The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what’s
that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we’ve been
stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush
administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change,
neither of which have blossomed.

A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is
still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions.
And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When
you make that hefty list of New Year’s resolutions, drop some of these
bombs. Then duck. You’ll get your change faster than you can say,
“Teabag this!”

1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it’s OK. Move to the city and rent.

“Homeowners should be walking away in droves,” University of Arizona law school professor Brent T. White told the
Los Angeles Times.
“But they aren’t. And it’s not because the financial costs of
foreclosure outweigh the benefits. One can have a good credit rating
again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.” 

In a scholarly paper called “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame,
Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” White tells
cash-jacked homeowners that they can return the screw.

We’ve been championing that course for years, with reports on walkaways and trashouts, as well as violent homeowner blowback. Hell, we called the Great Recession before most did, and we’re still calling it another Great Depression
in the making. So trust us. And if not us, then take it from the
professor, who will soon be joined by a chorus of similarly
credentialed whistleblowers as the financial crap truly hits the fan in
the years to come. Go ahead, move back to the city and rent. You’ll end
up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls. 

2. Unplug your cable. The easiest way to kill the
so-called news networks is to cut them off at their enablers. Don’t
like the hate spewed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp nutjobs? Pull your
cable bill’s plug, or shut down your satellite. Tired of the way that
Reality TV, in entertainment and otherwise, has replaced reality
itself? Withdraw life support.