My Favorite CDs of 2014

Twenty-fourteen was not one of the all-time great rock and roll years. Not like 1965 or 1980 or even 2011. 

There were a passel of good releases plus some noteworthy boxed sets and archival live albums. But nothing I played to the exclusion of sleep or even leaving for work on time.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just getting old. Or more responsible. Being that sixty is closer than fifty, one of these is a distinct possibility.

OK. On to 2014. 

First, the box sets.

I'm taking the road less-traveled and choosing the three-disc Michael Bloomfield collection From His Head to His Heart to His Hands.

The careers of other sixties guitar gods were certainly more celebrated and more thoroughly-chronicled than Bloomfield's. But I can't imagine they were any more deserving than that of this Chicago kid with the unruly hair.

His stinging leads informed some of the sixties most indelible albums, and helped usher the guitar into new and unimagined realms. This collection shines a much-needed light on the career of one of rock's unacknowledged masters.

Every once in a while, a tour attains legendary status. Such tours represent a watershed moment in the career of a band or artist. Examples would be the Rolling Stones in 1972. Bob Dylan in 1966. Or the Talking Heads in 1983.

Another would be Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1978. The uniform intensity of the band's performances (all 111 of them) was staggering. I've never heard a band play so hard so often. They were relentless.

Fortunately for us, several shows were simulcast on radio. And one of them, the August 9^th date at the Agora Theater in Cleveland, recently received an official release by LeftField media on Bruce Springsteen.net.

The sound quality is excellent, as is the performance. Cleveland was an early stronghold for Springsteen, and suitably enlivened, he and the E Street Band turn in a charged performance worthy of release.

Now for 2014's favorites:

1. Hookworms – The Hum On their second album, Hookworms don't just confront the so-called sophomore jinx, they assault and batter it until it's the consistency of porridge. (Which isn't to be construed as an endorsement of senseless violence, but as the Square Peg's way of saying The Hum is really good.)

Dark, aggressive, eerie—The Hum might be how The Doors would've sounded had it been recorded today, rather than a half-century ago. Most amazing of all is that Hookworms are able to infuse the proceedings with melody and, well, hooks.

Who knows—I might just be late for work one of these days.

Check “The Impasse” and “Retreat”.

2. Mogwai – Rave Tapes The spare and austere beauty of Scotland oozes from this collection, a continuation of the work featured on last year's brilliant Les Revenants soundtrack. Call it Mogwai 2.0.

The rock-inspired crunch continues to give way to a subtler, more-nuanced music that is as resonant as it is unhurried. 

Only a labored spoken word piece mars the glorious mood. On planet LPG, Rave Tapes was the grower of the year.

Check “No Medicine for Regret” and “Heard About You Last Night”.

3. Jenny Lewis – The Voyager I wasn't cool-enough to tap into Rilo Kiley until Under the Blacklight, and by then it was pretty much over with. Thankfully, Lewis' solo career has been a fruitful one.

The Voyager finds Lewis grappling with the questions biological clocks and boyfriends who won't take off their headphones pose. Paradoxically, it's all cloaked in a warm pop sheen, burnished by Lewis' oh-so-charismatic voice.

However deeply you choose to listen, The Voyager is a trip worth taking.

Check “Aloha & the Three Johns” and “Slippery Slopes”.

4. Hamish Kilgour – All of It and Nothing Brother David is better-known, but Hamish's solo debut is a smack dab doozy.

In that way a certain generation of Flying Nun alumni have, Kilgour's spare, talk-sung epics have an appealing understatement which is unlike anything out there. The shambling melodies and Kilgour's modest voice imparts an intimate, homemade feel.

Odd bits of instrumentation shine like stars in All of It and Nothing's vast sky, cementing its appeal.

Check “Crazy Radiance” and “Smile”.

5. Temples – Sun Structures Temples hit all the right notes on this, their debut album. 

Inhabiting a sweet spot somewhere between early Pink Floyd, mid-sixties Byrds and a bit of the Walker Brothers, they fashion a hook-laden nugget that's one of the freshest-sounding releases of the year.     

