Farmer Bob's Journal

Stop! Could We Just Stop?

2011-04-29T01:13:00.002-04:00

"Stop! Could we just stop?"

Sometimes I feel like Stan Marsh of South Park when he gets fed up with the ridiculous behavior engendered by the storyline, and puts his foot down, rhetorically.

Right now I'm just about fed up with G. Gordon Liddy and his doom and gloom advertisements endorsing investment in Gold. If you hated Liddy during the Nixon administration, just wait 'til get a load of him now. He's a one-man confidence undermining operation, and the armies of emailers are sometimes unwitting accomplices. I receive an endless stream of emails from well-meaning people about the upcoming End of the American Era, and Collapse of the World Economy, citing "signs and portents", calamity and catastrophe, and prognosticating the End of Times.

Folks, an important part of our economy is confidence. After all, money is just paper. Nobody is saying it loudly, but we are in Deflation. The price of oil is rising because the price is dollar-denominated and our dollar is deflating. That's why other prices are rising. It isn't inflation, it's deflation. That said, the entire situation can be turned around with judicious action by our Congress, led by a coalition of Senators or by the White House.

Right now, the U.S. Treasury is being funded by the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank. Quantitative Easing is the euphemism. The Fed lent 3 trillion dollars to someone. They can only lend money they have, and since they don't have it, they print it. 3 trillion is apparantly the quantity in quantitave. The Easing part is much easier to understand. They are Easing it out of our pockets in the form of deflation.

We need to cut government spending on everything. We need to encourage rich people to spend their money, rather than hoard it in Gold, T-bills and commodity futures. We need to take a little more tax money from everybody who can afford it. Yes, that means people making "less than $250 thousand a year." who are imagined to be "not rich." Plea-yuz! Only 5% make more than 100 thousand. If the top 5% of earners in our economy are not rich, then who is? Only Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? They haven't got 2 trillion dollars between them, so fuggedaboutit.

No politicians have been laid off in the making of this movie. Washington is doing fine. Staffs are bigger than ever. Agencies are bigger than ever. There is no sense of urgency except in the usual struggle for political power, that is, the next election.

We need a Constitutional Amendment to lay off Congressmen. The census-driven apportionment of the House should have an economic component to expand or contract the House based on the national economic outlook. The size of the House was set at 435 in 1929. It's time to let it be more directly representational. In the beginning, the a Congressman was to represent no more than 30,000 citizens. If we had that ratio today, the House would have about 10,000 members. That is a little big, but they should have no problem with 1000 to 2000 members. With a larger House, we could have smaller staffs, as the workload is lessened. The Constitution says nothing about a staff 20 times the size of the House. The House has around 8700 staffers who get salaries from $30K to $90K with benefits. Lobbyists would have to convince more politicians. It would raise the total price of bribes, excuse me, campaign donations.

In addition, we could follow NH in paying only a token salary to our representatives, rather than the $165K we pay them now. Congress spends $4.9 BILLION just running the business. How much of that 4.9 billion is spent on foam-backed presentation posters? Did you ever have something mounted on foam? It costs a fortune. These guys are posting a couple of hundred of these things a week. Have they not heard of PowerPoint? Is it too undignified for the floor of the House? Heck, the whole NYSE only costs $1.6 billion to operate, and they make a profit.

Of course, Congress's $4.9 billion dollar budget pales when compared to the total budget of $2.2 trillion they appropriate for the President to administer.

So how do we get rich people to spend their money? Do we give them rebates? How about an "Adopt an Entitlee" program? Throw in a Ford for the Poor with every luxury car sale? Threaten to send them to Libya?

Confidence, that's how. Increased confidence will make the rich spend. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That's the spirit we want, not this save it for a rainy day crap.

Now, if we can only convince the Chinese to spend their money. After all, they are the rich ones now. Maybe we could tax them,

The Organized Militia - The National Guard

2011-03-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

The National Guard is the modern equivalent of the organized colonial militia. It is being used today in a manner I believe contrary to the concept of a militia, a defense force. The symbol of the National Guard is the Minuteman.

I say organized militia because there was an unorganized militia, too. Those were the colonists that could be called upon to fight, but did not muster regularly. Today the same situation exists.

US Code Title 10 Subtitle A Part I Chapter 13 - Section 311: Militia: composition and classes

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are -

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

The Naval Militia is the Coast Guard and Auxiliary. These militias are our defense against emergencies, against catastrophe, against mob rule. Today if we need them, they might be in Afghanistan rather than their barracks.

It is as dangerous for us to mix these roles of Armed Forces and Militia as it is for us to mix the Military with the Police, the infamous Posse Comitatus (Power of the County). The Drug War has our Military running the ragged edge of the Posse Comitatus Act. The Coast Guard as an arm of Homeland Security is exempt from it, but the Navy and the National Guard are now "assisting." Now the Armed Forces have co-opted the National Guard as an active reserve. This might be appropriate in a time of outright war, but it is hardly proper for the military adventurism of our modern, super-delicate, international diplomacy and applications of overwhelming firepower and arrogance.

If we cut down the size of the Armed Forces. we might be less inclined to deploy them for adventures. As a first step, I suggest we confine the National Guard to guarding within our national borders. That should cut down on their fuel bill.

Image via Wikipedia

A Mid-Term Report Card on My "Dear Congress" Letter

2011-03-09T21:21:00.006-05:00

Back in January 2009 I published an open letter to our new Congress, requesting that they be the "most intelligent, cooperative, innovative and collaborative Congress (they could) be." I sent a similar letter to our newly inaugurated President with the cautionary note that "you have a Magenta Mandate, not a Blue Banner." Today I revisit their performance.

Congress:

Intelligent C-
Cooperative F
Innovative F-
Collaborative F-
EFFORT F-

Congress showed no imagination, offered little innovation, refused outright to collaborate or even cooperate, and, in general, hewed to party ideologies, demonizing the opposition as repugnant morons. Dumb Senators sought to "reform" the Senate by instituting majority rule. Dumb House Leaders advanced bills sure to die in the Senate, or forced bad bills through using parliamentary parlor tricks. All in all, not a Congress to remember, except in trying to forget them.

President:

Magenta Mandate F
Blue Banner C-
Effort D

The President offered nothing for the vast majority of the folks that voted for him. He chased the Hea;thcare chimera and made it a real monster that roars like a lion, slithers like a snake and smells like a goat. The fire-breathing was reserved for his base, who thought he should've declared martial law, killed all the republicans and saved America by putting their utopia, the Single Payer System, into effect. After the mid-term bloodbath, the President finally awakened to the Magenta Mandate and re-affirmed "tax cuts for the rich", something more appropriately referred to as maintaining the status quo. His budget rhetoric echoes the national concern for deficits and the debt, but the proposed budget does little to change anything.

