Omaha can't rely on cuts . . . or Erin Andrews

If you're running a mid-sized city and you're looking at starting the new fiscal year at least $11 million in the hole, you're pretty much looking at just three things you can do.

You can gut city services that already have been cut and cut again, thereby destroying your community's quality of life.

You can raise taxes.

You can sell nekkid pictures of Erin Andrews. And by that I mean not unclothed pictures of the ESPN sideline goddess, but rather pictures of the ESPN sideline goddess unclothed.

To his credit, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle -- in a budget address that was anything but subtle -- rejected the first option out of hand, declaring it a supremely bad idea. Likewise, he recognized there's no way out of the second option -- that citizens face a choice between horrible and unpleasant, and sometimes you have to suck it up and fork over a little more to the community chest.

As for that last option (though it would be an exceedingly lucrative sideline for Omaha city government), the reality is that Erin Andrews' chest does not belong to the community . . . and neither do photographic representations thereof.

SO, IT LOOKS like the Omaha City Council will have to either like or lump what the Omaha World-Herald reports the mayor set in front of it this afternoon:

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle wants to raise property taxes and impose a new tax on restaurant meals, movies and other entertainment to help the city climb out of a projected budget shortfall for 2010.

Both the property tax increase and new entertainment tax are part of Suttle's 2010 budget proposal, which he presented Tuesday to the Omaha City Council.

The 2 percent entertainment tax would affect anyone who sees a movie or goes out to dinner in Omaha. The tax would bring in an estimated $10.3 million at a time when the major revenue sources for city services — sales taxes and property taxes — are projected to remain essentially flat. Meanwhile, health care and other costs are projected to rise.

The proposed property tax hike would amount to an extra $36 a year for the owner of a home valued for tax purposes at $150,000. The $6.2 million in revenue would be used to pay off debt from the Qwest Center Omaha.

Whether either tax is approved ultimately will be up to the City Council. Omahans will get their chance to weigh in during a public hearing Aug. 11.

Suttle includes some new spending in his 2010 budget, including restoring the public safety auditor's position, as he had promised to during the campaign, and buying 44 police cruisers. His plan also includes some cuts to help address an $11 million shortfall, such as closing Westwood Golf Course and spending less money on street resurfacing.

Council President Garry Gernandt has said in the past that the council would be cool to the notion of increasing taxes and wants to look for further spending cuts.

But Suttle warned of the consequences if the council fights the tax proposals. The city would not open any pools next summer, he said, and libraries could close as well. He said both possibilities would be “a gross mistake.”

“If the council says no, then we've got problems,” he said. “There's just no place else to go (for cuts).”

LISTEN, tax hikes are going to be unavoidable. Not unless you relish life in a city remarkably less "user friendly."

But I have problems with the tax Suttle seeks to implement -- an "entertainment tax." Such a levy has the potential to hurt a local industry (encompassing everything from sports franchises to restaurants to concert venues) that's already being buffeted by people's lack of discretionary income amid economic hard times.

Obviously, the mayor wants to impose a tax that won't hit everybody . . . and one that has maximum "soak the out-of-towners" potential. There's three problems with that, though.

First, would it cause people to attend even fewer shows, skip the ballgame or decide to eat in rather than eat out? Second, would it make Omaha hotels and restaurants less competitive for the tourist dollar? In this tough economy, do you really want to roll the dice on that one?

And third, fiscal experts looking at Omaha's tax structure have said the city already relies too heavily on sales-tax revenue. That's what has bitten the city in the rear during this present downturn. Do we really want to increase that dependence, particularly on something as regressive as a sales tax? After all, an "entertainment tax" is nothing more than a targeted sales tax.

Better to just take the hit straight up, no chaser. Raise property taxes enough to cover both the shortfall and the Qwest Center debt -- the hike still wouldn't be exorbitant.

Of course, there's one thing Suttle could do tomorrow without council approval. He could implement the occupation tax on the books since the recession of the early 1980s. Denver and Kansas City already have.

Maybe that's Suttle's last-resort ace in the hole with the council. Or maybe an occupation tax is what's going to stave off municipal bankruptcy in the looming fire-and-police pension implosion.

Stay tuned.

O! Suck it up and git 'er done

They're talking about us down on the bayou. Most of what folks are saying is pretty good.

Interesting that, sometimes, visitors in Omaha for the College World Series look at our city and end up having more faith in us than we do. Says Gary Laney of The Advocate in my old hometown, Baton Rouge:

Baseball is about Little Leaguers in Williamsport, Pa., summer leaguers playing around the clock in Wichita, Kan., and collegians spending a couple of weeks at Rosenblatt Stadium — with the lucky few getting to feel the Ivy at Wrigley Field or hear the thud of a line drive off the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

When the Red Sox play the Yankees, the sport does fine. It’s when it goes into these misadventures with the new — overpriced Yankee Stadium seats, shortened college seasons — that it always seems to trip over its own spikes.

It’s within that context that folks here are a little nervous. Rosenblatt Stadium’s days are numbered, to be replaced for the 2011 CWS by a brand-spanking-new downtown stadium, to be called TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, named for one of the city’s Fortune 500 companies. Rosenblatt will become a parking lot for the Henry Doorly Zoo, and the stadium’s other tenant, the Omaha Royals, will move to suburban Papillion, Neb.

The new stadium promises, or threatens, to be everything Rosenblatt is not. Where Rosenblatt has the dome from the zoo as a right-field backdrop, TD Ameritrade Park will have the city’s skyline, and yes, Omaha has a skyline. Where Rosenblatt is in a working-class neighborhood with Zesto’s ice cream stand (where one can spend a couple of dollars for what is supposedly the best ice cream in the Midwest) across the street, the new place will be on the edge of trendy, touristy Old Market with the state-of-the-art Qwest Center across the street.