Check song of the year “Keep in the Dark” and “Sand Dance”.

6. Sharon Van Etten – Are We There When Van Etten asks if we're 'there', she's not referring to a vacation destination. 'There' is a place where, if you're really lucky, it might stop raining long-enough for sunlight to animate the particle of color in her endless night.

But with light comes shadows, and the haunted Van Etten can't help but wonder what romantic devilment lies within.

A snippet of lighthearted studio chatter closes Are We There, suggesting the possibility of a happy ending. Which is fine—as long as it doesn't preclude her master's thesis on the dark side of love.

Check “Our Love” and “Every Time the Sun Comes Up”.

7. Gary Clark, Jr. – Live Were it not for the smoldering, electric guitar goodness of this album, I'd be concerned this release masks a case writer's block, coming as it does two years after his last studio release and with no plans for another one anytime soon.

But when you have a talent like Clark who can sing like Marvin and play like Jimi, it's best to just enjoy the music however and whenever it comes. So what if it doesn't follow the prescribed path to success? 

Being on hold never sounded so good.

Check “Catfish Blues” and “If Trouble Was Money”.

8. The Faint – Doom Abuse I'd lost track of this Omaha, Nebraska outfit after 2004's Wet from Birth. Turns out it wasn't very hard, as following a year-long tour for Fasciinatiion they essentially disbanded.

Doom Abuse isn't the rusty release you could rightfully fear after so much time off, but a hit-the-ground-running collection that sounds like it came straight from the kinetic aftermath of a hot tour.

Check “Your Stranger” and the would-have-been Max Headroom favorite “Dress Code”.

9. Rodney Crowell – Tarpaper Sky On one hand, as perhaps one of three guys on this list who could recall the 1976 punk explosion, Crowell is a survivor.

On the other, that would be damming him with faint praise.

Albums like Tarpaper Sky are the reason Crowell isn't appearing at your local casino alongside Eddie Rabbit and the Oak Ridge Boys on those generic, pre-packaged oldies tours.

His remains a fresh and vital talent.

Check “Grandma Loved That Old Man” and “I Wouldn't Be Me Without You”.

10. Prince – Art Official Age September was twofer time in Paisley Park as Prince released a pair of albums, the better and more cohesive of which appears here.

Art Official Age isn't anything you haven't heard before, and it isn't going to replace Dirty Mind or Sign of the Times in your Prince pantheon.

But all of that's forgotten the first time you get up and pop n' lock.

Check “Breakfast Can Wait” and “Art Official Cage”.

Honorable mentions:

Wussy – Attica!

The Black Keys – Turn Blue

Jack White – Lazaretto

Who Knew: Budget Cuts are Inconvenient!

Oh, you're a sly one, John Koskinen! Pulling the fire alarm and telling millions of American taxpayers their refunds could be delayed because of budget cuts was a brilliant and inspired move.

You sure know how to hit 'em where they live, Mr. IRS Commissioner.

But despite the standing O I gave you during last night's network news, I feel compelled to uncap the dreaded red felt-tip pen for just a minute.

You neglected to credit Republicans and their relentless pursuit of the small government ideal. You know, the one that stripped your agency of funding.

The wealthy can be made still-wealthier. The powerful still more-powerful. If only big government wasn't sucking up their money to, you know, protect and expedite their tax returns.

As one who believes strongly in giving credit where it's due, it's only fair.

The Baseball Hall of (Kinda-Sorta) Fame

I'm kind of pissed. The Frambozen is gone. The end-of-the-year glow provided by the twin holidays of Christmas and New Year's Eve is also gone, replaced by the bitter, sub-zero, salt-encrusted ugliness of January.

If that weren't bad enough, the Baseball Writers' Association of America has again seen fit to dismiss the career of Lee Smith, a player as uncommon as his name is common.

