JOURNAL OF THE DEPRESSION

The following is an on-going series about one person's struggle through the economic collapse:

NEW FORMS OF TORTURE ALLOWED

In an effort to allow for some "enhanced" interrogation without violating the Geneva Convention limitations on torture, the Obama Administration Justice Department issued a new set of guidelines recently.

Suspected terrorists can be subjected to the following tactics to induce their cooperation:

Subjects may be forced to watch American Idol and Dancing With The Stars for hours and hours.

Subjects may be fed a diet for a minimum of 30 days exclusively derived from McDonalds.

Subjects will also be required to see the movie "Supersize Me"every morning.

Subjects will be driven around fo one hour each day in taxi cabs driven by Nigerians.

Subjects may be brought before Congressional Committees to be interrogated.

BOUNDARY BETWEEN SATIRE AND REALITY VANISHES

On April 27the the Bandersnatch ran a story about pigs protesting the swine flu. By May 1st that had actually happened, and now the flu has been officially renamed NIH1 to avoid offending the pork industry. SO if you want to read the news BEFORE it happens, keep checking us out....

PIGS PROTEST FLU NAME

Washington: (April 27, 2009) The American Pig Association filed a formal protest with the Center for Disease Control over the name of the new strain of flu that erupted in Mexico that is being called the Swine Flu./p>

"It demeans the porcine pride to have a pandemic named after us," said Porky, the pig spokesman.

The Pig group uggested the flu be called the Mexican Bird Flu since the virus also has avian DNA and the first cases were reported in Mexico.

The Mexican government had no problem with calling the disease a bird flu, but objected to tagging it with Mexico.

"We'd rather it be given a less offensive name like Avian 3 or Bird 12," said a spokesman for the Mexican Institute of Health. "After the Hong Kong flu epidemic, we think it is bad for tourism to name diseases after cities or countries."

US health officials, nevertheless, issued a travel advisory urging people to avoid traveling to Mexico because of the flu epidemic.

"However, you are more likely to get caught in the crossfire of a drug cartel shootout in Mexico than catch the flu," said an official with the State Department.

The European Union issued its own health advisory, urging Europeans to avoid traveling to the United States, even though the only US cases so far were traced to people who recently visited Mexico.

"We never avoid an opportunity to stick it to the United States," said a spokesperson for the EU.

Meanwhile panic spread throughout the world as governments freaked out and the public contemplated sudden death from a source over which they have no control.

GM TO CHANGE NAME TO GOVERNMENT MOTORS

General Motors announced today that if the US government accepts their proposal to stick the US taxpayers with a majority ownership interest in the faltering car company, they would change the name to Government Motors.

"We could still keep our GM logo," said an official with GM.

The concept of turning control of the auto maker over to Washington started when President Obama fired the president of GM a few weeks ago.

"We got to thinking, if the feds can fire our boss, then maybe we ought to turn the company over to Obama and let him take the blame when the company bites the bullet and fails," said the GM executive as he sent out his resume to other employers.

US government officials had a mixed response to the GM proposal. Pentagon officials immediately wanted to take the Hummer brand over so they could make the jeeps to their specifications.

Several Indian tribes offered to take the Pontiac brand of GM cars in exchange for ownership of the Pontiac assembly plant. "We think an Indian made car would really be a hot item," said a spokesman for the consortium of Tribes proposing the deal.

Republicans were generally apoplectic over the proposal, it being the worst nightmare they could imagine. "The last thing we want is for the federal government to own any banks or a car maker," said Ron Freebush, a GOP senator from Baja Arizona.

GM officials were confident that the federal ownership scheme would ultimately be rejected, allowing the company to file for bankruptcy, screw its unions and bond holders,  and emerge as a much smaller and meaner company.

However, some began projecting what kind of cars Government Motors would make in the future.

One vision was a lot of small, energy efficient cars that would end US dependence on foreign oil.

"That is a fantasy," said Freebush, "what the government will end up making will look a lot like those Soviet era cars the Russians made...big, ugly, inefficient...just like the federal government itself."

Obama administration officials were reportedly seriously considering taking over GM and running the company themselves.

"What if this really worked and we not only made really cool cars, but also made so much money we could eliminate the federal income tax on people making less than $250,000 a year?" said one Obamite.

Given that many companies receiving bailout money could end up in federal control, the prospect of a socialized economy loomed every more likely, according to some.

"The problem is Obama has some of the best an brightest people in the country working for the government, and they don't have a lot of experience with being frustrated, so they could actually succeed in taking over the companies, turning them around, and making the taxpayers some seriuous money," said Rusty Crow, a commentator for the Public Interest Group.

