A Whole New Year to Screw Up!

Happy New Year, everybody! Here's hoping it looks like a bright shiny penny all year.

My holidays were good, the conference in DC was good, DC itself was AWESOMELY awesome, and newe years was low key and pleasant. Hope yours was, too.


Now onto the bitching. Bush and Co. are jetsetting around today and tomorrow to deliver speeches about how fantastically the economy is going. I'm afraid I have to call bullshit on that one, having just spent the holidays with people who are not CEOs, think-tank employees, or Congress people. Three of my relatives got laid off this year; two of them had worked for their companies more than 10 years. Another cousin works for miminum wage at a job that gives her enough hours that she's not eligible for foodstamps, but not enough hours to give her insurance. Fortunately, having a baby this year will enable her to get government assistance for health care. That's messed up.

We did Christmas dinner buffet-style, because three family members had to work on Christmas day. Different shifts, of course.

My mom's job is being "restructured." She can reapply for her own position, but because hiring is based on seniority and job class, there's no guarantee she'll get it. Other employees of higher classes are worried about their own jobs and are likely to apply. She's been there more than 15 years. If she does not get the job, she will be asked to train her replacements before she leaves.

My dad has been told, off the record, that if he doesn't accept early retirement from the place he's worked since he was 18, he will find his performace reviews drop each year until he is eventually fired for performance reasons. He is 54. He is not eligible to draw social security benefits for another nine years.

According to an awesome letter put out by the United Auto Workers, "The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973, adjusted for inflation, despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone in The Corporate Library survey of 2,000 large companies."

So thanks, six-figure politicians and lobbyists, for letting me know how damn healthy the economy is. It's just too bad food stamps don't cover the champagne to toast you with.