I’m one month into hunting for a job. This is about one month longer than it has ever taken me to find a job in the past. So I’m swimming in a new world — new for me, that is.

Among the various thoughts that have come to me during this process is the idea of my efforts serving as a sort of litmus test for the U.S. economy. The argument starts with an assumption that my qualifications are, sort of, um, more stellar than that of the average bear. To test that assumption for yourself, you can check out my LinkedIn page (login to see the full record), or my business site credentials page. (Sorry if that sounded a little like “just Google me“.)

Now, the sort of job I’m looking for right now is a position as an in-house IP attorney within a Bay Area IT company. Such a position would seem quite well within the wheelhouse of my qualifications. And, I think it’s also fair to say that the California Bay Area is ground zero of the worldwide IT industry (including the hardware, software, Internet, cleantech, biotech, etc., industries).

My premise is that if a guy like me has a hard time finding a job, then this is one nasty downturn. I mean, we’re talking here about the flag-ship industry of the entire nation, in the geographic center of that industry, and a person with top qualifications for it.

I realize this might seem like a little bit of hubris or arrogance on my part. I don’t mean it to be. I just have a sense that if I’m having a very difficult time securing steady income, then I’ll bet that a very large percentage of Americans are too. I may be wrong in that sense, but there it is.

Anyway, with these thoughts in mind, I’m planning on chronicling the meta-events of this job huntin’ process. I mean, while I’m in the trenches, hunting for a job, I’ll try to step back, and look at my efforts, and the responses (and lack thereof) that I’m receiving, as an example of larger patterns in this nation.

Last thing I’ll say here is that I’m truly a newbie at this. I mean, as a child, I was loved unconditionally by my mother, so I didn’t need as much attention from my peers as others seemed to when I was young. Indeed, as a young man, I was the classic “big man on campus” — top student and star athlete. While my peers were developing their skills for drawing interest from the other sex, or from professors, or from employers, for me the story was quite different. For me, everything seemed to land in my lap, with minimal or no effort. People came to me; I didn’t need to learn those “people skills”.

Indeed, I made it all the way to 42 not needing to learn any of that stuff. Then my daughter came along. She is the very first person for whom I’ve needed to learn how to draw her positive attention. She’s quite the teacher.

Now I’m out there in the ghost town that is the 2009-10 American job huntin’ world. Nobody is dropping jobs in my lap. With the exception of friends, people aren’t responding to my emails with any evident eagerness. Four weeks in, Plan A has already failed, and I’ve got my doubts about Plan B just as it’s beginning.

I find myself on a crash course to learn those people skills that I never learned 25 years ago. I’m talking about obvious stuff like: “What do I put in an email to a prospective employer to whom I have been introduced?” I’ve had to ask my business colleagues obvious questions like that. They must suspect I’m from Mars. They’re probably right.

Anyway, I can’t afford to learn by painful trial and error this time around. Got to get it right the first time.

I’ll keep ya’ posted.

I was listening to an NPR piece on the health care debates. The program mentioned the oft-repeated notion that any health care bill that reaches Obama’s desk must not increase the nation’s deficit. Then it hit me.

Remember the bank bailouts last year? Bush started them. Obama continued them. What was that about?

It was about the “health” of our bank Corporations. The idea was to make these Corporations healthy again. You know, stave off Corporate death (i.e. bankruptcy).

Sure seems like it worked for Citibank and Goldman Sachs. But, of course, those bailouts drove up the nation’s deficit into the trillions.

Now fast forward to this summer. This summer we are not talking about the health of the bank Corporations. Instead, we are talking about the health of We the People.

Improving the health of the bank Corporations, Our Government was only happy to take Our deficit beyond imagination. But when it comes to Our health, Our Government offers not even a single, bloody farthing.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present your 2009 Government. Who do they serve?

Res ipsa loquitur.

“WTF?”, you’re saying. Here is the explanation for this picture. I’m re-posting here since I have a number of friends who visit this blog from time to time.

In my last two blog posts, I note my belief that Obama’s speech this coming Wednesday is a major cross roads not only of his presidency, but of the nation. Racially speaking, Obama is a coconut who is mistakenly seen as a “Black Guy” by people over 65. Obama has spent his life trying his hardest not to be seen as the Angry Black Man.

