and scary.

(Count me as one of those liberals who think a little parent-fear is healthy, simply because of what it’s standing in for, i.e. a world that’s ready to hurt you far worse than (99.9% of) parents are.)

Women and girls have a 1 in 4 change of being victims of sex abuse, mostly from male relatives. No one talks about it on CNN. Its not as newsworthy as a stranger abduction. More people are hit by lightening in a year than abducted by strangers. You’d think parents would be running around making sure their children were properly grounded.

Quick Shiny! Over there!

I have no children. I’m real happy about that.

I must have missed something.

Reading the above posts, I’d think the original author’s main intent was provoking a discussion about our economy.

I think “Phoenix Woman’s” point was how the GOP (and media) generate FEAR to herd the spineless masses into doing whatever it is they damn well want to.

Am I off base?

man I think of my mother in the small northern city perpetually 30 below for months on end and when our high school choir (class) sang at the bank during xmas holidays she walked about two miles to listen. it had to be cold.

now you’ve got me thinking about my dear departed mother who could only afford to buy us the ‘fake’ madras shirts.

fourmorewars @
33

Egregious, why didn’t you just terrify her with the prospect of a spanking? Frankly, what would a child that age even comprehend about ‘abduction’? A spanking is WAY more comprehensible, and scary.

(Count me as one of those liberals who think a little parent-fear is healthy, simply because of what it’s standing in for, i.e. a world that’s ready to hurt you far worse than (99.9% of) parents are.)

∞

Don’t have kids but I wish ‘the village” would discipline those who do, AND the kids, too.

The fear is real. How long has it been since a household with one main wage earner could support the family, buy a house, and send kids off to college? You know, the traditional family the Republicans claim they defend.

How about knowing that drive you have to take to get to a lousy job every day could turn into a disaster – one bad accident with no health insurance, unable to work and you’re toast.

How about being told all the time that Social Security will be gone by the time you’re ready to retire – and your company bailed on any kind of pension plan. How about those savings you don’t have, and that fortune you didn’t make in the dotcom boom. How about wondering how much longer you can keep your job, without being asked to take a pay cut or give up benefits, or maybe get downsized/outsourced. How about that credit card balance that keeps going up while each month you promise you’ll cut it back next month.

How about being told gays and lesbians are going to corrupt your kids, that their school is going to be left behind because of NCLB, that the district is going to have to spend big bucks because somebody wants to make a fight about teaching creationism. How about wondering if there will be a job for your kids where you live when they graduate.

How about wondering if the air and water are safe, when we find the EPA lied about Ground Zero and power plants will be able to dump more stuff into the air and call it “Clear Skies.” How about wondering if it’s safe to eat anything when you can’t be sure if frankenfood has slipped into the markets, your dog and cat have died from tainted pet food – and nobody is sure the stuff hasn’t gotten into the human food chain.

How about wondering if your government is going to keep you safe when they missed every warning about 911, couldn’t keep New Orleans from drowning, and tell us they have to tap our telephones and spy on us because terrorists are everywhere.

We are a country living in a state of fear. Fear makes people stupid. George W. Bush is president. Q.E.D.

I think you may be on to something here; but I must add that this undifferentiated fear would probably not have become the miasma it is except for the RWCM using it to amp up alarm on cue from the criminal element, namely the Bush administration. Our much-vaunted American optimism and pragmatism has dissolved close to completely in the last 6 years. I am constantly remembering a paragraph in, I think, Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” wherein he describes a scene about the road trip Merry Pranksters took to the Cow Palace to see the Beatles. Everytime the guitar players would turn in an arc, pointing the necks of the guitars toward the audience, the audience would as a huge animal ripple in the same direction. That is exactly what the RWCM is doing to the whole country right now, and most Americans are feeling and talking on cue in one huge right-wing ripple. Not so benign as the Beatles, I’d say, but worth a hell of a lot more money to our media moguls than even Sir Paul McCartney or all of the Beatles and Wings put together has in portfolio.

Just a thought.

I think there’s another new reason for not wanting to admit (even to yourself) how bad your economic situation is — another gift from our radical “conservatives” and their you’re-on-your-own economy is the idea that wealth reflects moral success as well as material success, and if you’re not making it, it means there’s something wrong with you.

This is true, and this in turn fuels huge credit card and mortgage debt, which of course worsens your financial situation.

Also, we are bombarded constantly by the media with scare stories, whether it’s child abduction, that latest disease, airplane crashes, drunk drivers, scary immigrants, weird cults brainwashing kids, unsafe products of all kinds, etc.

Not to say there aren’t dangerous and unhealthy things out there in the world, it’s just that they are sensationalized and over hyped to the point where a permanent paranoia is inculcated in the masses. For instance, we all know smoking is harmful and to many is unpleasant to be around, but walking past someone from 20 feet away who just smoked a cigarette will not give you lung cancer.

Gavin DeBecker, in The Gift of Fear, talks about the difference between rational and irrational fear. Child abductions are an irrational fear – as the Drum conversation pointed out, they are almost always done by someone who knows the child. So strangers aren’t the issue.

I remember, in big bad NYC in the late 1960’s, walking home – alone – at lunch to make a sandwich, and then walking back to school. 4 blocks each way, good neighborhood (2 blocks south of Harlem), but still…and a bunch of us, all the same ages (8-10) would walk over to the park and play together after school.

Back then we didn’t have hairsprayed, airheaded local news anchors telling us about every crime committed within 100 miles – a point DeBecker makes quite ferociously. We get worked up about so many things so easily today…

I am disabled and surviving on 975. a month. Without insurance my medication is 3500. a MONTH. I tried to work and deal with my illness and drug expenses. I even received a large settlement of 95000. but it ran out. It took 5 years for me to win my social security benefits, but I did. I went through all my savings etc. I closed my business and went to work for a software company so I could get insurance. I kept getting sicker and had to face the writing on the wall. I got a rent increase yesterday. But I am happy. I have a roof, friends, pets. I worry for the world not myself. I am good. The universe takes care of me. I just worry for the universe.

I can tell you one thing, I make less money now than I did 5 and even 20 years ago.Wage suppression is one of the Repubs main goals.
Right behind union busting.
( insert several nasty words here.)

As a sort of bystander (Canadian living in the US since 1999) I can see quite clearly that the “ruling class” i.e. the corporate state, has required that those they paid to get into power quite literally stomp on “the people” because that way they can make more money. When people are scared all the time they will put up with shitty working conditions and lousy pay because the alternative is too scary. So it doesn’t matter what the scare tactic is, the whole idea of keeping “the people” off balance and worried plays into their hands. Worried about money? Well then you should also worry about gays, molesters, losing your house (of course that’s easy with sub-prime sharks let loose with no regulation), loose nukes, nasty brown people over there, and more nasty brown people coming here to take your jobs. Like ANYONE wants to work at a Swift chicken processing plant, or work in the celery fields.

When the American “people” – the real people, not the denizens of the horrible corporate world of slimeballs who keep trying to assert that the economy is great – decide it is actually time to take back THEIR America, life in this country will begin to be better for us and our children.

fourmorewars @ 33

a little parent-fear is healthy, simply because of what it’s standing in for, i.e. a world that’s ready to hurt you far worse than (99.9% of) parents are.)

Of course, I don’t have any children, but as an armchair quarterback, this seems to be a very wise statement.

chiquita bananas had some interesting union-busting *friends* didn’t they?

RedVan @ 35

I must have missed something.

Reading the above posts, I’d think the original author’s main intent was provoking a discussion about our economy.

I think “Phoenix Woman’s” point was how the GOP (and media) generate FEAR to herd the spineless masses into doing whatever it is they damn well want to.

Am I off base?

I agree. I think the Dems fundamental mistake was not fighting the “terrorism is the new communism” meme starting on Sept. 12. 2001. Clinton was able to get elected because Bush 1.0 no longer had the commie fear card. The GOP was desperate for a new fear card. That the Dems didn’t see it coming is sort of dismaying.

okay i admit i overdid the protection thing when the kids were young.

they ignored my ‘directives’ on every possible occasion. as i later learned.

:>)………..brats

RedVan @ 36

I must have missed something.

Reading the above posts, I’d think the original author’s main intent was provoking a discussion about our economy.

I think “Phoenix Woman’s” point was how the GOP (and media) generate FEAR to herd the spineless masses into doing whatever it is they damn well want to.