We have grown from 9 Cabinet level departments to 15 and have 30 or 40 Tsars that are nowhere mentioned in our Constitution. We have 9 advisory councils, some statuatory some just for the fun of it, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which actually does little to control Drugs, but lots to control policy and spending. We really don't need all these high-priced consultants. The Presidency, as a bureaucracy, is out of control. The President shouldn't have over 60 people giving him answers; it should be filtered through the Cabinet. But the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has grown to over 2000 people. Similar, commensurate staff expansions have occurred in the Congress. Unlike the Will Rodgers quip, we are getting all the government we're paying for, and then some. Only 3500 or so firms in America employ more than 2000 people, and they took in about $11 billion in receipts. The EOP costs about $300 million to run and brings in nothing.

Now $300 million may seem like nothing, but all these folks, all 2000 of them, have policy-making responsibilities. Any time you see the word "policy" in Washington, translate it as "huge amounts of money are at our disposal." Diabolical laughter should also echo in your mind. There are 30 Executive Office entities that have the ear of the President, aside from the Cabinet, and each of the 2000 Executive staffers works for one of those entities. It is a madhouse. The Cabinet no more controls policy for their departments than the President controls his calendar. It is the staff that insulates us from our government. It is the staff that insulates the Executive from reality. It is the staff that ratchets up the invective in Congress and creates the intransigence. It is time to ask our Congress and Executive to pare their own spending, radically, first and foremost. The country was governed pretty effectively through two World Wars with less staff cumulatively than we have in place today.

Don't tell me that things are more complex today, etc., etc. Armies of bookeepers used to do the books that are now kept by one person on a computer. Checking and double-checking was a way of life once. Now we trust in machines, and complain if we have to push a button, or enter a number manually, or even wait for a computer to boot-up. We are more impatient today, for sure, but complexity has existed, and has been handled manually for centuries. The Romans invented bureacracy, the Vatican embellished it, the British perfected it, and the Communists made it a religion. America is still uncomfortable with bureaucracy. By the book is not the American way. Rules are made to be broken is.

Office We Could Do Without and Save $16 Billion

Image via Wikipedia

Sustainability

2010-08-17T22:50:00.001-04:00

I was listening to NPR the other day, and heard the Sustainability Desk editor bemoaning the fact that there is little an individual can do to reduce our dependence on the petrochemicals that permeate our lives. First, I was surprised to hear that there was a Sustainability Desk at NPR. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Second, isn't our petro habit a direct outgrowth of our dependence upon food, water, shelter (climate control, really), sanitation, community and commerce? Shouldn't most Sustainability effort be directed at mitigation, rather than in futile searches for a miraclulous replacement? We are mighty good at engineering our way out of sticky situations, e.g., the Green Revolution. We are less successful at wholesale replacement. Remember the Wankel engine, the Chrysler turbine that would run on "anything, even perfume.", the Stirling Cycle engine, and Atomic Power so cheap they'd be "giving electricity away?"

How does Earth, our blue green and white home floating in space, maintain sustainability? Brutally. The food chain is brutal; death equals food. The water cycle is brutal; all manner of bad weather and sea, raging rivers, prolonged droughts. All sustainable, all adjustments in equilibrium. The population cycle is brutal; epidemic, famine, fire, earthquake, flood and war contribute their brutal controls.

Our strength as a species is the way we have mitigated the brutality of our Earth. Life in modern technological societies is very comfortable, even when compared to life less than 150 years ago. Our concept of poverty in this tech society would be considered practically luxurious to the poor of 150 years ago. This is not to say that there is not wretched poverty anywhere in tech society, for the poor will always be with us, in part due to the brutality of nature, and in part due to the genetic lottery of the location of your birth.

The comedian Sam Kinison screamed, "You live in a desert! Move to where the food is!", but the reality is that the poor in less developed countries live at the mercy of governments, domestic and foreign, and international corporations. Sustainability is not at the top of the list for most of those agencies; they live in the moments of political windage or quarterly results. Some, for example the Chinese, are exchanging infrastructure improvements for mineral and trading rights, building on our talent for public works that mitigate the effects of larger and denser populations, and probably ingratiating the citizenry in the process. Careful cultivation of the relationship can result in long-term consulting opportunities for China's plethora of well-trained young men in need of jobs, many now working on public works projects in China . We, in contrast, send Peace Corps workers and tell them to create small-scale sustainable projects. Which effort do you think will change more lives for the better?

The true problem, the elephant in the Sustainability room is Population Control. Nobody in that room wants to talk about the elephant for fear of being trampled by the mob it represents. I have great hope that genetic engineering, tissue culturing and other biotech can keep the spectre of Famine at bay, much as big Pharma and Medicine have kept Disease under control, and big Ag has fed the world. We can reliably predict the odds of starvation and deprivation based on location and other demographics, unexpected disasters excepting. I wonder if the correllation between fertility rate and education is the natural control for our mitigating talents. For example, fertility in America dropped below the replacement rate in the 1970's, around the time we really woke up to enviromental impacts. But immigration has vastly outpaced fertility as a source of population growth in America today. Our talent for mitigating natural controls like fertility rates extends to public policy decisions, too. Should not our first concern in sustainability be at the source, namely, population growth? We cannot control the population growth in the world, but we can here at home. While I do not urge us to close our doors, I do urge that scientific considerations about the capacity of our infrastructure be made part of immigration policy.

The NPR Sustainability editor was unable to offer any hope, and did not address the elephant. Many believe that Sustainability can be achieved with organic farming, much the way alternative medicine advocates feel that health can be best maintained with natural remedies. This is magical thinking with little basis in reality. Science is the only reliable source of engineering advancement, and Sustainability today should be about engineering mitigating support systems and not speculating upon the sustainability of cow manure.

"O tempora! O mores!"

Old Glory versus the Decorators

2010-05-08T11:41:00.001-04:00

Wearing the flag has been in the news lately. I have strong feelings on the subject.

The US Flag Code forbids the use of Old Glory as a decoration. Using it as such is a tawdry political statement, a cheap and showy appeal to our heartfelt respect for the star spangled banner and the republic for which it stands. At one time, the Code forbad the 24/7, all-weather display prominent today. That changed in the 1970s when the "McDonald's Changes" were made. I call them the McDonald's Changes because the fast food industry lobbied for them. It eliminated the labor cost of hoisting and lowering the flag daily, training employees in the proper treatment of the flag, and the cost of replacing flags soiled in handling, with the predictable cost of illumination, initial installation, and minor maintenance.

Around the same time, all manner of minor officials began wearing flag patches and lapel pins, I believe mostly in reaction to the "Woodstock Nation." The Code was soon changed to accomodate that, and we now have Old Glory on the shoulders of all kinds of uniforms. In the military, national flag shoulder patches are a necessity in these days of international "police" actions. But is there any question that the firefighter that comes to your house is an official of American Government? Why do they need a US Flag shoulder patch? It is said they are a respectful, patriotic statement. In practice, aren't these ubiquitous patches more disrespectful of the flag? The flag should not touch the ground. Do all police officers and firfighters fall flag up?

