Damn Websites!!

Yesterday I sat down at this computer to write my blog, and had a serious case of writer’s block.  Nothing came to mind to write about that hadn’t been covered so completely in the news.  Since I have never watched Duck Dynasty, nor intend to in the future, that was out of bounds.  Congress not passing an extension of long-term unemployment benefits had been covered so completely in all of the news channels that seemed pointless.  There didn’t seem to be any point in discussing Rand Paul’s remarks about extending said benefits being “a disservice to the people receiving them” because it would cause them to not look for work was just stupid, so there was no point in belaboring that point.   

Consequently I decided to go to a website from a company that makes my little floor vacuum to determine if it is indeed repairable or if I need to replace it.  After spending several hours unable to connect with them on a rational basis, a gave up and went to the website of a company known for its tech savvy, and from which I had received a birthday present of one of their devices.  After spending another couple of hours with that website entering my birthdate and having that site refusing to accept it, then telling me I had spent too long trying to access my account indicating that I was an “illegal” accessor, or words to that effect, and that they were closing my ability to continue for at least 8 hours, I sent them an e-mail to which they have not responded that I have had that same birthdate for 84 years now, and I knew with a certainty that it is, in fact, my birthdate.  So, after I write this blog, I will try again to get my little device up and running.  I feel like a friend of mine with her new smart phone, which she calls a “dumb phone”, I assume because it will not do what she wants. 

All of this problem with business websites could only lead to one other thought, and that is Healthcare.gov, the website for citizens who have state governors who refuse to implement Obamacare in their states.  Apparently the website is running pretty well by this time, but for all of those people who rant and rave about government not being able to do anything right, let me tell you all that neither can the private sector sometimes.   

Perhaps if I keep rambling on about websites, I won’t have to knuckle down and go back to those two.  But if the one rejects my birthday again, I might actually get my old landline phone out of the drawer we keep it in for when the electricity goes out, and use somewhat outdated technology to contact them.  It might just work.

 

 

Why the Chimes Rang

Why the Chimes Rang

I need to say something about the story below.  Although it is couched as a Christian story, the sentiments expressed are to be found in every religion and philosophy.  This is another favorite story from my childhood, and it is my “Happy Holiday of your choice” present from me to you. The author is Raymond MacDonald Alden, published in 1906, and appears in a book by the same name.  I have typed it, grammar, punctuation and all as it appears in my book.  I hope you enjoy it. 

There was, once, in a far-away country where few people have ever traveled, a wonderful church.  It stood on  a high hill in the midst of a great city; and every Sunday, as well as on sacred days like Christmas, thousands of people climbed the hill to its great archways, looking like lines of ants all moving in the same direction.

            When you came to the building itself, you found stone columns and dark passages, and a grand entrance leading to the main room of the church.  This room was so long that one standing at the doorway could scarcely see to the other end, where the choir stood by the marble altar.  In the farthest corner was the organ; and this organ was so loud that sometimes when it played, the people for miles around would close their shutters and prepare for a great thunderstorm.  Altogether, no such church as this was ever seen before, especially when it was lighted up for some festival, and crowded with people, young and old.  

            But the strangest thing about the whole building was the wonderful chime of bells.  At one corner of the church was a great gray tower, with ivy growing over it as far up as one could see.  I say as far as one could see, because the tower was quite great enough to fit the great church, and it rose so far into the sky that it was only in very fair weather that anyone claimed to be able to see the top.  Even then one could not be certain that it was in sight.  Up, and up, and up climbed the stones and the ivy; and, as the men who built the church had been dead for hundreds of years, every one had forgotten how high the tower was supposed to be.

            Now all the people knew that at the top of the tower was a chime of Christmas bells.  They had hung there ever since the church had been built, and were the most beautiful bells in the world.  Some thought it was because a great musician had cast them and arranged them in their place; others said it was because of the great height, which reached up where the air was clearest and purest; however that might be, no one who had ever heard the chimes denied that they were the sweetest in the world.  Some described them as sounding like angels far up in the sky; others, as sounding like strange winds singing through the trees.

            But the fact was that no one had heard them for years and years.  There was an old man living not far from the church, who said that his mother had spoken of hearing them when she was a little girl, and he was the only one who was sure of as much as that.  They were Christmas chimes, you see, and were not meant to be played by men or on common days.  It was the custom on Christmas Eve for all the people to bring to the church their offerings to the Christ-child; and when the greatest and best offering was laid on the altar, there used to come sounding through the music of the choir the Christmas chimes far up in the tower.  Some said that the wind rang them, and others that they were so high that the angels could set them swinging.  But for many long years they had never been heard.