It’s such a practiced stance that it seems very difficult for him to get all righteous and angry. The only time we saw it on the campaign trail was when the Clinton campaign started with their desperate attacks on him, as their own campaign began to falter. Obama’s ire was roused, and he got sarcastic and combative.

Come Wednesday, he’s got to bring out the wood. Shut down the crazy right wing and send them back to the caves from which they come. Then turn his gun sights on the Heath Corporations. And fire away.

He has to make it clear that we are in a war for the survival of this nation. And the enemies of this nation are the massive Corporations that value money over humanity, and their follow travelers. There is no more facile example of this dynamic than that concerning the Health Corporations.

The vile Health Corporations touch the lives of each and every American citizen. This is in contrast with the investment banks and the military industrial complex, the dark workings of which are hidden, and unseen by the masses. But Health Corporations commit their crimes against the People each and every day. We People know that.

Obama is either going to stand up for the People on Wednesday, or he will be remembered as the worst — and who knows? maybe even the last — President of the United States.

I have blogged and told friends that Obama is the next in line of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. What all of these people had/have in common is that their presidency involved a struggle for the survival of the nation. Another thing all four had/had in common is that each man came relatively “late” to the struggle of his time.

Washington came relatively late to the revolution against the British. But he is remembered as the ultimate revolutionary.

Lincoln was not an abolitionist until quite late. But he is remembered as the man who freed the slaves.

Roosevelt did not build his career as a labor organizer. But he is remembered as a true man of the People.

Obama is very, very late in engaging the Corporations who control Government and Media. This current health care debate, stretching across the summer of 2009, is the most obvious example yet of the Corporations wielding their control of American society.

If Obama is going to be remembered as “next in line” to Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, then he will be remembered by history as the man who brought the Corporations to heel.

Yet as I write this blog post on September 6, 2009, it feels to me like Obama is going to shrink from this battle once again.

You know, if he stands up to the nation on Wednesday, and backpedals again, he will have lost me as a supporter. And I suspect that if he loses me, his approval ratings will drop far south of 50% (due to the demographic I represent), therefore his impact on the 2010 elections will be neutered, and thus this nation will be all but hopeless.

In that case, the horrors of “1984″ will visit us. We will become USA, Inc.

All of that riding on a speech coming up in 3 days. History says Obama will answer the call. But the past 9 months of behavior says something different.

I’ll be watching.

Back in 2006, when I predicted that Obama would become the next U.S. president, I explained that the basis for my prediction rested in part on the apparent Ennegram personality type of Obama. In my view, Obama is an Enneagram “Seven”.

Now, what a great many people seem to misunderstand about the Enneagram is that, at its core, it’s a theory of what we don’t like about people, not what we like. It’s about how we fail, not necessarily about how we win.

For example, I am an Eight. What that means is that, when I’m being an asshole, I’m a bully who pushes others, spins the truth for my own interests, and just can’t seem to shut up. Like I said, an asshole.

But when a Seven is being an asshole, that looks very different. For example, a Seven might be an asshole when a he is pursuing his pleasure addictions (e.g. smoking), acting like he thinks he’s God, and avoiding confrontation of any kind to the point of debilitation.

That last point brings me to the health care debates, and Obama’s upcoming speech to the nation this Wednesday. When the pundits who are your most ardent fans start mocking you for your annoying habit of avoiding all confrontation, you know that your Enneagram type has become obvious to all.

A couple of posts ago, commenter Matt upbraided me as follows:

Here is your biggest problem Peter – you are so totally enamored now that your ‘team’ has taken the ‘lead’(and you are a ‘team’ type person) that you have submerged your critical thinking abilities so far down that they practically no longer exist.

Actually, I mentioned and addressed this criticism in the previous post. But even after posting that last one, Matt’s comment was still bugging me. Kind of sticking in my craw. My spider sense was telling me that there was more to the story.

Yesterday, while working on some projects out on our land, it hit me. Matt was more than just a little right in his criticism. I looked back over my blog posts since Obama was elected last November and I’d have to agree that there is more than just a little “gloating” from me about “my team” having “taking the lead”.