Various movements took to burning flags as a political statement, so officialdom began to plaster it on their minions. At the same time, more and more US Flags began to appear behind political leaders. If one flag is good, 50 is better. A field of Flags became the normal political background, rather than one US Flag and a flag of the official's office. We ate it up. Flags began appearing on everything, even things specifically forbidden, and obviously disrespectful, like napkins. In the quest for public patriotic display or symbolically claiming the inheritance of the Republic we have lost sight of a sacred tradition, that Old Glory be treated as a person.

It is easy to use the flag, to stir the emotions for the banner. It is a "hot button", a bone of contention. Like arguing about religion, using the flag symbolically evokes a strong reaction. But, gentle readers, you are not more American because you wear the flag. You are not supporting the troops by wearing the flag. You are putting the flag in harm's way when you wear it. You wouldn't use a picture of someone without their permission; our flag etiquette is akin to that permission. Yes, it is a public figure, but it is unlike any other. You cheapen the flag when you use it on cheap merchandise, you disrespect it when you use it on disposable items. I will defend your right to make US flag toilet paper, but I will boycott the product if you do.

While I do not wish to remove the flag from public discourse, I do wish that those who claim it so loudly would be more considerate of the ultimate effect upon the flag. No one of us owns the flag; we all do. It is the flag of the position and the opposition. It has a higher approval rating than any party or official. Brave people have died for it. It flies for those who hate it, too. It doesn't wave well when you wear it.

Long may it wave.

Farmer Bob sings the Star Spangled Banner

Soft Drink Taxes or Better Public Policy?

2010-04-27T14:05:00.001-04:00

Image by Jonas in China via Flickr

Because we are fat, a tax on soft drinks is being proposed to reduce consumption, in other words, to "help" Americans drink less soda. Studies show that increases in price reduce consumption. My personal experience shows that price hikes cause you to find someone who sells wholesale.

Did you know that you can buy soda with federal Food Coupons?

Maybe we should stop subsidizing soda with federal tax dollars meant to provide good nutrition to poor people. It might save a whole lot of money, certainly would reduce soft drink consumption, and should promote standards of proper nutrition.

Whaddya think?

Farmer Bob Goes Commercial

2010-03-26T09:51:00.001-04:00

As part of my ever-expanding quest for digital domination of intergalactic media, I will soon be writing music reviews here. But, worry not, I will still post my observations and rants on subjects sundry. I seem to have lost my way with new music, and have grown out-of-touch with many genres. The best way for me to correct this is to seek out stuff to write about. But I am faced with a dilemma. Critics usually gain noteriety with negative reviews. Anyone who knows me, knows my talent for negativity, for pessimism, for true cynicism. So the question is: do I play to my strengths?

Tune in for more later.

A Wordle of 300 of Farmer Bob's Oft Used Words

2010-03-22T17:42:00.004-04:00

image courtesy of http://www.wordle.net/

The Wordle or Word Cloud produced at http://www.wordle.net/ from 300 often used words in my blog. The application was written by an IBM-er named Jonathan Feinberg.

SUICIDE

2010-03-14T12:17:00.003-04:00

Today a friend mentioned a suicide and I was saddened.
But not by the act.
No. No. Life is over for them.
By the consequences for all, I am saddened.

Suicide is selfish.

The pain ends for you,

But your friends bear the questions,

"Could I have helped?",

"Did I cause your pain?",

And, most of all, "Why?",

But you will and can never answer.

It is a cruel trick to take your life from those who love you.

The ultimate irony, the solution to make your life better by ending it.

You pay the ultimate price, but sacrifice our hearts.

Suicide is selfish.

Texting and Recklessness

2010-03-07T10:56:00.001-05:00

Does anyone else see the inanity of laws banning "texting while driving?" We already have laws against reckless driving. Texting while driving is obviously reckless. Why do we need a more specific law?

Perhaps it is the language. Rather than "texting", we should call it "composing, writing and mailing a short note" so we we might better understand its recklessness.

Health Care Haiku

2010-03-07T01:13:00.001-05:00

Write your lobbyists.

Congress isn't listening.

Lobbyists write bills.

Truth in Politicizing - The Big Benefactors' Billboard

2010-01-26T11:27:00.001-05:00

Corporations are entitled to speak, so sayeth the Court. At first I thought a Constitutional Amendment would work, but the politically savvy said it would never get passed. So I return to an idea I had a while back, namely, to replace all existing campaign finance laws with one: Full Disclosure.

Full Disclosure means we know who is paying for whom. I thought we could make politicans wear sponsorship patches like NASCAR guys of old. I say of old, because I went looking for some pictures of drivers festooned with patches, and found that the new NASCAR has discovered stylists and branding, with one major sponsor of the uniform and paint job surrounded by a few tastefully placed brands. I couldn't find the old, wild mish-mash of patches.

More importantly, after I perused the contribution lists of our political leaders, I became aware that there is not enough room on the human body for the brand patches necessary to convey who is paying for whom in politics. Another method must be found, and I think I have it.

We all are familiar with "the crawl", that line of type crawling across our video screens. I propose a similar device for political speech. When a politican or spokesman appears on video, a "brand billboard slideshow" will appear above, or in place of, their talking head, and the brands of corporate contributors would appear sequentially by size of contribution. We could program those US Flag lapel pins they wear to emit a "slideshow tag" with the online address of their slideshow, so that it is always current.

I think this would be very successful and we could probably eliminate the yearly debate on ethics and campaign finance legislation. Since the contributors are making these contributions from the munificence of their hearts, we could call the Full Disclosure legislation the "Big Benefactors' Billboard Bill."

Write your congresscritters.

Amendment 28? The Corporate Amendment

2010-01-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

With the recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that the 1st Amendment does not allow discrimination based on the identity of the speaker, we must seek an Amendment to the Constitution in order to limit the power of corporate speech. I am happy that SCOTUS has ended their 200 year dance around this issue, although the minority urged continued avoidance.

I propose the following Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

"Congress shall have the power to limit the constitutional standing of corporations."

Write your Congresscritters. Recommend and support this Amendment,

Critical Mass and the One-Way Street: Tolerating Fundamentalists

2010-01-21T09:59:00.008-05:00

Image by Paul Robert Lloyd via Flickr

Government tolerance for near all religions and speech is specified by the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It is an extraordinary thing. Prior to the United States, most if not all nations had national religions. That this tolerance has been fairly reciprocal among sects in America is a near miracle when you consider the history of religious conflict. Americans generally keep out of each other's way when it comes to religion.

The exception is the fundamentalist. I include self-righteous secular fundamentalists here, too, the purveyors of political correctness and such. The essential quality of fundamentalism is intolerance. Fundamentalism promotes active opposition of other points of view because the opposition is "wrong" based upon the pronouncements of a Higher Authority.

Critical Mass is the amount of radioactive material you must hold together to initiate nuclear fission. Without that critical mass of material you get no explosion, or, as Howland Owl would say. "Nary a fizz!" As our population has grown, so have the various fundamentalist communities. We now find ourselves surrounded by countless communities of citizens intolerant of something or other. I believe we have reached a Critical Mass of Intolerance and are starting to fizz.