Am I off base?

We will get to that. The thread writes itself.

Believe it or not, stranger abduction isn’t a new thing. It’s rare, but it’s not new. What’s new is the emphasis given to it, on shows like “To Catch A Predator”. The media acts as if it’s a new and growing problem, because fear and blood get attention (hence the newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads”).

For example:

When my mother was a little girl sixty-odd years ago, there was at least one known child molester in the area where she grew up. He was a car dealer, and so had the money both to avoid arrest and to keep his name out of the papers. He had a car that was designed to be locked by a master lock from controls located on the driver’s side; once you got in as a passenger, you couldn’t get out again. But again, since he had money, he got away with it. He likely wouldn’t get away with it now — he’d be held up as an example of “the child molestation epidemic”.

Guitar_Playing_Bastard @
35

I have no children. I’m real happy about that.

Same here. I applaud the optimism of those who do have children. But I am selfish enough to like my freedom and have no desire to bring someone into this world who will have to deal with the sh*t storm to come.

Thing is: Are there more stranger abductions now than before, or are we paying more attention to them now?

I suspect both. All the news all the time subjects to bad news from every part of the planet. MSM love to pore over every horrible story of predators and victims. But I also think that all this media coverage, and all the horrible films and games have fueled a more violent culture, casual cruelty, and just by the numbers, more truly sick predators.

Also, add in a mobile society in which people don’t know their neighbors, and strangers don’t stand out. In many respects, it is dangerous for kids.

20 years ago my wife was assaulted by a cop. other girls whom he also assaulted didn’t press the issue (their parents thought it was a stigma and didn’t want the attention) My wife persued it (by herself and her parents) as far as she could… he ended up having to quit the department with no other penalty. And she can’t have kids. He was killed by a drunk driver 4 years ago. She thinks he got off easy.

alcoholic families, like a nation living a lie, fill children with dire impossibilities rooted in fear.

Phoenix Woman @ 50

Believe it or not, stranger abduction isn’t a new thing. It’s rare, but it’s not new. What’s new is the emphasis given to it, on shows like “To Catch A Predator”. The media acts as if it’s a new and growing problem, because fear and blood get attention (hence the newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads”).

For example:

When my mother was a little girl sixty-odd years ago, there was at least one known child molester in the area where she grew up. He was a car dealer, and so had the money both to avoid arrest and to keep his name out of the papers. He had a car that was designed to be locked by a master lock from controls located on the driver’s side; once you got in as a passenger, you couldn’t get out again. But again, since he had money, he got away with it. He likely wouldn’t get away with it now — he’d be held up as an example of “the child molestation epidemic”.

the evil toobes

subjects us

I strongly suspect that there’s a mental tension created in average folks by the difference between what The Wise Media People tell them is the case and what they actually are experiencing themselves. This tension manifests itself in fear — and if they don’t want to openly admit that their economic situation is screwed, the fear transfers to something else: WMD, child predators, the black family moving in down the street.

Yup.

If all I hear on FauxSnooze is how great the economy is, I want to keep my own personal empty wallet my own personal secret. Therefore, I’ll find something else to unite around in fear. And there will be plenty of other people, equally fearful and equally secretive, who’ll agree with me that we need to invade Iraq or walk our kids to school. Because we are all individually terrified that we are one paycheck away from foreclosure and poverty, and we are all terrified others will find out about our uniquely impoverished bank balance.

The GOP Manifesto: Kick out the underpinnings of the middle class, tell them everyone else’s economy is doing simply terrific, and give them something to be very very scared of — and a way to share it with their neighbors, fellow churchgoers, or PoxWatchers.

Not only do I make less in real wages than I did three years ago, I make less in actual dollars, too! I haven’t changed jobs, either. Adjustments in the way overtime pay is calculated, combined with a bizarre company policy of 7 hour workdays (instead of the nominal 8) has me earning less this year than I had earned prior. And then the increasing costs of gas/energy and the price pressures that’s placed on everything else, I feel the squeeze, big time.

My parents owned a home and had just had me by the time they were the same age as myself and my partner. We couldn’t even begin to imagine doing that.

RedVan (#35), yeah, you’re off base a little. Regarding the media. I mean, we’re not gonna get anywhere barking up the wrong tree, and ascribing overly sinister motives to the people running these horrid excuses for news shows every day is a mis-bark.

They.just.want.their.piece.of.the.pie. NOTHING is more important than figuring out the maximum distraction level, to a) keep the customer past the break, and to b) keep them on the hook for their other, later dreck.

Fear, xenophobia, titillation, it’s all one to them. That, and not scaring off any corporate dollars through too much curiosity regarding corporate malfeasance. (But the average person still has the sense that they’re getting screwed. So you have an exclusive report about overcharging at the local body shop run by that Arab guy.)

smapdi @ 34

Women and girls have a 1 in 4 change of being victims of sex abuse, mostly from male relatives. No one talks about it on CNN. Its not as newsworthy as a stranger abduction. More people are hit by lightening in a year than abducted by strangers. You’d think parents would be running around making sure their children were properly grounded.

Quick Shiny! Over there!

Exactly. EXACTLY.

Incest is the big fat gorilla in the punchbowl here. And now that you mention it, I almost wonder if some of the reason for the intense focus on stranger abductions/stranger predations is a transferred horror at the incest problem that society dares not acknowledge.

Phoenix Woman @ 50

Believe it or not, stranger abduction isn’t a new thing. It’s rare, but it’s not new. What’s new is the emphasis given to it, on shows like “To Catch A Predator”. The media acts as if it’s a new and growing problem, because fear and blood get attention (hence the newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads”).

For good or ill, the job of journalists is not to pursue the truth or present the facts. The news is a loss leader for advertising. The job of a journalist is to keep people’s eyes trained on the paper, tube, or other medium that also includes the advertisements. If the “truth” or the “facts” accomplish that, then it’s fine to use them as means to that end. But if stories of the bizarre or unusual or frightening will work — and they will — then even better.

The point of my story was the other parents fear of stigma. FEAR is all the thugs know and it works. I asked a female friend of mine right after the patriot act was signed if she was willing to give up liberty for security, she said yes. Then I explained who originally said that and why. She still said yes.

Phoenix Woman @ 50

Believe it or not, stranger abduction isn’t a new thing. It’s rare, but it’s not new. What’s new is the emphasis given to it, on shows like “To Catch A Predator”. The media acts as if it’s a new and growing problem, because fear and blood get attention (hence the newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads”).

Yeah. Look, if the chances of something really bad happening to somebody are one in ten million each year, then it happens 30 times a year in the U.S. The problem is we hear about each one, and that makes it seem common, when it’s not. It’s still one in ten million, or one in two hundred thousand over your lifetime. If you lived in a community of two hundered thousand people, which is a fair amount of folks, and didn’t hear about all the stuff happening in all the other communities, then that really bad thing might happen once in your lifetime to somebody in your community. Or it might not. That wouldn’t seem so frightening.

Hello to the new folks!

Nice post, PW!

I don’t think that abductions are up, I think we are just hearing more about them. I remember as a kid that the network news was about serious and big stuff– you had to read your local paper for the other stuff. Now, with infotainment, we just get the local stuff blown out of proportion and the really big stuff stays buried or twisted.

It is fearmongering! Why on earth people vote against their own interests can only be explained by this nefarious manipulation.

Phoenix Woman @ 50

Believe it or not, stranger abduction isn’t a new thing. It’s rare, but it’s not new. What’s new is the emphasis given to it, on shows like “To Catch A Predator”. The media acts as if it’s a new and growing problem, because fear and blood get attention (hence the newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads”).

For example:

When my mother was a little girl sixty-odd years ago, there was at least one known child molester in the area where she grew up. He was a car dealer, and so had the money both to avoid arrest and to keep his name out of the papers. He had a car that was designed to be locked by a master lock from controls located on the driver’s side; once you got in as a passenger, you couldn’t get out again. But again, since he had money, he got away with it. He likely wouldn’t get away with it now — he’d be held up as an example of “the child molestation epidemic”.

I’m in my mid-fifties. I grew up in a smalltown in Kentucky. When I was a kid, we had a lot of freedom and I played all over town. But there was also a man who wandered all over town that we stayed away from. I don’t know what his history was but I believe he was castrated by the state, after having been in a mental hospital. I do not know to this day if he was a molestor, gay or what, but (unfortunately) any and all of the above may have been the trigger for his “treatment.” It was part of the every day reality.

