On The Money; The Sick Ideas Behind Healthy Humboldt

On The Money,

Economic Advice for the 99%;

The Sick Ideas Behind Healthy Humboldt

 

Listening to Dennis Huber’s Monday Morning Magazine show on KMUD last week, I heard the voice of a representative of Healthy Humboldt talking about the thrilling conclusion of the Humboldt County General Plan Update. While the endless acrimonious bickering on this issue highlights the complete failure of county government and private enterprise to address the county’s housing needs, or provide good stewardship for the resources and lands of Humboldt County, Healthy Humboldt’s cheerful proclamation that they advocate for “sustainability” particularly irked me.

I know they mean well, and I understand their reasoning: If we encourage people to live closer together, and closer to jobs, services, and public transportation, we can lower Humboldt County’s carbon footprint. However, a lower carbon footprint does not equal sustainability, not even close. The county goes to great lengths to prohibit sustainable housing, and even greater lengths to encourage resource exploitation and consumption. Healthy Humboldt wouldn’t dare suggest the county operate in any other way.

So, whether you’re an egghead ecofascist, a greedy fuck-all real-estate developer or a blood-sucking dope yuppie, you’ve got your head up your ass when it comes to sustainability in Humboldt County. The same goes for the bureaucracies in Eureka who issue permits and enforce the reams of pointless and arcane regulations the county has already adopted. These people have already made an unholy mess of Humboldt County, and this GPU won’t change that one bit.

Face it, as a culture, we have no idea how to live on this planet sustainably. Most of our building codes and housing standards were established in the post WWII boom years, the period of the greatest increase in American consumption, and before the concept of a finite planet ever crept into the American psyche. Today, building codes still largely reflect the values and attitudes of that bygone era.

The whole point of building codes was not to make homes “safer” or whatever, but to make them cost more, use more stuff, keep more people busy, and waste more water, energy, space and resources. In other words, building codes were established to spur growth in the economy. The entire regulatory system was designed to make housing less sustainable, and it has been fantastically successful. They gave us suburban sprawl, gridlock, and homelessness. They’ve made homes so expensive that most people can no longer afford one.

As a result, people have become slaves to their homes, if they haven’t already lost everything to their home, through foreclosure. They’ve successfully turned “home”, which should be a place of comfort, security, and sanctuary, into a source of stress, anxiety and endless toil. This is a remarkable achievement, even if it is not exactly something to be proud of.

We should acknowledge the county government, land developers, the construction industry, real-estate agents, appraisers, bankers and mortgage brokers for their role in generating an enormous amount of unnecessary economic activity by making life suck for so many people. They really deserve more than a token of our appreciation.

If you are homeless, facing foreclosure, struggling to make payments on an underwater mortgage or throwing your money away on rent in an overpriced housing market, you should know that it’s not by accident. Some people believe that it is more important for them to make more money, that it is for you to have a place to live, and those are the people bickering over the Humboldt GPU.

No, no one at the table at the GPU wants to see hillsides dotted with cabins, shacks, yurts and teepees. No one involved with the GPU wants to return to the days of out-houses and pit latrines, but that’s what sustainability looks like. That’s what home should look like, simple, tidy, and homemade. That is what the Humboldt County General Plan exists to prohibit; sensible homes built by hand, from local materials by the people who intend to live in them. Instead, the county employs a small army of personnel to insure that everyone in Humboldt County, lives up to their unrealistic expectations born in an era of unrestrained, bewilderingly wasteful consumption.

They all want housing costs to continue to rise because they all want more money for themselves, more money for their land, more money for their existing homes, more expensive new homes, more grants for Healthy Humboldt and more revenue for Humboldt County bureaucrats. They don’t care whether or not you have a home, or what kind of torture you endure to keep it.

Everyone involved in this seemingly endless saga with the GPU deserves your contempt, as does the GPU itself. You deserve a home, and not one that you have to spend half of your waking hours at work to afford. There’s a view of the Humboldt GPU that’s on the money.

On the Money, Bleak Friday

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Middle-Class

Bleak Friday

 

Around here, the grocery stores have had real x-mas trees for sale for a couple of weeks already. I don’t know why. Anyone who put up a real tree on Veterans day, will have vacuumed most of that tree off of the carpet by X-mas eve. Either they will have to buy a second tree, or they’ll put their gifts under a spindly, dry, brown piece of kindling.