It was said that people had been growing less careful of their gifts for the Christ-child, and that no offering was brought, great enough to deserve the music of the chimes.  Every Christmas Eve the rich people still crowded to the altar, each one trying to bring some better gift than any other, without giving anything that he wanted for himself, and the church was crowded with those who thought that perhaps the wonderful bells might be heard again.  But although the service was splendid, and the offerings plenty, only the roar of the wind could be heard, far up in the stone tower.

            Now, a number of miles from the city, in a little country village, where nothing could be seen of the great church but glimpses of the tower when the weather was fine, lived a boy named Pedro, and his little brother.  They knew very little about the Christmas chimes, but they had heard of the service in the church on Christmas Eve, and had a secret plan, which they had often talked over when by themselves, to go to see the beautiful celebration.

            “Nobody can guess, Little Brother,” Pedro would say, “all the fine things there are to see and hear; and I have even heard it said that the Christ-child sometimes comes down to bless the service.  What if we could see Him?”

            The day before Christmas was bitterly cold, with a few lonely snowflakes flying in the air, and a hard white crust on the ground.  Sure enough, Pedro and Little Brother were able to slip quietly away early in the afternoon; and although the walking was hard in the frosty air, before nightfall they had trudged so far, hand in hand, that they saw the lights of the big city just ahead of them.  Indeed, they were about to enter one of the great gates in the wall that surrounded it, when they saw something dark on the snow near their path, and stepped aside to look at it.

            It was a poor woman, who had fallen just outside the city, too sick and tired to get in where she might have found shelter.  The soft snow made of a drift a sort of pillow for her, and she would soon be so sound asleep, in the wintry air, that no one could ever waken her again.  All this Pedro saw in a moment, and he knelt down beside her and tried to rouse her, even tugging at her arm a little, as though he would have tried to carry her away.  He turned her face toward him so that he could rub some of the snow on it, and when he had looked at her silently a moment he stood up again, and said:

“It’s no use, Little Brother.  You will have to go on alone.” 

“Alone?” cried Little Brother.  “And you not see the Christmas festival?”

            “No,” said Pedro, and he could not keep back a bit of choking sound in his throat.  “See this poor woman.  Her face looks like the Madonna in the chapel window, and she will freeze to death if nobody cares for her.  Every one has gone to the church now, but when you come back you can bring some one to help her.  I will rub her to keep her from freezing, and perhaps get her to eat the bun that is left in my pocket.”

            “But I can not bear to leave you, and go on alone,” said Little Brother.

            “Both of us need not miss the service” said Pedro, “and it had better be I than you.  You can easily find your way to the church; and you must see and hear everything twice, Little Brother—once for you and once for me.  I am sure the Christ-child must know how I should love to come with you and worship Him; and oh! If you get a chance, Little Brother, to slip up to the altar without getting in anyone’s way, take this little silver piece of mine, and lay it down for my offering, when no one is looking.  Do not forget where you have left me, and forgive me for not going with you.”

            In this way he hurried Little Brother off to the city, and winked hard to keep back the tears, as he heard the crunching footsteps sounding farther and farther away in the twilight.  It was pretty hard to lose the music and splendor of the Christmas celebration that he had been planning for so long, and spend the time instead in that lonely place in the snow.

            The great church was a wonderful place that night.  Everyone said that it had never looked so bright and beautiful before.  When the organ played and the thousands of people sang, the walls shook with the sound, and little Pedro, away outside the city wall, felt the earth tremble around him.

            At the close of the service came the procession with the offerings to be laid on the altar.  Rich men and great men marched proudly up to lay down their gifts to the Christ-child.  Some brought wonderful jewels, some baskets of gold so heavy that they could scarcely carry them down the aisle.  A great writer laid down a book that he had been making for years and years.  And last of all walked the king of the country, hoping with all the rest to win for himself the chime of the Christmas bells.  There went a great murmur through the church, as the people saw the king take from his head the royal crown, all set with precious stones, and lay it gleaming on the altar, as his offering to the holy Child.  “Surely,” every one said, “we shall hear the bells now, for nothing like this has ever happened before.”

            But still only the cold old wind was heard in the tower, and the people shook their heads; and some of them said, as they had before, that they never really believed the story of the chimes, and doubted if they ever rang at all.

            The procession was over, and the choir began the closing hymn.  Suddenly the organist stopped playing as though he had been shot, and every one looked at the old minister, who was standing by the altar, holding up his hand for silence.  Not a sound could be heard from any one in the church, but as all the people strained their ears to listen, there came softly, but distinctly, swinging through the air, the sound of the chimes in the tower.  So far away, and yet so clear the music seemed—so much sweeter were the notes than anything that had been heard before, rising and falling away up there in the sky, that the people in the church sat for a moment as still as though something held each of them by the shoulders.  Then they all stood up together and stared straight at the altar, to see what great gift had awakened the long-silent bells.