Lee Smith was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the mid-seventies, which might be the only smart thing they did that decade.

After several years in the minors, Smith was called up to the major leagues in late 1980, the first of eight seasons he would spend in blue pinstripes. During that time, he reliably served as the Cubs' closer on those rare occasions they held a late-game lead in need of protection.

Built like a tight end, Smith would take the mound with Jheri curls glistening in the mid-summer humidity. He would glower at a succession of hitters from beneath a cap pulled low until they had, more often than not, surrendered to futility.

Sadly, in December of 1987 the Cubs saw fit to trade Smith to the Boston Red Sox for future Hall of Famers Al Nipper and Calvin Schiraldi. (For those of you not knowledgeable about baseball, I'm being sarcastic. Really, seriously and totally sarcastic.) 

This despite the fact that between 1982 and 1988, Smith never ranked lower than fourth in saves, and finished first or second four times. Is it lazy thinking or just too easy to suggest the Cubs felt there was nothing left to, um, save? 

At any rate, Smith continued his late-game heroics in Boston for two years before being traded early in the 1990 season to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Tom Brunansky.

In St. Louis, playing for surprisingly mediocre Cardinal teams, Smith elevated his profile and recorded three successive forty-save seasons with just a single ERA over 3.20. He was rewarded with three consecutive all-star berths.

Following a late-season trade to the Yankees in 1993 and by then in his mid-thirties, Smith split time between four teams, enjoying an all-star season each with the Baltimore Orioles (1994) and California Angels (1995) before retiring in the summer of 1997 as a Montreal Expo.

It is significant that in the fourteen seasons between 1981 and 1996, Smith never finished lower than ninth in saves and led the league four times. Only once in that span did his ERA climb above 3.65, or his strike-outs-per-nine-innings average fall below seven.

He assumed the all-time lead in saves in 1993, and held it through 2006. He set a single-season record for saves in a season with 47 in 1991, and was good enough, long enough to be named an all-star with four different franchises.

And yet Lee Smith remains unelected to the Hall of Fame.

Smith set about his career with the same quiet intensity Henry Aaron did his. He never made headlines by feuding with teammates, managers or GMs. Armed with a fastball that burned like the heat in his native Louisiana, he merely excelled.

But low-key personalities without multiple World Series appearances for big market glamor teams apparently aren't sexy enough to warrant BBWAA attention. After being named on 50.6 percent of the ballots in 2012, Smith's support has shrank alarmingly.

In what must rank as one of the larger insults of his life, Barry 'Asterisk' Bonds and Roger Clemens have been named on more ballots than Smith in each of the last two years.

Really, BBWAA? Really?

To my knowledge, Lee Smith has never killed anyone. Never patronized a puppy mill nor introduced legislation that would consign millions to economic deprivation while enriching a tiny percentage of the population.

Then why should he be made to suffer the indignity of trailing self-important gas bags like Bonds and Clemens in the BBWAA's annual Hall of Fame vote?

Let me try this again: if being very good for a very long time is the criteria for entrance to the Hall of Fame, Smith belongs.

If being the first relief pitcher to amass four-hundred saves, or remaining solidly entrenched in third place on the all-time saves list nearly twenty-years after retirement means anything, Smith belongs.

If a career ERA of 3.03 or averaging nearly a strike-out per inning over an eighteen-year career in the pressure cooker of relief pitching is just a wee bit out of the ordinary, Smith belongs.

The stretch of thirteen consecutive seasons with at least twenty saves remains the second-longest ever assembled by a relief pitcher. The six-straight seasons with at least thirty saves remains third-longest, and the three successive seasons attaining at least forty saves is second.

Does it need to be said again? Smith belongs.

Lee Smith was a rock. Others might have posted more glittering statistics over the course of a season, perhaps even picked-up a Cy Young award. But Lee Smith was better longer than just about anyone not named Mariano Rivera.

At 107 years old, the Baseball Writers' Association of America clearly should know better: Smith belongs.