"The entrenched bureaucracy will destroy any initiave the Obama people attempt," snorted Freebush.

"Just wait. They will come up with a car that gets 50 miles to the gallon only if it goes backward."

TREASURY HIRES SOMALI PIRATES

Washington: In an effort to kill two birds with one stone, the US government has launched an experiment to relocate Somali pirates to the east coast of the United States. The purposes of the pirate relocation are to reduce the pirate attacks on ships off the African coast, and to get back money paid for US corporations to their executives.

"There's the concept of setting a thief to catch a thief," said a spokesman for the US Treasury Department, which hired several Somali pirate crews and moved them to Long Island.

"We've made a deal with the pirates to let them keep 50% of any ransoms they get from corporate officials whose yachts they hijack," said the Treasury official. "We get the other 50%."

"We've also given them a list of target boats to look for owned by executives who we think got obscene bonuses," the official added.

The Treasury Department Pirate  Asset Recovery Team, as it is now being called, will seek corporate official boats based in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. "We will expand the program to other port areas where their are a lot of executive boats like Houston if the program works," said the Treasury official.

Also under consideration is allowing the Somali pirates to hijack corporate jets. Details are still being worked out between Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security which would have to eliminate security requirements at private airports on Long Island and other locations with high concentrations of corporate planes.

HOW TO AVOID BEING LAID OFF

With the economy shrinking faster than George Bush’s legacy, many workers fear they’re going to be laid off and end up homeless wandering among strangers.

This is a legitimate fear given recent news that tens of thousands of workers are being riffed by major companies.

And we all know who will be the first to get pink slips. The older workers so companies can escape funding pensions. Women. Minorities. Plus, anyone who has a boss that wants to get even for some slight.

That’s a whole lot of us on the chopping block. And we can’t get younger, change our sex (no health insurance plan covers this one), or get whiter. And whatever we did to plant the seed of revenge in the boss has been festering for way too long to do anything about it now.

The first tactic that seems to work for some is to become invaluable to the company.

A friend of ours got laid off a while back…an older guy. The corporate wizards had the bright idea that if they got rid of all the old folks in the company who cost them a lot of money, they could fatten the bottom line by hiring a lot of young folks. Problem was the young people didn’t know anything about the technology of the company and when management realized the older people actually were adding value to the company, they hired some of them back.

So make sure you are the only one with the computer codes, and other proprietary information of your employer so if they lay you off, all their screens go dark and their financial records vanish.

Another friend dodged a layoff because the store she worked in had a lot of customers who only spoke Spanish, and my friend is a very fast language learner. She actually doesn’t speak that much Spanish, but the customers would talk to her and the bosses only saw that she was ringing up sales. So what if the customers thought they were buying a shirt instead of a rope.

The second tactic is to have no expectations about being hired back at the same pay and benefits. My older friend got offered his job function back, but only as an independent contractor so the company didn’t have to fund his pension or health care benefits. Better to have some income than none, he figured.

But don’t give the bosses the codes or access to the proprietary information unless they write you a really big check.

A third tactic is always look really busy. See our prior advice on Avoiding Work. There’s nothing worse than a boss catching you with your feet up on the desk doing absolutely nothing, even if there is absolutely nothing to actually do. The New York Times Sunday January 24, 2009 had a great article about looking busy in order to survive being fired.

The fourth tactic is lawyer up. Age or racial or sexual discrimination is still illegal in this country and if someone has to get the ax, let them be the ones who can still be legally discriminated against…the white guys. Always have plenty of cards for the law firm that sues employers for discrimination in your pocket, and post them on the company bulletin board. Retaliation is also illegal.

A good tactic is splitting jobs….better to have half a job than no job. This creates some really interesting dynamics in a work place. Who would you split your job with and why?

Next, consider going into business for yourself. If the store is going to close, there’s a good chance there’s a great deal for the lease of the space, and a chance to buy the inventory for a song. Actually, you might get to rent the store space cheaper than your home. Ditch your home and live in the store.

Finally, if there is no way to avoid being bounced, remember that for every door that closes another one opens. The sad reality in America today is what we used to do for a living has become obsolete or worthless in the current economic environment. That doesn’t mean you have to become extinct. It means you’ve got to evolve. Change. Adapt. Retrain.

There are jobs that are less prone to being eliminated because the functions are necessary. Exactly what those are we’re not sure of at the moment, so that will be a topic of another piece of Squirrelly Advice.

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HOW TO LIVE ON 1/10TH YOUR INCOME

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