As it says on the back of my book, I'm just a working man with no college education. I've lived all my now fifty-five years of national obscurity here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, content to be a salmon swimming upstream. The bears in the worlds of government, religion, and business have been taking bites out of my ass; sometimes small ones, often big, painful chunks. As I write this, you see, I have a history of having worked at some fifty-plus companies in forty-two years.

Now that's a dubious honor at best. I know that. It does mean, however, that I have more actual experience than both the average person and the so-called experts when it comes to finding, losing, and re-finding employment in those areas in which a college degree is not a specific requirement.

And whether or not you agree, whether you like it or not, there are two realities regarding employment operating simultaneously in this country. There's one for those armed with college degrees, and then the rest of us.

Now if I sound angry at times, it's because I am. From where I sit and based on my experience, substance means little and appearance means everything. Education is mistaken for intelligence, authority is accepted as superiority, working for a living presumes we live to work, the once honorable condition of employment has become exploitation of otherwise good men and women, and people have been dehumanized from "employees" and "personnel" to "human resources," with their humanity taking a far distant second-place to their usefulness as a "resource."

There's too much greed at the top, too many sycophants in the middle, too many bullies at every step of the way, and not nearly enough apprecation for the workers' contribution in the success of both business and this country.

Now if you believe everything you hear, the only difference in today's world of employment is that the high-school diploma has been upgraded to a four-year degree. There are lies, and damned lies. The continuing myth of the American dream, the work ethic, the "thirty years and a pension," is a damned lie.

Working in this country has become very much like an armed robbery, as in "your money or your life." Employers are demanding more of you than just your time and labor. You know it. I know it. But no one wants to talk about it.

The challenge for us all, as I see it, is how best to inspire people to refuse to sell their souls and humanity along with the necessary time and energy in the pursuit of nothing more than money and the stuff it will buy. Or maybe you can tell me why the pursuit of money so often melts the spine and hardens the heart.

"The Maniacal Laughter of the Damned: Why you can live and work in the real world without making a deal with the Devil" is available from the publisher at
http://www.virtualbookworm.com/store/product.php?productid =17098

or from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Maniacal-Laughter-Damned-Randy-Vaugh an/dp/1602641129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196617767&s r=1-1

or it can be ordered from any local retailer.

If you'd like to read an interview I did recently, please visit
http://www.cvtips.com/randy_vaughan_the_maniacal_laughter_ of_the_damned.html

or if you'd simply like to know more, please visit me at
www.randyvaughan.wordpress.com

Politics, News & Issues > Economic News Financial crisis: There's plenty of blame to go around

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Ask your average blue-collar working man or woman about this "financial crisis" and you'll more often than not get one of two responses: Laughter or anger. As long as it's been just us struggling from week to week, month to month, you could put into a thimble with room left over for a thousand dancing angels all the so-called leaders, both political and in the private sector, who cared. But now that it's those near and at the topas well as those with the "extra" money to investwho are having a rough go of it, now it's a "crisis". Yes, it really is laughable as hell.

The anger is that un...

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