Hating the opposition is the national pastime of American politicans, but it is less so among the electorate. Generally, we hate politicians, but we love politics. Because of Critical Mass we can no longer play politics as parlor game for fear of offending a nearby fundamentalist. We can no longer have a deep discussion about issues among dissenting parties because fundamentalism is likely to rear its head and discussion descend into the mantra-like repeating of cant. Proof of this critical mass can be found right here in the blogosphere. Very few read those with whom they disagree. Most blogs have a narrowly self-selected audience that is unlike that of traditional mass media. There are no vegan friends on the American Beef facebook page.

Have you ever read the comments on the articles in online newspapers or discussion groups? Few comments are even on point. It is disheartening to see intelligent comments answered by name-calling or the relentless restatement of unsupported and often disproven "facts" by the members of groups purported to be pursuing discussion, but actually involved in a masturbatory massaging of the memberships' preferred view of the world. For example, there are a plethora of Health Care Reform groups seeking "consensus" about the reform. Should you go there and express an opinion contrary to the actual goals of the group, you will be excoriated. They are like people discussing which flavor of ice cream to make, rather than answering the larger question of how to make a dessert with available ingredients. We'd all like to have ice cream, but it can't be made from wheat. At least, not yet.

The rise of the narrow Fundamentalist Interest Group (FIG) on the Internet has created a new, obstructive power in society. Nuts of all persuasions can now find each other more easily to plan and execute havoc. Sometimes, or most times really, they simply reinforce each other's delusions, but there is a real danger in this incubation of looniness and the illusion that your particular looniness is your normal peer group. You think so because it is a self-selected group, but they are not really your peers, they are your compatriots or co-conspirators or co-dependents. You have become a full fledged member of a FIG when you become a Lying Egotistical Arrogant Fool, or a FIGLEAF, who believes their own cant. This is most appropos because figleaves were once used to cover the genitalia of nude statues by "right-thinking people" to counteract the lust that might be aroused by the sight of Hercules' wee-wee carved in stone.

The new FIGLEAF is used to cover thinking for yourself and to establish conformity so no one's thinking can be compared, because that would be "Judgmental, man", and we can't have that. After all, all ideas are equal, right? That's what Equality means, right? If all people are equal, then doesn't that mean their ideas are equal, too? Well, only if you are a moron. All moronic ideas are equal. All other ideas must be submitted for testing. Is it possible? Is it likely? Is it pragmatic? Et cetera, et cetera. et cetera. But FIGLEAFs are opposed to testing because to test a belief is to doubt a belief, and there is no doubt in a FIG, only doctrine and delusions.

Our constitution mandates we tolerate the intolerant, but the intolerant would like to change that. Some would "restore God" to our society. I tell those folks to substitute ALLAH for God when they get on the idea of injecting their religious morality or legends into civic life. The fiction that America was founded by "Judeo-Christians" belies the fact that Freemasonry was considered a dangerous secret society by many churches, notwithstanding its recognition of a Supreme Being. Most of the Founders were Deists and Freemasons, some were sectarians, and some were atheists or what we now call secular humanists. God did not found or guide America. It is the product of men, and now of women, too. Neither has God been driven out of America. Can a Supreme Being be made to leave the area by mere mortals? Would an all powerful Supreme Being favor Cowboys over the Indians? Men over women? Whites over Blacks? No. I don't think so.

So, the next time you meet an intolerant fundamentalist, tolerate them. But let them know that you are only tolerating them because you dissaprove of intolerance.

What Were Our Parents Thinking?

2010-01-20T08:33:00.012-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

What were our parents thinking? Scions of the most fecund and prodigious generation ever in America; steeped in the faiths of their fathers, in the unspoken social contracts that allowed the law to be a last resort rather than the first, in the stoicism of “mind your business”, not “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, not “undressing” in public; who lived through the Great Depression and had sympathy and gratitude for the things that unions brought like the 40 hour week, overtime, benefits, pensions, holidays and vacations; who pledged to the Flag and the Republic for which it stands, and its cores in the Declaration, Constitution and Polling place, who invented radar, the atomic bomb, the transistor, the computer, and perfected the airplane, rocket, jet, helicopter, the bituminous concrete highway, 50,000 mile tires and the LP record; our parents chose Disney as their number one, Mom & Dad-approved, wholesome, family-oriented entertainment source. Again I ask, what were they thinking?

Let's take a look at the body of Disney’s work with an eye towards how Disney’s ideals are at cross-purposes to the things our parents were taught to believe. Readers might parry my claims with the thrust that our parents beliefs were superstitions too, but I make a distinction among the quality, moral and ethical standing of the institutions promulgating superstition today. In other words, some religions are more tolerant than others, and we like those better even if we think their beliefs are loony. Like the old joke about opinions and anuses: we all have ‘em and they all stink. Also, I don’t leave out those secularists who abandoned their progeny to the Magic Kingdom. They might be rational in their intellectual abandon of superstition, but actions speak louder than words. (This is beginning to sound like Æsop.)

When You Wish Upon A Star

There it is, Folks, the Disney Creed. The first phrase can be intoned just as in the Gregorian Chant "Credo in Unum Deo" ("I believe in One God"), and could well be stated as Credo in Unum Stella, and declared a heresy by the Society for the Protection of the Faith, better known as the Holy Inquisition. It is sung by a cricket representing Conscience.

When you wish upon a star, makes no diff’rence who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.
When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star as dreamers do.
Fate is kind, She brings to those who love, the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.
Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through,when you wish upon a star, your dream comes true.
- by Ned Washington and Leigh Harline
Copyright © 1940 by BOURNE CO. Copyright renewed.

So, whaddya think? I cannot deny the power of the performance, it is hauntingly beautiful, with manipulative and melodramatic power in its arrangement and the near-countertenor lead. I can hear my parents, “what a pretty tune!”. They, Irish-American Catholics, were more atuned to learning and performing music as a course of life, and not an exceptional event. Aware of the power of words, I am surprised they let this get by. Let’s go line by superstitious line:

When you wish upon a star, makes no diff’rence who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.

OK, Daddy. First of all, “Why?” Failing to answer that, you were taught and truly believe that the only way to make your way in life is to believe in God, work hard, pay your taxes, love your neighbors, do your civic duties, be sober and responsible, and, all in all, either raise yourself up some, follow a noble vocation or ethical profession, and failing that, raise some kids that might, so how does the idea that all your desires can be fulfilled by wishing upon a star fit in with your values? Why would you think this a harmless idea? The most amazing thing is that this occurs while James Bond and Peyton Place are condemned from pulpits, both bully and church, as morally dangerous influences on adults (the sort the Brits call “right-thinking people”), and EC Comics is being put out of business by "Slaughter of the Innocents", a hysteric tome with horror stories about children committing suicide by jumping from their stack of EC horror comics, with Tales from the Crypt fresh in their young impressionable minds, which instigates the Comics Code, much like the big media (publishers and producers, print. radio, movies, and the new upstart, TV) Standards and Practices codes.