And, one is named after a corporate giant while the other is named after the mayor who brought professional baseball and the College World Series to Omaha.

All of those thoughts are downright scary for baseball purists. But folks in Omaha are the perfect hosts for the College World Series for a reason, and that’s what gives hope for their new stadium. If any place is going to do a new stadium right, it’s Omaha.

THERE'S A LOT RIGHT about Omaha. And, yes, if any town can make a major change to a beloved baseball tradition -- and, more importantly, make it work -- it's the Big O.

But we're facing tough times. City revenues are tighter than one of Sasha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" getups, and ordinary folk are yelling and screaming for city fathers to take a budget ax and cut right through the bone.

That's because Omaha, unfortunately, is not immune to America's generation-long affliction with taxorexia. It's kind of like anorexia and bulimia combined, except that while you're not taking any nourishment in, you're still purging cops, libraries, yard-waste pickup and street repair.

Funny thing is, it only applies to civic affairs. Show us skyrocketing cable-TV bills and we'll still pay up. We'll bitch, but we'll pay. Upgrade to digital, even.

And we'll sell Junior on Craigslist to fill up the SUV with premium unleaded.

But show us a city that's cut the budget to the point of "You don't want to go there," and we'll say "Go there . . . we ain't paying no stinkin' taxes." Of course, no one has any useful suggestions about where to cut, but that's not important now -- there must be some more fat somewhere.

Sadly, it's often between the ears of the armchair budget director.

AS I SAID, Omaha's in a tough spot right now, what with anemic tax collections and all. But we've been in tough spots before, and Nebraskans usually suck it up and do what needs to be done.

So maybe we just need to shut the hell up and do it again -- in this case, that would be protecting the city's quality of life, basic services and economic viability just as zealously as we've guarded the CWS all these decades.

What, do you think we got to the point where far-off newspapers run glowing accounts of life in Omaha by sitting on our butts muttering "No, no, never, no"? I think not.

Suck it up. It's important.

Don't tax you, don't tax me. . . .

To read the comments on newspaper stories is to understand why the Founding Fathers gave us a representative democracy, not a direct one.

Basically, Americans always want something for nothing. They also think you don't have to spend money to make money. And, of course, a people hooked on iPhones, three cars in the driveway, plasma TVs and credit-card debt can't help but lecture city fathers about living within one's means.

So, when the Omaha World-Herald reported Saturday that the city is facing another $11 million shortfall next fiscal year, that the city budget already has been cut to the bone and that something drastic will have to be done, folks were quick to denounce being "taxed to death." Well, that and the new downtown baseball stadium.

THIS COMMENT is pretty typical:

What was the city thinking of when they approved the new stadium, the Qwest center,and annexing Elkhorn. Obviously the city of Omaha can't afford these. We are not a big city like Chicago, or New York. Omaha is just a little hick city in Nebraska. Why are we trying to be like the big guys. We didn't need a new stadium. Rosenblatt has served well over the years, and should have been maintained all along. We have the Civic Auditorium and that should have been sufficient. Also it cost a lot more for city services out west in Elkhorn. They should have been left alone, providing their own services. Plus the services they now receive and not near as good as Elkhorn was providing. I also disagree that the nation should mandate the update of sewer systems, however I know that is out of Omaha's control. Mayor Fahey did a lot of damage to the city's financial picture, and it seems as if Jim Suttle is not doing any better so far. We can't afford these things and now us taxpayers are going to have to pay. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people and businesses move out of Omaha, because just like us, we can' afford the high taxes.

UNSUPRISINGLY, the combox warriors' bile seems not to be exactly reality-based. Here, from the World-Herald, is the problem Omaha actually faces:

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle met with business leaders Friday to outline possible tax hikes — including new taxes on entertainment and workers — as ways to resolve the city's budget crisis.

While Suttle didn't say he had decided in favor of any tax increase, his message was that Omaha would be hard-pressed to avoid one at a time of slumping revenues.

Sales tax revenues this year are expected to drop for the first time. Meanwhile, the property tax base is not growing significantly. Sales and property taxes are the city's main revenue sources.

As a result, the city already is cutting $14 million from the current budget, although a large portion of that depends on a wage freeze that has yet to be negotiated with the city's unions.

For 2010, when the revenue slump is expected to continue, city officials are projecting an $11 million shortfall in the amount needed to maintain city services.

Suttle is considering additional spending cuts that would close the gap, including ending yard waste pickup, closing three libraries and allowing police staffing to shrink by not hiring new recruits.

But Suttle is also looking at raising revenue in 2010 with one of the following: higher property taxes; a new 2 percent tax on entertainment, including restaurants and bars; and an occupation tax that would collect $2 a month from people who work in Omaha and an equal amount from their employers.

Both of the two new taxes would affect not only Omaha city residents but also people who come into the city to work, dine or catch a movie.

Suttle has not decided that higher taxes are necessary, said spokesman Ron Gerard. But the mayor is concerned that current revenue may not be adequate to fund city services over the long run.

“We're at the edge of a cliff, and we don't want to fall off,” Gerard said.

(snip)

Suttle outlined the two new taxes that the city could impose, each raising about $10 million a year. Both have been controversial in the past.

— The entertainment tax was proposed in 2007 as a way to finance the city's new downtown baseball stadium. It was dropped amid heated opposition from the restaurant industry. If Suttle revives the idea, he would need City Council approval.

— The occupation tax on employees has actually been on the city's books since 1983, when it was passed as a way to balance the budget in an earlier shortfall. But sales tax revenue rose, and the tax was never implemented.

