What amazes and shocks me no less than ever before is how little people know about our country, about current events, the political climate, economic realities, America’s place in the global community, etc. Now look, I don’t want to come across all high and mighty, but I think that be being well informed, learned about these things is a responsibility that we have as citizens and members of our community. For me, it’s no different than being an informed consumer, or an informed driver, or an informed employee. Yet ask the average American to name the three branches of the US government, and they struggle – and I mean, they really struggle. Ask the average American to name the leaders in government, or where Libya is on a map (heck, even it’s continent), or what the hot topics in politics are, and you’d be shocked (or maybe not) at the lack of awareness.

Here’s where it get’s shameful for me. Ask the average American about Charlie Sheen, and they have answers. Not only do they have answers, they’ve got a scoop. Ask them about American Idol, about Ashley Judd’s memoir, about all sorts of (in my opinion) useless pop culture news, and you’ll find them to be very well informed. Ask them about what it really means to buy locally, to participate in public service, to be charitable, to really be active (if not well informed) in their community, and yet again you’ll get blank stares.

The state of America’s society is in a shameful, embarrassing, arrogant, naive, and simply sad place. I wonder, though, how long we can keep this up? Is it just where the pendulum happens to be right now? Am I not being fair, not seeing the full picture, looking in the wrong places? I’m sure I am, to a small degree. I’m generalizing, I know that, but I’m not far from the mark.

Is the media to blame? Entirely? Really? It’s totally the media’s fault? Is it also the fault of the media that teachers make a small fraction of what the average white collar worker makes? Who’s fault is it that firemen and women aren’t getting their pensions? Who’s fault is it that celebrities and professional athletes are who our children look up to, instead of astronauts, scientists, the First Lady, or Army Generals?

I think I know who’s fault it is. It’s my fault. It’s your fault. It’s your neigbors fault, your brothers, your sisters, your parents, your friends, colleagues. We are to blame for the state of America’s society, political climate, economic condition, joblessness. We are to blame for the disgusting behavior of people like Charlie Sheen. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. The more bullshit we consume, the more bullshit we produce. If you eat shitty food, you shit stinks to the heavens (pardon the crude analogy). If we, Americans, spent even one hour per day consuming less of the things that do not matter, and consume things that do, imagine how many hours of importance it’d produce?

The empire that is America is about to come crashing down. I mean that, truly. I don’t think I’m overreacting at all (and rest assured that America is an empire), I think I’m stating what informed people know. When it comes crashing down on us, we’ll be so fat, stupid, hopped up on sugar, porn, celebrity gossip, and mindless entertainment that we’ll end up looking like the movie Wall-E. No, seriously. Fat, dumb, deaf, and blind – staring at, consuming, eating, injecting whatever orgasm is put in front of us by each other, by the media, the corporate giants producing it, the greedy vampires orchestrating it and banking on it.

I do have hope though. I have hope that America is suffering from a momentary lapse in reason, good judgement, common sense, and that the medicine is coming – in some form, some shape, some place. Maybe America like a man suffering a mid-life crisis, rejecting his old ways, leaving his family, breaking his own rules, driving a red sports car, carelessly getting laid, recklessly imbibing, and avoiding the reality check that is coming, the reality that his kids now hate him, his dog doesn’t know who he is, his wife loved him and still does, he was lucky to even have the job he had, etc etc. I have hope that this pendulum is reaching that moment where it pauses and changes direction.

The pendulum will swing. It will reach the center, and find another extreme.

I feel better now. Thanks for reading and please, take what I write with just a small grain of salt.

Related articles

• The political-overreach pendulum (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Bill Maher: America Needs “A Class War” (mediaite.com)
• The Astounding Absurdity of a Government Shutdown (swampland.blogs.time.com)
• As Internet Use Grows, Is It Polarizing Political Views? (huffingtonpost.com)

Is the Democrat from Connecticut out of his mind? What is he trying to achieve here, raising revenues for the federal government? I don’t get it – where’s the logic in this provision? Maybe someone smarter than me can help me understand, but in the meantime if you are for entrepreneurship, for innovation, for job creation, for small business, then go here and sign the petition to stop this nonsense.

