Cowboy Confessional

I could get used to this real quick.

There is a holy place in the unholy town of Berkeley, California. Smelted in the 1960’s along with several thousand other coffee shops (the American variety, not the Amsterdam kind, though in the 60’s the differences were minor) was The Freight. Its proper name is The Freight and Salvage Coffee Shop. The Freight came by their name dishonestly. When founded they took over a building that had been a freight and salvage warehouse and decided to keep the signage. The name stuck.

Unlike the several thousand other coffee shops in hippie-era Berkeley (or as we locals like to call it, Bizerkely) The Freight survived, and did so primarily because the music played there. Lord knows their coffee is not top-shelf and the price they take for a tiny cup would cause the typical gray-haired Berkley hippie to charge them with making obscene profits.

The Freight caters to folk music, be it Americana, Celtic, African or Martian. Anything that is native and unamplified. For 40 years, unknown and world renowned performers played tasty tunes on The Freight’s microscopic stage … after exiting a green room the size of a prison cell and with the same ambiance. History walked on The Freight’s stage.

Whenever I went to The Freight, I always stopped for a moment in the lobby. On the walls were calendars going back to their beginnings. One playbill showed the night Bukka White played. For those uneducated in the history of blues, Bukka was BB “Blues Boy” King’s older cousin who got BB into the music biz. Bukka did old school delta blues more authentic than anything else recorded with the exception of Robert Johnson.

Hopefully Bukka didn’t make any crossroad deals.

I loved playing on the tiny Freight and Salvage stage. I never gigged there as I don’t gig at all. But The Freight was the monthly meeting place for a songwriters’ competition. The room itself is completely improbable for good acoustics. It is a small rectangle of cinderblocks, custom made for harsh standing waves. But over the years sound buffers were erected here and there, a solid sound system was assembled, and dedicated mix masters manned the console.

The Freight made even me sound good.

And now it is gone … kinda. The old venue is closed. I’ll never have the chance to stand on that stage again, and this is a sad thing. Closed to the public are the quaint black walls, the mismatched and completely third hand chairs, and restrooms designed by some who took a lot of acid in the 1960’s. RIP Freight and Salvage.

Welcome the new joint.

After a couple of years and a lot of donated money (The Freight is a non-profit venture), they have opened a new venue that I visited today and in which I might want to be buried. Using salvaged wood from the old place, the walls are wonderfully absorbent, allowing undistorted sounds to come from the house speakers to your ears. The stage is wide and with enough back ported monitors to ensure tat every performer will know how they are doing. They have a new mixing board seeming designed by NASA (control knobs are embedded in touch screen panels, the all digital systems stores and recalls specific mixes, and the faders and motorized and move when a mix is restored). Audience seats are new, recline slightly, and match.

The coffee is still marginal.

And there is the rug. On the old stage there was a Persian carpet so think you would trip on the rise the first time you headed for a microphone. It was there to absorb the boot stomping of us excitable performers. And unless I am mistaken, that little slice of history – the same threads upon which many masters of music trod – was brought to its new home.

I sure hope it is the same one. I’m looking forward to standing on it again.

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For a state that prides itself upon cultural sensitivity, California’s junior senator certainly seems unburdened by it.

In less than a month Senator Barbara Boxer has managed to instigate two controversies through ignorance of cultures or crass assumptions of the same. Not content to merely castigate a soldier for his practiced politeness, this week she made a citizen’s race a point of her attack.

Strom Thurmond displayed better racial outreach than Boxer.

Later last month, a Marine general who still had Iraq dust on his boots addressed a Senate committee. During interrogatory, Brigadier General Michael Walsh answered Boxer by addressing her as ‘maam’. Barbara succumbed to a minor meltdown the likes of which Republicans prayed Justice Sotomayor would. With shoulders slumping under excess padding, Senator Boxer pantingly demanded that she be called ‘senator’ and not ‘maam’.

Oddly none of the men that the general called ‘sir’ voiced complaints.

Though not born of the southern noblesse oblige with which I am familiar, the general’s use of the common reference of deference is a cultural phenomenon and one to which temporarily sitting senators should show sensitivity. Down south, we call everyone sir or maam. Elderly people address children with the same words. Wives and husbands trade the titles. It is considered the minimal civility and one offered to strangers as a matter of principal. The cultural bias at play is that one assumes the best of all people until given a reason not to.