WANT TO MAKE the city's financial problems a lot worse in a few years? Don't build the new stadium, and let the NCAA use the breach of contract to move the College World Series to another city -- one with a shiny new stadium. See $41 million in annual economic activity and more than $2 million in annual tax revenue disappear.

I wonder how much more taxes would have to be raised to make up for that? Alternatively, how much more draconian would cuts in city services have to be to fill the even wider budget gap?

Likewise, for the want of Joe Omaha paying an extra $42 in property tax for a $100,000 house or an extra $24 annual occupation tax, how much are Omahans really willing to sacrifice in quality of life?

Do they really want to live in a city even more underpoliced than it is now? Do they really want to live in a city that's closing public libraries? Or has noticeably rattier parks and public facilities?

Do they really look forward to living in a town without yard-waste collection?

HERE'S A reality check for you: Having your yard waste hauled off by a private contractor will cost you a lot more than $24 . . . and probably more than $42.

Hauling it to the dump yourself will set you back, too. And burning it in the back yard will get you a visit from the fire department -- assuming it can get there before you burn the neighborhood down, you idiot -- and an illegal-burning citation.

And how much is it worth to you to have the cops actually show up when you need them?

How much do you think the quality-of-life losses you're willing to set in motion for fear of having a decade of property-tax cuts rolled back a bit are worth to companies considering opening up shop (and creating jobs) in Omaha?

I'VE LIVED places with too much blight, not enough libraries and more crime than cops. You don't want to go there. Coincidentally, neither did companies that could have created lots of well-paying jobs.

Listen, it's not complicated.

We live in a pretty wealthy area of an extremely wealthy country. Times are tough, tax revenues are off, and the city has cut the budget close to the bone. Those are the plain facts.

If you value the city Omaha has become, and if you value not living in a s***hole, it's time to suck it up and do what needs to be done. Even $10 more in city taxes a month won't kill you -- it just won't.

Leave the third car in the driveway, cut back on your pay-per-view habit, tell Junior he has to choose between soccer and taekwondo, then just suck it the hell up.

Omaha is a great city. That would be a hell of a thing to waste.

Operation Louisiana Bloodbath

It occurs to me that my home state, Louisiana, is a lot like Iraq.

The government's pretty crooked, people are always squabbling, the "Sunnis" in the north hate the "Shiites" in the south . . . and everybody hates (for lack of a better Iraqi analogy) the "Christians" in New Orleans. And if the fishermen learn how to make car bombs out of roadside "fresh-shrimp trucks," we all in trouble, Cap.

Then the rednecks will start booby-trapping meat pies, and it'll be a bloodbath.

Anyway, Louisiana's version of Saddam Hussein -- Huey Long -- kept things in check for a while from the late 1920s through 1935, mainly through a masterful balance of bribing Louisianians with petrodollars and, when necessary, exercising brute political force.

If there had been wood chippers big enough back then, he probably would have put some prominent "anti-Longs" through one. Mulch one, instruct a thousand.

But then, in September 1935, one of the "anti-Longs" got off a lucky shot before being turned into Swiss cheese by Huey's version of the Republican Guard, and Louisiana's been going to hell ever since.

OH, SURE, various governors -- including Huey's little brother Uday Earl -- kept the peace, more or less, through keeping up the varying combinations of petrobribery and demagoguery. But that wasn't going to last forever.

At some point, your oil money ceases to exceed the amount you're paying out in bribes to the warring tribes, and then it's all she wrote.

Welcome to All She Wrote.

Oil revenue tanked. The Great Recession hit. And one day, Louisiana realized it had been spending all this money but folks were still poor, dumb and contentious, and the state was fresh out of grease for all those outstretched palms.

Budget cuts would have to be made. Civic leaders, newspapers and (GASP!) even legislators began to talk about ending Louisiana's program of Every Community College a University. Oxen, at some point, must be gored.

One of the early targets might be the "Sunni" enclave of Alexandria, which has its own ox, but nobody knows exactly why that is. And the newspaper there, the Town Talk, is making ominous noises. From a Wednesday editorial:

The editors of a New Orleans newspaper looked long and hard at the state of higher education in Louisiana, the demand by the governor to "right-size" the bloated university landscape, and the need to help the state become a smarter, better place.

From within their city -- which wallows in a sea of tax dollars lapping at the doors of colleges and universities -- these thinkers ruminated and then pointed a crooked finger at how to fix higher education.

They, the editors of the Times-Picayune newspaper, wrote this: "Certainly a plan for downsizing is needed -- and the state ought to look at duplicate and underperforming programs. The Legislature foolishly upgraded Louisiana State University at Alexandria to four-year status in 2001, even though there was already a public university in nearby Natchitoches."

Forget for a moment how such wisdom is shaped -- by people who brag about a town built on government handouts and perpetual corruption, who are comfortable with poverty and murder rates that dwarf the national averages, and who are so numbed by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades.

Forget about the river of education funding washing through the Big Easy, a city so detached from learning that the state had to commandeer the local school system because of its chronic failure, and where 44 percent -- nearly half -- of the adults can't read well enough to fill out simple forms.

"SO NUMBED by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades"? Them's fightin' words.

I've been accused by aggrieved Louisianians of taking gratuitous shots at my home state. Shots, yes. Gratuitous, hardly.

But I never, ever in a million years would have written that. Especially if I lived in Alexandria, which isn't exactly the municipal version of one of Saddam's grand palaces. With an editorial like that, the Town Talk editors could have saved precious newsprint and simply written "Dear New Orleans; F*** you. And Baton Rouge, too. Die soon."

I imagine the warm fuzzies will spread from town to town as more hard-to-justify state colleges end up on various hard-times hit lists. And when the state finally succumbs to the budgetary inevitability and actually starts trying to save what it can and cull the rest. . . .

