Gas....
Mood:  blue
Topic: Mike gets kinda political
So the hottest topic of the last few weeks is the ever increasing price of gas and the fact that the gas monopolies show a huge profit. Their argument that they are just adjusting to make up for the increased price of oil seems suspect. I am not surprised that they are making money; they have turned amazingly stifling summer gas prices into an expected trend for the past few years. It is a trend every single one of us has accepted. No matter how much we griped we paid the price and kept driving. Most of the time there was no choice we needed the fuel to get to work. I am in that exact situation again because my phone job starts earlier then the buses get going. My insurance job will also require me to drive. So I am up a creek and there never was a paddle for my boat to begin with.

We know that gas prices are high and no matter how outraged we get that they really won't change the price or lessen our plight. The 'investigation' by the government won't change things either. We are stuck paying the gouging prices and I hate that! It gets me upset and it causes me serious heartburn. In fact I had a panic attack after I saw the final purchase price of the gas I got tonight. I was hyperventilating and everything! What I held in my hand was an amount over 2/3 of 1 day's pay at my phone job. I told the station pump guy: "Next time can we have a little foreplay?" and of course since he is a lowly peon he did not find that at all funny. It was not meant to be. What the gas companies are doing is shooting fish in a barrel. They have a product that a lot of people need to have. Gas fuels the car that gets them to work to pay the bills. What gas companies seem to want is to make you work a second full time job so that you can pay for the gas that gets you to the first full time job to pay the other bills.

So what do we do about it? I know plenty of people that like hugging trees would say we should have a day when no one drives a car at all to show our protests of the gas prices. I am not one of these hippies. I realize that I can have all the no drive days I want but when it's over I have to get gas to go back to work. Other people suggest that we all go and buy alternative fueled vehicles and that will allow us to use less gas. Unfortunately I exist in the real world, I can not afford to have an oil change let alone get a new car that is more expensive because of the 'eco-friendly' label!

I have no choice I will keep driving to and from work everyday. So how am I helping myself and fighting the evil fuel empire? I am rearranging my thought process. My car will be used to go to and from work. I will get gas and food only if I am already in the car because of a work trip. I will walk to places in my neighborhood and I will take the bus on my days off for any sightseeing. It is not a huge change as far as gas consumption, I won't start any revolution or any noticeable dip in the gas companies’ bottom line but it might push my fill up day back 1 more day. That 1 more day may help me a little bit, but it will be a moral victory. Not using my car to see the city will definitely help me actually see more of the city as I sit on a bus cruising through streets to my desired destination and not worrying about the traffic. Most of all it will help me feel better knowing my trip to explore the city did not put money in the gas companies’ pocket. I am not exactly taking food out of their child's mouth but unfortunately that would take more then me. It would take an army....

Sleepless in Sea... err... Portland
Mood:  loud
Topic: Mike gets kinda political
Have you ever had one of those nights where no matter what you do you can't fall asleep? I had one of those last night. I think everybody has nights like this. The mind is so busy running wild, sometimes, that it boils over, and no matter what you need to do the next day, sleep becomes harder to catch. I had a lot of ideas buzzing around in my head, ideas for future blog entries, ideas for stories, ideas about the world, ideas about life. They were all buzzing around in my head and I wrote some down in my bedside journal, but the more I wrote the more ideas I had. Most of them were silly things and a lot of them were just bits and pieces of an imagined whole. I tried to roll over, I tried staring at a certain spot in the wall, I counted sheep. In the end I got back up and started typing. 2 hours later I had a rough draft and I was finally tired enough to suppress the roiling cauldron of ideas. It was 1:30 AM and I had to be at work at 5:30 AM.

So what did I write feverishly about for 2 hours? Jury duty.

Yes, jury duty. What about jury duty could have caused me to lose so much sleep?

I am glad you asked.

It was a throw away moment and a throw away statement that lodged itself in my brain Monday night. I was sitting at the orientation meeting for my new job and had been faithfully doodling for almost 2 hours. We were discussing work expectations. More specifically we were talking about not being late and not calling in sick. In this general topic is a section about getting approved time off. From vacation, to religion the area is well hit and questions abounded. Some question was rambling out of a co-workers mouth that sounded to me something like this: "What if on the third Tuesday of the second month of the Mars land rover expedition my daughter gets sick and I have to rush her to the hospital and I am supposed to be at work and while I am on my way there a werewolf jumps out and rips off my arm and beats me silly with it and I never make it to work and end up in the hospital next to my daughter with severe blood loss, would that be an attendance occurrence?" I am thinking, "It sounds like this has happened to you before." The next topic is jury duty. He asks who has had jury duty before, and out of a group of 55, 5 of us raise our hands. I am completely amazed. In college I was asked 7 times, in Phoenix I was asked 1 time and in Roseburg I was asked and I served on a jury one time. That makes 9 times I have been asked. I have been old enough to be on a jury for 10 years and I have had my name drawn 9 times. That sounded like Ferris Bueler, "9 TIMES". Anyways we discuss the fact that usually you know a month in advance about your appearance date, unless you live in Roseburg where you are told you need to call in every day of your special month to find out if you will be called for Jury Duty. So for 15 business days I called and on the 16th day I went to jury duty. I loved it, I had enjoyed serving and I look forward to the day I can do so again. I thought it was incredibly interesting and kind of fun to watch from that side of the courtroom, the deciding side. I was part of 12 people that made a decision in a civil case. It was a great experience.