 

I’ve seen X-mas decorations in stores since before Halloween. I even saw some crossover: Count Santula and his bat drawn sleigh scared the hell out of me at one store this past October..

 

It seems like everyone jumped the gun on X-mas this year, but Friday marks the official start of the X-mas shopping season. Black Friday, as it is called, also coincides, not coincidentally, with “Buy Nothing Day”, sponsored by Adbusters Magazine. Now that AdBusters has unleashed Occupy Wall St., maybe “Buy Nothing Day” will really take off this year. Lord knows that people sure don’t need most of the crap that retailers have on offer, but those shoppers have money burning a whole in their pockets.

 

November 25^th also turns out to be the official start of the professional panhandling season. The Salvation Army deploys brigades of Santa Claus impersonators, who will ring the “opening bell” on the Holiday panhandling season, and suck up all of the easy spare change until Dec. 25^th.

 

This means that if you want to make a living panhandling this holiday season, you are going to need a story, and you are going to have to work it. Like this guy:

 

Go ahead and give it a try. I encourage everyone to panhandle professionally this holiday season. Find a shopping center with a lot of traffic, and get started. X-mas is all about the spirit of giving. You can give holiday shoppers the opportunity to be genuinely generous, just by pretending to be needy.

 

Try to get them to give you at least $20. Use a story like, “My mom’s in the hospital back east, and I just need to raise enough to fly home to see her before she dies.” A little story like that, told with abundant (fake) sincerity, can turn X-mas into your most profitable time of year as well. And, not only can you participate in “Buy Nothing Day”, but you can help people feel the X-mas spirit of giving, without letting the retailers act as middle-men.

 

Personally, I’m not leaving home until next Tuesday.

The Hippie Hitlers of Humboldt, or The Limitless Lameness of Liberals

The “Hippie Hitlers” of Humboldt

or, The Limitless Lameness of Liberals

I’ve spent enough time working in liberal/lefty, non-profits to know that at the bleeding heart of every liberal lies the stone-cold calculating mind of a fascist. While right wingers favor fascism by Bible and business, hippies prefer a fascism of party and positivity. Right wingers tend to flourish in government positions, where they form “good ol’ boy” networks. “Hippie Hitlers” prefer to work in the non-profit realm. Either way, you get oppression, incompetence and corruption from both sides of the aisle.

 

I’ve seen “Hippie Hitlers” of one degree or another in nearly every non-profit I’ve been involved with, but Humboldt seems to have more than its fair share, and they really seem to flourish here. “Hippie Hitlers” feed on liberal guilt. We have a lot of guilty liberals here in Humboldt Co., and some of them have a lot of untraceable cash. That might explain the swarm of “Hippie Hitlers” around here.

 

But how does “Hippie Hitler” use “party and positivity” to acquire and wield power over our local non-profits. How does, for example, a concert promoter convince a small town to build and maintain a huge concert hall, with a top-notch sound system, that primarily benefits concert promoters? I acknowledge that Carol Bruno did many great things for this community (Hitler built the autobahn too). However, Carol Bruno provides a stark, and well documented example of “Hippie Hitler” in action in Humboldt Co. non-profits.

 

First, the “power of positivity”. Folks around here recall that during the reggae wars, Carol Bruno, former president of The Mateel Community Center, and former “Reggae on the River”concert promoter, said little else publicly, except to reaffirm her own “positivity”, even though she had just screwed the community center out of about half-a-million dollars.  “I’m just staying positive, saying my affirmations and reaffirming my own positivity.” I once heard her say in an interview on KMUD.

 

Of course, her empire was crumbling beneath her at that time, but still, she expected her positivity to save her. See, she didn’t rip-off the community center, we were just being “negative”. Our protests brought “negativity” to her very positive festival. The lawsuit, bitterly contested, just more negativity, and of course, she only agreed to pay a settlement, so that she could put all of that “negativity” behind her. But this final revolt and overthrow came much too late. For years Carol Bruno dominated SoHum with an iron fist of “positivity”. In a nutshell, here’s how “positivity” works.