BUT I GUESS civil war is inevitable when you have jobs programs masquerading as state universities, and every town has one. Especially when the Sunnis already hate the Shiites, and everybody hates the Christians.

Drawing a line in the sand trap

The Republican Party has had it with the strong-arm tactics of the Obama Administration, and its leading pols are saying enough is enough.

In fact, one GOP senator is drawing a line in the sand trap on No. 16, telling the evil Democrats to cease and desist molesting fine, upstanding Americans whose jobs may be threatened by the socialist cabal.

THAT WOULD BE (ahem) the CEOs of Wall Street banks who blew up the economy and now suckle at the federal teat. Somehow, James Rowley of Bloomberg stopped ROTFLMAO-ing just long enough to pound out this story:

A leading Senate Republican warned the Obama administration against removing chief executive officers at banks that received U.S. assistance, saying “the great fear” would be government management of companies.

“If you think that Washington can run car companies and banks and so on, well, then you’ve not been paying attention to how we’ve been doing back here,” Senator Jon Kyl said of the Treasury’s threat of management changes at banks getting “exceptional” aid. Last month, the administration forced out General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner as a condition for more U.S. aid.

While a financial review showed most banks don’t require new assistance from the Treasury, “the government appears to still have control over the major banks to the extent of saying they’ve got to raise capital,” Kyl said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

This continued government leverage over companies such as Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. “does raise some questions,” Kyl said. “Hopefully they can all get out of that relatively quickly.”

Kyl, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, also said it would be “absolutely unnecessary” for Congress to create a commission to investigate harsh tactics that the Central Intelligence Agency used to interrogate suspected al-Qaeda operatives seized after the Sept. 11 attacks.

PRO-ROBBER BARONS, pro-torture -- now that's what I call a winning political strategy. (Did the Chinese Communists take over the GOP while I was sleeping?) It can't be too soon until this spent political party just goes away and spares us any more of this vulgar spectacle.

Don't consider this an endorsement of the Democrats; it's just that we can deal with only one plague at a time. And this is the GOP's time.

Aye, there's the rub!

A lesson for managers everywhere to remember in these tough economic times: If you run off all the people who produce the product you're trying to sell . . . you won't have anything to sell.

This is particularly applicable to the print and broadcast arts, where the temptation is to fire, fire, fire to cut costs in the midst of collapsing advertising revenues. Newspapers (and radio) are fast reaching the point where there's not going to be enough staff to produce enough of a product that their remaining readers (and listeners) might care to bother with.

No audience, really no advertising.

THIS LESSON is being presented in distilled form right now at the Omaha Community Playhouse, the nation's largest community theater. In the name of tight finances and organizational efficiency, the theater's executive director and board decided to pick on "creative."

They asked the theater's artistic director, who also is one of its two principal directors, to resign. That he did.

What they didn't count on was his declining to direct various shows on a freelance basis. And what they also didn't count on was the other principal director turning down a pruned-down version of his job, then quitting in solidarity.

Nor did they count on three-fourths of an upcoming production's cast to take a hike as well.

THAT'S WHAT you call an "epic fail." But wait! There's more! And it's not even intermission yet.

Cue the Omaha World-Herald:

The staff shake-up at the Omaha Community Playhouse could drive a financial stake through the nonprofit theater's heart.

The simultaneous departures of directors Carl Beck and Susan Baer Collins from the playhouse has stirred new concerns — both financial and artistic — for "A Christmas Carol," the theater's biggest revenue producer.

Jerry Longe, the professional actor who has played Scrooge on the playhouse's main stage for the past three years, said Monday that he would leave his role if Beck and Collins leave the playhouse.

Both have said they plan to leave. They hired him for the role in 2005.

"I can't imagine doing that show without Carl directing," Longe said. "I can't imagine that show is even going to go up without Carl and Susie, who know the magic of it.

"But I'm still hoping for a reconciliation of some sort."

The 33-year hit holiday show in which Longe stars, written by former playhouse Executive Director Charles Jones, earns more than one out of every five dollars in the theater's budget. It has generated publicity and millions of dollars since 1976 and is crucial to the playhouse's artistic identity and financial stability.

Longe stepped into the shoes of Dick Boyd, who played 818 performances as Scrooge before retiring from the role at age 83. The crowds have since warmed to Longe. He had the added boost of a show makeover — new sets, costumes and special effects — when he started as Scrooge.

"It would break my heart to not do Scrooge again," Longe said. "But we have to move on."

Playhouse Executive Director Tim Schmad declined to comment on the developments regarding "A Christmas Carol." He said he would wait for an open forum, at 5:30 this evening in the playhouse's main auditorium.

OOPS. You can't sell nothing, guys.

Methinks somebody's going to lose their job over this one. And it's not going to be the directors, who already quit, or the volunteer actors, whom you couldn't fire if they hadn't already walked.

It's got to happen, because the Playhouse now finds itself facing a dilemma worthy of Hamlet.

"To be, or not to be: That is the question."

The next sick thing

What do you get when you combine producers from the country that gave us legal euthanasia and the network that specializes in "Mouth-Breathe TV"?

This.

Fox has fast-tracked a reality series in which real companies that are struggling to stay afloat in this lousy economy agree to let their staffs decide who among them will get pink-slipped to cut costs.

Fox is already in production on "Someone's Gotta Go," having lined up companies -- smaller, Dunder Mifflin-esque outfits with 15 to 20 employees -- Fox's reality-series madman/genius Mike Darnell told the TV Column. We sounded incredulous. Darnell notes that every time he comes up with one of these trashtastic reality series, we ask the same question: What on Earth would motivate anyone to be on this show? And his answer is always the same: "They want to be on TV. Who knows? There's never a shortage."