            But all that the nearest of them saw was the childish figure of Little Brother, who had crept softly down the aisle when no one was looking, and had laid Pedro’s little piece of silver on the altar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Good Samaritan Revisited

This is California, and we don’t usually get quite so cold as it was here last week.  It was nothing like what was happening in the northern climes of this world, but we do not have the clothes, nor all of the other stuff we need to keep warm.  As a result, I shivered for at least four days. 

So it was with a great deal of relief one night that, even though I was having trouble getting to sleep, I was warm, so I snuggled in and let my mind wander.  Eventually it wandered to the news of the day, which included some dim-wit Congressman stating he wasn’t going to vote for the extension of federal unemployment insurance because of some obscure Bible verse that suggested that if one doesn’t work, one doesn’t get to eat.  That swirled around for a while in my brain until I thought about the parable of The Good Samaritan.  For those not acquainted with that parable, I quote it from the King James Version of the Bible.  I use that translation because that way the radical religious right can’t complain that I’m using a wrong translation.  As one preacher from Texas famously said, “If English was good enough for Jesus, its good enough for me!” 

Luke 10:29-37

But he, wiling to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?  And Jesus answering said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.  And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, take care of him; and whatsoever though spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.  Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?”  And he said, he that shewed mercy on him.  Then said Jesus unto him, “Go and do thou likewise.” 

Usually when this parable is preached or spoken about, it is that someone from a different culture, or tribe, acted with more compassion than the members of the beaten man’s own tribe, and that we must be compassionate toward everyone.  Which in and of itself is certainly true.  But the thought that came to me was that after the initial compassionate acts of binding up the beaten man’s wounds and taking him to an inn and caring for him for one night, the Samaritan, having obligations he needed to attend to in the next days, paid the inn keeper to care for the man, with the promise that he would come back and see to it that the inn keeper was reimbursed for any further costs.  What the Samaritan didn’t do was berate the beaten man for having been so negligent as to not having learned the ancient equivalent of tae kwan do in order to defend himself and not  be beaten in the first place, and then behave toward him with contempt for being a “loser”, and for deserving everything that happened to him. 

With that being said, we don’t have inns or inn keepers like that anymore.  But we do have government agencies that are substitutes for them.  We have food stamps, we have unemployment insurance, we have emergency rooms in hospitals, and we have Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.  We pay the “inn keepers” of our time with our taxes.  There is no way I can be everywhere, nor can anyone else, but we can see to it, as the Samaritan did, that people who have been beaten down by life are cared for by the appropriate government agency, if there is no other means possible.   

Shame on those who do not want to fund these programs through closing tax loopholes, readjusting an outrageous tax system back to a progressive tax rather than the regressive one we have now.  How have we as a country, sunk so low that we would deprive people of any age food, but particularly children and seniors!  Now, in my book, this is viciousness personified!  

 

 

And Then We Have The City of Detroit

And then we have the city of Detroit – the automobile manufacturing center of America for decades.  And unfortunately for the city of Detroit, it is in the State of Michigan. 

When Michigan elected an all Republican state legislature and Governor, together they managed beyond all belief to pass a law that allows the Governor to dissolve the duly elected governments of cities or counties (or whatever they call them back there), if the Governor deems the boards or commissions to not be acting in what he believes to be a fiscally responsible manner.  The law gave him the authority to appoint an emergency manager to replace these duly elected boards.  Since I was a duly elected county Supervisor in our county for some eight years, I nearly blew a valve when I read that the Governor had started implementing this law in some six cities in Michigan, ending with the largest being Detroit.   

The final straw for me was when Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Kevin Orr to be the emergency manager.  Why, other than the fact that he was appointed, was I disturbed?  Because Kevin Orr is, or was, a bankruptcy attorney for Goldman Sachs.  And then the city of Detroit files for bankruptcy.  I am shocked, shocked that a bankruptcy attorney would do such a thing! 

The upshot of this is that the judge approved the bankruptcy, with the proviso that the banks and bondholders who hold Detroit’s debt be paid back first, and the city’s assets can be used for this.  The nasty part about all of this is the city’s pension fund is part of the city’s assets.   

Imagine yourself how you would feel if after working as a public employee for any number of years up to 30 years, expecting a pension of a certain amount, adjusting your housing, etc., based on that amount, and then have some outside entity come in, and give half of your pension to some bank which is already too big to fail.  All at the same time that your state government has refused to give your city the funds owed it through revenue sharing with the state.  In Detroit’s case, this amounts to million upon millions of dollars Detroit could really use at this time.  OK.  Detroit is in a sad fiscal state.  Jobs are extremely hard to come by.  Your retirement has been cut in half, and somebody in a silk suit and gold cuff links is telling you that you can augment your pension by getting a job.   