Phoenix Woman @ 59

smapdi @ 34

Women and girls have a 1 in 4 change of being victims of sex abuse, mostly from male relatives. No one talks about it on CNN. Its not as newsworthy as a stranger abduction. More people are hit by lightening in a year than abducted by strangers. You’d think parents would be running around making sure their children were properly grounded.

Quick Shiny! Over there!

Exactly. EXACTLY.

Incest is the big fat gorilla in the punchbowl here. And now that you mention it, I almost wonder if some of the reason for the intense focus on stranger abductions/stranger predations is a transferred horror at the incest problem that society dares not acknowledge.

We have all become voyeurs. They hypnotize us with the shiny thing.

Mary McCurnin @ 27

Oklahoma kiddo @
2

My late Mom was a working woman all her life, and never had a credit card. She finanaced only one thing, our house. She told me, kiddo, if you can’t buy it with cash, you don’t need it. She was right.

A house in Rancho Cordova by the American River. Valued now at $400,000.00

My Mom bought, in 1955 the 10th. house built in Rancho. It was a brand new house on Malaga Way. Four bedrooms and 2 baths, for $11,500. When she passed away last year, that house, the only one she ever owned sold for a fortune. I was in the first graduating class at Cordova High.

Phoenix Woman @ 59

smapdi @ 34

Women and girls have a 1 in 4 change of being victims of sex abuse, mostly from male relatives. No one talks about it on CNN. Its not as newsworthy as a stranger abduction. More people are hit by lightening in a year than abducted by strangers. You’d think parents would be running around making sure their children were properly grounded.

Quick Shiny! Over there!

Exactly. EXACTLY.

Incest is the big fat gorilla in the punchbowl here. And now that you mention it, I almost wonder if some of the reason for the intense focus on stranger abductions/stranger predations is a transferred horror at the incest problem that society dares not acknowledge.

Point one. That’s how taboos work. They are not to be spoken of.

Point two. How many people paying on this thread can honestly say they might not be tempted to change the channel if a TV journalist were to plumb the god-awful depths of incest? A story about incest would violate rule #1 of TV journalism: keep people watching the commercials.

Thanks PW,
I’ve been thinking on this for years: why don’t the people revolt? Why are we acting like we do: powerless, deeply in debt, yet living (as much as possible) like we are rich and powerful?
I think we’ve got three things going on at once, which you’ve pretty much spelled out:
1) We are frightened silly by the random (and well publicized) violence in our society (available 24/7 on any news channel), our nearness to bankruptcy or layoff, and the fragility of our personal relationships and marriages. We live in constant fear that at any moment: Bad Shit’s Gonna’ come down.
2) We are promoted and sold and celebrated to live like kings: cars, houses, big screen TVs, the latest jeans; it’s all yours if you can qualify for this loan, and the corporate money changers make it SO easy to qualify.
3) We are sold (constantly) a story of patriotic my-team pride. We are part of the winning team of America! We’re number one! And anyone off the team is publicly denigrated (or at least frowned upon.)
All of this creates a horrible tension. We’re rich, yet we’re one pay check away from bankruptcy. We’re highly successful, yet we’re scared that our employer might get an idea to cut costs this quarter and RIF our jobs. We’re patriotic and united, yet we know our president is lying to us and laughing afterward.

This is a terrible situation. There’s no control. So almost all of the people of this country think they are powerless and there’s nothing they can do about it.

That’s were this forum comes in. We are the individuals that are daring to speak up, and we’re just folks. We are taking back the power and it’s working. It won’t take long for this behavior to catch on in a big way.

TeddySanFran @ 58

If all I hear on FauxSnooze is how great the economy is, I want to keep my own personal empty wallet my own personal secret.

Yupper, because you don’t want to admit to your buddies (who you all KNOW are doing better than you, ‘cuz FOX says they are and they’re not saying otherwise, right?) that you’ve got an empty wallet and maxed-out credit cards.

Therefore, I’ll find something else to unite around in fear. And there will be plenty of other people, equally fearful and equally secretive, who’ll agree with me that we need to invade Iraq or walk our kids to school. Because we are all individually terrified that we are one paycheck away from foreclosure and poverty, and we are all terrified others will find out about our uniquely impoverished bank balance.
The GOP Manifesto: Kick out the underpinnings of the middle class, tell them everyone else’s economy is doing simply terrific, and give them something to be very very scared of — and a way to share it with their neighbors, fellow churchgoers, or PoxWatchers.

Exactly. That’s what’s so insidious about this. The fearful ones have reasons to be afraid, all right — but the people they should fear are the ones busy stoking their fears of the wrong things.

Alternatively, there are those people who DO realize who really is to blame for their crappy situation, but — like the traffic cop who goes after the slower speeders because she can catch them, or the guy who takes out his unexpressed anger at his boss on his wife and kids — they decide not to go after the person(s) who are the most culpable, but the persons they feel they actually have the power to “punish” for their situation.

And part of the fear too: not only worrying about health care costs and rent or mortgage and credit card debt and heating costs and gasoline and food prices and college tuition…

is retirement! They tell us we’ll need millions, gazillions! to retire. Forget salting away 10 a week like my mother did, it’s hopeless.

Better develop a taste for eating catfood under a bridge.

I was inclined at first to say: “No wonder why the PNAC/Bush neocon bullshit about ‘we can’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud’ worked so well. The insane fixation on a very rare crime is turning us into a nation of bedwetters who freak at the sight of our own shadows.”

On this point, I would add that there is a distorted thinking pattern known as catastrophizing, where you make decisions based only upon the worst possible outcome, a.k.a. Cheney’s 1% Doctrine.

Our country is being governed by mentally unhealthy leaders in the executive branch.

- Tom

Robert Chapman @ 66

How many people paying on this thread . . .

Not “paying.” Sorry, bad proofing on my part. “Paying attention to this thread.”

too bad more people didn’t pay attention to Aaron Sorkin: movie: The American President and later West Wing, he was telling the public the truth but yet they never got it, ergo: BUSH

carolyn urban @ 70

And part of the fear too: not only worrying about health care costs and rent or mortgage and credit card debt and heating costs and gasoline and food prices and college tuition…

is retirement! They tell us we’ll need millions, gazillions! to retire. Forget salting away 10 a week like my mother did, it’s hopeless.

Better develop a taste for eating catfood under a bridge.

Better watch out for that cat food. It could kill you nowadays.

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

angie @ 64

Hello to the new folks!

Nice post, PW!

I don’t think that abductions are up, I think we are just hearing more about them. I remember as a kid that the network news was about serious and big stuff– you had to read your local paper for the other stuff. Now, with infotainment, we just get the local stuff blown out of proportion and the really big stuff stays buried or twisted.

It is fearmongering! Why on earth people vote against their own interests can only be explained by this nefarious manipulation.

Remember good old Brill’s Content? They used to do articles talking about the dearth of hard news in modern “serious” journalism.

One of their most telling features was to see how often the “serious” news mags like Time or Newsweek had the same cover story in a given week as did the celebrity-and-soft-news-oriented People magazine. When People started out in the 1970s, it was well under 5% of the time, IIRC. By the late 1990s (the time Brill’s started up), it was over 50% of the time.

carolyn urban @ 75

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

Exactly. We’re better equipped to live on the edge than they are.

I use FEAR now, I tell my diehard Bush supporting friends they need to think about a Democrat in the Whitehouse with all of those Kingly powers Bush thinks he has.. scares the hell out of them.

This is nothing new, but the amplification of this fear (by the media and various organizations) is at an hysterical level these days.

The fear of stranger abduction has been with us for a very long time; I know my parents worried about it in the 1950s (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy), but it really became an obsession in the early 80s (Carter, Reagan) when photos of missing children began to appear on milk cartons. I remember a neighbor’s friend was visiting from England and was astonished, asked us if children being kidnapped was such a common occurrence in this country.

There have been some highly publicized abductions in the past 15- 20 years, some that truly shocked us because of the manner of abduction and/or the absolute cruelty involved, but until recently most kidnappings rated mention in local news outlets, nothing more.
We hear about more of these cases now because the huge technological advances in communications have given us the ability to report on so many more news items than we could ten years ago; this makes it sound like there are many more cases when, compared with population figures, it may be that there really are fewer per capita.