Each week, a different company will be showcased. Each week, that company's boss or owner will call the employees together and tell them someone has to be laid off. He or she will give the employees all the available information about one another -- salaries, job evaluations, etc. -- and let them decide who gets the pink slip.

Darnell thinks millions of Americans who fear for their jobs or have lost them will flock to a TV series in which someone loses a job every week, because the show is about . . . Wish Fulfillment.

The idea came from watching a segment on a cable news channel in which a small-business owner decided to let all her employees know what each of them was paid.

"We've taken it a step further and opened up the books to everybody's salary, opened up their HR files and let them talk about each other and to each other -- this one's lazy, this one's a hard worker, I hear this one's having an affair. And in the end they will decide who's to go.

"I'm sure you've been through a situation where someone at your company gets fired and you think, 'Why did that guy get fired and that idiot is still here?' " Darnell asked us, rhetorically. We had no comment.

The show will be brought to us by Endemol -- the Dutch-based production company that also gave the world "Big Brother," which used to seem mean-spirited and skanky, but which suddenly looks quaint and charming.

I THINK The Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes summed it up right nicely with that last paragraph. Or, to paraphrase Boon's description to Katy after a night of frat debauchery at Animal House: "Unbelievable. A new low. They're so ashamed."

Not.

That's because if you're a miserable enough SOB to watch it, they're miserable enough SOBs to make it -- "it" being yet another show that degrades people for the entertainment of others, thereby turning human misery into a media cash cow.

And you're a miserable enough SOB to watch it. After all, how long have The Jerry Springer Show and Maury been on the air?

Way back there then, Caesar used to provide bread and circuses for the people as a means of keeping everybody amused . . . and in line. Then the barbarians came.

Now, we find our "elites" -- both governmental and cultural -- providing bread and circuses for the barbarians (that is, us) as a means of keeping everybody amused . . . and in line. I mean, we have everything -- gladiators, temple prostitutes, chariot races (NASCAR), freak shows . . . everything.

WELL, ACTUALLY, not quite everything. We don't feed Christians to the lions yet.

Give Fox another couple of TV seasons, though, and they'll see what they can do.

3 Chords & the Truth: Feel like a number

Hard times keep calling us back.

Calling us back to explore the subject one more time, at least, on 3 Chords & the Truth. Why not? We're in them . . . just as well plumb the depths of where we find ourselves.

What interests me this go around is the death of "livin' large." Or the death of that notion for some -- the ones not taking the bonus money and running. If you listen to the news, or the cultural zeitgeist, you can be forgiven for thinking we all were riding high . . . and then something happened.

THE TRUTH is more complicated. Truth is, the American Dream has been under assault for the better part of two generations. For that long, great American industries have been on the skids, and the Americans who worked in them have been progressively thrown away.

Now we watch as the government goes about "shuttin' Detroit down" -- which may or may not be a mercy killing -- and the loss of industrial jobs kicks into overdrive. Pedal to the metal.

Used to be, you could work in a factory (or plant) make a good wage, support your family, send the kids to college, then retire with a comfortable pension. Used to be.

Global competition and the quest for short-term returns killed that notion dead. We've thrown away workers' security, and now we're busily throwing away the workers themselves.

Job retraining, in too many cases, is learning to say "Would you like fries with that?" in both English and Español.

First, we began to import throwaway products. Now we have throwaway workers. Check out the tent cities of the homeless all over California.

REALLY, is there anything -- or, for that matter, anyone -- we don't throw away these days? We have disposable plates, disposable utensils, disposable containers and disposable appliances.

Disposable napkins, disposable clothes, disposable bags and disposable lighters.

Disposable relationships, disposable contracts, disposable jobs and disposable workers.

Disposable music, disposable culture, disposable arts and disposable media.

Disposable lovers, disposable kids, disposable marriages and disposable morality.

AGAIN . . . CAN SOMEBODY tell me what we don't discard?

Well, banks do seem to have some difficulty in disposing of "toxic assets." And we fervently hope you won't chuck this week's episode of the Big Show.

Such is life in a world where people serve the economy, and not the other way around. Maybe that's why we keep returning to this theme in these times.

Or, as Bob Seger once sang:

Feel like a number,
Feel like a stranger,
A stranger in this land,
I feel like a number,
I'm not a number,
I'm not a number,
Dammit I'm a man,
I said I'm a man

THAT'S KIND OF a Motor City translation of a Christmas sermon Pope Leo the Great once gave. The money line: "Christian, remember your dignity."

It would be nice if the suits remembered our dignity once in a while, too. "Dammit, I'm a man. I said I'm a man."

And, as always, it's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

A tale of two Kentuckies

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It's a hard-knock life. Unless you're a big-time athletic program.

Then you get to tell a nation in the middle of the worst hard times since the Great Depression. . . . Well, let's just say you get to rub big money and f***ed-up priorities in folks' faces.

We act like life is a game and a game is life. No, and hell no.

Copper-plated coins denominated at .01 dollar eminating from a paranormal entity of bliss

Your government wants you to know:

Economic turmoil (e.g., increased unemployment, foreclosures, loss of investments and other financial distress) can result in a whole host of negative health effects - both physical and mental. It can be particularly devastating to your emotional and mental well-being. Although each of us is affected differently by economic troubles, these problems can add tremendous stress, which in turn can substantially increase the risk for developing such problems as:

* Depression
* Anxiety
* Compulsive Behaviors (over-eating, excessive gambling, spending, etc.)
* Substance Abuse

(snip)

Other Steps You Can Take

Acknowledge that economic downturns can be frightening to everyone, but that there are ways of getting through them - from engaging in healthy activities, positive thinking, supportive relationships, to seeking help when needed from health professionals.

Encourage community-based organizations and groups to provide increased levels of mental health treatment and support to those who are severely affected by the economy.