But maybe not too amazing as our parents were trusting of their institutions. Some would say they were hypocrites, but that goes too far. I believe their leaders were, those mavens of media and their Hollywood role-model pawns, consummate showmen honed in the misery and ruthless competition of the vaudeville circuit, then thrust into the mass media as “ordinary folks with STAR POWER”, when in fact they were products, no matter what the quality of craft. And our folks bought it, hook, line and sinker. They thought that the government had their interests at heart, that the corporate good citizen was the new model, the benign paternal company the norm, that there was truth in advertising, that scientists could not be bought, that new was great, in better living through chemistry, and plastics, and that nuclear power would make electricity free, that all their children would be able to go to college and have an even better life. And they sacrificed to make much of it possible, but unconsciously indulged something counter to the accumulated wisdom of their own parent’s and peers’ beliefs, namely Mr. Disney and the now nearly completely profit-motivated company. Mr. Disney might have believed this stuff. I’ll need to check his background before I make errors of attribution. After I know the skinny, I’ll make all the errors I want. Let us continue to the next sentence.

When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star as dreamers do.

What?! No wish too extreme? What if I wish that it does make a diff’rence who you are? What if I wish for everyone but me and my chosen lusts be transported to the sun? Come on. If they think that magical thinking is harmless, no wonder they’re worried that Elvis’s swingin’ dick is dangerous, Elvis’s dick is real. Believing in real magic is harmless thinking? This is not the willing suspension of disbelief you use to play along or be entertained by a performer, this is wishbones and black cats and broken mirrors and hats on beds, whistling in the dressing room or mentioning the Scottish play by name, Nomar’s batting gloves and goalies throwing up. It’s mass hysteria in the name of a nice song. Next line,

Fate is kind, She brings to those who love, the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.

OK. Didn’t you tell us the Fates were pagan idols, incapable of producing the blessing of the One, True God? So what is this shit? Did you think that no one would believe it because it was ridiculous? Like the Red Queen, it is possible to think of a number of impossible things before breakfast, but the weak-minded could convince themselves that those impossibilities would become true because they desired it so. I note at this time that children are notoriously weak-minded and impressionable. These ideas are promised true in the song their mother and father sings to them, not as a dangerous idea promoting irrationality, but as a soothing lullaby. Everything will be alright because we wish it so. The Power or Positive Thinking gone wild, a secular Prosperity theology. Onward! Excelsior!

Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through, when you wish upon a star, your dream comes true.

Now we’ve all heard the expression, a bolt out of the blue, and we all understand it to mean a lightning strike without a cloud in the sky, but I’ve never known anyone who has seen such a thing, and I am naturally skeptical simply because of all the golfers and farmers in the open fields of the world who might have but have not reported same. There is always some kind of weather front involved. The immediate supernatural assistance of Fate that is demanded and enforced by the wish-granting star is actually like that bolt, completely imaginary, but the metaphor serves to validate the magical thinking that wishing makes your dreams come true by moving the Fates.

Mom, Dad, were you there when they crucified my Lord?

As you can see, this little piece of music, lyric and sentiment is a crack in a consistent moral façade that allows dangerous solutions to seep in, to crystallize, to calcify, and build the frame for manipulation, commercial or noble, sacred or profane.

Catch the Magic.

Image via Wikipedia

John Henry in Space

2010-01-17T10:27:00.006-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

John Henry was a steel drivin' man famed for defeating a steam-powered hammer in a contest on the C&O line in Talcott, West Virginia. His legend is a morality play of self-determination and the power of supreme focus and individual effort, but also a lesson in Phyrric victories, victories gained at irretrievable cost. John Henry died with his hammer in his hands.

I cite John Henry because of the recent crisis in the US Space program. The Shuttle is to be retired and we will have NO capability to carry a human to orbit. We will be depending upon Russian rockets to continue servicing our multi-billion dollar investment in the International Space Station. Contrast the fact that Japan, India and China have manned programs, and maybe even North Korea, too, and you see why it is incredible to me that the US has abdicated its leadership in manned space exploration. The Russians are tops in manned space exploration now, although we still maintain the lead in fancy-schmancy robotic exploration.

The competition between manned and robotic exploration has always been contentious in budget battles, and while robots have been in ascendancy since the manned lunar landing, there is no drama of exploration today greater than human versus space. There is no rescue in space. You can't float up to where the air is. You can't call Air/Sea Rescue. You are stuck with whatever you and ground support can cobble up should something go awry. Problems are even harder on the robots, as they can't cobble up anything and must depend entirely on clever ground staff, and can be brought down by simple math errors.

Image by JAMBTC via Flickr

We are a little like John Henry in that we won the Cold War Space Race, defeated the Soviet machine and died with the hammer of the Saturn V in our hands. Yes, folks, those Saturn Fives you visit in Florida and Houston are not mockups, they are REAL. They represent BILLIONS of dollars abandoned by our government. We lost the foundation of 21st century infrastructure because we did not have the stomach to pay for it, this work so important to the future of humankind, as we grow our population beyond the capabilities of the planet. The Russians are laying the rails to space now, just like the steam hammer took John Henry's job in spite of his heroic effort.

I propose that President Obama present a challenge to the nation to explore simultaneously the robotic and manned space programs. To focus attention on the challenge I suggest creating a John Henry Prize to be awarded to the team that best advances our space infrastructure. It should be awarded every two years to maintain interest in the race, and should include a tangible reward for the technical workers and astronauts. This is a jobs program I could get behind, and that could deliver long-term benefits to all of the USA, even if only by exciting the national imagination, and inspiring a generation.

The trophy could be John Henry with a Saturn V in his hands.

Image via Wikipedia

Emissions, Hollywood and Reality

2009-12-30T12:46:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

California, land of paradox, manufactured celebrity, and the Left Coast of American intellectual hubris, is a land governed by strict vehicle emission regulations. I am always puzzled by California's pride in its clean air regulations. Should a state be proud of regulations that produce "Bad Air" days for one third of the year in L.A.? I hear that they now intend to regulate wood burning and barbecue grills.

Has anyone investigated the emissions produced in the name of Special Effects? Nearly every explosion you see in action genre cinema today is filmed in the real world and "enhanced" with gasoline and other accelerants. While this is exciting, is it really necessary? And what is the cost? I imagine that burning a cupful of gasoline in a special effects explosion produces incomplete combustion and a plethora of emissions, especially when combined with the other materials being burned. And what about the explosive materials? And the firearms?

It is illegal in many places to burn trash, because of the toxins produced by burning synthetics like plastics. A car, one of the most likely props to be burned, contains an incredible array of synthetics, even when stripped of usable parts. Must every car that crashes through a guardrail in a movie explode? Why has fantasy replaced reality in the special effects world, even while purportedly depicting real events?

Firearms in the movies are often completely unreal, too. Just carrying the amount of ammunition I see used in "routine" Hollywood shootouts requires use of a handcart, and in toto per action film, probably requires a good size truck. But the heroes and villians fire thousands of rounds with nary a nod to where the heck it all comes from. I'm surprised that California with its strict gun laws, does not have similar firearms emissions laws. They probably do have them for firing ranges, but I don't think all special effects are filmed on firing ranges.