This next is not a change of subject.  We’ll get back to Detroit in a moment.  Last night on All In with Chris Hayes, there was a segment discussing whether Nelson Mandela was a terrorist or not.  One of the panelists claimed that, contrary to what our government was saying at the time, namely Ronald Reagan, was calling Mandela, he was not a terrorist.  A terrorist is someone who kills completely innocent people for some abstract reason.  When a government basically declares war on its people, as the South African government did with its apartheid laws, the people who fight back are fighting for their lost freedoms.  This is not terrorism, and it is sloppy thinking to call it terrorism.  These were ideas I had not heard so clearly delineated before. 

In Michigan with the new rules about restricting the opportunities to vote, cutting funding for education, and other essential services, and now with the decimation of retiree’s pensions, and heaven only knows what else will be imposed on the poor people of Michigan, we all might keep the above definitions in mind.  I think if I lived in Michigan, I would be highly motivated.  For what?  I’m not sure, but I would think of something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too Much Turkey

Dear Readers,

For readers in the United States, you know why I am too full, still, to even think of something to write.  For readers not in the United States, you just have to imagine what it is like to celebrate your own national holiday with feasting and joy.

I will return next week.

Malala and Texas

Last year, when then 15 year old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for advocating education for girls in the Taliban controlled Swat region of Pakistan, most people in the world who heard about it were outraged.  How could anyone choose to shoot a girl in the head for wanting other girls to be able to read books!  How could anyone just take aim at, basically, a child’s head, and then pull the trigger.  Fortunately, Malala survived and has become a nearly world-wide celebrity, receiving awards for her bravery in continuing her advocacy for the education of girls, even after such a horrendous experience.  I’m not an expert on the Muslim religion by any means, but I have a personal friend who is a Muslim and a medical doctor.  She is married to a medical doctor, and they have two children, a boy and a girl, and the girl is educated as well as the boy.  Obviously the Taliban is the radical right wing fringe of the religion. 

Probably many of us in this country felt rather smug because something like what happened to Malala could never happen in our country.  We are too politically sophisticated to even think of such a thing.  Right?  Wrong! 

In the United States at this time there is a concerted effort by the Republicans in both the federal and state legislatures controlled by Republicans to deny women the right to basic health care, all under the guise of preventing abortions.  As I type this, the state of Texas has closed women’s health clinics all over the state except for just three.  These clinics, and those in other states, don’t just provide abortions; they also provide, but not limited to, mammograms to detect breast cancer; they provide for cervical and other cancer screenings; they provide sex education and birth control information; diabetes detection and education.   

What these Republicans are doing in these states is basically taking aim at poor women and girls and taking away any hope they have of receiving the basic health care I have delineated above.  If anyone of these women or girls develops any one of the above diseases, does not receive health care in a timely manner, it is just the same as aiming a gun at their heads and pulling the trigger. 

The only difference between what the radical religious right is doing in this country, and what the would-be killer of Malala is, that man had the courage to at least come close enough to her to kill her.  What is happening in this country is that the men who are passing these laws from religious conviction are at a distance from the women and girls they will be killing.  The basic premise, however, is the same with both radical religious Muslim men and radical religious right Christians.  Women and girls do not have the same rights as men, in this country as well as in Pakistan.   

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.  A radical feminist is the notion that women (and the decent men who support them) need to do something about this – now.

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on the Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) is the law of the land, and has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court.  It will keep children on their parent’s health insurance until they are 26, and that is a good thing.  It prevents health insurance companies from denying someone a policy for a pre-existing condition.  It prevents said companies from putting a cap on the amount the company will pay you for your health care.  It prevents said companies from cancelling your policy the minute you get sick, or have an accident.  It prevents said companies from using any more than 20% of their profits for big bonuses for their CEO’s.  It prevents companies from selling junk policies that don’t really cover anything.  It allows the individual to shop, either on line, by phone, or in person, for the best coverage the individual can get for the price.   

So far this advantage to the individual has been called slavery, akin to Hurricane Katrina, or been told it is taking away our freedoms, and turning us into a socialist state.  I’m not sure about you, but if I have to listen to one more TV pundit talk about this ACA roll out, I will stop watching TV all together, which, of course, includes all of the commercials.  But then we don’t watch commercials anyway since we Tivo almost everything we watch so we can fast forward through those.   

Since the states that agreed to implement the ACA themselves are doing OK, and people are pretty satisfied with what they find, I wish the media would just simply start presenting news instead of pontificating ad nauseum on something that can be fixed. 

