Thanks W!

Thanks to our recently retired president's failed economic policies, the company I work for had to resort to drastic measures today to try and stay in business for a little while longer. They called everyone into a meeting first thing this morning to announce that, starting Monday, they would be cutting everyone's pay by 20% across the board. The sad thing is, that was good news compared to how things could have gone. I just feel lucky to still have a job.

To make matters just slightly worse, I was on the phone with my parents tonight talking about all of this when my dad snarkily mentioned that Colorado just passed a "card carry" bill that makes it easier to unionize and that perhaps that would be my salvation. Is there a reason why he felt the need to inject politics into a conversation like that? Perhaps I'm guilty of the same thing with this post; then again I'm not speaking to my daughter who just lost a fifth of her pay and is feeling pretty shitty about the world.

Anyone who still wants to claim that the republican party is pro-business must be mentally challenged. If you can look around at the ruin of 8 years of Bush rule and feel good about republican economic policy, there's probably no hope that you'll ever view our world in a rational way.

71,401

I just read that companies cut 71,400 jobs today. To put it in perspective - in one day, we lost almost 36% of the total jobs which have been cut since the beginning of the year (200,000). Compared with 2008, the year with the most jobs lost since 1945, we lost 2.5% of that total (2.8 million). Those are stunning losses, even after over a year of recession.

One of the casualties not counted in the numbers reported by the big companies today was my little brother. He sent me a text message this morning letting me know that he had been laid off. I already thought the company he worked for was despicable - they're the ones who fired me after I transitioned - but this really puts the icing on the cake.

My brother just had an appendectomy a little over a week ago and has a baby girl due in a few months. The timing really couldn't be much worse and the company definitely stuck it to him. They didn't give him any severance pay and his medical benefits end in less than a week.

If you're a web designer/developer in the Denver area, I'd recommend staying the hell away from SpireMedia. I've seen them do this time and again to their employees and it's just not worth working there.

If anyone is looking for a really talented interactive designer, please send me an email (there's a link on my profile). My brother is very good at what he does and is a great employee.

I hope everyone reading this had a better day than many in our country.