January 30, 2014

While I am still unemployed but housed, I have been on a bit of a creative streak. Since the second underpaid stint at Mitchell's ended on January 24, I came up with a song (1099) that blasts their pay structure and other businesses moving to that pay structure to avoid paying the new $8 per hour minimum wage. Over the last couple of days, I went to slightly less incendiary lyrical topics- the piping plovers who are holding the Rockaway Boardwalk hostage (Piping Plovers) and Governor Cuomo, Mayor De Blasio, and other ACORN/Working Families politicians who think pro-life, pro gun Catholics have no business being in New York (Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway- Coda).


And here are the lyrics below to those songs:
1099- by Thomas Clarke

Minimum wage, we've got a way around that... You've heard me talk about the 1099 before but here's why it's such a threat to the poor For 1099, you're supposed to be a subcontractor setting your own pay, setting your own hours Getting commission on something that's supposed to pay a decent wage It was never designed to be a way for employers to enslave and impoverish employees under the guise that they're just independent contractors But that's what it's become in New York City It's not working, get it right and fix it $8 an hour might be too high to be the minimum but for $5 an hour for twice as much work for overtime hours with no overtime pay is too little And it's not just the milkman messengers from Long Island City (Mitchells) that are doing this How about some inedible fruit arrangements from Manhattan with a legal wage the reward after months of 5 an hour? How about the big kahuna of messenger companies (Urban Express) that switched to low commission and no tax help after paying above the old minimum wage last year? Nobody seems to know or care and they think the ones getting paid a legal wage are the only ones getting screwed Some think that more pay with benefits is too little and some think that the taxpayers are their piggy bank Why should they get one penny more when there are people earning far less, working a lot more and not getting a legal wage? Fix the 1099 gap so those trapped in it can get a legal wage fix the healthcare system but not by forcing people to buy insurance and driving those premiums through the roof fix poverty by helping the poor become not poor instead of punishing them by making them or keeping them poor The leftist ideas from before didn't work then and they are making stuff worse now Quit making stuff too expensive Quit overtaxing the rich when their money can alleviate some of the suffering and they can move their money with them Leaving those who cannot afford the bill the only ones who can pay for it. Quit saying life and self defense and religion are part of the problem and not welcome When they may be part of the solution The 1099 perps aren't the only problem the jackasses need to go too get it right before the wrong type of revolution comes and heads start rolling and no one wins it's not working, get it right and fix it

Piping Plovers lyrics (c) 2014 by Thomas Clarke

we fly across the waves without much ease we look cute when we strut and when we feed we look cute, but don't mess with us we're the piping plovers we migrate west, we like the upper crust we trot across the beach so cute and so free we look cute, but don't misjudge us we milk "endangered" for all it's worth we look cute, but don't mess with us we'll get our gull goons after you we look cute, but don't mess with us we're the piping plovers we left our nests on the ghetto beach we claimed it was because of Sandy we look cute, but don't misjudge us Don't think you're getting your new boardwalk anytime soon Not until you pay for our new beachfront property! we look cute, but don't mess with us we're the piping plovers don't mess with us we'll get our EPA lawyers after you we're the piping plovers think we should press FEMA for a new jacuzzi? no, let the pigeons pay for it from their tributes


Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway (Coda) Lyrics- (c) 2014

Trapped somewhere between Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway between what's left of America and Europe somewhere where the poor are getting poorer the Faith is under attack what used to be wrong is now right and what used to be right is now not welcome Somewhere in Rockaway the pigeons, seagulls, and piping plovers are fighting over food at the shore and the plovers are holding up the new Boardwalk until 2017! politicians are fighting over monetary food over how progressive they can be when they're really regressive who says someone being pro-life and wanting to defend oneself has no business being in New York? Maybe Cuomo, DeBlasio, and their ACORN and jackass buddies should leave New York instead! I'm to poor to live here comfortably............ Stuck somewhere between Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway and maybe somewhere between Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Texas if things don't work out here...... Who said I had to stick to one style? who said I had to leave things the way they were? it's a brave but messed up new world and I'm trying to adapt

January 29, 2014

New year, same old problems. I am unemployed again- because 5 months worth of sub-minimum wage commission delivery work did a number on both my wallet and my right knee. I started the new year in Rockaway Park with my sister and nephew visiting from Dyersburg, TN. This was the first time I had seen either since my 30th birthday- in May 2002! Not long after they got here, a major snowstorm socked NYC with 6-12 inches of the white stuff.

My nephew, of course, enjoyed it. I nearly got frostbite taking those pictures.

On the way back to Pennsylvania and Tennessee, my sister got trapped in an ice storm. About 2.5 weeks later, another snow storm of around a foot hit NYC.

Supposedly NYC is not the only place in North America with horrifically-below-average January temps. Austin had temps in the 20s- a good 20-30 below average (and a humanitarian crisis with 4000+ homeless flooding the shelters that were designed for one tenth that number). Colorado Springs had major snowstorms. Minnesota had days in which the high temperature was below 0. And the Southeast got paralyzed this week by snow- albeit far less snow than what NYC has seen this month. Even Florida and Texas can't escape this cold. The Super Bowl will be held across the river from NYC on Sunday. I hope the NFL knows what it's in for- cold (although 30s by then will be a heat wave compared to most of this month), chance of snow, unfilled seats because few sane people want to pay 4 figures to see an outdoor game in the cold. Even the hotels (which unlike Met Life Stadium do have heat) are having trouble filling their rooms. I can see now why Liz Stonehill (an EMT dispatcher whose office is probably warmer than my room in Rockaway) considers snow to be a 4 letter word.