As one of our daughters told me a Buddhist saying is, “If it can be fixed, why worry?  If it can’t be fixed, why worry?”  This is something that can be fixed, so stop worrying it.  It reminds me a lot like a bored, old dog who starts licking a spot, irritates it, then keeps on licking because there is something there.  We had an old dog that did that.  Every time he went outside the deer flies started in on it as well, so my husband sprayed it with OFF to keep the flies away.  After a week or so we realized he had stopped licking that spot, and it eventually healed up. 

My advice to the pundits is, use OFF, and get on to something else that has some value.

 

Plagerize, Plagerize, Plagerize

What to write about today?  I’m sick of hearing about the Obamacare rollout mess.  So it was not done correctly.  So millions of people are frustrated that it is taking more time than they wanted.  They should have been around when the only means of communication we had were party lines for the telephones, mail, telegrams, or walking or driving to the person you wanted to communicate with.   

As for telephones, that didn’t mean we all partied on them.  It meant that up to 20 people would share one line, and when the phone rang everyone in hearing would listen for the ring tones, which in those days were a combination of long and short rings.  When your ascribed combination, two longs and a short in our case, rang, it was answered by someone in your house.  The sound coming through depended on how many people were listening in.  The more listening in, the softer the sound.  

Mail was the usual method of communication.  That was pretty reliable in the old days before Congress started messing around with requiring the Postal Service to fund retirement benefits for 75 years out.  We are supposed to run government like a business?  What business would fund its employee retirement benefits 75 years into the future.  This is a mechanism to bankrupt the Postal Service to privatize it with Fed Ex and UPS. 

No one wanted to get a telegram, since it was considered to be bad news.  And to drive to a business a long way away was not always convenient.   

 But I digress. 

I couldn’t think of what to write, so I asked one of my daughters to give me a hint, and she said Rand Paul and his plagiarism problem.  Well that seemed like a good idea, so I finished up what else I was doing, which was not much.  At that point I realized a melody from days past was flitting about in my head.  After I identified the melody, I had to find the song book it was in because that melody and the lyrics to it were perfect.  The name of the song is “Lobachevsky”, by Tom Lehrer.  It is in a song book entitled, “Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle”, published by Pantheon Books in April, 1981.  “The author states that although Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1793-1856) was a genuine, and indeed eminent, mathematician, the peccadillos attributed to him herein are not substantiated by history.”  As you read the lyrics, in your mind please substitute the word ‘politician’ for ‘mathematician’.              

  Who made me the genius I am today,

        The mathematician that others all quote,

        Who’s the professor that made me that way?

        The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat.

 

               One man deserves the credit,

               One man deserves the blame,

               And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobashevsky is his name.

               Hi!

               Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach… 

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.  In one word he told me secret of success in Mathematics:  Plagiarize! 

        Plagiarize,

        Let no one’s work evade your eyes,

        Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,

        So don’t shade your eyes,

        But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize …

        Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’. 

The final refrain:

                              And who deserves the credit?

               And who deserves the blame?

               Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.

               Hi! 

The song goes on for some time and is truly one of my very favorites.  It accurately depicts the person who commits a wrong, then blames it on someone else with lots of words smearing reality.

Whenever I think of Rand Paul from here on out, I won’t think ‘thief’, for that is what a plagiarist is, a person who steals someone else’s work to aggrandize his or her own, but I will sing, “… plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize ...”, and will have nothing but contempt for Rand Paul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memories, Social Security and Socialism

Memories, Social Security and Socialism

As I have said on more than one occasion, I have a memory that reaches far, far back.  In fact, I can remember falling into the fireplace after tripping over my father’s foot because I was off balance after having gone to the doctor to have my hands bandaged from reaching out to the gas-fire box on the bottom of someone’s hot water heater and burning the palms of my hands pretty badly, and my mother having hysterics over the whole thing.  I was only 11 months old.  Yeah, that did happen.

But I also remember the family arguments in the 1930’s about how this new proposal by FDR (that rabid socialist) called Social Security to provide a safety net for “old” people who could no longer work, and had no family to help them out was going to destroy the soul of the people, make them dependent on government, blah, blah, blah.  I remember because parts of the argument were that this program would destroy the rest of the economy, the government would collapse, and we would all become Communists.  This was pretty scary for a little kid, so when none of this happened, needless to say I was quite relieved, but I also began to question some of my family’s more adamant pronouncements.

As an adult when Medicare was passed, I heard the same statements that this program was going to destroy the soul of the country, make people dependent on government, blah, blah, blah.  This time I was not particularly frightened, since as far as I knew after Social Security passed, the economy had not been destroyed, the government had not collapsed and we were not all Communists.  In fact, in the 1960’s, we were the greatest nation in the world. 

