Inter-Ocean Parabolic

Does anybody remember Clearly Canadian fizzy beverages?  I drank quite a few of these back in the day:

Some readers of this blog may remember that I took part in a personal Compact not to buy anything new between February 23 and November 30 of 2007.  While I had several minor infractions, I was mostly successful.

Since I bought a new house, though, that Compact has been out the window, so to speak.  Therefore, to rein in my spending and to return to a simpler way of life, I am reentering the Compact--and I will only buy used items, excluding food, beverages and plants, between now and July 1, 2010.

I grant myself the following exemptions:

1.  Various computer peripherals  

2.  New cell phone

From the New York Times:

The unemployment rate includes only jobless people who have looked for work in the past four weeks. The underemployment rate — which also includes jobless workers who have not recently looked for work and part-timers who need full-time work — reached 17.5 percent in October. And the long-term unemployment rate — the share of the unemployed population out of work for more than six months — also continues to set records. It is now 35.6 percent.

The official job-loss data also fail to take note of 2.8 million additional jobs needed to absorb new workers who have joined the labor force during the recession. When those missing jobs are added to the official total, the economy comes up short by 10.1 million jobs.

Taken together, the numbers paint this stark picture: At no time in post-World War II America has it been more difficult to find a job, to plan for the future, or — for tens of millions of Americans — to merely get by.

For the record, I don't believe that mandating people pay huge, monopolistic corporations (insurance companies) money they can't really afford right now is a particularly good way to increase your popularity. But, apparently, the Democrats are of that opinion. Oh, they're going to help people who can't "afford" it? Well, I'm familiar with "income sensitive" plans, and I'm not buying it...

As the poet T.S. Eliot warned,

"The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right thing for the wrong reason."

(To give credit where it's due, I came across that reading Greg Palast.)