Politically, I am at the mid-point of Green and Libertarian. …

I have a deep streak of adherence to self-sufficiency and I believe that self-reliance is our best way out of our current national mess. (e.g. For one among a great many examples in my life, my wife and I are planning on home-schooling our daughter.) This aspect of me lines me up with Libertarians.

But while I do not believe that “I am my brothers’ keeper”, I do tend to lean that way. For example, I believe that we are all connected in ways that we don’t even know yet. I don’t just mean economically or via an environmental ecosystem. I mean connections that science hasn’t even established yet. These beliefs draw me closer to the Greens.

I think that my “gloating” about the Left taking the lead in America is about the Left being on the run for the past 25 years. I’m pretty sure that if I’m still alive 25 years from now, and America still exists, I will be sick and tired of the excesses of the Left, and much pleased with a reborn, corrective Right at that time. It’s all just part of the ebb and flow of American politics.

Be that as it may, I’m glad that Matt woke me up to the rut I was getting into. For example, yeah I have a low opinion of Sarah Palin. But, you know, I think I’ve beaten that dead horse enough by now. There’s nothing new or interesting there. So why do I keep returning to that subject, other than for the reasons Matt offered?

Apart from Matt’s timely “cold shower” comment, the other thing that woke me up was focusing on the cognitive dissonance between the media coverage of the health care debates and the polls revealing the opinions of us People. As I note in the previous post, the media paints a picture of a divided nation with us People at each others’ throats. But the polls reveal a much more united nation, with 2/3 to 3/4 of Americans supporting the “public option” in health care reform.

Matt, together with this data, has woken me up. They have popped me out of the latest turn in the Culture Wars, and tuned my attention back to signs of the People gathering mindshare about our greatest threat: old Corporations.

As Matt suggests, I’ll need to brush up my critical brain for this renewed focus. This is because the media is still stuck in 1994, reporting the news solely through the lens of the Culture Wars. I’ll need to read those stories much more critically than I have been this year, to get at the this underlying People vs. Corporations dynamic. I’ll also need to improve my Twitter-trolling skills, to get the “news” in an unfiltered way.

In sum, thanks, Matt, I needed that.

A comment that Matt submitted to my last post got me thinking. Matt wrote:

Here is your biggest problem Peter – you are so totally enamored now that your ‘team’ has taken the ‘lead’(and you are a ‘team’ type person) that you have submerged your critical thinking abilities so far down that they practically no longer exist.

Matt’s idea that I’m “on a team” and spouting team ideology piqued my interest. Because I think there’s a grain of truth in there. Not the precise truth that Matt thought he noticed. But rather something that I’ve been writing about since 2003.

That is, the “team” I’m “writing for” is not political Left as against political Right. Rather, it’s People, as against Corporations.

As I’m watching the health care debates unfold this summer, it seems obvious to me that this is the first unambiguous People vs. Corporations struggle being waged on a public stage.That is, the struggle matters to and is understood by individual people (as contrasted with the bank bailouts), and the struggle is being led by a strong leader (Obama, as compared to Bush who didn’t say a word when the Corporations stole America under his “watch”).

The health Corporations would love nothing better than to defeat Obama here, and at least neuter Obama’s attempts at reform.

IMHO, this dynamic is an obvious one, if one cares to look.

Now, in addition to the health Corporations, there is the Right wing in America which is lining up with the health Corporations, trying desperately to rip the halo off the head of Obama.

Is the Right wing in America married to the Corporations? Yes and no, I believe. That is, I think a great deal of the Right wing opposition to Obama on health care is political opportunism, plain and simple.

But still, together with the Democratic “Blue Dogs”, the Republican Party receives the greatest amount of lobbying money from the health Corporations. Google it if you don’t believe me.

So with health care, we have People vs. Corporations, fighting it out, via the proxy combatants of Left vs. Right.

For John Mackey, founder/CEO of Whole Foods, to come out on this struggle on the side of the health Corporations, and do so in the Corporate rag WSJ, was shocking to many of us. Here was a Man of the People, with a 25-year record of humanism, revealing himself, upon the first reports of gunfire at Fort Sumpter, to be an agent for the other side. Hence the widespread feeling of betrayal and treason.