Needless to say, my past experiences have made me particularly skeptical about some of the more radical and extreme statements coming from the radical right about now being a nation of “takers and makers”.  I will admit that changing the language from all becoming Communists has been fairly refreshing.  Because I have this history, however, when I listen to even the pundits on MSNBC, I get fairly frantic because they seldom mention relevant facts regarding Medicare and Social Security in response to the radical rights’ assertion that these two “entitlement” programs are destroying the economy, are going to cause the government to collapse, and we will all become Socialists.  To be upfront, I receive both Social Security and Medicare.  In my opinion, these are not “entitlement” programs from the government, because I paid into them with my taxes, and I believe that if there is any entitlement connected to them, I am entitled to get my taxes back! 

Regarding Medicare, there was a tremendous amount of fraud connected with the program, but it was more from the provider side rather than the recipients defrauding the government.  Consequently, the Obama administration has cut some $650 B dollars in fraud out of Medicare, which has helped tremendously to cut our federal deficit in half in just the last 5 years.  With other changes in how it is operated, Medicare is now running quite smoothly.  And the government is running this program quite efficiently.

Social Security should not even be mentioned in the same breath as Medicare and the federal deficit because it has absolutely nothing to do with the deficit.  It has its own funding source provided by future recipients.  These funds go into the Social Security Trust Fund, which is overseen by a Board of Trustees.  The amount of the taxes going into the fund was 6.2% of income, but several years ago a cap on the top wage earners was placed at $113,700.00.  People earning over that amount were no longer required to pay into Social Security.  One of the reasons for this, and probably the most important in our present political climate, was that it amounted to taking hard earned money away from high wage earners to provide for those who earned less.  In other words, taking from the “makers” to help the “takers” out.  If this tax cap were eliminated, the problem with the Social Security Trust Fund being depleted would certainly be significantly helped out.

During the Reagan years I remember reading or hearing someone comment that in the middle class savings accounts was all of this money that the more affluent had no access to.  That needed to be changed.  For the past 30 years, the Radical Right has been trying to do just that.  And then toss in the Radical Religious Right stating categorically that this is what God wants so that people do not rely on government but rather on God, and you have an evil brew in the making. 

And why, pray tell, is it OK for the wealthy to take wealth from the middle and poor classes, but if we down here toward the bottom want some of it back, it is SOCIALISM!!!!

 

 

Seeing Both Sides Now

One of the difficulties I have had in my life is the ability to see both sides of an issue.  This doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions of my own, since I obviously do.  It does mean, however, that I often need to think about what I hear for a while before I comment on it.  Of course, sometimes I don’t think, and it comes out wrong!!  It is known as foot in mouth disease!

This past week on Martin Bashir’s program he had a segment discussing Congressman Alan Grayson’s comment comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  Some other Democratic Congressman had criticized Grayson’s comments stating that he had learned as a legislator never to discuss fascism, the Nazis, the KKK or slavery.  I found that a tad odd since these all are historical facts, and they need to be talked about so that we can learn from history what is malevolent.

Bashir’s point was that the KKK had carried out a policy of lynching innocent black men for little or no reason, and the Tea Party had never done that.  To compare the two then trivialized the horrors of the KKK.  Grayson’s point, which he did not make very well, was that Tea Party rhetoric was very often racist, and that he had received many vicious and threatening e-mails of a racist nature.  Therefore, his analogy between the Tea Party and the KKK was valid.

How to reconcile the three ideas that had been tossed out there:  the first, that one must never discuss fascism, the Nazis, the KKK or slavery (the Democratic Congressman); that when one found common points between two events one had the obligation to compare them to each other (Grayson); to compare one truly malevolent historical fact with another historical fact that was not as malevolent but did have points of convergence was to trivialize the former (Bashir).  All valid points.

It is my opinion that the Democratic Congressman and Bashir were trying to make the same argument that one should not attempt to make a position stronger by comparing it to an horrendous event.  An example would be comparing Obamacare to slavery.  The comparison is ridiculous to start out with, but it also trivializes the dreadfulness of slavery.  And this is a very compelling argument to never do that.

And yet Grayson apparently recognizes that words can have terrible consequences if not unchecked.  It wasn’t until Europeans began to compare peoples of color and their cultures as being terribly inferior to European culture that the enslavement of people of color became OK.  After all, if a people had an inferior culture, and then only 3/5ths of a soul on top of that, it became almost the duty of the superior peoples to enslave them to save the people of color from themselves (the white man’s burden).  And in Germany in the 1930’s when it became the policy of the Nazis to begin the verbal assault against Jews, homosexuals, and anyone who the Nazis considered defective, that eventually the populace as a whole began to view these people as inferior or a detriment to society, so it was OK to treat them abominably.  I doubt in the beginning of this denigration the average German had any idea what the eventual results would be, but if the government thought it was the right thing to do, then neither did many of them care.  The end result was the murder by one means or another of nearly 9 million people, 6 of the million were Jews.