My 20 Favorite Bruce Springsteen Songs

 

I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen for a long time. I'd like to say I didn't need 'Time' and 'Newsweek' to show me the way to 'Born to Run', but that would be lying.

He's one of a handful of performers who has stayed as relevant and as interesting after forty years as he was after four minutes. Like a classic movie or a great book, his songs hold up to repeated listening because there is always something new to be found in them.

Add that these songs were often rendered in front of an audience with as much fire and passion as they had been in a recording studio, and an indelible rock and roll icon was born.

Very few performers poured themselves into their concerts like Bruce Springsteen did. His concerts were hands-above-your-head celebrations of rock and roll; exorcisms of generational expectations and wage slavery which would crescendo into the orgiastic ecstasies of salvation and redemption.

It's not an abuse of poetic license to compare them to southern baptist church services—wild and unfettered.

Of course, all of this was a long time ago—I haven't been to a Springsteen concert since 1984. But the songs below live on. 

And unlike me, they remain ageless and undiminished.

1. Backstreets - Captures that sense of loss and regret when the wide-screen dreams of childhood give way to the tedium and obligation of adulthood.

2. The River – Moving portrait of a young, working-class couple expertly rendered and observed.

3. Badlands - Compelling statement of survival, will and purpose.

4. Born to Run – An anthem for anyone who ever loaded up their car in hopes of finding something better.

5. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out - Razor-sharp tribute to the R&B of Springsteen's youth.

6. Johnny 99 - Composite of every end-of-his rope, down-on-his-luck character Springsteen ever wrote about, and sadly as true in '15 as it was in '82.

7. No Surrender - Picture-perfect reminiscence of how thrilling and influential rock and roll was to us, especially in our youth.

8. Born in the U.S.A. - Howling litany of a veteran's betrayal which unwittingly became example number-one in pop song misinterpretation.

9. Incident on 57th Street - The opus-highlight of an album rooted in beat poetry and soul music.

10. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - A wild and exuberant celebration of career and romance freshly bloomed.

11. Thunder Road - A song that captures the anticipation of striking out on your own.

12. Jungleland - A stylized street life ballet that rises and falls like sex.

13. Factory - This song moves like the factory clock. You can practically feel the weariness of feet in steel-toed boots.

14. Racing in the Street - A couple at the point where they realize the honeymoon is over.

15. She's the One - Glorious celebration of lust and sexual attraction.

16. Streets of Philadelphia - Haven't heard this song in years, but can still hear the haunting line "...and my clothes don't fit me no more."

17. Prove It All Night - Not for anything contained in the lyrics--just for the epic floggings it received on the 1978 tour.

18. Stolen Car - Thoughtful meditation on an album mostly dedicated to upbeat frat-rock.

19. Atlantic City - Another profile of people in desperate straits, set to a sober, haunting melody.

20. Tougher Than the Rest – An expression of eternal love, with a melody as pure and uncluttered as the thought.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

OK. I admit it. It's not all climate change deniers and distracted drivers and a government hellbent on sucking Wall Street's penis to the exclusion of legislating and leading in a semi-responsible way.

There are, in the words of the immortal Ian Dury, reasons to be cheerful.

1.) I was able to locate a liquor department stocking New Belgium Brewing Company's Frambozen, a brown ale and raspberry concoction far better-tasting than you might be inclined to believe.

Upon my first taste of the stuff, I wasn't especially impressed and relegated it to the “interesting” category. But by bottle number-six, I was on the verge of proposing marriage.

So yes, I search high and low for Frambozen at Christmastime. You should, too.

2.) The New York Knicks are 5 and 27. The Los Angeles Lakers 10 and 21.

Nothing like seeing the league's most-dysfunctional franchise continue to flounder under its Hall of Fame slash opportunist GM. The realization that former GM Isiah Thomas couldn't make things any worse than they already were at Madison Square Garden is staggering.

And the Lakers? I confess to getting a kick out of watching the league's most-entitled team suffer the ravages of old age and free-agent defection. 

