July 26

Sorry for the delay in getting a new post done. I went away for the weekend and didn't have internet access. That is one of the topics that I want to briefly discuss here today, the need to be in communication with the rest of the world 24/7, or the need to have the latest technological gadget in your possession. We don't need to be connected to the wired world 24/7. We actually need to get away from being so wired (in a literal sense as well as figuratively speaking). I know too many people who have to have the latest gizmo to come onto the market. The phone that has internet access, gps, text messaging, etc. has gotten too complicated for me. I use my cell phone to make telephone calls and that is it. Why do I need to be able to access the internet so often when I'm at the beach or taking a hike through the forest? This is bullshit as far as I'm concerned and maybe I'm someone who is technologically challenged but I think of myself as very computer literate and know many applications but I don't want to be tied down to my computer. Let it go for the weekend. I know at my last job whenever I went on vacation, it really wasn't a vacation since I was checking email on a daily basis and responding to those emails. In some respects, it didn't feel like I left the office. So I say, get outside and do physical things or just enjoy the sunshine.

The other topic I want to bring up because it s news all over California and probably the nation at this point is the situation in the city of Bell, California where the city administrator was receiving a little over $787,000 a year for doing his job adn then to tell the news media that this was a normal amount for this kind of position. I feel like a lot of people do that this is just wide spread corruption on a very large scale. But the real irony of this issue is that this man is now entitled to a pension of approximately $710,000 a year for the rest of his life. This is bullshit. This fits in with my opinion of what should have happened to Madoff and those others that were caught in Ponzi schemes over the past decade or so. Freeze the bank accounts (and I mean all of them) so that no money can be touched by anyone, and this money should be frozen until all legal issues are resolved with huge penalties imposed if found for any wrongdoing. But these Bell officials it seems made no bones about getting overpaid in a city that has a 60% poverty rate and laid off other city employees who had been told that there was no money to continue working there. I really think that the protestors need to keep after them until they return the money and that the state and/or federal authorities need to look into filing criminal charges against these people. Where is the morality? Where is the community well being that these elected officials were bound by?

What do you think about being wired to your gadgets so very much? And what do you think should happen to those scoundrels in the city of Bell? Let me know.