It's A Wonderful Life in Reverse

Our "representatives" have decided to focus on the deficit rather than skyrocketing unemployment and dumpster diving. Cut spending and raise taxes, especially regressive taxation like jacking up the cost of cigarettes.

Don't change the fact that private equity and hedge fund managers are taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%, keeping up the pretense that they're investing their own money in ridiculous schemes like buying swamp land in California for CALPERS, instead of taxing their wages at 35%, the ordinary tax rate on earned income.

If there ain't no regular unemployment, up grows an underground employment. Not just talkin' 'bout prostitution, drugs and shoplifting. Also about desperate behavior, like this woman who called me presumably responding to my flyer for academic services rendered.

I should have known something was up when she mysteriously refused to tell me what she wanted to meet about. She only said it was something she had to show me in person. I thought she might be embarrassed to ask me to help her with term papering and I, too, could use the work.

I met her in a neutral place (Starbux, of course). It turned out she wanted to sell me on "Wellness Products" from Melaleuca, some scam pyramid scheme run out of Mormon country in Salt Lake City. She hinted that if I was a good girl, I might even become a salesman myself. She did have some nice shiny marketing materials in a big loose-leaf shaped book featuring lots of product pictures. One "disinfecting" liquid claimed to scrub areas clean of E Coli and the H1N1 virus. I told her to lead with that. At least she bought me a skim latte.

Coming home, I G--gled the company and found out it managed to siphon people's bank account or credit card numbers right off the bat (desperation again) with its promises of riches and a new car. Mary Kay, here I come. Lots of complaints that people checked their accounts and found mysterious withdrawals from the company. When questioned, company responded, "It's in the contract you signed." Whaaa? What contract? No one could remember there being a contract, let alone signing one. Caveat emptor. Don't drink the water.

Let's fight for the crumbs on the bottom, shall we?