As a card-carrying member of N.C.F.K. (Never cared for Kobe), I'm not shedding any tears at the sight of Bryant starring in the role of former superstar hobbled by injuries and in the twilight of his career.

True, the record will show that Bryant scored more points than M. Jordan, but another will show that insofar as championships were concerned, the Black Mamba did less with more.

3.) The 2014/15 Chicago Bulls, custodians of a tidy 22 and 10 record which places them atop the Central Division.

After impressive victories over Memphis, Toronto and Washington and another Christmas Day over the Los Angeles franchise formerly known as contenders, the Bulls appear to be rounding into shape.

Best of all, Derrick Rose looks like his old self, driving the lane and giving the once-anemic offense options. With free-agent acquisition Pau Gasol playing like he's in his mid-twenties and the bench once again full of characters ready, willing and able to defend and even pad leads, the Bulls look awesome and formidable.

4.) Finally, there is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

I don't see much live music anymore, which is mostly a byproduct of my limited income. But even if things were different I'm still not sure I'd be plopping down three-hundred bucks to see the likes of U2 circa 2014.

So as an early X-mas gift to my mate, I bought a pair of tickets to the CSO and we made the trip downtown to Orchestra Hall to see a program featuring Haydn (93^rd symphony), Strauss (Don Juan) and Beethoven (7^th symphony).

Let me first say that classical music benefits more than any other when heard live. I'm still waiting for the recording that captures the transparency and richness of an orchestra in full flower.

Whew.

Of course, great seats don't hurt. Neither does a little Ludwig Van (as Alex in A Clockwork Orange was wont to call the estimable Mr. Beethoven).

Without the vocabulary and experience of a seasoned listener, I'll just say it was wondrous, with textures, sounds and melodies that enchanted and excited and got my soul righted.

More than any other piece performed that night, Beethoven's seventh was an orgy of mood and sound, fully animated by what is still one of the world's leading orchestras. I was agog.

And a post-concert walk through Millennium Park, with its backdrop of skyscrapers and Christmas lights, was a silent night-styled treat. It was the perfect coda to an evening of powerful music.

So life could be worse.

I remain grateful for Stand 'N Stuff taco shells. Express check-out lanes. The chime that goes off when I leave my headlights on. The fact that I am not legally or biologically related to anyone named Kardashian. Elizabeth Warren. And the continued functioning of my overworked and much-abused ears.

But life could be a great deal better, also. Which is what I'm hoping the next calendar holds for me and you.

Happy New Year.

Am I the Only One Who Sees the Ghost?

Dear readers, I'm going to ask you for a favor.

I want you to go to the biggest, most opulent homes in your community and leave $10,000.00 on each of their doorsteps.

That's right. $10,000.00. On the doorstep.

Then I want you to write out a check to the following: Google, Goldman-Sachs, Exxon, British Petroleum, Apple, Microsoft and Citibank for—you guessed it—10K.

Stay with me. Just one more step.

Could you please petition your congressional representation (yes, you still have some—sort of) and the president to imbue the nation's largest and most powerful corporations with absolute power?

Thank you.

OK. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? 

At your most-civil, you might be thinking, well, what's he thinking? Did he have a bowl of bad chili? Forget to take his meds? Tell me he's not experimenting with meth! 

At your most uncivil, you're speculating into which bodily orifice I've inserted my head.

Fair enough.

Suffice to say I'm in a bad way. Let me tell you why.

In 2008, our economy collapsed after years of abuse and neglect. It wasn't because of ignorance, as you could rightly claim with the 1929 crash that kick-started the Great Depression.

No, this crash was premeditated. Enacted with malice aforethought. It was manufactured by jackals who purchased the prostitutes which inhabit the U.S. Congress.

Seduced with promises of unlimited campaign financing, our mealy-mouthed elected representation then repealed the very legislation meant to protect us from the ravages of unregulated bankers and drooling Wall Street carnivores.

