Month: February 2011

Buying Congress

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Until we pass legislation reversing the Citizens United decision that allows corporate billionaires to pour massive amounts of campaign cash into the system, we’re pretty much screwed. Unless, of course, we start to walk like Egyptians, and I don’t see that happening:

The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington’s political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group’s separate advertising and grass-roots activity during the 2010 campaign.

Claiming an electoral mandate, Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs’ core energy businesses.
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Shredding

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

I finally got my shredder working again, and all night I’ve been going through piles of old stuff — things like my old newspaper clips, tax stuff, old bills, just assorted crap. Far too many owner’s manuals. Old phone books with numbers from people I’ll never see again. Pages from an old diary I thought I got rid of years ago in a major purge — a very depressing trip back down memory lane. (Let’s just say I have a dependable lifelong knack for choosing exactly the wrong man.)

My shrink agrees I do it on purpose, but he puts it so nicely: “I don’t think there’s anything odd about someone with such high autonomy needs choosing relationships that can’t really go anywhere.”

“Oh,” I say. (I’m not used to people in authority who don’t berate or judge me.) He doesn’t see anything irrational about my need to be the center of my own universe, creativity-wise.

“Do you think you’re ready for something different, though?”

I shrug. “Sometimes. Maybe. I’m tired of drama. Probably. I don’t really trust people, so there’s that.”

But you know, there are a lot of big changes working in my life right now. You never know.

Things could get interesting.

Hmm

~ susie

I had this fling 20-something years ago who really was such a waste of time that all these years later, I can’t remember even one redeeming quality. I rarely think of him, for that reason. But today, when I was watching a documentary about Joe Strummer, I remembered that he turned me on to the Clash.

So I’ll give him that.