Sorry, that was a really long-winded way of saying that:
1) parents have always worried about their kids regardless of who was in the White House,
and
2) a lot of “news” is just there to fill in on slow news days,
but
3) maybe it’s being amped up, a deliberate distraction, much like all the coverage of Things That Actually Do Not Matter such as celebrity gossip, but with the distinction that They know that our children do matter to us…

or is that too a paranoid view?

carolyn urban @ 78

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

Ding!

carolyn urban @ 75

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

There is that. It made an already fully functioning bullsh*t detector even stronger in my case. The fear tactics don’t quite work on me.

PW, you have emboldened me! ;)!

I heard someone saying on Tucker a few ago that this whole money thing with Obama and Clinton “will make them better candidates”. Dammit, that’s just exactly what I don’t want; “better candidates”. I want better statespersons!

carolyn urban @ 74

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

In some respects, yes. However, often it feels like I spend inordinate amounts of time and money just trying to keep my head above water. Everything costs more when you’re poor, as they say. There’s nothing empowering about that.

carolyn urban @
78

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

I think Kris Kristoferson found a song in there somewhere.

From what I’ve read, stranger abductions are DOWN from the 70’s. Most abductions today are still done by someone in the family or known by the family. Similar stats for sexual abuse.

I do know of kids that were beaten, raped and even murdered, etc. when I was younger (I’m 42), but it barely made the local news, let alone was ever sensationalized at a national level. In Hawaii there was even a shooting in my junior high (there it was called intermediate school). I don’t believe my parents were ever notified.

The only time I was ever told to worry by my parents was when there was a family going on a killing spree trying to get out of the US, they had busted a father and son from prison in Phoenix. They came through Yuma and did some horrific things that would make your hair stand on end. Until they were caught, everybody in Yuma drove with their car windows up and locked their doors. And I mean everyone was scared to death, even my father. This may have been a one night item nationally, but was covered well in Arizona.

If this same thing were to happen today, the entire country would be panic stricken and laws across the country enacted to prevent this from ever happening again.

Other than that one instance, I was left pretty much unsupervised, and also rode my bike to get my parents their cigarettes. I was also trusted to babysit from 12 years old by our neighbors, and by 16 (when I could drive) babysat for periods up to 2 weeks while people were gone on vacation.

Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to 1964…

I miss my childhood when the only word-to-the-wise warning I got from my mom as I shot out he door on a summer morning was, “Come home when the streetlights go on.”

No cell phone, bike sans bike helmet, no holing up in some bedroom playing computer games. Nope, we were blowing up those army men — green = USA (Little Joe and all the cast members of “Combat”), gray = German (Kraut), tan = Japanese (Jap) – with clods of dirt. And as you can see, yelling out politically incorrect names at the enemy.

But here I am today, a non-abducted, pacifistic adult who embraces all mankind… except… sigh… Bushies.

Bustednuckles @ 44

I can tell you one thing, I make less money now than I did 5 and even 20 years ago.Wage suppression is one of the Repubs main goals.
Right behind union busting.
( insert several nasty words here.)

A-yep. Which is why Tula Connell of the AFL-CIO and the fine folks at the SEIU are doing the Lord’s work for us.

In some respects, yes. However, often it feels like I spend inordinate amounts of time and money just trying to keep my head above water. Everything costs more when you’re poor, as they say. There’s nothing empowering about that.

No, I hear that bdu. I give myself a few times a month to feel seriously sick and worried about my financial situation. I have to actually sit down before I open my heat bill. Then I try to put it out of my mind. I have a coworker who says that when he’s stressed he tells himself: at least I’m not in Bagdad.

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

signs of the times:

Yahoo offers page to help find foreclosure property

Eight years ago, Internet IPOs were being touted as the get-rich gimmick du jour.

Today it’s foreclosures.

In a sign of the financial times, Yahoo unveiled an online Foreclosure Center on Wednesday that gives tips on how to buy foreclosed homes and allows people to search for foreclosed properties by city or ZIP code.
…

Bankruptcy Filings Surged in Q1

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – Spurred by a sputtering U.S. economy, bankruptcy filings are on the rise in 2007, an increase analysts predict will continue.
…

AnnieW @ 86

From what I’ve read, stranger abductions are DOWN from the 70’s. Most abductions today are still done by someone in the family or known by the family. Similar stats for sexual abuse.

I do know of kids that were beaten, raped and even murdered, etc. when I was younger (I’m 42), but it barely made the local news, let alone was ever sensationalized at a national level. In Hawaii there was even a shooting in my junior high (there it was called intermediate school). I don’t believe my parents were ever notified.

The only time I was ever told to worry by my parents was when there was a family going on a killing spree trying to get out of the US, they had busted a father and son from prison in Phoenix. They came through Yuma and did some horrific things that would make your hair stand on end. Until they were caught, everybody in Yuma drove with their car windows up and locked their doors. And I mean everyone was scared to death, even my father. This may have been a one night item nationally, but was covered well in Arizona.

If this same thing were to happen today, the entire country would be panic stricken and laws across the country enacted to prevent this from ever happening again.

Other than that one instance, I was left pretty much unsupervised, and also rode my bike to get my parents their cigarettes. I was also trusted to babysit from 12 years old by our neighbors, and by 16 (when I could drive) babysat for periods up to 2 weeks while people were gone on vacation.

Oh, and that’s another whole subject — the creeping elongation of childhood well past the teen years and into the twenties.

At 3.50 a gallon for 87 octain gas I don’t know how long before the California economy goes tits up.

Gort @ 90

No cell phone, bike sans bike helmet, no holing up in some bedroom playing computer games.

So, how comes it to be that “we” fear abduction and falling off a bike . . . and see-saws on playgrounds . . . but not, say, the effects of holing up in one’s room and/or video games?

I tend not to be a nostalgic person, I am also not really old enough. But one thing that I can say that my parent’s generation had better was the cost of higher education. While I was an undergrad, I came across a receipt for my father’s tuition for one quarter at UC Berkeley in 1970. It was $75. The ridiculous increases in the cost of higher education even at “public” universities serve only to restrict access and deepen the divide between the rich and poor.

Has any one said lately how brilliant Driftglass is?
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/

And here’s the thing too. First of all, I’m not talking about the elderly on fixed incomes, or people with serious medical issues who cannot afford treatment, because those are special cases. And as for the super rich? FUCK THEM. Choke on it.

But for the rest of us? We live over inflated lives. Poor for Americans is rich for everyone else on the planet. We could do more without. It wouldn’t kill us, and it would be good for the planet.

I have a book “Women in the Material World” – profiles women from various cultures: their lives, marriages, family, work, habits. The women from industrialized countries in some ways had busier lives, and certainly way more stuff. The women from third world countries worked physically harder, but man, some of these women – their faces glow in the photographs, they passionately love their children, they have hard work that is meaningful, their lives are hard, but simple, and they make sense.

Something not all of us have.

wind off the lake @ 90

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

The Lindbergh baby made news precisely because he was the son of America’s most famous aviator, who was one of the biggest heroes America had at the time and was rich to boot. He would never have been taken by the ransom-seeking Hauptmann had he been the son of Joe Blow the working-class schmoe.

Lorna Doon is in hot water – I’m sure it’s posted here somewhere already.

LS @ 102

Lorna Doon is in hot water – I’m sure it’s posted here somewhere already.

What, what, what?

Speaking about taking constructive action, Jane’s got a new thread up top urging us to do just that. Go and do!

LS– nope, you brought it first and thanks!

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._0405.html

Comment #61, redvan is not off-base, redvan is spot on it.

True, fear stories sell; that’s why your local news has that awful teaser about something that happened three thousand miles away that couldn’t possibly affect you. Fear also impedes thought, which most of us have little time for anyway.

That “local” station, by the way, is probably owned by Rupert Murdoch or ABC or someone like them, which most certainly does have national strategies for what they sell locally.

News, for example, doesn’t just directly make money by informing or frightening us. It makes money indirectly by shaping or distracting opinion in ways desired by ruling elites. These compensate “news makers” with tax subsidies, legal immunities, regulatory approvals, and so on. Which can generate a lot more money than selling soap.