The lessons to be learned from all of this I believe is that it is just as important to talk about what has happened in our history – the good, the bad and the ugly – as it is to talk about what is happening in our country right now – the good, the bad and the ugly.  But how we talk about it can have great consequences.  Therefore, direct analogies between two uneven events should never happen.  But it is important to surface malevolence whenever and wherever it arises.  An example would be to discuss the coded racial rhetoric of the Tea Party from the perspective of depriving people of their dignity as human beings, of possibly depriving them of their civil rights, or of the Tea Party for being just plain cruel and immoral. 

Words do have consequences.  We must use them wisely.

Freedom Fried (satire)

All of this rhetoric over the tyranny of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and how it is going to take away our freedoms really had me concerned.  Now that the ACA has survived the attempt by the Tea Partiers to get rid of it by repealing, defunding, and delaying it has backfired, that may also have the effect of not getting rid of all of the rest of the nasty regulations that keep us from really being free.  Woe is me! 

With the federal Clean Water Act still in place and pretty much working, I don’t have the freedom to drink water that has little bits of stuff floating around in it.  I don’t have the freedom to drink water that might be tainted with cholera.  And just think, some of us won’t have the freedom to have our water from the faucet catch on fire or watch our rivers glow in the dark when they catch on fire. 

And how terrifying has it been to breathe air we can’t see after all of those regulations went into effect to control the amount of pollution from coal-fired plants, oil refineries, automobiles and other coal or oil fired engines?  Not to mention how our curiosity about how climate change will affect the planet over the long-term.  I really wanted to see all of those hurricanes, tornados, excessive rainfall here in California that causes our hills to turn to mud, and then the extended droughts here in the west that cause even more extensive wild-fires than we have had.  Boy, those people in Washington sure take the fun out of life. 

As for gambling, without food safety regulations we could have had a good time gambling on whether the food we eat had e-coli, salmonella or contaminants from herbicides all over it.  Of course, if we didn’t want to gamble on that we could buy locally produced food designated to be organic.  Except without inspectors to make sure the farms are organic, I guess we can still have the fun of gambling to see what will happen to us. 

When it comes time to take a vacation, we can have all of the excitement of not knowing what the weather will be.  Our weather reports come from a federal agency, so imagine the fun of driving across Oklahoma and being caught in a tornado.  We may get to whirl around at a couple a hundred miles an hour, and all for free.  You have to pay to ride a roller coaster you won’t know is safe because the inspectors are no longer on duty.  A tornado would be so much better.  And imagine the fun of being caught in a hurricane if the vacation is near the gulf coast.  Those surfs you see on TV look like they would be terrific to surf, and why not?  No one is around to tell you whether the surf is safe or not.  Nanny state all gone! 

We could, I suppose, still gamble when we decide to take a vacation.  If we decide to drive, we can be sure that our vehicle wasn’t inspected when it left the plant, so we can play a game of whether the vehicle will last long enough to get there.  Or if we fly, we can gamble on whether the plane was inspected before it was allowed to take off.  Now that will be a hoot!  We can grab the armrests with every little bit of air turbulence before we find out if that is all it is, or whether the plane is breaking up.  And if it does break up, no one will know why because the agency that determines what caused the air accident is a federal agency.  Without all of those regulations we can go back to having no fear of flying.

Since there won’t be any gun control of any kind, when there is a massive bombing, as at the Boston Marathon last year, we won’t have to waste time trying to figure out “who done it”.  Those incidents are investigated by federal agencies.  We can just shrug them off and go about our business, having the freedom to wonder where it will happen next.   

Ah, freedom.  I can hardly wait until the next government shutdown, or debt default.  Maybe if the feds go for a default and there is a total world-wide economic collapse all over the world, we will be free of regulations, and then the corporations will be able to give us all of the freedom we can handle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Confederate Flag? Amazing Grace??

The thing about age is one mellows. 

I watch the news program, Martin Bashir, eat my lunch, and then ride my exercise bicycle (sort of).  Today there was a segment about the House Republican Caucus that blew my “mellow” all to pieces.  It was about how the Caucus met this morning with a prayer.  Well, that’s OK.  It wasn’t a public meeting, and if they wanted to pray, that seemed like a good thing to do for them because, in my opinion, they need all the help they can get.  But they left the Caucus, in the halls of our government, singing the hymn “Amazing Grace”.  I came unglued for the following reasons, some objective, some not.  Let me state here that I profess to being a Catholic Christian along the lines of Pope Francis, long before he came on the scene, so this is not some anti-Christian rant.   

