Everybody Brace Yourself, Economic Turbulence Ahead

Last night the rescue of the U.S. auto industry collapsed. This morning GM is already talking about closing 21 plants across North America. Looks like even more workers will be getting some form of a pink slip for the holiday.

I am no fan of how U.S automakers have done business over the years, nor am I a fan of their environmental negligence. In fact I know Henry Ford was a fascist fond of the Nazis and GM had its tendencies as well. If you have seen Roger and Me you are not likely to be too fond of General Motors' business practices. However, I am aware that the U.S. auto industry is one of the few manufacturing bases in left in the United States.

The failure of providing U.S. auto companies a heavily conditioned bridge loan of $14 billion dollars by a Senate that eagerly provided Wall Street with 700 billion no strings attached dollars I find rather sickening. Not to mention, some of the same people voting against this rescue package voted for huge incentives and tax breaks to bring foreign auto-makers into the United States.

… and it goes a little something like this.

I’m a firm believer that communities should exist in real life, not just on-line. Most of us interact with the people we care about via some form of technology more often than we find ourselves in the presence of those people.

As life would have it, most of the people I care about live a great distance from the place I call home. Those of us residing in the same geographic region, do not see each other as often as we’d like due to work and family constraints. Meanwhile our lives go one.

It seems there is more and more technology to keep us connected with each other. The unfortunate effect of this is our attention spans fade, and we no longer make as much effort to actually spend time in each others presence. It seems we stay in touch for the sake of staying in touch.

The return of this online presence, is my acceptance that too many of us remain stuck in offices at computers, or tied up with our lives, when we could be enjoying the world around us. Aside from a diversion in our everyday lives, I’d like to use it to share information about events where we all could spend some time together.

Since I am me, and this is also a vehicle of pushing the music my friends and I make on you, you can figure that many of these events will be music and art related.

I’ve been an active counter-cultural taste-maker here in Washington, DC since the turn of the century, why should I stop now?

Stay tuned.

Amor y lucha,
Dozer

We are free, truly free, when we don’t need to rent our arms to
anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.
~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914