Stinkin' Public Employees!

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that there is a backing away by the main stream media, excluding faux news, of denigrating our public employees.  Public employees have been the favorite target of the radical right for some time, exploding in the massive protests in Wisconsin this past winter over Scott Walker giving millions of dollars in tax breaks for corporations, then crying that the public employees were breaking the budget and therefore had to give up collective bargaining.  John Kasich, Governor of Ohio, tried more of the same, resulting in more protests.   

Then we arrived at the protests in New York in front of Wall Street the past weeks.  For several days the protesters and the police occupied the same space in relative comfort, laughing and joking with each other.  The police were respectful of the citizen’s rights to peaceably assemble, and the citizens respected the authority of the police.  Then we witnessed the arrival of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna – or as Jon Stewart called him, Tony Bolony.  He was really obvious because apparently in the NYPD the upper echelon of officers wear white shirts in contrast with the blue shirts of the rank and file.  This wretched individual began pepper spraying the faces of women who were peacefully protesting, causing them great pain and anguish.  Some of the blue shirts were heard making really uncomplimentary comments about his actions, but they couldn’t really do much because he was obviously their superior officer.  Reluctantly the NYPD, after several days, realized the incident needed to be investigated.  Since this apparently was one rogue officer, I do hope someone looks into his finances and background.  Has he had an infusion of cash anywhere in his family?  Does he have a troubled history? Since I am automatically suspicious of incidents like this, I wonder if he was given incentives by whomever to create a riot in order to vilify the protesters.  The majority of the officers on scene should be commended for their professional behavior.   There will always be areas of the country, or areas within an otherwise professionally run department, that need to be straightened up.  That is an understood.  But other than those areas, I believe that the majority of officers act in a professional and respectful manner.

When I was still in office we had an incident in our county that was very disturbing to me.  Our deputies were called, at night, to a derelict trailer park for a disturbance of the peace.  While there they realized that one of the disturbers had an outstanding arrest warrant.  In the effort to arrest him, the man died.  The public outcry of police brutality was horrendous.  Many demands were made that the deputies should be suspended, they should be arrested, etc.  Fortunately, although the incident occurred at night, the deputies had remained in view of their own video camera.  What was recorded were the deputies going about their business in a calm and professional manner.  Why had the man died?  He was coming down from a meth high, was drunk, and died from what is known as excited delirium.  In short, his heart exploded. 

What was very demoralizing for our deputies was that not one representative of the media gave them the benefit of the doubt.  They were accused immediately, simply because they were law enforcement.  There was one woman who was leading the charge against the deputies.  She was so adamant in her accusations I finally wrote a very short letter to the editor asking if the deputies were found innocent, would she be as vocal in declaring their innocence as she was in declaring them guilty before a trial.  I was concentrating on her, and hadn’t realized that short two inch letter was the only support they received from anyone, anywhere.  In my mind, that was unacceptable.  Had they gone to trial and found to be guilty, throw the book at them.  But at least wait until the investigation is complete!

Our society has gone bonkers, in my opinion, by immediately assuming that if it is a public employee, be it a teacher, firefighter, police, or any other, they are automatically wrong.  Ronald Reagan started this with his, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem”.  Well, he was wrong. 

Fortunately, I do believe people are beginning to realize that.

Unhealthy Connections

So, where to start today.  There are so many issues that need addressing, such as the big lie that the Republicans have been saying about Social Security since it was voted into law in about 1935.  It has neither gone broke nor driven the country into the ground.  The Social Security trust fund has bailed out the federal government several times by “loans” to keep the government afloat.  The Feds just might want to pay those loans back rather than trying to privatize Social Security.

But then we have this crazy society that has become so irrational when it comes to birth, life and death.  Where to start?

How about Phoenix, AZ.  There was the horrible situation with a family where there was a mother of four and pregnant with the fifth child.  A diagnosis was made that there was a medical situation (don’t ask me what it was) wherein the fetus was dying and at the same time was killing the mother.  After much ethical, theological and medical debate, it was determined that the only action that would save this innocent mother’s life was an abortion.  In no case, could the fetus survive.  The local Bishop of Phoenix, Bishop Olmstead, had a conniption over this and excommunicated the nun on the ethics committee of St. Joseph’s Hospital for allowing the abortion to take place.  Remember, without the abortion both the baby and the mother would die, leaving a husband and four children without a wife and mother.  Not particularly just.  And Pope Benedict XVI didn’t intervene.