It’s not a strategy limited to news organizations. I’ll bet you’ve replaced your cell phone in the past four years. A lot of those phones were replaced under marketing promotions suggesting that new machines were “911″ compliant, implying that your subsidized purchase helped local first responders know where you were.

The people who really wanted to know exactly where you were were the FEDs. They had an understanding with all those companies who wanted merger approvals to get those new GPS phones in your hands pronto. National Security. Yes, sir. Fear and greed can do wonderous things.

tbsa @ 96

At 3.50 a gallon for 87 octain gas I don’t know how long before the California economy goes tits up.

I hope the Terminator has a sports bra for the Golden State.

-GSD

Evan @ 98

While I was an undergrad, I came across a receipt for my father’s tuition for one quarter at UC Berkeley in 1970. It was $75. The ridiculous increases in the cost of higher education even at “public” universities serve only to restrict access and deepen the divide between the rich and poor.

Hey Evan – I’m not disagreeing with your ultimate point – the cost of college today is outrageous.
But…your father’s bill from Berkeley was quite different from mine at another state university, Indiana. I paid, I believe, about $800 a semester in ‘69 or “70.
California at the time was still among the states where a college education was valued so highly the tuition was deliberately kept very low. In fact, until the late ’60’s (someone here will know the dates better), California was famous for having FREE tuition to state universities. Even Berkeley.

All that was pre-Proposition 13. (was it 13? or was that a different state’s no.?)
That prop, voted in by the people of California after a great disinformation campaign by the Grover Norquists of the day, capped property taxes at a very low level. From that point on, the cost of everything provided by government, especially college, began going up, up, up.

It was the first blast of the 40-yr Republican campaign to drown government in the bathtub, and keep the money for them that already has it.

LS @ 103

Lorna Doon is in hot water – I’m sure it’s posted here somewhere already.

Can we petition the mainstream media to always refer to it as the “scandal plagued Bush Administration” from now on?

-GSD

I wonder what will happen if home prices plummet, let alone when interest rates rise.

All the people I know that “seem” to be doing so well are maxed out. They have already spent every penny of their homes appreciation and will not be able to make it. They don’t feel maxed out either, because it’s their home loan and it’s “tax deductable”.

My husband and I are doing very well technically, but still feel insecure about the future. As a result, we don’t have a lot of the “things” that many people feel are necessary, people that are in much more precarious positions than ourselves. His car is payed for, mine has 1 year left, and we still don’t have a flat screen TV, will only get one when our TV no longer works.

We thought for awhile before buying a good quality $400 barbeque. In this area, everybody else thinks nothing of financing the new BBQ islands, that go for thousands.

Don’t get me started on how all my women friends take their young children to get professional pedicures….and by the way, my neighborhood is solidly working class.

tbsa @ 96

At 3.50 a gallon for 87 octain gas I don’t know how long before the California economy goes tits up.

No problem. The Bush tax cuts just keep on working their magic for all of us. hahahahahahaha

wind off the lake @ 93

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

Maybe not more notorious, but just as notorious. The two that come to mind right away are Polly Klaas and Elizabeth Smart, and I think they caught our attention so much because bother were taken from their homes, while their parents were nearby. People weren’t able to distance themselves from it by saying to themselves, “It can’t happen to us, her parents were careless.” It became apparent that it could happen to anyone.

carolyn urban @ 100

But for the rest of us? We live over inflated lives. Poor for Americans is rich for everyone else on the planet. We could do more without. It wouldn’t kill us, and it would be good for the planet.

[snip]
I have a book “Women in the Material World” – The women from third world countries worked physically harder, but man, some of these women – their faces glow in the photographs, they passionately love their children, they have hard work that is meaningful, their lives are hard, but simple, and they make sense.

Something not all of us have.

amen sistahgrrl.

Favorite bumper sticker:
Live simply so that others may simply live.

in some ways, we seem headed for a return to the basics…
the downside: it’s going to shatter a lot of illusions.
the upside: it’s going to shatter a lot of illusions

(all this fear-mongering fuckery being one of them).

GSD @ 109

LS @ 103

Lorna Doon is in hot water – I’m sure it’s posted here somewhere already.

Can we petition the mainstream media to always refer to it as the “scandal plagued Bush Administration” from now on?

-GSD

No kidding. Talk about a fishing expedition, you just throw your old hook out hourly and catch another scandal. Unbelievable.

What party are you going to want leading the nation in times of economic hardships?

The party of the New Deal and the Great Society or the party of “Fuck-off, I’ve got mine”.

-GSD

GSD @ 114

What party are you going to want leading the nation in times of economic hardships?

The party of the New Deal and the Great Society or the party of “Fuck-off, I’ve got mine”.

-GSD

Well put…but I’m a big fan of your comments.

Phoenix Woman @ 101

wind off the lake @ 90

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

The Lindbergh baby made news precisely because he was the son of America’s most famous aviator, who was one of the biggest heroes America had at the time and was rich to boot. He would never have been taken by the ransom-seeking Hauptmann had he been the son of Joe Blow the working-class schmoe.

So the publicity is not new, and the fear is not new. But 50 years ago many of us were in neighborhoods where there were some bonds among parents. A significant element of the fear atmosphere is that we are each alone, and personally responsible, and solely responsible, for anything that goes wrong. I think it is Jared Bernstein who offers the theme “were all in this together” as an antidote to the fear inducing policies and greedy policies of every one for themself.

ok kiddo @ 2

My late Mom was a working woman all her life, and never had a credit card. She finanaced only one thing, our house. She told me, kiddo, if you can’t buy it with cash, you don’t need it. She was right.

my rule-my dad, a retired accountant, warned me about credit cards in the early 80’s-said it was an attack on the middle class, boy was he right………

sorry i didn’t show up earlier, pw you brought up a lot of things….that nag me….

first-none of that forced busing going on where i live, thankfully

second-i know nader is a bad word around here, but he was right in america being sold on what they need to BUY, most people feel the need to shop……i was brought up that if i need it, wait, pay cash, if i really need it, buy it……if i don’t really need it, why are you buyin’ it?

third-people have anxiety about the future when they aren’t paying attention to the present…….there are many things to distract you from this—pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…………pay attention to the things around you that matter.

chop wood carry water……….shawn colvin, it’s borrowed from many sources……….really, pay attention in your own life, make it good, all aspects, take care of yourselves in all things, then you can reach out and help in other areas……and it will be geniune.

Phoenix Woman @ 101

wind off the lake @ 90

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

The Lindbergh baby made news precisely because he was the son of America’s most famous aviator, who was one of the biggest heroes America had at the time and was rich to boot. He would never have been taken by the ransom-seeking Hauptmann had he been the son of Joe Blow the working-class schmoe.

tejanarusa @ 108

Evan @ 98

While I was an undergrad, I came across a receipt for my father’s tuition for one quarter at UC Berkeley in 1970. It was $75. The ridiculous increases in the cost of higher education even at “public” universities serve only to restrict access and deepen the divide between the rich and poor.

Hey Evan – I’m not disagreeing with your ultimate point – the cost of college today is outrageous.
But…your father’s bill from Berkeley was quite different from mine at another state university, Indiana. I paid, I believe, about $800 a semester in ‘69 or “70.
California at the time was still among the states where a college education was valued so highly the tuition was deliberately kept very low. In fact, until the late ’60’s (someone here will know the dates better), California was famous for having FREE tuition to state universities. Even Berkeley.

All that was pre-Proposition 13. (was it 13? or was that a different state’s no.?)
That prop, voted in by the people of California after a great disinformation campaign by the Grover Norquists of the day, capped property taxes at a very low level. From that point on, the cost of everything provided by government, especially college, began going up, up, up.

It was the first blast of the 40-yr Republican campaign to drown government in the bathtub, and keep the money for them that already has it.

There was no tuition at Cal State colleges in the 70s, only at the UC campuses. Instead, we paid a “registration” fee and mine in 1970 was $23.

wind off the lake @ 117

Phoenix Woman @ 101

wind off the lake @ 90

There may be frequent reporting of child abduction, but it is not like widespread publicity is new. Is any recent case any more notorious than the Lindberg baby kidnapping? (Am I so old that no one else would reference Bruno Hauptmann for purposes of a trivial pursuit game?)

The Lindbergh baby made news precisely because he was the son of America’s most famous aviator, who was one of the biggest heroes America had at the time and was rich to boot. He would never have been taken by the ransom-seeking Hauptmann had he been the son of Joe Blow the working-class schmoe.