The first reason deals with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”  Now if the members had wanted to sing any other song that was not so blatantly Christian, I would not be so furious.  How about, “The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor…”, or, “Let Justice Roll Down Like a River.”  These are songs that could be sung nearly anywhere.  But singing “Amazing Grace”, which is blatantly and specifically Christian, for me smacks a bit too close to being an attempt to subvert the First Amendment.   

Further, the words to “Amazing Grace” were written by John Newton, a former captain of a slave ship who became a committed Christian later in life.  He wrote the words obviously after he had a complete change of heart from his former occupation.  The melody, however, was written on the five black keys of our Western eight note octave, which are the five notes of West African music.  The melody is remarkably close to a sorrow chant of West Africa, and would have been chanted in the holds of his ship by the newly captured Africans on their way to be sold as slaves.   

Take the deeply meaningful history of the hymn and put it in juxtaposition to the waving of the Confederate flag in front of the White House this weekend.  Not only does this flag have very, very deep emotional scars for our fellow African-American citizens, but it also represents sedition for the rest of us.  It was the flag of the South during the Civil War.  Allegiance to this flag represents sedition to our Constitutional system of government, that all are equal before the law.  Our society often does not live up to this ideal, obviously, but that does not mean we should abandon it as an ideal.  To wave that flag in front of the White House when the current occupant is an African-American is beyond despicable. 

Perhaps the members of the Caucus don’t know the history of the hymn; perhaps they know and don’t care; or perhaps they know and are sending a message, along with the Confederate flag, that does not auger well for our entire country.  In any event, these were despicable actions on both counts

 

When will this gaggle of radical insurrectionists be called to account for their actions which are becoming, in my opinion, perilously close to being high crimes and misdemeanors. 

 

 

 

 

 

Tarantulas, Computers, and Other Irrelevant Matters

Tarantulas, Computers and Other Irrelevant Matters

For those not from the California Central Coast, and for some who are newly here, we have these really hairy spiders that are pretty scary sometimes.  They can be anywhere from two to six inches in length, but generally around four inches.  Coastal tarantulas can make you sort of sick, but unless the human has some already pretty bad health issues, the tarantulas are not generally lethal.  The male spiders live somewhere (I’m not sure where), but emerge around the first of October and start wandering around.  They used to really upset me until I realized that what they were looking for was a female tarantula similarly inclined.  These females live in holes in the ground waiting for a male to wander by.  I once found a hole with a female living in it, and a wandering male one day, so I scooped up the male with a shovel and put him by the hole.  The speed with which he jumped toward the hole, and with which she emerged and they mated was truly remarkable.  I didn’t wait around for the rest of nature’s way, but I have been told that she then kills the male, drags him into her hole, lays her eggs in him, and when the eggs hatch the little ones chomp on good ol’ Dad until the little ones go their tarantula way.  After learning this, the wandering males just sort of make me feel sad.   

The legend here on the Coast is that when the tarantulas start to walk, it will rain within three weeks. 

My husband Bill, unlike me, wakes up at some ungodly hour of the morning, and when that occurs on a Saturday morning, he watches the farm station from the mid-west somewhere.  On this particular morning there was a world-wide weather report from some hot-shot computer in Europe that predicted no rain in California for the foreseeable future.  Since we are in an extreme drought situation this was not particularly good news.  Later in the day on that Saturday, he had been working outside, gotten sort of tired, and sat down to take a breather.  While there, two tarantulas came from opposite directions to a stop in front of him.  He said it was like watching some sort of very slow-motion dance, with one tarantula slowly raising one leg out of eight, then putting it down.  The other did the same thing a few moments later.  This went on for a few more minutes, with one tarantula raising a leg, then the other.  Suddenly they leapt to their back legs and hugged each other for a few moments, dropped back down to the ground and each wandered on in the general direction they had come from, still searching for a female. 

Ah, but that meant a contest between the tarantulas and the computer.  Which would be right?  Would it rain and prove the computer wrong, or would it not rain and prove the tarantulas wrong?  Last week a low-pressure system moved down the California coast well within the three week tarantula legend, and I was most happy.  But, it only drizzled!!  There was moisture in the air, however, but does that really count?  Only the Shadow knows.   

Why am I writing about tarantulas and computers?  Because if I write about what is going on in Washington right now, I would be using all sorts of language that should not be read in mixed company.  By this time next week we may have an answer to this god-awful mess we are in, and perhaps I will be less angry.  Or, I may just write about it and use lots of @#%$&^(*s.