I am not the type of person who asks for advice. I will vent or rage or gossip, but I rarely ask for other people’s opinions on what I should do. Instead, I mull things over, I research and I generally only talk about things once I’ve already made up my mind to do it. I do, however, ask for help once I know what kind of help I need.

But this time I am going to ask for advice and suggestions.

I need a new career. I need some kind of career path that will make us middle class with minimal investment in education/ training as far as time and money go. There is a strong possibility that my current job will end in the near future and even if it doesn’t I need a living wage and benefits (which I don’t get here).

I thought about nursing (cause after the Kid goes to college I could take a nursing degree anywhere in the world) but the older I get the more squeamish I get. I’ve been known to hide my eyes during the gross parts of House.

Skills- well I’ve got 15 plus years of office admin experience. But I have maxed out my potential as admin extraordinaire and am tired of the pink collar ghetto. I also have experience in health and welfare benefits management (which I quite liked because of the technical knowledge required regarding health care law). I am good with technology but not an uber geek. I am more of a fast learning end user and pretty good at teaching it (see last 5 years of employment as lab rat). I’ve also done a good bit of writing/editing/proofreading on the side. I like proofreading legal briefs quite a bit, despite the fact that I never edit blog posts. (Plus I need a good grammar book, I can never remember when you use colons vs. semi-colons)

Have almost got my AA (one quarter to go and no financial aid money left- fuckles).

I have near super power levels of deciphering bureaucracy speak, legal rules and regulations, etc. I once nailed a bank manager for not following federal banking rules for making deposits available. He said it was the first time in 12 years that he’d been wrong about it.

So peeps- what do you think I should be when I grow up?

(ETA: During the writing of this post Ruth and I have been emailing back and forth about my not finishing my degree in poly sci for the same reasons mentioned here. Even just getting an under grad degree in poly sci ONLY qualifies me to be a cab driver. Ruth thinks I’d do well in economics (I am geeky enough about it) but it might be a bit like going to law school- too many douchebags to make it tolerable).

If he got off the campaign trail, went back to Washington and started doing his job of governing the country.

None of this I’ll show up if the vote on the bailout bill (TARP) is close but won;t make a speech crap. He needs to show up. He needs to say “I’m going to do my job to fix the country. And BTW- Fuck you Paulson and Bush for this shock doctrine attempt at blackmailing the country into handing over 700 billion bucks and retroactive immunity.”

If he did that, I could actually vote for him. But as usual, Obama comes up with a half assed attempt that doesn’t fix anything but makes him feel better about being a douchebag.

Some of you may know that I have been in a raging battle with Seattle Housing Authority for the last year over how they calculate my income when determining rent amounts. Today, after repeated attempts just to get information on how my income is calculated, I finally had a hearing…

AND I WON! I did the fricken impossible- I won! Just little old me, without any legal assistance or even much preparation other than printing out my tax records that I didn’t even need.

I have been asking for the numbers that they use to calculate my income because SHA’s numbers are consistently between 25 and 30 percent higher than my actual income. I was never given a real answer, I was just told that the numbers come from the Unemployment office and to deal with it. When I asked for proof, it wasn’t provided. When SHA sent me their determinations (which I have 10 days from the letter date to answer of I give up any right to question their determination) the letters either were never sent or when I did receive them the postmark was 5 days after the letter date, giving me no time to request a hearing. I have been lied to by SHA staff, I have been hung up on, I have had child support that I don’t receive calculated into my income. When the hearing date was finally set, my douchebag of a case worker said “It doesn’t matter- it’s not going to change anything”.

Ha!

A little about the hearing:

It’s informal and mine was more like a mediation than an actual hearing. SHA got to present their case first, and in addition to the facts that I have been begging for, like how my annual income is calculated, the douchebag case worker thought it was pertinent to throw in things about how she thought my paystubs were fake (I get paid via direct deposit, so my “paystubs” are computer printouts from the college.) that my rent was going up because I “choose to live in an overpriced apartment” (I’ve been in the same apartment for the last 4 years without a rent increase- SHA payments standards have gone down for this year in a budget saving measure, but that has nothing to do my choosing an overpriced apartment) and that I have been abusive with the letters that I have written.

In the end, it made her look like a petty, vindictive asshat. When I finally got to present my case, I explained that within the first 5 minutes of the hearing I had figured out how they miscalculated my income because I finally got the mathematical breakdown of how they figure my wages.

I work for a college, and I only work fall, winter, and spring quarters. During the summer my income is ZERO. But SHA, rather than looking at my entire annual income, was only taking income from one quarter and multiplying it by 4. Douchebag’s manager jumped in to say that there is precedent for using all annual income instead of one quarter in the case of school employees and she agreed to recalculate my income based on an entire year.