This includes politicians who are normally held suspect from the beginning.

The military maintains similar modes on behavior. Children raised in Dixie or soldiers sweating in boot camp are acculturated to show respect. A returning soldier I greeted at the airport called me ‘sir’ despite us having never met before that moment. Cultures that install politeness – be it southern born or military bred – are recognized and appreciated by everyone living in this largely impolite world.

Aside from self-important people, that is.

As insensitive as Boxer is to cultures that incubate kindness, her more recent affront to African-Americans would make her an honorary member of the Dixicrats. Harry C. Alford, the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce was, like the general, staring down the business end of Boxer’s distemper. Speaking to how proposed legislation might hinder business, Boxer pointedly produced a counter argument published by the NAACP.

She saw his blackness and raised him a few chitlins.

Alford, who also was once in Uncle Sam’s military, showed the self-restraint that only cultural discipline instills. “All that’s condescending … As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that” adding “You’re quoting some other black man. Why don’t you quote some other Asian. You are being racial here.”

California is, if nothing else, the ultimate American melting pot. We potentially have the widest selection of cultures, subcultures and counter cultures in the inhabitable world and D.C. Strolling down any San Francisco street will induce sensory overload as global languages and aromas assault from every angle. Like most of America, we get along because we learned how – sharing our space with neighbors completely unlike ourselves and attempting to show a little sensitivity. Native Californians like Alford understand this.

A nice Jewish Brooklyn girl like Barbara should too.

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California is quaking once again. In this instance it has nothing to do with plate tectonics.

California is like a functional drunk. It sips, then swills, then gulps, then passes out, waking and swearing off the juice until the next time. Government spending is California’s whiskey, and when the lush – also known as the state legislature – has sucked on the budgetary bottle too long, the state’s slightly more sober side kicks some collective rump.

Like any empire, California employees people to do its dirty work. The more employees, the larger the empire. Aside from having a lot of them, Cal state employees enjoy pay scales and benefits unknown outside of the Saudi royal family. Working for the State of Emergency is one of the best ways to not earn a living.

Yet like both drunks and empires, things tend to get out of control when unchecked. The Golden State grows in spurts like a teenager on steroids. When it grows too fast, the slightly more sober side kicks the collective’s posterior a bit harder.

California citizens instinctively feel when government has grown too big, and together they take corrective action and inaction. In the 1970’s the state grew to such Gulliver proportions that the people passed Proposition 13, restricting the flow of blood to the cancer called Sacramento. At that time the state was employing nearly one in every one hundred residents, and that doesn’t include the dozen or so illegal aliens each legislator kept on hand for personal hygiene purposes.

(click chart to enlarge)

A couple of decades after Howard Jarvis smite the state, and under the expert mismanagement of Gray Davis, California’s employee roles and budget ballooned yet again, retaining nearly one percent of the population for no discernable performance. Davis was summarily dismissed and replaced by an intellectual teenager on steroids.

Six years later the employee roles have expanded yet again, popping back above the seemingly magical one percent barrier, assisting the inevitable bankruptcy of the State of Disaster. The people revolted by denying the legislature’s request to raise taxes. Since California’s credit rating is slightly below Zimbabwe’s, there is little choice but to cut costs, and the obvious place is an over packed payroll.

The open question is if anyone in Sacto gets sacked as they should.

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The end of Washington’s spending spree may soon come thanks to incautious California.

The day care center known as the California Legislature has led the State of Disaster to fiscal ruin. So bad is the situation here in the Shaky State that politicians – unable to balance the budget without bankrupting the taxpayers – rigged a series of ballot propositions to do jigger the books. Propositions 1A through 1E raise taxes or shuttle money from one formerly protected use to the general fund. The institutionalized insanity of the state overspending is not addressed in any of the proposals.

And the people are PO’ed.

Odds of these ballot measures passing is slightly below Hell’s sixth ring. If they fail, California’s $42 billion shortage combined with its junk bond rating would likely push the Land of Fruits and Nuts into bankruptcy, an outcome for which more than a few folk are openly rooting. Taxpayers contend that the state legislature is fiscal alcoholic, and like regular drunks needs to hit rock bottom before it can recover and start leading a respectable life.