Before being neutered in 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act had protect the American economy for sixty-six years. But it also kept Wall Street in shackles. 

Dozens of billions were made instead of hundreds of billions. Some chief executive officers were forced to drive two-year-old Ferraris. Bonuses that rendered Major League Baseball payrolls chump change weren't even a glimmer in Wall Street's eye.

You can see why something had to change.

It shouldn't be a surprise that a Republican, Phil Gramm of Texas, introduced the bill that would play such a large part in unraveling our economy. Two more Republicans, Jim Leach of Iowa and Thomas Bliley, Jr. of Virginia, quickly co-sponsored it.

After tossing the public a bone which amounted to bringing the woman you've just raped a bouquet of roses, the Senate and House passed the final version of the Financial Services Modernization Act that November, with President Clinton signing it into law on November 12, 1999.

Do you remember what you did on that date? Ironic how an event which will one day upend your life can pass by practically unnoticed, isn't it?

It's worth noting that the bill received very little opposition. 

In the Senate, 98.1% of voting Republicans and 84.4% of voting Democrats favored the bill. It was much the same story in the House, with 97.6% and 75.2% of voting Republicans and Democrats, respectively, approving.

Only Michigan Democrat John Dingell voiced concern, exhibiting an uncanny prescience when he stated on C-SPAN that after creating too-big-to-fail banks, passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill would one day necessitate a federal bailout.

It is remarkable that so few questioned legislation which would undo protections enacted in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in American history. Protections whose effectiveness was measured in the six-decade absence of home-wrecking financial cataclysms since they became law.

Combined with the Riegel-Neal Act of 1994 (also signed into law by President Clinton—who says Democrats aren't business-friendly?), the environment in which banks and financial services entities operated in was changing rapidly. 

Everyone was going to get bigger and richer and less-regulated. Yay!

Banks and investment houses no longer had to adhere to bothersome restrictions dictating how and with whom they did business. They could co-mingle in any way they pleased. At its essence, the Financial Services Modernization Act meant that banks and investments firms didn't have to bother with condoms any more.

By the ninth anniversary of its passage, the U.S. economy was in a shambles. An unholy trinity of mortgage brokers, investment firms and gargantuan banks, let off the leash of regulation, had sodomized anything and everything they could lay their hands—and other body parts—on.

The economic equivalent of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases came with an enormous price tag—one which was borne by the tax-paying public. Congress fixed Wall Street in a single weekend, earmarking 700 billion dollars to bail out the very firms whose deregulation-inspired recklessness had destroyed the economy.

(Permit me a moment to point out how cries of “socialism!” accompany such aid when it is directed at individuals, but an amount which would fund the SNAP program for a decade was given away in a matter of days without so much as a syllable of protest.)

Fast forward to Fall, 2014 and the creation of a new national budget. 

With the nation still mired in a slow-motion recovery, Wall Street feels put-upon. This despite a robust four-year run that finds the DOW, which bottomed-out in March of 2009 at 6,626, having more than doubled, closing on December 5^th at 17,958.

For the mathematically-challenged, that's an increase of 63.1%. Clearly, their economy is doing just fine.

But it's not enough.

The creation of a consumer protection agency and the Dodd-Frank financial reform left Wall Street and our corporate banks feeling picked-on. Unloved. Unappreciated. Why haven't we cuddled them and kissed them goodnight?

Never mind that the consumer protection agency isn't headed by firebrand Elizabeth Warren because the banks and Wall Street were afraid she might actually do something, or that the Dodd-Frank bill was drastically watered-down to ensure quick passage by an obstreperous Congress.

No, the petulant and entitled product of unbridled wealth and privilege wants more.

Step number-one is the removal of safeguards which were designed to limit our liability in the event Wall Street and Citibank couldn't control themselves. Translated, we (that's you and me) are now liable if Wall Street and our ginormous banks get too much slobber on the steering wheel and lose control of the car.

I'll let CNN explain:

“At the center of the dispute are arcane financial instruments known as loan swaps. Those are contracts between banks used to spread the risk in their loans and trades.