Work together to help all members of the community build their resiliency and successfully return to healthy and productive lives.

For further information on mental health or substance abuse issues please visit The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

PERSONALLY, I really prefer how Americans dealt with this kind of stuff in the 1930s (see video above).

Shutting Detroit Down

Sometimes, it takes a songwriter to distill into digestible form what's been happening to a people.

For a generation in this country, we've seen the rich get richer and the poor and working class get the shaft. By and large, we have been too distracted with bread and circuses to notice what's been happening in Novus Rome.

But the bubble has burst. The fit has hit the shan. We notice.

And now, as country singer John Rich notes, we're bailing out the bankers while we're shutting Detroit down. And throwing the working man under the limousine.

If, as many fear, the worst is yet to come -- and if Americans have any civic-mindedness and fundamental concern for justice left -- there's going to be a revolution in this country.

You can take that to the zombie bank.

On working for The Man today

The folk singer Melanie, performing on TV way back when, predicts 2009 and the disposable worker.

Burn, baby, burn! Hard times inferno!

The prophet of Times Square certainly has been an interesting sideshow.

SURELY YOU'VE HEARD, somewhere on the Internets, the dire prophetic warning from the Holy Spirit -- via the blog of the Rev. David Wilkerson, pastor of New York's Times Square Church:

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE - EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written,

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (v. 3).

God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations. He is destroying the secular foundations.

The prophet Jeremiah pleaded with wicked Israel, “God is fashioning a calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh, turn back each of you from your evil way, and reform your ways and deeds. But they will say, It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart” (Jeremiah 18:11-12).

MAYBE the good pastor is right. Then again, maybe it wasn't the Holy Spirit whispering in his ear.

In any event, I don't know whether you can call it prophecy if one's reaction to it -- well, at least my reaction to it -- is "Well, DUH!" I think what Pastor Wilkerson really is prophesying would be a triggering event that will cause postmodern Westerners -- raised, by and large, with an entitlement mentality and without God -- to act in an entirely predictable manner when faced with dire circumstances rendering their worldview null and void.

In other words, go apes***.

Look at it this way: For at least a couple of generations, what used to be Christendom has elevated worship of mammon to historically unprecedented heights. And like all belief systems built upon philosophical sand dunes, the foundation was bound to crack.

Crack!

Now the walls are bowing out and the roof ain't looking too good. One good shock -- The Israelis attacking Iran, perhaps, and oil prices again shooting into the stratosphere as a result? -- could cause the whole thing to come down.

Think of it this way: In the absence of the hope derived from the prospect of greater earthly prosperity (an insufficient and fleeting hope, obviously, but you take what's available to you) what real hope does mankind have apart from that won at a terrible price on Calvary, with Jesus Christ hanging dead on a cross for our sins?

What victory can we claim over the natural state of mankind, save that same Jesus' triumph over death and despair on that first Easter morn? Of late, we have put abiding faith in a modern materialistic aberration . . . but what if that all goes away?

And it might, you know.

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HOW DOES a people without hope behave?

David Wilkerson had a vision:

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City.

All you need is angry people. Check.

Hopeless people. Getting there.

A match thrown in a puddle of sociological gasoline. ?????

Someone, anyone, tell me: What hope will the people have when the "bubble America" they've so carefully constructed proves to the cruelest of false hopes? In what do people hope when their collective god dies, the house has gone back to the bank, the SUV has been repossessed, they can't put food on the table and the iPod won't answer urgent prayers?

What's left but the abyss when the trend line looks like this, as reported by The Associated Press:

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.

(snip)

The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.

About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths. And, since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents — 1.2 percent — said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca and Santeria.

The study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group.

ANYONE? ANYONE?

It's fitting, actually, that President Obama announced today that it's now full speed ahead for embryonic stem-cell research, otherwise known as cannibalizing the tiniest human beings in hopes of fixing what ails us giant economy-sized human beings.

This triumph of scientific "progress" is an eminently logical progression for the "developed" world, where we've cannibalized the environment to build a planetary Temple of Stuff. And where workers continually are cannibalized (figuratively . . . thus far) by corporate titans in the name of "shareholder value" and "globalism."

Creating embryos just to consume them makes perfect sense to an America where we've cannibalized our surviving progeny's future for the holy cause of tax cuts, elective wars, McMansions and an automobile in every pot.

WHETHER OR NOT it really was the third person of the Holy Trinity -- terminology wholly unfamiliar to a burgeoning demographic -- it seems to me it was perfectly appropriate for Rev. Wilkerson to issue his warning and invoke the prophet Jeremiah.

After all, one of the founding fathers has his back:

"For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever. . . ."

Thomas Jefferson wrote that. You can find parts of it on the Jefferson Memorial . . . in Washington, D.C. That's where President Obama -- supremely ironically -- has devoted much of his energy to enshrining a new form of slavery, one where humans not even worth three-fifths of a white man satisfy our needs with their lives.

Washington is also where politicians look out for the interests of corporate masters at the expense of a new kind of serf. "Wage slaves," if you happen to be of a Marxist bent.

And Washington is where the government enabled, then bailed out, the Wall Street profiteers who blew up the economy. And, maybe, your job along with it.

Worse, they blew up the gods in which lay our hope. O mighty iPod, o sacred text message, come to our assistance in this our time of travail! Hummer hear our prayer!

Hello? Hello?

No one's there. Burn that mama down.

Looking for bailouts for God, Inc.

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Go to Mass on Sunday, and you're likely to hear how contributions are falling short "x" thousand dollars every week. Please step it up.

Yes, we know some of you have lost your jobs. Yes, we know people are hurting. Yes, we know there's a recession afoot, maybe a depression.

