Benefits

I think I've finally figured out why we don't have either single-payer or some sort of private/public partnership in our health care system. It appears that people in government believe that the reason folks become doctors is so they can make lots of money and not have to work too hard at it. And also to employ lots of folks to handle ridiculous amounts of paperwork.

Here I thought it was so doctors could practice medicine and help people.

Silly me.

I'm sure most actors think (when they're fifteen), "I'm gonna go out and become a movie star!" By the time they're working their fourth restaurant job in a year, they think, "I'm gonna go out to every audition I can in the hopes that I can quit the day job." Sure, some people go into a particular trade to make ridiculous amounts of money (Wall Street, for example, or con games), but some people go into a particular trade because it's a calling.

One of the most irk-inducing traits of the Conservative mindset (note that I didn't use the word Repugnican), is the ingrained belief that people need a profit motive to do whatever it is they do. Making money is nice, I'll grant you that, and true Marxism has never held much appeal to me (and certainly Soviet-style socialism seems like it was a pretty bad idea). Hell, I could always use a few more bucks. But if you look at every job that any person could do, does the profit motive always enter into the picture? I'll grant you, a sanitation worker deserves all the money they'll pay him, but if you're doing something you love, in a nice office, with decent benefits, and the money's OK, would you need more than that? Am I not cynical enough?

So, if the Conservatives need a profit motive, why are they running for office? Is there a profit motive at work in being a Senator? It isn't all, "Ah work for the people of the state of Texas," is it? There's a little "consulting" gig waiting for you when you "retire," isn't there? Or am I being too cynical?

Not that Democrats are any better. There is a certain politician in California that somehow manages to give away more Brioni suits every few years than I would ever be able to buy in a lifetime of graft. He's a great guy, very smart, very up on the issues, and he does good work for the people of his state. And he does pretty well for himself, too.

But the height of cynicism in all of this is the idea that if there isn't money behind it, it's not worth doing, and I'm afraid that's why most politicians are in the trade to begin with. Because there is plenty of extracurricular money to be made by getting elected to do the people's work.

Maybe that's the first thing that needs to change.

Ah, Progress...

I  decided to watch something on YouTube that I'd heard about, and thought beforehand, "how bad can it be?"

Sure enough, it was awful.

New Year's Day, 2 AM, Oakland, CA. Apparently, there was a fistfight on a train in the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (known to current and former residents of the San Francisco Bay Area as BART), and the BART Police (a publicly paid for, but privately managed security force) came in to break it up, wind it down, hand out citations, whatever.

In the video, there appear to be four or five of these cops (who appear to be either all-white or mostly white, and there's at least one woman in the crew), and three or four African-American males. The young men are a bit hostile, but all of them are seated. One stands up and attempts to talk to the police. From the video, it's unclear what he is saying (the video was shot using a cellphone, from inside the train with the doors closed). The cops bring him down to the ground, face down, and force his arms behind his back. One of the cops puts his knee over the man's neck and head to further restrain him. There are three cops holding him down at this point, while the others are standing back, watching both the man on the ground and the other young men sitting watching their friend. One of the cops holding the young man down is facing the camera.

He stands up, unholsters his gun, and shoots the prone man in the back. 

The gunshot is audible on the video.

The bullet ricochets off of the platform floor back into the man's body. He is pronounced dead at the scene. The BART police attempt to confiscate every video camera they can find. They miss at least two.

The streets of Oakland erupted in riots during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest march on Wednesday, January 7th. Some who suffered property damage at the hands of the rioters weren't surprised, nor even terribly hurt, by the injuries done to their property. African-Americans in Oakland are getting tired of hearing about their young men being shot by the police. If a policeman shoots a civilian, he is put on administrative leave, and expected to turn in his badge and gun. If a civilian shoots another civilian, they are arrested and put in jail. If a civilian shoots a cop, other cops might kill them and claim self-defense (not that I believe everything James Ellroy writes). 

While the organizers of the protest and even the victim's family decried the violence, I can understand it. While it may be counterproductive, it really depends on how long you've had to deal with living in a kind of siege state. Oakland has had it's murder rate go rather high in recent years, and one of the usual complaints by the locals is that the cops will come when it suits them, but not when it scares them. Black-on-white crime gets the full-court press, but black-on-black crime is routinely ignored or downplayed. Interestingly enough, in the protest this week, there was a large Latino contingent along with the African-American crowd. When it comes to the police, they agree on who the problem often is.

The police officer's name is Johannes Mehserle. He is 27.

The victim's name is Oscar Grant. He is 22, forever.

And we just elected an African-American President.

When Doing Nothing Works Well

The ground assault (Operation Cast Lead) is underway by the Israeli Army in Gaza, and those pesky civilians keep getting in the way. Israel keeps claiming (through various "spokesman said" mouthpiece types) that they are taking all care to avoid civilian casualties, but Hamas has all of the weaponry stashed in and/or near civilian populations.