Bankruptcy might just sober-up California for the first time in history. San Francisco however will continue its non-stop bender.

While sucking down coffee at my favorite corner café last week, I predicted that should Cal go bust, it would instantly turn to its equally insolvent big brother, the federal government. The Golden State – bereft of gold – would cadge congress for cash. In the age of endless bailouts, and with Obama beholden to government employee unions while trying to make government ‘cool’, another $42 billion would look like chump change. After all, AIG got $100 billion more than that and congress critters never cringed.

I should go into the prognostication business, because I nailed this one.

Bill Lockyer, California’s current Treasurer, gives other trolls a bad name. I encountered Bill years ago when he horded the state’s Attorney General’s office. I briefly debated him on the constitutional basis for gun control. Despite his being a lawyer and me being an autodidact, it quickly became obvious that he was incapable of performing his job or perhaps cleaning himself properly after visiting the little dictators’ room. I suspect he is no more capable of making change than managing California’s coffers. Even the concept of a balanced budget seems beyond his grasp given his written statement:

“Even with a balanced budget, California believes its cash flow shortfall in fiscal 2009-2010 will be in excess of $13 billion.”

But he is a politician, which means he looks for the easy way out.

Lockyer has written to Timothy Geithner, a Keystone Cop masquerading as the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Without the shame common to common prostitutes, Lockyer began the pocket picking process, extending his rather greasy palm into the pockets of taxpayers from coast to coast.

“I am writing today to ask that you authorize extending TARP assistance to the State of California,”

‘TARP’, you will recall stands for ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program.’ Indeed California is troubled … in the psychiatric sense. Yet classifying Cal as an ‘asset’ will irk anyone east of the Sierra Nevadas. More to the point, TARP was established to soak-up toxic loans and other real property. Congress never intended for this loot to be lobbed at other governments.

Given America’s general distrust of California, you can expect a backlash.

People generally dislike being stolen from. If a man lives in a state that has balanced its budget the way it should, he will look lowly upon any attempt for another state to take his taxes. Yet that is what Lockyer yearns for – to make off with mullah from Maine, Montana and Missouri. Bill wants to bilk bumpkins in Baltimore, Brevard and Bayonne.

And they will bite back.

If the Obama Bunch backs Bill Lockyer in this misappropriation, it will backfire. Tea Parties were tepid compared to the pummeling politicians would receive over this intergovernmental slush fund. Imagine a representative from Rexburg, Idaho explaining to his constituents – many of whom escaped California years ago – that he opted to underwrite the fiscal failure and open air asylum called California. The good folks of Rexburg would reverently read scripture … as the tossed the last shovel full of dirt on his face.

Repeat the processes in 48 other states.

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Fred Smith (no relation), the founder of Federal Express and the inventor of an entire industry, spoke at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club tonight. George Shultz — a man who held more secretary positions (Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Secretary of State) in the U.S. government than Monica Lewinsky – sat attentively in the front of the audience.

That’s one of the wonders of San Francisco. Smart and accomplished people live here anyway and hang out in the audience with the plebs.

During his talk, which covered commerce, energy and tax policy, Smith mentioned in passing that FedEx is currently about a $40 billion company. California is about $40 billion in the hole this budget year. Fairly clear who would be better running a government – a person acquainted with commerce or politicians acquainted only with pocket picking. But I doubt Fred wants the pay cut or having a belligerent boss like me.

This incidental contrast of $40 billion positive and negative statuses made me involuntarily ponder Meg Witman, a woman who apparently has lost her mind given she now wants to skate away from eBay, the online auction house she founded, and preside over the California’s $40 billion fiscal tar pit. Of course eBay churns less than $9 billion in annual revenues, so perhaps it is a shorter step down for Meg than Fred.

Fred thankfully validated – hell, he almost repeated verbatim – one of my common comments, that government does not produce anything and only moves money from one source to another. Business people do produce, and they do so with the help of a lot of employees who work toward creating value (and Fred values employees – he always puts them on the top of the hierarchy, acknowledging that they create FedEx value and he merely sets the direction).

That is why you will see every California state employee campaign vigorously against Whitman as they did against presidential contender Mitt Romney, another successful businessman. State employees fear Meg will force them to create value like the rest of us.

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