There are several states in this United States, unbelievable as this is, who have passed or are contemplating passing laws that make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage.  Apparently the reasoning here is that maybe some women cause their miscarriages so they won’t have to have an abortion later, so make it a crime for all women to have a miscarriage.  This is probably one of the cruelest miscarriages of justice I have ever heard of.  Many miscarriages are the result of medical conditions over which the woman may have little or no control, and without adequate medical care, no hope of having control. 

Then we have the horrible event of yesterday with the life of Troy Davis, who may not have been guilty of the crime he had been convicted of, who was killed.  The US Supreme Court determined that all due process had taken place, so Troy Davis had to die because of that process – not because he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt!  And frankly, the live or die yo-yo that man was on the last weeks of his life seemed to me to constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”, which unless I have missed something is still against the law.  We need to have due process, but when that process has been called into question by a former Director of the FBI and thousands of others, including Pope Benedict XVI, justice is not being served. 

We also just survived the 10^th anniversary of 9/11.  It was a truly horrible event, and there is no way one should even think that it wasn’t.  3000 of our innocent citizens died in that event.  In retaliation for that, we have killed some 100,000 innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, with only a few voices questioning the justice in this. 

These are just a few of the thoughts that are swirling around in my head, but to me they form a pattern.  Although I am absolutely not 100% accurate in my ability to “connect the dots” and therefore perceive a pattern, there is a pattern in the making here.

If one is white, male and has some wealth, one is pretty assured of clemency.  If one is female or a person of color, hold on to your hats.  The next few years or so are going to be interesting!

Political Polling

Political Polling

Lately the constant media attention on what the current polling numbers mean is really beginning to irritate me.  Not only is it repetitive, and thus very boring, but the punditry of either side is in my opinion very flawed.    

After the debt crisis the country’s opinion of Congress has apparently, according to the polls, gone in the proverbial tank.  That gives me hope for the electorate.  Then there is much discussion about the fact that Obama’s numbers have dropped, and then always this is followed by the results of polling that people think the country is going in the wrong direction, and this factoid is then used to indicate that Obama is losing support. 

I can only describe what I perceive to be a major flaw in this logic.  For one, I have answered some of these polls and the question, “Who is responsible for the country going in the wrong direction?  Obama; Congress; the electorate; other” is never asked.   

I adamantly support Obama because he has done an outstanding job in trying to get through the programs people voted him into office to accomplish.  And this with his first two years being sandbagged by Republicans in the Senate filibustering virtually everything he wanted to accomplish, and since 2010, the House of Representatives saying “no” to everything he has wanted to accomplish.  With all of that we have a health care bill, which although not perfect, is certainly better than nothing, and can be amended in the future.  We have a significant drawdown of troops in Iraq, and soon I would hope we would have the same in Afghanistan.  We should never have been there in the first place.  Neither country had anything to do with 9/11 or WMD.  We could go through a list of his accomplishments, but I am not going to list them because if you can read this, you have a computer and can google them. 

After watching the last two Republican candidates’ forums, with the audience applauding the number of executions in Texas and then yelling out to have the hypothetical patient without health insurance and in a coma die, I can assure you I think the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe FauxNews commentators lie, lie, and lie some more, I certainly think the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe the overt disregard with which some Republicans treat our President, I certainly believe the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe the control that the Koch Machine, Grover Norquist, et al, have on the political life of this country, you better believe I think it is going in the wrong direction. 

None of that has anything to do with anything that Obama has done, yet he is constantly being blamed for it.  It is my paranoid suspicion that this constant background noise of blame Obama for not doing anything, that the Democrats are disappointed in him, etc., etc. is coming out of the Koch Machine.  They are adept at using the Big Lie principal.   

Say something over and over enough times, true or false, and pretty soon people begin to believe it.  That is what is happening here, and it is being based on the faulty logic of polling!

Agendas

Agendas

When I was still in office during a Board of Supervisors’ meeting people would often times comment that those who spoke in opposition to their own position had “an agenda”.    To which I would invariably respond that everyone in the chambers had an agenda, though each one was undoubtedly different.  The County Counsel’s agenda was to make sure the meetings were conducted in a legal manner.  The County Clerk-Recorder’s agenda was to make sure that the meetings were recorded accurately, and that protocol was conducted in a correct manner.  All the rest of us had agendas as well, if only to get through the rest of the day alive.  So I didn’t want to hear about people having an agenda.  We all had one.