More information can be found here on The Huffington Post, in a well penned piece from Robert Litan. A quote follows:

Various studies published or sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation have made it abundantly clear how dependent the U.S. economy has been and will continue to be on the formation and growth of new companies. Angel investors are important funders of new companies. There is no good time to make it more difficult for them to invest in startups, and now — when the economy is struggling to recover from what may be the deepest recession since the Great Depression — is the very worst possible time to discourage angel investment.

Sign the petition here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Robert E. Litan: Proposed ‘Protections’ for Angel Investors are Unnecessary and Will Hurt America’s Job Creators (huffingtonpost.com)
• Are Incubators and Angels Gaining Leverage On Larger VC Firms? (readwriteweb.com)
• CitySquares Acquires Online Retail Directory Yokel.com (searchenginewatch.com)
• Proposed Financial Regulations Could Cripple Angel Investing (readwriteweb.com)
• Dodd Bill Could Render Startups Too Small to Succeed (xconomy.com)
• Startups Get Hit By Shrapnel In The Banking Bill (avc.com)
• Dodd Reform Bill Contains Provisions That Would Punish Startups: Fred Wilson (huffingtonpost.com)

My very first bank when I was a teenager was BayBank. A few years later BayBank merged with Bank of Boston, to form BankBoston. So then I was a BankBoston customer. Then came along Fleet Bank, who acquired BankBoston. Then I was a Fleet Bank customer. In 2005 Fleet was merged into Bank of America, and since then I’ve been with them. What started for me as a couple of nice local banks with roots in Boston going as far back as 1784, later became one of the banks that were and are, as it’s been so well put by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail.

The past 24 months has been a total nightmare for the every day American who trusts some of these Too Big to Fail banks with his/her hard earned income, who trust them with their home loans, who trust them with their 401(k), their mutual funds, their CDs, portfolios, wealth management, and on and on.

In late 2008 the US economy, along with most of the other economies across the globe, froze in time. Credit was frozen and we just saw the tip of the iceberg in what became the Global Financial Crisis. Along came the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which then resulted in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP as it’s more commonly known. Under this program the federal government literally had to step in and purchase assets and equity from these banking institutions to prop up our economy and avoid a total economic meltdown. Money was simply frozen in time – it wasn’t flowing for quite a while, as we all shudder to remember. And the only reason this happened is because of something that we all know of now as the Subprime Lending Crisis.

These massive, and I mean massive, financial institutions were bailed out by you, and your brother, your sister, your children, grandchildren, your mothers and fathers, your friends. How many of them are struggling to make ends meet? How many of them are working their asses off to pay for the home or tuitions? Unless they’re employed by one of these massive companies, I bet there’s a lot of them. It was your money, and their money, that bailed these companies out! Our tax dollars, instead of going to other causes like fixing our educational system, or fixing homelessness, disease, poverty, space exploration, fixing our nations highways and infrastructure, environmental causes, or any cause that you might feel passionate about, your tax dollars didn’t go there – they went to these massive institutions. Why? Because these banks are too big to fail? I call bullshit!

What all this boils down to for me and millions of other people like me, is that there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with our economic system, and this is just the beginning. I’m not a student of economics but I pay attention. I think I’m like a lot of people, whereas until something affects my wallet I tend to ignore it most of the time. But some politics and some economics just can’t be ignored anymore, some things have totally earned my outrage, my disgust, as opposed to my usual state of apathy. And I know I’m not alone.