 

You see, you never have a legitimate beef with “Hippie Hitler”. Instead, no matter how you phrase your criticism, you are just venting your “negativity”. “Hippie Hitler” treats “negativity” as a deadly contaminate, not to be tolerated in any dose. “Hippie Hitler” seeks to purify himself of all “negativity”, because only those people who are free of “negativity” deserve the good things in life.

Your tiny little criticism just deeply offends this being of pure “positivity”, and of course they want nothing more to do with a person who’s just so full of “negativity” that they can’t help spilling it all over the place. In this way, “Hippie Hitler’s” incompetence, corruption, and obnoxiousness becomes simply unassailable, while the discussion instead revolves around your “negativity”, and how to deal with the problem of trouble-makers like you.

 

In some organizations around here not the slightest criticism is tolerated, not even the slightest hint of criticism. If you actually have the nerve to say something critical, however, “Hippie Hitler” will not hesitate to attack you viciously. “Hippie Hitler” will look at you like you just pissed on the new carpet and say something like:

“I couldn’t believe you would say such a thing, in that forum, in that way, or whatever. It really made me wonder what kind of person you are. I’m not sure you’re the kind of person I want to work with.”

This way “Hippie Hitler” can simply banish “negativity”, without ever addressing the criticism.

Then “Hippie Hitler” will tell others in the group: “I really don’t know about that guy, I get a bad feeling about him. I think he’s a troublemaker, and agent provocateur or whatever.” In reality these pillars of “positivity” invariably turn out to be vicious, ruthless people acting out of a totally self-serving agenda.

These “positivity” people, by the way, are also the ones who believe that we are rapidly evolving to a higher plane, where all of the “negativity” will disappear, and we’ll all be beautiful radiant beings of light, inhabiting a higher plane of existence. Does that pile of horseshit sound familiar? In reality, “positivity’ is just another strategy for fucking people over, no “evolutionary awakening” going on there at all.

Pure Horse Shit

You’ll often hear “Hippie Hitler” say, “We have new people here. We don’t want them to get turned off by all of this infighting.” This way, the real issues the group would grapple with, get suppressed so that newcomers can be protected, like innocent children, from the real issues. “Hippie Hitler” treats all newcomers like children, who must be protected from the machinations of “the core group”. So, meetings become boring, ceremonial events that quickly dissolve into parties, and “the core group” becomes increasingly insulated from the membership at large, or the community at large for that matter.

For “Hippie Hitler” its much more important to stifle dissent, establish an insular “core group” and to develop cash flow, than it is to actually accomplish goals or solve problems. “Hippie Hitler” cares more about preserving the group, his position in it, and the cash flow, than about accomplishing goals. This is precisely why most non-profits around here become calcified, stodgy, inaccessible and lame, while you hear nothing but endless praise for the great work they do, whether they do any great work or not.

Here’s how parties play into this strategy. Like I already said, “Hippie Hitler” wants to keep meetings short, and “positive”, and then have them turn into parties. At meetings, and in forums, you usually only find people who genuinely care about an issue. For “Hippie Hitler” these people mean trouble. People who care, want to know what’s going on. They want to know where the money goes. They want to know what “Hippie Hitler” has accomplished. “Hippie Hitler” doesn’t need that “negativity”.

At parties, on the other hand, its all small talk and gossip. At a party, any kind of conflict is in bad taste, but you can easily speak ill, of someone not immediately present. While most hippies have an incredibly low tolerance for conflict, they love gossip and rumor. At a party “Hippie Hitler” can work the room, and his personal agenda, without ever facing a single tough question.

While only people who care, show up at meetings, everyone loves to party, and you can raise money at a party. The parties never stop here in Humboldt Co. between the benefits, boogies, barbeques and festivals, you can always drop some of that liberal guilt for a cause. Just don’t ask any questions, or say anything “negative”, after all, its a party, we’re all just trying to have a good time.

So, you see, parties give “Hippie Hitler” the perfect opportunity to harvest the conscience money, while minimizing his exposure to any “negativity” from anyone who expects to hold them accountable.

This community finally rose up and toppled the Bruno regime, but we still have plenty of “Party and Positivity” fascists in our midst here in Humboldt Co. That is not to say that everyone who works in a non-profit around here is a fascist, it just seems that way sometimes.