So the publicity is not new, and the fear is not new. But 50 years ago many of us were in neighborhoods where there were some bonds among parents. A significant element of the fear atmosphere is that we are each alone, and personally responsible, and solely responsible, for anything that goes wrong. I think it is Jared Bernstein who offers the theme “were all in this together” as an antidote to the fear inducing policies and greedy policies of every one for themself.

YES!!!

GSD @ 115

What party are you going to want leading the nation in times of economic hardships?

The party of the New Deal and the Great Society or the party of “Fuck-off, I’ve got mine”.

-GSD

I think that Harvard should recall Bush’s MBA. Based on his demonstrated knowledge, he couldn’t have earned that degree and must have cheated to get it. Either that or they were teaching that tax cuts cure all problems.

who do you want making money off war: diane feinstein or halliburton?

Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 122

who do you want making money off war: diane feinstein or halliburton?

Neither. We want the money to line the pockets of the Royal Bush Family.

dakine01 @
53

Same here. I applaud the optimism of those who do have children. But I am selfish enough to like my freedom and have no desire to bring someone into this world who will have to deal with the sh*t storm to come.

I neither applaud nor deride those with kids. By the way, it’s not selfish to make a decision that’s the correct one for you. It’s called living life on your terms, and *I* applaud YOU for that.

RedVan @
36

I must have missed something.

Reading the above posts, I’d think the original author’s main intent was provoking a discussion about our economy.

I think “Phoenix Woman’s” point was how the GOP (and media) generate FEAR to herd the spineless masses into doing whatever it is they damn well want to.

Am I off base?

I think the flow of this discussion demonstrates the validity of Phoenix Woman’s argument!

sorry folks. I do believe there are more child abductions now than before.
i think there are more mentally disturbed people now than before.
i think the corporate/military/religious entity known as the u.s.a. breeds terr-ifying fear relentlessly.
i think chemicals/transfat/pesticides in the food make crazy people.
i think cell phone rays and psychiatric drugs make crazy people.

It is a very serious error to say that wages

“bottomed out in 1996, then started to rise as Clinton’s 1993 undoing of the Reagan/Bush tax cuts giveaways started making itself felt — but then immediately started to drop again once Bush Junior’s 2003 tax cuts for the rich went into effect.”

This is very poor logic. The facts are coincident, it could probably never be proven there is a causal relationship. This stupid sort of logical error is the same as all the supply side tripe we have lived with for 25 years. It’s partisan hakerery. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Wage and income trends, as well as asset distribution, are huge trends which cannot be attributed to any one factor. Certainly not to one releatively minor change in fiscal policy.

Fiscal policy has two components, the revenue side and the spending side. Each has been in the range of 19% to 23% of GDP over the entire Clinton/Bush period. The revene side being the more volitile, within the narrow range. The point being that a couple of percent in this spending side, the one which effects wages, perhaps, is hardly enough to explain the changes in over all wage trends.

The largest macro trend which probably lead to wages rising in the late 90’s was the revving up of the stock and asset bubbles and the resultant economic overheating. The rise in wages was counter trend and now the main trend has regained control. The age of the major trend of falling wages, 73 to 07, is now as old as the trend to rising wages 1942 or so to 73.

We have been trained to think of the postwar period as the base upon which all economic trends are based. This is a mistake. It’s better to think of it as just another economic period. It could be argued that the postwar period of rapidly rising incomes and the flattening of its distribution were in fact an anomaly.

wind off the lake @ 113

So the publicity is not new, and the fear is not new. But 50 years ago many of us were in neighborhoods where there were some bonds among parents. A significant element of the fear atmosphere is that we are each alone, and personally responsible, and solely responsible, for anything that goes wrong. I think it is Jared Bernstein who offers the theme “were all in this together” as an antidote to the fear inducing policies and greedy policies of every one for themself.

Indeed. I was explaining this to my neighbor the other day. He and his family came here from Iran a few years ago. He’s a very friendly man, caters delicious kabobs for local companies, and shares with his neighbors liberally.

He was confused that sometimes people respond poorly to his greetings of “hello neighbor”…

I tried to explain that, as a country, we used to be very close-knit with those around us, we had to be to survive. At some point, everyone decided that we no longer needed our geographically-close support network, and ever since there’s been a significant number of people who are very distrustful of anyone who seems to be acting too friendly.

It’s all quite sad, really. He says his 20yr old son admonishes him for standing outside and talking to me for too long… that no americans would want to do that, that I’m only being polite. Honestly, I love hearing his stories and I like being able to stand out in my driveway and talk to my neighbor for awhile, it reminds me of the way things used to be when I was a child.

It becomes more and more important to see
that how America conducts the day to day of
living is not sustainable.

The militarism we endorse and implement to support
our daily energy desire,the rampant economic
forces we endorse to subjugate and
enslave second world,third world and yes even
the fourth world to support the consumerism and
sprawl of “the American lifestyle” are plain to see.
Wages,benefits,health care and
pension/retirement outlooks are surely going to
point to less,not more as this 21st century
reels for all Americans.

Yes…Americans are going to have less,get
less and the “good life” will be much harder to
put in place or keep.

Just one example suffices well enough. The
Washington Post this past weekend ran an article
about the abusive deforestation of SE
Asia and Pacific Islandia. The Chinese were put
up as the black hatters in the piece but what
they are doing is in large part processing that
timber for American consumers via American retailers
who profit from illegal timber sales,
cheap Asian wood processing and the indifference
of the law here in USA,there in
China and the rotteness of the Burmese junta and
the legacy of Suharto era Indonsesian
graft and corruption.

It is about how the planet is going,how the
other two thirds of Earthlings are being pushed
down. It is too bad Americans are feeling the
pain. Many Asians,Africans,Central and South
Americans have been there far longer. Perhaps
always. The USA had a nice last half 20th century…
well…at least the top third of USA
did. The 21st century will be a much tougher
hang on to. The top ten percent of Americans…
the ones with the most already surely see that
coming. They are not going to give up what they
have already or make nice about equitable share
with Americans who seek a fair shake. Nor will
they care much about the rest of this planet
Earths environment,people or sustainability.

These are the folks who brought America the
Iraq Oil War. Who support $700 billion plus
Pentagon budgets. Who likely think G.W.Bush is
a great guy doing the right thing. And they do
want more. American wages? Always will seem too
high compared to cheap Asian labor. So what is
the logical outcome? Americans living like the
rest of the world seems a likely scenario.

Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 125

sorry folks. I do believe there are more child abductions now than before.
i think there are more mentally disturbed people now than before.
i think the corporate/military/religious entity known as the u.s.a. breeds terr-ifying fear relentlessly.
i think chemicals/transfat/pesticides in the food make crazy people.
i think cell phone rays and psychiatric drugs make crazy people.

Actually, we can thank the Republics. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California he systematically began closing down mental hospitals, later as president he would cut aid for federally-funded community mental health programs. That has not changed in all of the years of Republic rule.

Robert Chapman @ 16

I have long suspected that this particular fear is tied more to increased anonymity and mobility in society than to economic instability.

wind off the lake @ 117

But 50 years ago many of us were in neighborhoods where there were some bonds among parents. A significant element of the fear atmosphere is that we are each alone, and personally responsible, and solely responsible, for anything that goes wrong.

Wonderful point. Social isolation — people live in their McMansion-shaped boxes and don’t even have windows facing their neighbors’ houses anymore. And for much of America, the most meaningful interaction with others people have outside of home or work is with . . . tail-lights.

And the ideology of individualism may not be helping.

bdu @ 86

carolyn urban @ 74

But here’s the big secret the bushies don’t know: being relatively poor is EMPOWERING. You don’t have much to lose.

In some respects, yes. However, often it feels like I spend inordinate amounts of time and money just trying to keep my head above water. Everything costs more when you’re poor, as they say. There’s nothing empowering about that.

It is really tiring and stressful, especially if you’re a homeowner who has had a serious illness hit the family. That means every plumbing problem, every high heat bill etc. is a wolf at the door. Every sore tooth, etc.

No kidding. Talk about a fishing expedition, you just throw your old hook out hourly and catch another scandal. Unbelievable.