Unlike Israel, where everyone does a stint in the military, just in case they need to fight, well... everyone at once. 

Hamas, of course, is being reprehensibly stupid by doing this sort of thing, except that it does remind people that in war, everyone's responsible for the actions of the elected, and often, the electorate has to pay a price for electing the wrong bunch of nutjobs.

Many Palestinians voted for Hamas, because Fatah wasn't showing a lot of backbone when it came to dealing with the Settlements. Israel's response to Hamas being elected? A gradual choking off of supplies, food and medicine to Gaza. The imposition of odd curfews and border inconveniences that resembled Kafka. The occasional visit by the Israeli Army to civilian homes where Hamas fighters were "thought to be hiding."

In other words, thanks for exercising your right to vote, here's a little humiliation, subjugation and slow, lingering death. Unless and until you vote for people we like.

Needless to say, in the Arab world, this sort of thing seems to breed martyrs. The population of Gaza is now a majority of minors. More than half the population is under 18, and all they've known is bloodshed and death at the hands of the Israelis. Fathers or mothers who look at the splintered, bloody remains of their dead family in the al-Shifa mortuary express the wish to blow up a few buses in Israel. Other parents tell their children from birth that they are growing up to become martyrs to the Palestinian cause. 

Kind of like I was told that I was going to take piano lessons.

Reprehensible sort of thing to think, but what would you do if your only son and your wife or husband were targeted for death, simply because you were all at prayer for a relative's funeral (also thanks to Israeli shells)? Or your nine-year-old son is so traumatized by bombs going off outside his house every day that he no longer talks? Of course revenge is a bad thing.

Isn't it, Messrs. Olmert and Barak?

While Israel does indeed have every right to protect itself, and Hamas really doesn't have the right to just casually lob missiles into Israel, each side is fighting for the survival of their people, their race, their culture. Jews have a long history of being the tormented, the tortured and the killed, and so they don't much care for folks throwing missiles at them. The Palestinians have a different history, but it, too, is full of torment and humiliation and death, mostly at the hands of western powers. Neither side wants war, but neither side wants the other to be the way it is.

So who starts the ball rolling by stopping?

Just stop.

Not Sure I Approve Of Me

The economy is just fine-ish, thank you.

And that's where I part company with myself, because it's all too weird and painful. This country is now nearing $11 TRILLION in debt - 

And we're printing more money in the hopes that that will cause us to get out of debt faster by improving the lives (read: wages) of all people in the country and then dun them for taxes, which will be used to pay for the wages we just raised by paying for infrastructure projects that need to be done because our roads and bridges are all decaying and on the verge of collapse and perhaps if we pay people well enough for the work they do with that money we just printed, they will gladly hand a little of it back in taxes which we will then use to pay off the increasing debt we're incurring because of the interest that's accruing...

boogedy boogedy

As my paranoid brother tells me (and I'm beginning to agree with him on this one), the Fed abandoned the gold standard, and began to loan money based on the value of what they were loaning on, rather than having the capital in the bank, and relying on the investors (i.e., little savers like you and me) to not all rush the bank at once and take everything out. So, when you buy a house, they loan you the money that they printed just for the occasion based on how much the house was assessed at. Doesn't this leave a large hole for the unscrupulous to walk through? Or perhaps there would be regulations preventing the unscrupulous from doing that sort of thing?

Oh, yeah... President Ronald Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, President William J. Clinton, President George W. Bush.

So. Does the economy finally implode? Or does this charade go on and on until the end of time, till the dollar buys nothing and the Chinese own the deeds to the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, Monticello, (OK - you get the idea), and instead of firing a nuke at us, they just foreclose?

Please, someone, tell me I'm stupid (about THIS, mind you), or talk me down off this ledge, because the wife and I are talking about having a baby, and all those jokes they talk about having to deposit your first-born into the bank to get a home loan? Well?!?

You'll Put Your Eye Out

Israel is attacking Gaza again. Israel says that Hamas is firing rockets into civilian areas, so Israel has to defend itself by bombing and rocketing into the Gaza strip, and because Hamas hides itself in the civilian population, civilians are getting the brunt of the attacks.

Or is that really the case?

So far, one Israeli has died due to rocket attacks from inside Gaza (homemade rockets, mind you). In the first day or two of fighting, over three hundred Palestinians have died, a lot of them children on their way to school. The Israelis have bombers, fighter jets, tanks and artillery that they may yet unleash on the Gaza, while Hamas and the Palestinians can defend themselves with bricks from the rubble created by the Israeli attacks.