But. . . .

BUT WHAT?

But, we've turned the Catholic Church into a corporation? But, we don't give clothes to the naked or food to the hungry, but instead create chanceries, which have offices, which hire staff, who run programs . . . which help the needy?

But, half of what you put in the plate -- plus a crapload of parents' money in the form of tuition -- go to fund a Catholic-school system no better (at least in Omaha) than public schools and absolutely as likely to turn out hedonistic little pagans?

But, you're paying dearly to build more, and more luxurious, facilities in which comfortable suburban Catholics hear a lukewarm version of the gospel to the lounge-lizard beat of liturgical composers at whom, I'm sure, Simon Cowell would love to have a go?

OH . . . AND THEN there is this.


WHICH MAKES YOU wonder about this, from Pravda, ummmm . . . The Catholic Voice:

Lee Karrer, finance director for the Archdiocese of Omaha, says only time will tell what kind of an impact the economy will have on the archdiocese.

"It's probably a little too early," he said. "The archbishop, however, has directed that we bring our expenses of operating the Central Administrative Offices into line with anticipated slowdown of incoming revenue."

Karrer said the finance office is in the process of finishing the budget planning on reducing the budget for 2008-2009, as well as the fiscal year of 2009-2010. The reality is that anything and everything is being discussed in terms of reducing the budget, including salary increases, benefit levels and staffing.

"Now we are just at the beginning of the process for Fiscal Year 2009-2010. We haven't even met with the finance council yet. So it's a little early to be able to say exactly what the end results will be," he said. "I can say we've reduced this year's fiscal budget by six figures and will do at least that if not more in 2009-2010."

The finance office's budget affects the chancery offices at 100 N. 62nd St. in Omaha and the archdiocesan offices located at the Sheehan Center campus near 60th and Northwest Radial Highway, Karrer said.

Father Joseph Taphorn, chancellor of the archdiocese, said the priests of the archdiocese have had their salaries frozen for this year, and all archdiocesan office directors were asked to trim about 10 percent from their budgets.

"How can we do that without sacrificing the essential program ministries?" he said. "Well, maybe we can forsake some of the luxuries, some of the travel or conferences that are nice things to do, but if we really don't need to do it, then let's not do it this year and put some of those things on hold.

"Everyone has to trim a little bit and tighten the belt, but I think for the most part we're going to preserve essential services and those essential programs, but everyone has to be a little lean."

"EVERYONE HAS to trim a little bit and tighten the belt," or, if you're in the pews, fork over what's left in your wallet. Yes, indeed.

Well, except for Archbishop Elden Curtiss, who's going to be doing just fine in his retirement years -- sitting pretty, all by himself, in his $389,000 house. Paid for by the good Catholics of the archdiocese.

Meanwhile, somebody sitting somewhere in the chancery, in some office of some archdiocesan bureaucracy, is wondering where all the Catholic young people went. And why those who still bother with God at all are more than likely to end up in some church just like little Waterfront Community Church in Schaumburg, Ill.

Breaking news: The death of God

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God had died in that season; the spirit no longer flowed through the people's bank statements and 401(k) accounts and, lo, the desolation of abomination was upon them, and they were mightily afraid. Confusion gripped the faithful, and consolation they could not find.

Woe enveloped them, and verily they awaited the solace of death.

Oh my word, they killed God! Bastards.

Is God dead? Yes, it is.

We killed our god. Our $avior is no more.

LO, it is written by The Associated Press:

A relentless sell-off in the stock market Monday blew through barriers that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago, and investors warned there was no reason to believe buyers will return anytime soon.

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted below 7,000 at the opening bell and kept driving lower all day, finishing at 6,763 — a loss of nearly 300 points. Each of the 30 stocks in the index lost value for the day.

And the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, a much broader measure of the market’s health, dipped below the psychologically important 700 level before closing just above it. It hadn’t traded below 700 since October 1996.

Investors were worried anew about the stability of the financial system after insurer American International Group posted a staggering $62 billion loss for the fourth quarter, the biggest in U.S. corporate history — and accepted an expanded bailout from the government.

But beyond daily headlines, Wall Street seems to have given up the search for a reason to believe that the worst is over and the time is ripe to buy again.

“As bad as things are, they can still get worse, and get a lot worse,” said Bill Strazzullo, chief market strategist for Bell Curve Trading, who said he believes the Dow might fall to 5,000 and the S&P to 500.

The Dow’s descent has been breathtaking. It took only 14 trading sessions for the average to fall from above 8,000 to below 7,000. For the year, the Dow has lost 23 percent of its value.

I WOULD SAY "Have mercy on us," but who would be there to hear?

Oh, Baal, what have we done to you?

Sadly for the Rocky, Scripps brought wrong hat

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Another newspaper has died. This time, it's the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

There's a lot that can, has and will be said about this sad event. One of the truest things said so far is newspapers aren't things -- they live. And they don't go out of business; they die.

And the heartbreaking damned fact is, given the times in which we live, many, probably most, of the people losing their jobs today -- the people who made the Rocky live and breathe -- will never work for a newspaper again. Perhaps never work in the broad outlines of their chosen profession again.

That's as big a tragedy and waste as the physicist -- or the poet -- relegated to sweeping up factory floors in some communist-bloc country because he or she offended the political regime in some unfathomable way. In America, we don't have an iron-fisted, monolithic political regime to offend and, thus, be banished.

We do, however, have an iron-fisted, monolithic corporate infrastructure to offend by our continuing need for food, shelter and the money to purchase both. We also have the gods of change to offend by becoming an anachronism.

INCREASINGLY, newspapers -- and newspaper people -- are anachronisms. Anachronisms proficient at what, increasingly, no existing economic model will support.