This infuriated Douchebag- she felt the need to point out that I wouldn’t get any special reviews of my income if they use the whole annual income to calculate my rent. I said “I would rather have my income calculated fairly than have to deal with another special review from you”.

I was happy, Douchebag’s manager was happy. Even the judge was happy. Walking out, the judge said “It’s rare that everybody leaving one of these hearings is happy with the results” then he looked at Douchebag and said “well, almost everybody”.

I’ve been doing the happy dance ever since! All I wanted was for my income to be correctly calculated. It sucks that it took a year to get it corrected, and there is no possibility of them reimbursing me for the amount that I was overcharged last year- but it’s fixed now.

Maybe.

No nicotine. Rahhhhhhh.

Once again my paycheck is late and the administration is being a giant douchebag. Arghgggg.

Fortunately our director’s wife just moved to a job in the payroll office. She’s finding stuff out and making it all better. That is the only reason I am not there pulling my best Godzilla impersonation.

I forgot to put on my stupid patch.

Just one drag, please. No, bad bad girl.

Stay tuned for more incoherent ramblings from a nicotine junkie in the throws of withdrawl.

I saw this little clip today of John Stossel (asshat extraordinary) getting a verbal smackdown on the Scarborough Report. It made me happy, Stossel is an idiot. Even other libertarians think he’s a douchebag, according to the guy sitting next to me on my return flight from Cancun, but Stossel is really just spouting the same bull other libertarians spout.

On the surface, the idea of libertarianism sounds good. It’s all about liberty, freedom from government restraint and interference. When it comes to social policy, I am down with liberty. I don’t think the government should tell you who to sleep with, how to sleep with them, who to love or who to marry. You want to homeschool your kids, or maybe unschool them. Fine with me. You’re the one who is going to have to try to get your kids into collage after years of letting them play video games instead of learning how to read (I actually know someone who is doing this- so it’s not conjecture). But that’s about as far as libertarianism works.

See Libertarians are all about the capitalist ideas of Adam Smith, but I swear to god they have never read Adam Smith or studied the context in which he was writing. The basic premise goes something like this: All governments are corruptible so governments should have as little power as possible. Everything else should be left up to the free market because competition keeps business from being corrupt.

The first part is right, all governments are corruptible. The second part is a load of bullshit. The thing about corrupt governments, at least in democracies, is that the people have the ability to fire the entire government when they are fed up enough. Conversely, unless you have a fat wad of controlling stock, there is no way to fire the board of a corporation.

Second, Smith was writing at a time when trade guilds controlled the markets with an iron grip. You couldn’t start a business without guild approval, you couldn’t get into a guild without serious cash and some family connections. So the average joe on the street couldn’t set up his own fabric weaving business. Smith wanted to eliminate the stranglehold guilds had on the potential merchant class by creating a free market, a market where anyone could get into a line of business and anyone could buy goods from whomever they want. As long as businesses stay relatively small and monopolies are avoided, this can work very well. But not so in the modern world.

The problem comes when one entity becomes so large that it is capable of manipulating the market to eliminate competition (Wal-Mart, Microsoft) or to influence the government (Diebold, Haliburton) or to hide serious problems with it’s products (Merck’s hiding of problems with the drug Vioxx). In this way the giant corporations of today have become the trade guilds of Adam Smith’s time. They eliminate competition and maintain too much control to be seriously considered “libertarian”. Let me give you an example, if Merck had been regulated by a more powerful FDA then fewer people would have used it and suffered dangerous complications and death. But because of it’s large size, Merck could control what information was released about it’s products even though some of the hidden information was necessary for the public good.

Much like pure democracy, where every single person votes on every single aspect of public life, libertarianism only works on a very small scale. In a small town where people could actually meet once a week for a town hall meeting and all decisions about how long to make the red lights last at intersections and what day trash pick up should be could be done by a quick yay or nay vote, pure democracy works. In a small system where no one business is allowed to monopolize others and all businesses have the same restrictions and opportunity, then the quality and price of the product are actual factors of competition and people are free to choose the best good for their needs.

The real basic premise should be something like this: All governments are corruptible, and all businesses are corruptible, so it is up to the people to elect politicians who will monitor businesses for the general welfare of the people and to keep business influence out of politics so the monitoring process is less corruptible. The main point is this- both business and government work for the people. Business gets it’s reward for a job well done with our dollars and government gets its reward with our votes. However, neither should be given free range or unrestrained power. It is only through the diffusion of power through individual votes and dollars that corruption is kept to a minimum.