No to the war funding, but I’ll cheer on my Representatives to fund the building of more federal penitentiaries to store the incoming boatloads of this Administrations criminals that we put on ice. And please, we have silly Crusade to pay off, so keep amenities at these prisons to a bare minimum — lots of cinder block, concrete floors, hay mattresses etc…

You know what’s funny, folks?

The world isn’t all that scary, really. Even here in America. Even in a big city like San Antonio.

I leave my front door unlocked. I don’t even know where my key is, although I think my husband has a copy. The only time we lock up is if we’re going out of town longer than a day or two.

Nobody has broken into my house yet. Of course, someone is usually home at any given time, and we keep strange hours. But I find it weird that people lock up when they’re inside their own home. We don’t.

Is it fool’s luck that we’ve never been robbed? Maybe. But do you think that someone who wanted my stuff wouldn’t do what they had to do to get it, regardless of locks and alarms, if they really wanted it?

Maybe the reason I’m not so damned terrified is that I’m not saturating myself in the murder and mayhem that is network TV (news and entertainment). But maybe I’m that way because maybe things aren’t as crazy as some people would have us believe.

I think they want us scared, and keep us scared. Marilyn Manson just blew my mind in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine when he nailed the fear factor as being used against us…for a reason.

Indeed. I was explaining this to my neighbor the other day. He and his family came here from Iran a few years ago. He’s a very friendly man, caters delicious kabobs for local companies, and shares with his neighbors liberally.

He was confused that sometimes people respond poorly to his greetings of “hello neighbor”…

I tried to explain that, as a country, we used to be very close-knit with those around us, we had to be to survive. At some point, everyone decided that we no longer needed our geographically-close support network, and ever since there’s been a significant number of people who are very distrustful of anyone who seems to be acting too friendly.

It’s all quite sad, really. He says his 20yr old son admonishes him for standing outside and talking to me for too long… that no americans would want to do that, that I’m only being polite. Honestly, I love hearing his stories and I like being able to stand out in my driveway and talk to my neighbor for awhile, it reminds me of the way things used to be when I was a child.

bdu– I love this story and you and your neighbor are lucky to have each other.

There is something else though– there is a fear/distrust of brown people/middle easterners/arabs that is out there and real. It’s part of the pathology in our nation and needs to be addressed! Just another reason I am so angry at this administration, the backwash rabble-rousers and ignorant fools.

angie @ 134

Indeed. I was explaining this to my neighbor the other day. He and his family came here from Iran a few years ago. He’s a very friendly man, caters delicious kabobs for local companies, and shares with his neighbors liberally.

He was confused that sometimes people respond poorly to his greetings of “hello neighbor”…

I tried to explain that, as a country, we used to be very close-knit with those around us, we had to be to survive. At some point, everyone decided that we no longer needed our geographically-close support network, and ever since there’s been a significant number of people who are very distrustful of anyone who seems to be acting too friendly.

It’s all quite sad, really. He says his 20yr old son admonishes him for standing outside and talking to me for too long… that no americans would want to do that, that I’m only being polite. Honestly, I love hearing his stories and I like being able to stand out in my driveway and talk to my neighbor for awhile, it reminds me of the way things used to be when I was a child.

bdu– I love this story and you and your neighbor are lucky to have each other.

There is something else though– there is a fear/distrust of brown people/middle easterners/arabs that is out there and real. It’s part of the pathology in our nation and needs to be addressed! Just another reason I am so angry at this administration, the backwash rabble-rousers and ignorant fools.

You are so right, Angie. There are many willfully ignorant people out there, willing to hate anyone who is perceived as different.

1,477 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND..

Citizen phoenix woman and the firepup Patriots:

Yer on ta sumpthin’, sister…I’m convinced we are in a chapter of some shrink’s textbook. The manipulation of mass psychology is sumpthin’ right outta the Fourth Reich and Brave New World.

When people have been disarticulated from their own history and experience and can not recognize their own political and economic interest, they are vulnerable to en loco parentis authoritarian manipulation. And that’s where we are here folks…an oligarchy consolidating socio-political as well as economic power behind a well engineered locomotive of corporate fascism. As we have all learned, all politics is local and local politics only needs a well organized minority (33%ish) to gain functional control. The fascists have understood this for over a century and they have studied and implemented the best knowledge of social psychology and mass communication.

So folks, look forward to the presentation of a parental authority model in all our presidential wannabees…we are in for a bumpy ride.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, AND REMEMBER GOD IS WATCHIN’ AND SHE’S PISSED OFF!!!

angie @ 131

bdu– I love this story and you and your neighbor are lucky to have each other.

There is something else though– there is a fear/distrust of brown people/middle easterners/arabs that is out there and real. It’s part of the pathology in our nation and needs to be addressed! Just another reason I am so angry at this administration, the backwash rabble-rousers and ignorant fools.

Oh, there’s plenty of that, too. But I don’t think the two are unrelated. If you had to work with your neighbor to survive, you’d discover much quicker that not all people of color are the one-dimensional stereotypes you’re fed… being isolated means you can be quite ignorant of others.

FWIW, he’s a smart man, it didn’t take him long to discover the ultimate irony: He fled Iran as a persecuted christian to find himself among a great many american christians who would just as likely persecute him as welcome him.

bdu @ 137

angie @ 131

bdu– I love this story and you and your neighbor are lucky to have each other.

There is something else though– there is a fear/distrust of brown people/middle easterners/arabs that is out there and real. It’s part of the pathology in our nation and needs to be addressed! Just another reason I am so angry at this administration, the backwash rabble-rousers and ignorant fools.

Oh, there’s plenty of that, too. But I don’t think the two are unrelated. If you had to work with your neighbor to survive, you’d discover much quicker that not all people of color are the one-dimensional stereotypes you’re fed… being isolated means you can be quite ignorant of others.

FWIW, he’s a smart man, it didn’t take him long to discover the ultimate irony: He fled Iran as a persecuted christian to find himself among a great many american christians who would just as likely persecute him as welcome him.

That just makes it all the more depressing.

Fostering fear – especially of crime – has another function- building support for the prison industry.

Molly Ivins said, “Better wake up, folks. It is class warfare–and they’re winning.”

Warfare always scares people, or, at the very least, makes them uneasy about the future.

I don’t think we’re most troubled by specific fears. Rather, we’ve succumbed to a siege mentality, where we presume that the next big problem or the next amorphous evil is on the way, though we can’t say for sure what it is, or why we feel that way.

As people come to understand they’ve been manipulated into adopting that mentality, their fears will be transformed into anger. The trick in the next few years will be to channel that anger back towards the Republicans, those who have fostered and encouraged such fear in the first place.

According to AW.com, they’re going after Condi, for her part in the Great Yellowcake Snipe Hunt. She wants to duck testifying, of course.

And, the 15 released brits will be old news in another 24-48 hours, but 4 more brit soldiers were killed, near Basra, and the insurgents down there, whomever they are, are clearly ramping up their attacks on the brits.

Blair can’t stand a sustained spike in casualties; he will have NO option to keep the 1600 troops that he’s been talking about withdrawing, there any longer. They will have to come out, and as the brits draw down, the lid on the Shiite south will be that much closer to coming off.

Gonna be a HELL of a summer.

It’s all so safely theoretical, and easy to criticize, until it happens in YOUR community. Have mercy.

I agree.

A twelve year old girl was approached outside her middle school as she was leaving to walk home, forced at knifepoint into a nearby alley and raped. This occurred a month ago within a mile-and-a-half of my home. I live in a nice “safe” neighborhood in a large city in California.

I’m happy to walk in dark parking lots late at night and not worry. However, I’m damned if I’m going to be blase about possible threats to my twelve year old daughter. A parent’s first job is to keep their child safe. Please stop mocking those of us who take that charge seriously.

This is a good conversation. I grew up in a small town neighborhood where there were always moms around to feed and keep an eye on us. Never had house keys or fear of strangers, hitched all across the NE in the 60’s and 70’s as a teen.

But the middle class is going away and financial fear is coming in, with good reason. I’m reading “Screwed,” by Thom Hartman, an easy, good read w/accurate historical explanations of the philosophy of the cons now in charge.

We can change this, it’s not destiny. The pendulum has begun to swing back toward reason and democracy, away from babble and theocracy.