A rule that would have limited the use of those swaps by commercial banks (think Citigroup (C) or JPMorgan Chase (JPM)) was essentially stripped out of the law during budget negotiations in recent days.

Swaps were ground zero of the 2008 meltdown of the global financial system. That's because banks had bundled risky mortgage loans and sold them as bonds. And to make the bonds more appetizing to investors, swaps were created as a form of insurance that the bonds would pay as promised.

So when the housing bubble burst and so many people couldn't afford their mortgage payments anymore, those bonds blew up. And the banks and firms like AIG (AIG) that held the suddenly-toxic swaps contracts needed bailouts.”

And later:

“One provision of Dodd-Frank to protect taxpayers was a rule saying major banks couldn't use their normal commercial banking operation to create, buy or trade these kinds of swap contracts. Instead those contracts had to be held by separate entities whose assets were not insured by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

"If Wall Street banks want to gamble, Congress should force them to pay for their losses, and not put the taxpayers on the hook for another bailout," said a letter signed this week by both one of the most conservative senators, David Vitter, and one of the most liberal, Sherrod Brown.

Even though Dodd-Frank was signed into law more than four years ago, the rules to limit banks gambling with taxpayer-backed money are not yet completely in place.”

So. You get this, right? 

If Citibank and Wall Street fuck-up, it's on us. Their losses will be insured by the same people who insure your bank account—the taxpayer-funded FDIC. Which is another way of saying we the people are on the hook for it.

It's called gaming the system. Casino-owners in Las Vegas will throw you out on your ass and put you on their permanent shit list if they catch you doing this, but in Washington D.C. it amounts to following best practice.  

I'd be fine with this if we also shared in Wall Street's gains. But strangely enough, those will remain in the private sector. Only their losses will find their way to the public sector. 

Privatized gains, publicized losses. Still think the President runs the country?

Call America what you want. Just don't call it a democracy.

321,000

As if you could forget, it's that time of year again.

No, I'm not referring to Christmas. I'm referring to the annual November jobs report, which nearly every year portrays a robust economy firing on all cylinders like a V8 under full throttle.

It's economist's version of a baby animal story and as full of fluff as Good Morning America.

This year, the Department of Labor reported that 321,000 jobs were created in the United States of America. By almost any measure, that's a lot of jobs. Except in a country with 320 million people saddled with a moribund economy which continues to seek an order of protection from the Great Recession of 2008.

What the Department of Labor's report fails to tell us it that approximately 320,000 of those jobs are either seasonal, part-time, or both. In other words, it's Christmas, stupid!

Yet the media continues to gush, swarming over the news like kids at a free cotton candy store. As it did last November and the November before that. And why not? Consumer confidence is a critical measure of the economy, and if people feel things are looking up they'll be more willing to open up those wallets and spend, spend, spend.

And that means more advertising revenue and more tax revenue for the selfsame media and government who told you everything is just great. 

I think I smell a great big win-win! Yay!

A convenient side-effect of this news is that when jobs are created the unemployment rate goes down. But you should know that the government has a very generous definition of 'employed'. It has almost nothing to do with the notion of being self-supporting that 'employed' implies.

For instance, the government considers me employed. This despite the fact I can't afford an apartment within several zip codes of where I work and am unable to find enough hours in the week to accommodate the number of crappy jobs I'd need to support myself.

The government also considers a single mom employed as a Wal-Mart cashier employed, even though she's part-time and dependent on multiple government programs for her survival--and that of her kids. 

It considers busboys, convenience store cashiers and CNAs employed in spite of hours worked and dollars earned. In other words, the Department of Labor job report is like your resume. It is formatted to present the best-possible picture, not necessarily the most-honest one.

I'm not against good news. I'm against spin and massaging the facts and painting a picture which says everything is okay when it isn't.The fact remains that 320,000 temporary jobs aren't going to change anything. 

Except a politician's resume.