Except, when I had went for jury duty I had a company that paid me for the day when I signed over my juror pay. Which irked me , I mean it was only ten dollars why not pay me and let me keep the juror pay. My new company does not pay you while you are at a juror. You make ten dollars for that day and you miss a day of real pay. If you have more then one day this could be financially devastating. So he told us to schedule the day off and when they interview the jurors claim financial hardship and the judge most likely will let you go home. Everybody was immediately placated. Well, everybody but me, I was crestfallen. The realization that for a lot of people it just isn't something they can afford to do, including me at this point in my life, seemed devastating and shocking.

At this point, we moved on to dress code and the guy finally livened up, and with that momentary entertainment, the shocker of a moment ago slid back into my subconscious. I went home made dinner, fed Stewey, fed George and fed myself. I wrote a clever update, I ended the poll, I watched some TV and I answered some emails. Then I went to bed, where I tossed and turned for two hours trying to resist the urge to get up and write all these ideas that had started attacking my brain. I had to sleep, the next day was an early start and I had lots to do. My eyes would not close, my eyelids were not heavy, every sound was an irritant. I wrote a quick future blog where I worked in a slightly changed quote from 'Tombstone' and had Stewey recite it. It was genius. I laid back down and within minutes I was scribbling ideas about why he said the quote. Then I started scribbling ideas about how he was contributing to my blog topic when he uttered the line. "It's all down, it's already to go", I thought. So I got up and headed to the computer and started typing. What came out was a horrible mess of an idea about the importance of jury duty, it had nothing to do with Stewey and his overbearing gangster side, or his clever reworked 'Tombstone' line.

Finally, I bring you the idea that generated this entry.

Jury duty is a vital part of being a United States citizen. It is one of the easiest ways to participate in the world around you. You actually see your opinion matter. You are an important piece to the justice puzzle. You actually see some of the things that the crazy American colonists decided was worth fighting for. A trial of your peers. The very community you live in decides what your lot will be.

Then how come it is seen as such a curse? How come an entire segment of the population is left out? Is this related to low voter turnout? Is it just to hard to believe that poking buttons in a booth will decide the next senator, governor or president? I think it is. I think, that if all you get to do is vote, it's hard to believe that anybody cares about what you have to say. I think that the electoral college and the legal wording on the ballots and the propositions make the process seem foreign and not worth the time. Especially, if you always pick the loser.

Jury duty, allows you to realize that you're part of something bigger then you can see. At least it did for me. There has been only one other thing that has made me feel so connected. That was actually emailing the senators and receiving responses back. Sure, a few were canned 'rah rah vote for me' wastes of email disk space, but some came from the senators themselves. They stopped what they were doing, read what you had to say and then responded. Sometimes they don't agree with you and sometimes they do but you still have to respect that they responded. You kind of have to respect that they told you the truth when they have to get reelected by voters and their opinion was the opposite of yours. Sometimes they offer advice, sometimes they explain their stance, sometimes they just say thanks for bringing your view to my attention. Whatever it is, it is great to see the response in your email box. It makes you feel like you are a part of something. Maybe I am crazy and maybe I am the only one who wants to take part in something this big. If that's the case why are you still reading this entry?

Jury duty is another way to connect with your government. It is something that shows you respect, because as a juror you have a very important job. I think it is essential that economics is eliminated from people's decision to serve as a juror. Why can a company elect to not pay a person for jury duty? Why is the juror pay so pathetically low? How do we make it more realistic? What is the solution to make it more inclusive?

I don't have the answer. Every answer I come up with gets beaten out by several reasons that the answer is not perfect. I will put them out there anyway.

1. We raise juror pay to a higher rate, a livable daily rate.
* Well that would get extremely costly. Where would we get the money for that when plenty of programs are already being tossed out the window?
2. We demand employers pay for an employee to go to jury duty.
* This one seemed plausible at first. I always believe that companies whine about employee costs more then they should. If it was so bad too pay people to work we wouldn't have to work and everybody would be farmers, artists and writers. I mean more then likely it would end up being tax deductible if we made it mandatory anyways, where is their excuse then? The big corporations already don't pay people what they are worth. What is a day of pay here and there? It's for a civic duty. Then I realized that this would apply to the small businesses too. If they could figure out how to pay for an employee to go to jury duty, would they be able to afford losing that person? And how many more corporate tax cuts can the regular American people stand? I don't think I can stand too many more. You make billions and since that means you pay more taxes here is a tax break! What do you mean their percentage is lower? They pay more then you do! GRRRR!!
3. A compromise. The government and the company both pay for a portion of the worker's salary.
* There still is not enough tax money, regardless of whether you believe the national debt exists or doesn't exist. The companies will still find a way to complain even with a tax cut. And how much would each side pay? If it were a percentage how much would that mean. Say a CEO went to the jury duty. How much is half of a days pay of a multimillion dollar salary? Where is the cutoff? Who qualifies for this, who doesn't? What about the self employed? How screwed are they?

So where is the solution? How do we get more voices actively taking part? Is it that plenty of people would rather less voices took part. I don't know, but that type of thing is what keeps me up at night.

For ways to email your congressman, check my Links page.