I never understand why people think that parents not leaving their children unsupervised is ony because of stranger abduction. I’m 47 and when I was a kid sexual harassment, gropings, all kinds of things that are horrible and traumatizing to a 7 yo but not abduction were never spoken of but common occurances. Yes, we walked home and played outside, but we had our secrets. In college, in the 70s many of us did consciousness raising and we learned to name it and don’t want our daughters and sons to have to repeat it. Probably we overdo it, but that’s life. I worry a lot more about the kids who I see going into strangers’ houses than I do about my kid who has to stay within sight of my house and wear a bike helmet.

LJ/Aquaria @ 134

You know what’s funny, folks?

The world isn’t all that scary, really. Even here in America. Even in a big city like San Antonio.

Maybe the reason I’m not so damned terrified is that I’m not saturating myself in the murder and mayhem that is network TV (news and entertainment). But maybe I’m that way because maybe things aren’t as crazy as some people would have us believe.

I think they want us scared, and keep us scared. Marilyn Manson just blew my mind in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine when he nailed the fear factor as being used against us…for a reason.

Bingo.

I’ve successfully (with my wife) raised two boys to young adulthood. They are better educated socially than I was but it wouldn’t have happened if I had been AWOL, as my own Dad was…

“Quality Time” is yuppie bullshit. Parenting is hard work. You gotta do the time. Boring, hard work sometimes. Like in a factory, not always swell, but sometimes necessary.

I appreciate folks who don’t want to have kids, like my own brother or my brother-in-law, but they’re like priests talking about sex when it comes to kids… it’s tough to balance the marriage, the safety, the money, the culture.

My own choice (and my wife’s) was to let them experience the culture and explain it to them as it was washing over them with so much fear bullshit like that damn DARE crap… (remember DARE?)

Informed, educated, financially stable families and citizens will reinvigorate our democracy… or it’s back to the feudal European societies our Founding Fathers longed to leave behind…

When I grew up we kids all played touch football in the street after school. We didn’t need to be supervised. We came home for dinner and that was that.

Now I live in a VERY safe city — Naperville, IL, often rated the best city in the nation in which to raise a family — and the kids are invisible. You NEVER see them. They are at home, at school or in structured activity. No kids outside, ever. Like we have been hit by a neutron bomb. Unbelievable.

meadows @ 147

I’ve successfully (with my wife) raised two boys to young adulthood. They are better educated socially than I was but it wouldn’t have happened if I had been AWOL, as my own Dad was…

“Quality Time” is yuppie bullshit. Parenting is hard work. You gotta do the time. Boring, hard work sometimes. Like in a factory, not always swell, but sometimes necessary.

I appreciate folks who don’t want to have kids, like my own brother or my brother-in-law, but they’re like priests talking about sex when it comes to kids… it’s tough to balance the marriage, the safety, the money, the culture.

My own choice (and my wife’s) was to let them experience the culture and explain it to them as it was washing over them with so much fear bullshit like that damn DARE crap… (remember DARE?)

Informed, educated, financially stable families and citizens will reinvigorate our democracy… or it’s back to the feudal European societies our Founding Fathers longed to leave behind…

We tried to do the same with our three kids, who are now 37, 28 and 24, and they were more socially aware than we were as kids, but I walked them to school half the time. There were other dangers beside strangers, like bullies and bad drivers, and kids don’t always pay close enough attention to traffic. I almost lost my youngest when she was 14 and an elderly woman ran a red light when Katie was in the crosswalk. Her older sister grabbed her arm just in time; the driver and her passengers continued, unaware of what had just happened.
DARE appeared a couple of years after I was a PTA president, but I had to put up with the inanity of Red Ribbon Week. I told my board it was stupid but they couldn’t see that it was an empty gesture.

Feh.

The California bike helmet law came about partly because of an incident in my neighborhood. A neighbor child fell off her bike and hit her head on a raised curb. Terrible, unbelievable head injury. She was in intensive care following surgery, and in the bed next to her was a boy with a similar injury, a skateboarder who hit his head on a raised curb. He died. Both accidents were cited when the helmut law was being discussed.
I grumbled a lot when the law went into effect, but I bought them the dumb helmets and made them wear them.

Where I live now, 2 miles north of Disneyland, I do see kids playing on my street all the time but that’s mainly because it’s a cul-de-sac. The houses were built in 1947, half of the original owners still live here, and we all try to get to know anyone new who moves here; we are a community despite the fact that half are of us are immigrants. It’s funny, but one of the old geezers is referred to as our mayor.

want to buy some fear?
I grew up in a single mom home living on her pay check nothing to spare one week to the next, things were tense at times but the fear of the outside world was low. This was in the 50’s and 60’s – well my parents were divorced in the middle of 8th grade in 1958 but had been seperated a few times before then. I had freedom to roam the city pretty much after 4th or 5th grade and always walked to and from school except in the peoria, il winters.

I think vietnam had a huge effect on the fear, Before Veitnam I dont rmemeber anything about sex preditiors except being told not to get into a car with an adult i didnt know or take candy from strangers. vietnam was a huge crises that jump started the fear. that war made lots of homeless after a few years and by then cheap goods from japan were starting to roll in and companies were starting to go offshore to make components, at least electronic stuff.

I suspect that the increased debt load (copaies and individuals) and the reduction of taxes to the wealthy which began slowly back then started the stratification of wealth that started to take a toll on hopes. Cheap goods helped eleveiate the fears somewhat until they really started to take the jobs away. Economic uncertainty (a relative feeling) was coming. And the uncetainty was real in many ways but its the relative feeling that counts.

The civil rights movment started some of the bigotted ones worrying about who would move next door or whom the daughte might bring home for dinner. Fear breads Fear like a smile to someone might bring a smaile.

I dont rememeber when the first big sex abuse charges (that most turned out to be false ) started but it was sometime in the mid to late 70’s…..that was the real start of cultural fear. The News Media sold fear to get ratings. Kids on milk bottles. adds on tv for missing kids, never mind the increase in divorce rates made for lots of child abductions between people who knew each other….almost never child abduction by strangers but that wasnt mentioned and its easier to blame things on strangers then admitt that family memebers will screw one another much more then a stranger.

Politically the democrats have gone overboard in exciting fear in the indirect way. They did this because they kept being accused of being weak on defence. They over compensated by calling for heavier port inspections and trying to be more patriotic then the repubs by taking up the homeland security badge of protection. the competition to look like the best crime fighter, terrorist fighter, protector of the citizens naturally increases the fear in the attempt to sell the cure.

HENCE Fear-for-Sale

My parents testified as character witnesses for a neighbor accused of trying to molest a teenage girl, a friend of his daughter. That was in the early 50s.

The fear was there before the Vietnam War.

opie_jeanne @
151

My parents testified as character witnesses for a neighbor accused of trying to molest a teenage girl, a friend of his daughter. That was in the early 50s.

The fear was there before the Vietnam War.

ok – i bye that – but im talking about the large increase in fear that has taken place.

By the way, wasn’t that close to the Mcarthy communist scare thing?

And the early 50’s was the korean war.

It may be rare, but that’s not the metric I use as a father. It’s not the risk, it’s the stakes. Everyone would agree Russian roulette is stupid. Would it be any more acceptable if the revolver had 100 chambers? How about 1000? Of course not. Dead is dead and it takes only one bullet. Same with child abduction. It takes only one abductor/pedophile and one moment of opportunity and the thing that is more precious to me than my own life, my child, is gone. The stakes are simply too high to afford even the slightest risk. I regularly check the sex offender database for my area and would encourage anyone else with access to one to do the same. You might be surprised. I live 2 blocks from an elementary school and see young kids walking to school every day. How many parents would allow that if they knew there was a registered sex offender on practically every street. And those are the ones that are following the rules now. How many others fail to register or have yet to be caught? I’m not advocating some mob scene to run the “monsters” out of town, but as a parent you should be aware.

fear-for-sale @ 152

opie_jeanne @
151

My parents testified as character witnesses for a neighbor accused of trying to molest a teenage girl, a friend of his daughter. That was in the early 50s.

The fear was there before the Vietnam War.

ok – i bye that – but im talking about the large increase in fear that has taken place.

By the way, wasn’t that close to the Mcarthy communist scare thing?

And the early 50’s was the korean war.

Yes, but I think it’s a bit of a reach to blame the Korean War and McCarthy for accusing a neighbor of trying to grope a teenager.
The fear of abduction, the fear of molestation, go back long before the 1950s, probably back to the beginning of time.

It comes with the territory, when you become a parent.