Hollywood enhancements may be a significant contributor to L.A.'s Bad Air and should be investigated. While population control is the only way to truly reduce humanity's emissions, until we come to grips with that, I suggest that a return to reality in Hollywood when depicting reality might be a good starting point for a return to sanity in the body politic, a return to vérité.

Image via Wikipedia

Christmas and Freedom

2009-12-23T09:43:00.004-05:00

The Marine Corps Band at the National Tree Lighting. Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Well, it's that season again, the season when we all settle in for a nice, warm bunch of news articles about a fight about the right to have Christmas displays without having a display for every tom-dick-and-harry religion who can find a holiday of their own near Christmas in the name of religious tolerance or "inclusion." I predict articles and features about the Death of Christmas, and how we have taken Christ out of Christmas, and about neighborhoods famed for their lighting displays, and about neighbors complaining about air blowers and tinny Christmas carol recordings running non-stop from Thanksgiving to Epiphany, and Eco-warriors blowing on about the waste of trees. It's the Christmas Season, the season of giving, of hope, of national insanity. Christmas is a Christian invention that has been ingrained so thoroughly into American consumer culture that Christians can no longer claim it as their own peaceful, blessed season. It is now a secular holiday celebrated by endless reruns of Christmas movies, the aforementioned news features, and the huge bills brought by the Ghost of Christmas Excess.

While the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation, some of the original states were explicitly founded by and for particular Christian sects. Our nation acknowledges a Sovereign God in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but the founders were soon beset by and acceded to demands for the protection provided by the 1st Amendment, forbidding the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The 14th Amendment applies this protection to all government within our borders, not just the federal government.

Christmas creche displays are a free exercise of religion. Menorahs are a free exercise of religion. Paying for them from taxes is establishment. You have the right to have a display, but you have no right to make me pay for it.

Kwaanza is not a religious holiday, it is an ethnic holiday. We have long traditions of observing ethnic holidays in America, e.g. St. Patrick's Day, Columbus Day. While I have deep respect for Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwaanza, I'm not sure that creating an African American holiday that directly follows the biggest holiday white folks ever invented is quite the right way to heal racial division in America. However, if someone wants a Kwaanza display, I'm OK with it if they have the votes.

The Christmas holiday, Christmas trees, and Santa are inventions rooted in christian traditions, but are no longer religious, per se. Many non-religious folks observe the holidays, put up trees and lights simply from tradition. Paying for lights and seasonal decorations from taxes is not establishment. It is a choice of your municipality.

Christmas is now about freedom, folks. And that includes the freedom to celebrate Xmas. God has not left American culture; God's the one that made us free to determine what we will be. Freedom is the essential quality of America, not godliness. We may be a good nation, but we are not a godly one. And be not confused, our Freedom is under daily assault by many of our politicians and political interests, domestic and international. We, the People, are the final defenders of Freedom. Vote your conscience and write your legislators. Every voice matters, even if only to add to the cacophony that is Freedom.

AIDS and Me - World AIDS Day, 1 Dec 2009

2009-12-01T15:28:00.009-05:00

I wrote this song after hearing someone refer to intentional infection with HIV as "Giving the Gift". The infected have a special duty to avoid spreading the virus. In rich countries, AIDS is seen as a chronic condition treatable with expensive drugs, but, in poor countries, it is a death sentence. We should not be cavalier about this disease just because we are rich enough to afford treatment.

Be Safe.
Play Safe.
Wear Your Rubbers.

N.B. - Apologies to Jean Langlais for stealing and rearranging his Missa Solemnis - Sanctus riff.

The Future Today in Afghanistan

2009-11-16T13:25:00.002-05:00

Afghan Provinces. Image via Wikipedia

Imagine a world patrolled by killer aerial drones. Imagine Afghanistan. Instead of conquest, the goal is to contain the nation, and specific communities and persons of interest using aerial drones, for as long as it takes. Which, considering Afghan history, might be forever. The Forever War, but the only time-travel required is cultural. How far behind are the drone tanks and warrior drones?

Why does anyone think they can take control of a nation that has successfully fought off the best of conquerors. Why did we overthrow the Taliban? Because they were fundamentalist Islamists? How does that fit with our tolerance of religion? Because they violated Human Rights? We have many more egregious offenders among our United Nations. Because we could? Yes. Because we were angry? Yes. Along with the world? Yes. How's that goin' now, that World thing?

According to the The Seattle Times, July 23, 2009

Quote:
UNITED STATES - About 59,000 soldiers, at least 675 died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.
BRITAIN - About 9,000 soldiers, 188 dead.
GERMANY - About 4,000 soldiers, 35 dead.
CANADA - About 2,500, 125 dead.
FRANCE - 2,900 soldiers, 27 dead.
ITALY - 2,800 soldiers, 14 dead.
NETHERLANDS - 1,650 soldiers, 19 dead.
DENMARK - 700 soldiers, 24 dead.
End quote.

So 82,000 pairs of boots on the ground, taking on a country of 32.7 million. Granted we have the cool equipment and aerial platforms that can deliver death from miles away, as well as motorized artillery, tanks and infantry vehicles. The infantry runs on food and water, but everyone needs gasoline, too. All this is very expensive to cart about the world.

Image via Wikipedia

So the new idea is to run only drones and contain Al-Quaeda, the franchise, and the hell with the Afghans. It might work, but only as the Forever War. The major error each of the prior conquerors made was interfering with the time-honored trade in opium and marijuana, the Afghan cash crops. The Taliban imposed a ban and death penaly, but they also co-opted the trade, muscling in on centuries-old territories. They paid, when the exiled opposition worked the post-9/11 opportunity to have them toppled and themselves placed in power. Again we hear about poppy eradication, etc. When will we learn? No one will ever stop this trade. No one has ever been able to.

Image via Wikipedia

Afghanistan is a country where everything is uphill until you get to Tajiksitan or you roll downhill into Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Pakistan. Argali, the mountain sheep, live there, but it's too steep for mountain goats. Gerbils and hamsters and five-toed jerboa live there, Gazelles and Ibex and Snow Leopards, too. All the good land is either grazed grassland, or used in subsistence farming and herding, with opium, marijuana and (surprise) apples as cash crops. Until we, the West, devise an exit strategy for the Drug War, we will be hopelessly mired in Afghan corruption.

Image via Wikipedia

Will we be fighting the War onTerrorism with joysticks, delivering death by point and click? VP Joe Biden thinks we can exert hegemony this way without coffins at Dover and burials at Arlington. It is a tempting vision, but it is wrong. Al Quaeda can go in a decidely low-tech direction to thwart intelligence, and provide targets of opportunity for the drones that create vast civilian casualties. Foreign corpses sap political will, too. And Al Quaeda can attack soft targets here.

We must form new policies if we wish to succeed in Afghanistan. Only by incorporating the opium lords can the government escape corruption. But we have not the will for that, so we contemplate fighting the Forever War, our high-tech culture versus Afghanistan, the 16th century culture armed with 21st century ordinance and information technology.