Anachronisms who have mouths to feed and a need to be useful. Anachronisms who know, in their heart of hearts, they will never have a job they can do as well as this one -- this outdated one. Anachronisms who know what they do is needed still, even if nobody else does, because who will keep an eye on the bastards now?

These newly minted anachronisms, the ones with no idea what they'll do now, are human beings . . . despite the prevailing opinion on talk radio and in the Internet comboxes. They hope, they fear, they love and -- to the amazement of those giddy about yet another victory over "the vast left-wing conspiracy" -- they are loved.

And so is their newspaper, which today is no more. One comment on a farewell story on the Rocky Mountain News website struck me as a particularly vivid illustration of this.

SO . . . for the last time, from the Rocky Mountain News:

conative1963 writes:

I feel like my BFF has died. I have been crying on and off for the last 12 hours.

Although I've been in and out of Colorado for the past 20+ years, finding, picking up and reading the Rocky in its inky goodness has been like seeing an old friend. I remember visiting my Grandparents when I was five, and loving the fact that I could actually hold the tabloid-sized paper in my teeny hands MUCH easier than a broadsheet. Thus began my love of an actual newspaper.

Members of my family have been reading the Rocky Mountain News for at least 120 of the last 149.85 years.

I never, ever thought the end of a business would evoke more emotion than the death of a real person. But it has.

I do realize that the Newspaper business has changed, and will continue to change and evolve. Someday, maybe the Rocky will return as an online entity. Until then, it will be missed. Greatly.

I do not look forward to taking this morning's paper to my Alzheimer's riddled 94 year old Grandmother. She inquires daily about her paper, and when I have to take her the Post, I know she will cry.

Thank you, all, for your wonderful work.

Goodbye.

Repent! The end may not be near

Cheer up! Things could be worse.

Or so I'm told.

Meanwhile, this floated over the transom, courtesy of Reuters:

The global economy may be deteriorating even faster than it did during the Great Depression, Paul Volcker, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Friday.

Volcker noted that industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.

"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,'' Volcker told a luncheon of economists and investors at Columbia University.

Given the extent of the damage, financial regulations must be improved and enhanced to prevent future debacles, although policy-makers must be cautious not disrupt things further while the turmoil is ongoing.

Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve famed for breaking the back of inflation in the early 1980s, mocked the argument that "financial innovation,'' a code word for risky securities, brought any great benefits to society. For most people, he said, the advent of the ATM machine was more crucial than any asset-backed bond.

"There is little correlation between sophistication of a banking system and productivity growth,'' he said.

NOW IS THE TIME for all good men to drop the bulls***. Quit blaming your neighbor who, for whatever reason, is in trouble. Try helping instead.

It's important.

The Swine Rebellion . . . live on CNBC

Did you get talked into an adjustable-rate mortgage by an unscrupulous broker, only to have the value of your house collapse and the mortgage reset?

Did you get a fixed-rate mortgage on an overpriced house that also happened to be the cheapest house . . . at least the cheapest house in a neighborhood you dared live in?

Did you do all the right things? Tried to be responsible, didn't buy too much house . . . but didn't count on your house now being worth two-thirds of what the mortgage is?

Well, bubbie, you're a loser!

YOU'RE A LOSER, a drain on society who doesn't deserve one iota of help from the government. You're a parasite who will be sucking the hard-earned monetary lifeblood out of "ordinary folks" -- like Chicago traders and well-paid CNBC talking heads like Rick Santelli.

And what needs to happen to you is a good dose of social Darwinism. You need to be left to ruin. Homelessness, even.

Government aid should be restricted to the worthy -- to the producers of society. You are worthless and weak and, if need be, there should be a revolution of the fit in this country to put you in your place.

Note that this revolution will be coming after Wall Street got its wad of the taxpayers' scratch.

OR, AS BILLIE HOLIDAY observed as we were emerging from the last depression:

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

THIS IS AMERICA on the edge of the abyss. This is the America of "them's that got shall get." That is, until the gettin's no good.

Then comes the America that eats its own. Its poster child is Rick Santelli . . . live on CNBC.

Never has "capitalist pig" been such an apt description.

Doom is becoming a meme

I keep hoping Gerald Celente is a nut, because if he's not . . . we're toast.

So, how do you think we look in marmalade? Will we go well with tea? Reasonable questions in these interesting times, I think, because Gerald Celente -- the doomsaying trends researcher with a much better than average track record -- is no nut.

Colorful and a great self-promoter, but no nut.

IN BRIEF, Celente thinks we're at the beginning of what he calls the Greater Depression, that unrest and uprising will sweep the land, and that the trendy Christmas gift for 2012 won't be an iPod. It will be food.

Welcome to the United States of America, the world's first formerly developed country. According to Gerald Celente. Who is right more often than not in his forecasts.

I think the reason Celente is all over the media (and now is all over the blogs of folks like me) is that our collective gut tells us he's right. That our entire economy, society and coddled, hyperindividualistic existence is absolutely unsustainable.

Not politically, not emotionally, not spiritually, not economically, not environmentally.

WE GOT too greedy, too fast, and we partied like there was no tomorrow. Welcome to tomorrow.

That's what my ample, middle-aged gut is telling me. That's what Celente's data are telling him.

So, how then shall we live?

My guess is radically differently than we do now -- as if we're going to have any choice in the matter. Everything will change.

I think God will change, too. Rather, I think our perception of God -- our relationship to God and the church -- will change. That, or God will become dead to us.

We no longer can afford a lot of things, and a self-satisfied, self-reverential (and referential), middle-class Christianity is one of those luxuries now beyond our grasp. We will be holy, or we will be savages.

The center did not hold. Neither will Marty Haugen. At least the coming Bad Times won't be all bad.