This past Friday evening I was watching Bill Maher on HBO, as I often do late Friday nights (am I a liberal? gasp!). Arianna Huffington was on, and I really enjoy her. I learned about this new movement that she, and others, kicked off a little over 2 months ago called Move Your Money. Here, Arianna explains how it came about, and talks a bit more about the fundamentals behind it, but the idea is a simple one – move your money from the financial institutions that are “Too Big to Fail” to institutions that aren’t, and move your money to more fiscally, socially, environmentally responsible ones. Wow, what a notion huh? Not exactly rocket science is it? And the result is a website called Move Your Money. Move Your Money is about exactly that, moving your money from these institutions to a local community bank or credit union. Who’s too big to fail?

Most people are trying to avoid the six largest banks that engaged in casino-style financial practices (credit default swaps, derivatives trading, etc…) and that are largely to blame for the financial crisis — Citi, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The banks and credit unions we encourage people to look at largely avoided these kind of financial tricks, and then did not reward their executives with massive bonuses.

Today, March 8, 2010, I made my pledge to move my money. And I started the process. I opened a bank account a very well respected, very socially responsible, community bank called Wainwright Bank. Look at these guys – look at what they do! And this isn’t something new, because it’s the popular thing to do, they’ve been at it for nearly twenty years. It’s banks like Wainwright that have earned my business, but only now that I’ve learned my lesson! It’s a bank like this that I can be proud to bank with! The effect on my bottom line? Zero effect. Sure, they’re online banking may not be as swanky as BofA, but I have Quicken and Mint and I know how to balance my checkbook and stick to a budget. Sure they may not have locations all over the nation, but I like that, and they’ll refund my ATM charges. The fact of the matter is, I just feel better by making this change. It’s better than sitting on the sidelines, shaking my head and saying “what a shame, what a shame” and wondering how we’re going to get out of this mess. Oh, and I’m not alone. According to HuffPost…

More people are reaching the same conclusion. A new poll found that 9 percent of Americans have already moved their money out of a big bank as a protest. And the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to require any bank doing business with the city to reinvest in the community. It’s about time citizens and local governments inject some much-needed competition into our increasingly oligarchic banking system.

Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, a longtime Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress, from Boston, once said, “All politics is local.” What he meant was that the problems and troubles within our towns and cities around the country have a major affect on the actions of their representatives and senators at the capitol.

Please join me and Ali as we move our money and take action! It’s easy. Start by finding your new bank, here, then follow these basic steps. When you’re done, spread the word on twitter, on Facebook, and even log it here!

Read about what people are saying at Time, the Nation, Newsweek, Salon and all around the web.

The past 24 months has been a total nightmare for the every day American who trusts some of these Too Big to Fail banks with his/her hard earned income, who trust them with their home loans, who trust them with their 401(k), their mutual funds, their CDs, portfolios, wealth management, and on and on.

In late 2008 the US economy, along with most of the other economies across the globe, froze in time. Credit was frozen and we just saw the tip of the iceberg in what became the Global Financial Crisis. Along came the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which then resulted in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP as it’s more commonly known. Under this program the federal government literally had to step in and purchase assets and equity from these banking institutions to prop up our economy and avoid a total economic meltdown. Money was simply frozen in time – it wasn’t flowing for quite a while, as we all shudder to remember. And the only reason this happened is because of something that we all know of now as the Subprime Lending Crisis.

These massive, and I mean massive, financial institutions were bailed out by you, and your brother, your sister, your children, grandchildren, your mothers and fathers, your friends. How many of them are struggling to make ends meet? How many of them are working their asses off to pay for the home or tuitions? Unless they’re employed by one of these massive companies, I bet there’s a lot of them. It was your money, and their money, that bailed these companies out! Our tax dollars, instead of going to other causes like fixing our educational system, or fixing homelessness, disease, poverty, space exploration, fixing our nations highways and infrastructure, environmental causes, or any cause that you might feel passionate about, your tax dollars didn’t go there – they went to these massive institutions. Why? Because these banks are too big to fail? I call bullshit!