Thus, it surprised me a tad the other day when someone whom I am very fond of, and who is a truly delightful person, though a tad conservative, commented that this blog had a left-wing agenda.  I have no problem with the comment about it being left-wing.  After all, it is Progressive Political Punditry and other irrelevant matters.  As far as having an agenda, the only agenda it has is to get these thoughts out of my head and possibly make someone consider another point of view than the one they currently have. 

Anyway, to be on the safe side I looked up “agenda” in the on-line dictionary and found two definitions.  1) A list or outline of things to be considered or done, and 2) An underlying often ideological plan or program.  So, I guess under part of the first definition, this blog does have an agenda.  Things to be considered, but it certainly does not fit the second definition of an underlying plan or program. 

Then I got to thinking about some of the other issues where people have said there is an “agenda”.  The other night I heard someone talk about the “homosexual agenda”, inferring that there is an underlying plan or program.  In my mind the homosexual agenda is pretty open.  The same civil rights everyone else has.  Or the “radical feminist agenda”.  This one, too, is pretty open.  Women want to be treated as fully human, with intelligence equal to that of men, and to be given all of the same opportunities men have, in church and out.  It does not appear that there is anything “underlying” about either of these so-called agendas.

Although my friend would not have implied anything nefarious to the term, many people forget the first definition of something to be considered, and only refer to the second definition of an underlying often ideological plan or program.  It has long been my habit, unless I have documentation in hand, to discount accusations of some group having an underlying agenda.  For no other reason, than if it is an underlying agenda, it is usually underlying because the perpetrators don’t want it known, so how did the documentation surface?  That, too, has to be researched. 

Ah, politics!  At once both a fascinating and frustrating occupation to be involved in.

The Banana That Leaves The Bunch Get Skinned

During World War II there were all sorts of ‘sayings’ making the rounds.  I don’t remember whether they came out of some central office or just sort of appeared.  At least down on my level, they sort of just appeared.  Things like ‘loose lips sink ships’, or if you had some knowledge about ship movements, don’t talk about it in public because some spy might be listening and relay the message back.  But the one I liked best was ‘it’s the banana that leaves the bunch that gets skinned’.  Of course, at the time it referred to tight flight formations for fighter pilots, but it seemed to me to be applicable to life itself.  It is OK to try to go it alone, but there is more protection and support for people, or fighter pilots, when they stick together. 

That was the objective of Social Security, and later Medicare and Medicaid, when they were made into law.  We would be stronger as a nation if we all stuck together and helped each other out when that became necessary.  Companies back then had a really bad habit of firing employees just before retirement in order not to pay for the pensions that the employees had paid into most of their working lives.  Social Security smoothed that problem out, thereby creating less stress on workers and their families.  Then when Medicare and Medicaid came along, these were seen as also supporting those in need, thereby alleviating stress over how to pay for medical care for seniors or for a chronically ill child.

Now Marco Rubio of Florida maintains that these programs are weakening the fabric of our characters.  Which is probably one of the stupidest things I have heard in one long time.  How in the world does it weaken the character of someone in a wheelchair who cannot work.  Or the character of a family with a chronically ill child.  This writer’s family has been there and done that.  We had a profoundly developmentally disabled child.  At that time in California, thanks to Gov. Pat Brown, there was an excellent state funded hospital for the developmentally disabled.  As a result of the excellent care he received at the Porterville Center, I was able to adequately care for our other four children who are now adults, all working, all paying taxes, and contributing to the health and welfare of the cities, counties and states in which they live.  Did that government assistance weaken our character?  Absolutely not!!

When our country was at its strongest, during the time between 1950 and 1980 there was a progressive tax system in place.  We had the best schools that were available to anyone, a new interstate highway system, bank and financial institution regulations that worked, disgust for people, especially those in government who broke the law, but the best was great hope for the future for our children. 

There were social problems.  Women and minorities were, and are discriminated against.  The welfare system, although begun with great ideals, sometimes led to difficulties in families.  The corporations were chafing under the regulations because those in management positions could see how much more profitable the company could be without the regulations, thereby increasing their salaries.  Our country began using our armed forces to fight what were called ‘police actions’.  Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama for starters. 

But these difficulties were not the result of the government safety nets.  They surfaced when people began caring only about themselves.  As a country we must begin to care once again about the common good.  What is best for the people?   We will be stronger as a nation, and more productive, with more wealth equity when that happens.  We will all stand together.

The banana that leaves the bunch is the one that gets skinned.  The radical right wing in this country has manipulated a great segment of the American people, as expressed by Marco Rubio,  into believing that it is better to ripen alone.