Attacked by Gall

2009-09-14T15:58:00.008-04:00

I just spent a week in the hospital after what the ER doctor called a "gall bladder attack." You see, post-middle age is when you get very well acquainted with the specific functions of internal organs that have uncomplainingly served you for years. Since my last chronicle of my adventures with medicine was quite graphic, I decided to put my mind to a more whimsical presentation. For that, I turn to my alter-ego, Herr Doktor Scheissmeister, for the complete explanation.

Herr Doktor Scheissmeister:

"Ze Gall Bladder (#5) iz located just below ze Liver (#4) und shtores bile, a nezzezzary part of digestion. Ze Gall Bladder gets its name from the fact that tiny French people lives in zere, hoarding bile, und monitoring ze quality of your dietz. If you do not follow a goot dietz, zen ze tiny Gauls organize a protest, causing a major or a mild indigestion, depending on how grozze ze dietary infraction. Zen, ifff zey do not get the proper rezponze, zey organize a shrtike. Uzing ze bile und cholezterol, zey create ze gallstones und roll zem into ze ducts. Oof, da pain!! Like a hot poker below ze shternum.

Ze only zolution iz to evict the tiny Gauls, und tear down ze Haus, ze Gall Bladder, mit Zurgery. Zen ze bile will be zent directly from the liver to ze duct, which iz no problem for volks dat eat regularly.

Farmer Bob:

The Gallic eviction is being planned and will be executed at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in October, an appropriate month for having your abdominal cavity blown up to the size of a pumpkin.

Of Kings and Constitutions

2009-08-31T10:21:00.006-04:00

Franklin D. Roosevelt via last.fm

While engaging in a vigorous facebook mediated discussion about FDR's Economic Bill of Rights, someone decried the reverence I hold for the Constitution of the United States. One of the arguments was that the British do fine without one. This is not true. Brtitain's Constitution is consider unwritten because there is no document called the British Constitution. However, they have a primary doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty, and a vast body of legal precedent, treaties and procedures. Because modern Britain evolved from a sovereignty, the people had already surrendered their sovereignty and were subjects rather than independent sovereign citizens. Ceding sovereignty from the King and Queen to the Parliament was the natural course of events.

We revolted against the King. We declared every man a sovereign. We cede our sovereignty grudgingly, and sometimes wholly differently in each state. We don't seem to mind being regulated, but we hate being told that we cannot do something, or being told that there is only one way to do something. But we also have based much of our law and custom upon British law, excepting the idea of subjugation to the Crown or Parliament. The US government is our subject, and not the other way around. The various states have differing Constitutions, cession of rights, and doctrines of government, but we all agree on the rights enumerated in the U. S. Constitution. It is to that consensus that I attach reverence.

Generally, once the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, we all go along with it. This is as much a part of American political culture as our cordial presidential transitions and, until recently, our little-contested election results. The abortion debate has changed this as our policies diverge from traditional moral stances. Society has become more secular and tolerant of things once considered anathema. We are reasoning our way to a new moral authority, and stumbling along the way. But we are doing it our way. Not the European way. Not the Asian way. Not the African way. Not the Australian way. Not the Antarctic way. The American way.

The 21st Century - What a Pleasure; What a Disappointment

2009-08-26T11:05:00.008-04:00

Defense Dept meets with Chinese about North Korea - Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We're well into the 21st Century, but aside from the economic debacle, not much has changed. Few of the things predicted in my youth have come to be, 2001 came and went without Pan Am space travel and Moon colonies, but some of the things predicted by Orwell have. Take Newspeak, for example. The Ministry of Peace is the military. We call it the Defense Department, but the effect is the same; it presents an innocuous face on what we once called the War Department.

Machiavelli - Image via Wikipedia

Orwell's Newspeak concept has been taken even farther by the discovery of "framing." What you argue about, the frame of the argument, is now more important than the actual issue as political scientists push demographic buttons using the frame alone. The loyal opposition is now treated as the traitorous enemy. Of the empirically-hardened soft sciences, I think Political Science is the most dangerous threat to our freedom, setting us one against another to fulfill political goals of dubious public interest.

We have squandered much of our progress in space exploration and exploitation, but I celebrate the space industry that creates and supports communications, weather and other satellites.

Sputnik - Image via Wikipedia

It is a wonder that this very blog takes a minimum 37,000 mile trip to be posted on Blogger's servers.

I celebrate the search engines, and the ability to google up an education, the continuously updated encyclopedia I longed for in my youth as I read hopelessly outdated info about space. But I worry about the mutability of that data, the rewriting of history, on-the-fly, by Government or Academia. Now we must be ever more careful about archiving as our great libraries go behind the digital door. I also celebrate the millions of computer scientists, engineers and programmers from hardware to firmware to software that make things

easier for us, but I also condemn the bloated code and user cryptic interfaces that are often created by forgetting computer science's best practices of the past.

We became servants of Computers much sooner than predicted. Not in the classic sense of sentient computers making a more efficient but less free society, but rather in the the insidious, incremental impositions on our lives, and the wholesale transformation from analog to digital of information storage and distribution, from print to screen, from postcard to email, from LP to DVD, from NTSC to ATSC.

I do not deny the decided benefits of the digital revolution, but I fear the loss of basic understanding by the hoi polloi about the analog world in which we live. The watch is fast becoming only jewelry, and not a necessary accoutrement. The cell phone is the new wristwatch, and with the advent of Iphones and other intuitive touch interfaces, it will become the date and phone book and web browser, too.

Flat TVs came about 30 years later than predicted. Nuclear power generation never became what it promised to be, except perhaps in France. Printing solar electric cells like paper never happened, and their efficiency has not improved much. Combustion technology has come a long way, and efficiency is very high, so the cost-benefit ratios over other technologies are a steep obstacle to change

French Nuclear Power complex - Image via Wikipedia

The resource-intensive and wasteful airline business has created artificial efficiencies in the delivery of freight. We worry about the wetlands in our backyard and drive hybrid vehicles, but think nothing of using the airlines to travel or to transport luxury products. We buy water in bottles that is trucked or sometimes flown from wells in faraway places. More harm to our planet is done by airplanes and helicopters than by small arms.

On the surface we have become a more transparent society, with financial disclosures and the ubiquitous availability of information, but in truth we have become more secretive, as the only way to protect against disclosure is to make something secret. We claim a more liberal morality, but no longer tolerate the white lies of "off-the-record" or any semblance of a private life, especially for public figures. Those kind of secrets are now an open book. Secrecy is now formal.

There are now about 68 thousand Congressional staffers (agencies and personal staff), something like a 123-to-1 ratio to Senators and Congressman. In 1955 that number was around 24 thousand. We now allow personal staff to do campaign work, which was not allowed in the '50s, and many are very well compensated.