Yes, the Israelis deserve security. And while Hamas has always said they aren't for Israel (well, they're for Israel no longer existing, if that's possible), Gaza itself has become an ironic boil on Israel's backside. Do the Jews of Israel remember the Warsaw ghetto? If they could have defended themselves against the Nazis, don't you think they would have? The Palestinians in Gaza have been cut off from clean water, their food supplies have been restricted, people have died trying to get to hospitals outside Gaza because they've been stuck at the border, waiting to get through. So the people in Gaza are basically being treated with absolute contempt by people who were once treated the same way, and for similar reasons.

Is this some sort of weird, pay-it-forward-style of inhumane treatment? They got us, we'll get you? And this is where I suddenly go from defending Israel (being a good American), and become the one saying, if the Israelis can't deal with the problem in some sort of peaceful way, do they deserve to be treated well? Should we continue to give them guns, money, a free pass? 

300 to 1...

If Mexico sent a single shell into San Diego and killed twenty or thirty people, would we be justified in bombing Tijuana flat?

A Coal Ash Martini, Please

Sure enough, it has happened again. A coal ash waste pond (where they stack the ash, and then mix it with water and divert it into storage "cells") finally blew its buffer and released more than 5.4 million cubic yards of this toxic crap into the environment, near the town of Kingston, Tennessee. This coal ash tsunami invaded twelve homes in the area, covering 400 acres of land between four and six feet deep.

That's 1.06 billion gallons, 100 times the Exxon Valdez spill, and this stuff is pouring into two feeder tributaries of the Tennessee river. The Tennessee, in turn, is a drinking water source for Chattanooga, west Tennessee, and the states of Kentucky & Alabama.

Clean coal, indeed.

Coal ash has high levels of mercury, arsenic and lead, and is more radioactive than spent nuclear waste (Scientific American, thanx for that happy little nugget of info), thanks to the two major radioactive impurities found in coal, uranium and thorium. When the coal is burned, anything that is NOT combustible is stored in concentrated form in the ash. Then the ash is very carefully piled up in enormous mounds inside earthen dams that are sort of affected by stuff like, well, rain, and so on. Yes, there had been warnings about this particular cell and it's ability to hold in the contents. 

There are always warnings that officials decide not to act upon, and hope for the best. This is known as laissez-faire.

Now, this is not the first time this has happened. And it probably won't be the last. The question is, where is the government in regulating this stuff: how it should be contained, how much can be in one place at one time, etc.? Apparently this particular sludge pond was a record-breaker. The kind of thing where the tour guide goes on about how "this here coal ash repository is three times the size of the next smallest one, and there ain't one bigger'n this'un."

Great - a "toxic-waste Titanic."

Dying for that Minimum Wage

The first death of the shopping season was recorded on Friday morning after Long Island WalMart shoppers decided it was more important to buy... something... than to aid a fellow human being, prone at (or under) their feet. 2000 people were so impatient to get in and shop before the bargains were all snapped up, they broke down the door before opening, and ran down Jdimytai Damour, a temporary employee from Queens, who struggled to get up under the onslaught of rushing idiots.

I realize this isn't the normal sort of topic for what's supposed to be a political blog, but it speaks to the United States of Mind. And, of course, repeating my mantra, which is "WalMart is Evil."

What is wrong with Americans? Or is it just Long Islanders? Do we really need the DayGlo hot pink TV Chef Barbie so badly we're willing to kill immigrants just to get our hands on one? Is the value of that new Transformer Car higher than that of the human being gasping out his last breath on the floor? Makes me re-think my whole attitude towards X-Mess.

Yes, I still want to buy presents for my wife, my friends and my cats (though not necessarily in that order), but the crowds are bothering me this year more than ever. Shopping in the middle of a rugby scrum only appeals to those already interested in being in rugby scrums (hint: not me). Nothing against rugby or scrums for that matter, mind you. 

I remember being in London on Boxing Day and thought it was pretty crowded, but to me, the worst part of it was the attitude of the folks working the counter at the Macy's-like department store where we bought a bunch of our stoneware (really really decent price). The guy saw what we were bringing to him and we opened our mouths (here come the rude Americans) and asked to have it all shipped back to the States. "But I'm about to go on break." Whiner. The whole city was crowded, and it hardly bothered me at all, even in the very busy toy store, with zillions of kids. But no one was trying to kill anyone else to get the last whatever on the shelf...

The term "Black Friday" is meant to indicate the day of the year when retailers go into the black for the year, where they make their best sales. It's also the time when sales are at their most extreme in bargains bargains bargains for the consumer. So people get a little crazy.

And now of course, Black Friday has a whole new meaning for one Queens family.

UPDATE:

Being WalMart means never having to say you're sorry, right? Even if it costs you an arm, a leg, and a lung? I guess they feel it was no longer cost-effective to avoid paying a tiny fine, since paying it would set some sort of, I dunno, precedent: WalMart spends $2,000,000 to avoid paying $7,000.

Really, you are reading that correctly.