But although the People vs. Corporations struggle is obvious to me, it’s still not openly discussed in the major media as a cultural meme. So I think pundits and most people miss it.

What are they left with? Right vs. Left. So outrage at Mackey and Whole Foods is mis-characterized simply as an effete “hissy fit” of the Left.

Look closer, people. Yeah, the health care debate seems to be yet another episode of the Culture Wars between Left and Right in America. And yeah, Obama’s health care proposals do seem to fall in line with expansion of the national debt beyond all imagination.

I can see all that. But what I think this debate will be remembered for in history is the struggle between the People, led by Obama, and the health care Corporations. Sitting where I am, in August of 2009, this first skirmish looks like a 50/50 struggle.

Maybe it would be better for the People to lose this one. Just so long as the hand of the Corporations on the knife stuck in the back of the People becomes obvious to everyone in this nation still who is living in the fog of the past.

Finally, I’ll conclude with something I’ve been reading. Namely, even Drudge admits that polling shows 2/3 to 3/4 of Americans supporting the “public option” in health care reform. If those polling numbers are correct, then that would be dispositive evidence for what I’m saying here. That is, this struggle is about People vs. Corporations, not Left vs. Right. And 2/3 to 3/4 of Americans lining up with the People sounds about right to me.

Because if this was just about Left versus Right, there’s no way that 66% to 75% of Americans would poll as lining up with Daily Kos and MoveOn.

QED

I love reading the reactions of the reactionaries to the emerging Whole Foods boycott. They’re like children experiencing a new phenomenon. They don’t know what to make of it, so they fill the vacuum in their comprehension with the simple things that they “know”. Here are some such confused reactions:

• “Why be mad at Whole Foods? Why not Safeway? Or Home Depot?”
• “You leftists are trying to deny Mackey his First Amendment rights.”
• “He didn’t say anything really offensive in his WSJ piece, and the WSJ editors, not Mackey, chose that unfortunate title.”

Well, my little reactionary pupils, I’m here to clear up your confusion for you. Let’s start with the last one. Here is a Huffington post piece explaining that what Mackey wrote in that article is what Sarah Barracuda would have written if she only had a brain. But since she doesn’t, she’s left with “death panels” and other such ideas suitable for our 3-year-old.

On the “First Amendment” argument, I’m pretty sure the Framers didn’t intend that amendment to require people like us to keep giving Mackey our money.

Finally, we come to the first argument. Why do I now prefer shopping for organic foods from Safeway over Whole Foods? One reason, of course, is price. But until I learned about “Whole Foods-gate”, I still shopped at Whole Foods regularly. Why?

The reason is that, until Whole Foods-gate, Whole Foods was one of those businesses consistent with the ethos of the Sixties. You know, environmentalism, community, “small is beautiful”, “Mother Earth”, nature-trumps-made-made crap, etc.

If you had asked me before Whole Foods-gate who I suspect founded the company and runs it, I would have guessed that the person had been a hippy in the 1960s, but wasn’t among those who cut their hair and joined the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s.

But, alas, it turns out to be John Mackey.

So why do I now shop at Safeway for my organic foods? It’s because Safeway is an impersonal corporation that doesn’t give a shit about you or me and — and this is a critical “and” — it doesn’t even pretend to. It will sell us anything that we will buy. It will sell us poison wrapped in plastic and stored in the middle isles. It will sell us organic foods around the edges of the store. It doesn’t give a shit which we buy; just so long as we buy, and our purchases include some high-profit-margin SKUs.

Whole Foods, on the other hand, pretends to be something more. Try and find the grand trifecta of the Poisoning-of-America in a Whole Foods store:

• trans fats
• high-fructose corn syrup
• MSG (with its many code-names)

If those poisons are in Whole Foods, I’ve never found them, and I have looked. That Whole Foods won’t sell us these poisons is a political decision, that, until now, was a brilliant business one as well.

But now Whole Foods has been revealed for what it is. It’s Sarah Palin in sheep’s clothing. It’s a fraud. It’s a betrayal of the very values it espouses.

Betrayal and hypocrisy are really shitty business models to pursue. I predict that the fall-out from this story will include a new verb in lexicon: “Mackey”, as in “Oh shit! I hope I didn’t just Mackey my own business”.