Our automobiles have gotten much better, luxury features like power windows and air conditioning are now standard. Our home appliances have also gotten much better, but the days of robotic butlers and maids are still far off. Our communications devices have gotten better and worse. People are available for contact nearly 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, provided they are in an urban area. We have abandoned the idea of the urban centers subsidizing the rural areas, much like we abandoned the idea of Blue Cross/Blue Shield in favor of more fragmented risk pools, for selfish reasons.

Mass media is slicker than ever before, and public spectacles are a huge business, but the story lines of public literature and film seem to be more formulaic than ever. Many movies have plots that can be described in three words: stuff blows up. Often the advertising trailer is more compelling than the movie.

Now, after the most enormous financial finagle in history, we are about to embark on the creation of a new commodities market in Carbon Emissions. We seem to ignore the lessons of the past. These commodities exchanges grow into huge profits for intermediaries at the public's expense. People will get rich simply because they are an intermediary.

I now have two phone bills, a satellite TV bill, a satellite Internet bill. I consider these to be essential utilities, an idea at which my parents would have scoffed, and their parents would have considered insane.

Intextication on two phones. - Image via Wikipedia

Few now smoke tobacco. Few drink alcohol like folks did in the past, but the variety of available beverages has expanded enormously. Nothing is out of season anymore; strawberries in January are commonplace.

My largest concern for this century is the expectation that no one is average, when in reality, nearly everyone is average. That's what average means.

I do love the influence of hip-hop on music lyrics. People are returning to proper scansion and the formation of rhyme schemes. I love the ubiquity of subwoofers, another outgrowth of hip-hop.

I sure hope it continues to get better on the whole than it gets worse.

Me and My Health Care

2009-08-12T10:58:00.005-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Some of you may wonder why I write so often about health care. I do so because I am a major consumer of healthcare services. Because I have AIDS I am a careful and conscientious patient. Modern pharmacology has saved my life. Modern medicine has prolonged my life and made it more comfortable. I see my primary care doctor quarterly, and many other specialists at regular intervals. I speak to and have gained the perspective of many health care workers, from the clinicians to the clerks to the maintenance workers. I have seen the changes from paternalistic companies to "you're on your own, buddy" companies, which is among the most reactionary changes in our culture. We went from "the greatest good for the greatest number" to back to "rugged individualism", or "Am I my brother's keeper?" Let me relate my experience with health insurance.

I started my career with New England Telephone in 1968. At that time and for many years thereafter, the company clearly told us that we had "More Than a Job", that our benefits were a large component of our compensation, and that pension practices for retirees like Cost-of-Living increases and Benefit Parity were part of that promise. Of course, they always included a disclaimer about changing the plan at any time, and that nothing they said was a binding contract, but the strongest impression their brochures and letters left was that the company was committed to keeping their promises. And for a good portion of my career, until the 1984 Bell System breakup, New England Telephone did keep their promises. They added prescription drug and vision coverage. But they also began to react to a change in American culture, caving in to the "it's not fair" crowd that resented paying the same premiums as a family of four. If I believed in conspiracies, I'd say it was a divide and conquer strategy to end the growing costs of company-provided health and retirement benefits. It started with the establishment of "benefit banks", a fixed amount per employee to cover medical, Rx and dental. It was equivalent to the cost of coverage for a husband and wife with two children. If you were single, or made coverage choices didn't spend the entire amount, you received the remainder in cash. This both diluted the risk pool and tied coverage directly to per capita. It was a selfish plan, but it was wildly popular because of the baby boomer bubble of singles. We weren't big on thinking ahead, living in the moments of the "Me" decade, the 1970s.

After the 1984 Bell system breakup, there began a contnuing stream of changes to the promises. Pension increase became few and far between. Co-payments were introduced, which penalize people who go to the doctor, the very people whose costs insurance is supposed to reduce, not increase. Lifetime coverage limits were instituted. Prescription formularies were introduced; they won't pay for anything more than the generic. The last COL increase for pensions was in 1994. The latest twist on the formulary is a sliding scale of co-pays, monopolistic discounts for using the prescription provider of choice, Merck Medco, rather than your local provider. I now pay thousands of dollars for my healthcare that previously was fully covered after the deductible.

Now, I am not complaning about my coverage. It has been most satisfactory. I am complaining about the nibbling away at the edges of what the company promised to pay for, and the contrary idea of making those who use medical services pay more. The idea of medical insurance is that everyone pays some so that none pay a lot. It is simple economics that the larger the pool, the fairer the premium. We will all become sick at some time. Some will be grievously afflicted, some will escape major afflictions.

Now let me move on to pensions. Pensions were introduced because the traditional system of saving for your retirement wasn't working. Many were ending up on the public dole. Social Security

Image via Wikipedia

was introduced as a safety net to assist life savings and meager pensions. The local Old Age pension boards went out of business. Today we are dismantling the entire pension system. We are letting companies renege on their promises. We let them underfund their pensions, and rob the "overfunding" during the stock bubble. We made 401Ks the heart of our retirement funds, and they, like the life savings model before, are failing. We must insist that companies meet their promises, and not transfer these obligations to the taxpayer.

Congress puts too much detail into their legislation. They need to simplify. There is absolutely no reason our code of justice and taxes should be a stack bigger than the average citizen. It would be a lot easier to enforce, and a lot more just, if it wasn't so complicated.

The current House Health Care bill is enormous. If the goals of the bill can be stated succinctly, why cannot the detail be similarly succinct and simplified? Why not have a series of bills to address one goal at a time? The hurry to solve a non-existent "crisis" is all politics and little reality. Why not address insurance alone? The big bite of "Total Health Care Reform" is mighty hard to chew.

For interesting information, see Association of Belltel Retirees and ProtectSeniors.org.

Troublemaking and Agitating about Health Care

2009-08-11T22:44:00.005-04:00

Image by Speaker Pelosi via Flickr

I received an email from the Democratic Party telling me that troublemakers and agitators were being organized by sour-grapes Republicans to disrupt town hall meetings about Health Care. I find it rather amusing that they consider their own Organizing for America to be a grassroots movement, but the opposition's organizing to be troublemaking and agitation, severed from the grassroots.

Hey guys, many of us are opposed to the Public Option. We do not need another Federal Bureaucracy. We don't want you to use our money to create one "for our own good." You are not my mother, and I wouldn't let my mother create this behemoth either.

Everyone who opposes your plans is not a minion of Rush Limbaugh and the sour-grapes Republicans. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer who beat your act hands-down in the ratings, but you cede him too much power by invoking him incessantly. There are people who oppose you who do not listen to Mr. Limbaugh, are not Republicans, are not right-wingnuts, and are not ignorant sheep baa-baa-ing down debate. You are trying to force through a massive bill with many strange provisions. I have read the House bill and find that much of it creates new government jobs and duties. That means We, the People, will pay these salaries forever. You already need more money than you collect. How will spending more make everything better?

Yes, Health Insurance needs reform. Yes, Medicare and Medicaid underpay providers. Yes, the customers and insurance companies pay for the inadequate fees paid by Federal Government health insurance. So the answer is to put everybody in the system that pays inadequate fees?

What strange legislation. Read it yourself.