Rich, White Guys: Why Such a Mystery?

From the landing outside my second-story granny unit in Santa Rosa, I can hear the jets come and go from Sonoma County Airport.  They are private jets: the ones I saw yesterday while at an autocross event yesterday (decadent, I know -- at the back end of the airport) look like they can hold about eight passengers.

They could be shuttling people -- men, of course -- from other airports or they could be privately owned.  I don't know: it's all quite mysterious to me how they acquire the money, the power to own those kinds of things or get those kinds of services.  Perhaps, some other rich guy is lending his jet and his pilots to his rich "buddies."

They are headed to a bucolic piece of wilderness among the redwoods just ten miles from the ocean and a couple of hours from San Francisco.  What do they talk about?  Elections? Tax codes?  How to easily move money and jobs offshore?  Marriages falling apart?

They are reminding me of my financial status: I don't make any money just yet and...I haven't for three years.  Ever since the "crash," it has been a struggle, nay an impossibility, for me to get paid for my endeavors.  Good thing I'm banking on the long-haul.

Money and Power: even in this semi-enlightened age, how has the system become so insidious, so traditional?  Why do we still measure life in terms of income and possessions despite Robert Kennedy's rhetoric of 1968?

"GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile."

Forty four years ago, RFK made that statement yet...we still measure everything in terms of GDP.  The Dow-Jones was up yesterday.  Big deal: it fluctuates all over the place for reasons unknown to most common folks.

We have captains of industry, banking at least (Barclays, JP Morgan Chase), falling by the wayside for bad decisions.  Mostly, they simply led their companies poorly: they hid mistakes. They ruthlessly demanded performance to the point where no one would tell them bad news.

These guys, these white men, they're in charge.  Oh, another jet has taken off.  In a supposed democracy, why have we let things get like this?  How come I feel I have no say in how our government runs?  Why is it that we've spent more than $3 trillion over the last ten years in the Mideast and the Taliban controls most of Afghanistan?  And, no one is accountable?  No one.

If I seem like I don't understand the status quo, it must be my ideals getting in the way of a more accurate perspective.  I had this illusion that there was suppsoed to be some fairness.

Nevermind.