What all this boils down to for me and millions of other people like me, is that there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with our economic system, and this is just the beginning. I’m not a student of economics but I pay attention. I think I’m like a lot of people, whereas until something affects my wallet I tend to ignore it most of the time. But some politics and some economics just can’t be ignored anymore, some things have totally earned my outrage, my disgust, as opposed to my usual state of apathy. And I know I’m not alone.

This past Friday evening I was watching Bill Maher on HBO, as I often do late Friday nights (am I a liberal? gasp!). Arianna Huffington was on, and I really enjoy her. I learned about this new movement that she, and others, kicked off a little over 2 months ago called Move Your Money. Here, Arianna explains how it came about, and talks a bit more about the fundamentals behind it, but the idea is a simple one – move your money from the financial institutions that are “Too Big to Fail” to institutions that aren’t, and move your money to more fiscally, socially, environmentally responsible ones. Wow, what a notion huh? Not exactly rocket science is it? And the result is a website called Move Your Money. Move Your Money is about exactly that, moving your money from these institutions to a local community bank or credit union. Who’s too big to fail?

Most people are trying to avoid the six largest banks that engaged in casino-style financial practices (credit default swaps, derivatives trading, etc…) and that are largely to blame for the financial crisis — Citi, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The banks and credit unions we encourage people to look at largely avoided these kind of financial tricks, and then did not reward their executives with massive bonuses.

Today, March 8, 2010, I made my pledge to move my money. And I started the process. I opened a bank account a very well respected, very socially responsible, community bank called Wainwright Bank. Look at these guys – look at what they do! And this isn’t something new, because it’s the popular thing to do, they’ve been at it for nearly twenty years. It’s banks like Wainwright that have earned my business, but only now that I’ve learned my lesson! It’s a bank like this that I can be proud to bank with! The effect on my bottom line? Zero effect. Sure, they’re online banking may not be as swanky as BofA, but I have Quicken and Mint and I know how to balance my checkbook and stick to a budget. Sure they may not have locations all over the nation, but I like that, and they’ll refund my ATM charges. The fact of the matter is, I just feel better by making this change. It’s better than sitting on the sidelines, shaking my head and saying “what a shame, what a shame” and wondering how we’re going to get out of this mess. Oh, and I’m not alone. According to HuffPost…

More people are reaching the same conclusion. A new poll found that 9 percent of Americans have already moved their money out of a big bank as a protest. And the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to require any bank doing business with the city to reinvest in the community. It’s about time citizens and local governments inject some much-needed competition into our increasingly oligarchic banking system.

Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, a longtime Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress, from Boston, once said, “All politics is local.” What he meant was that the problems and troubles within our towns and cities around the country have a major affect on the actions of their representatives and senators at the capitol.

Please join me and Ali as we move our money and take action! It’s easy. Start by finding your new bank, here, then follow these basic steps. When you’re done, spread the word on twitter, on Facebook, and even log it here!

Read about what people are saying at Time, the Nation, Newsweek, Salon and all around the web.

Jack Connolly was Alderman of Somerville’s greater Davis Square neighborhood (insert Ward # here) for 22 years, until he lost a couple years ago to the young Rebekah Gewirtz. It was a real upset for Mr. Connolly, and his supporters. Rebekah did a heck of a job getting the younger and YUPPY vote, and Jack ended up being a victim of his own hard work.

I’m a big Jack Connolly fan, and I consider Jack a friend and ally to Citysquares. He’s a customer too. The work he’s done for the community, especially the small business community speaks for itself. Look at Davis Square in the 80s. Heck, look at Davis Square just 10 years ago! As hard as some of his naysayers try, no one can take that away from him. Jack might be a bit old school, but look folks, this is Somerville, Massachusetts, not Berkeley, California. Jack’s old school connections and ways are necessary to navigate the political systems in Somerville and greater Boston.

Funny how things happen, huh Jack? See you around buddy!