Month: June 2009

In 92 when Clinton was elected President, people think of it as the beginning of the end.

No my friends, it goes much further back than that. In 1980, the year before I graduated, my father was still making 20,000 dollars a year, enough to put us soundly in the middle class, although his decision to spend much of that putting his 5 children through Catholic Indoctrination ate much of that.

He deeply resented that my fresh out of High School eldest brother, living at home, was working for Detroit Diesel and out-earning him by far. He had started as a “chipper,” a sweeper, and within a couple years was on the line. He would make “production” in a few hours, then spend the rest of the time reading. 8 years older than me, he was my “book dealer” since I was 10. (We were all voracious readers) I was reading Heinlien’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “Future Shock” at 10.

By High School, he had made Electrician, and I was scoring his pot for him. By the time he moved out, his car cost more than my Dad’s house, and he and his girlfriend working also as an electrician at Wixom Ford, could barely scrape to buy an average house.

Suddenly my Father realized that their combined 80,000 dollars now bought less than his 20,000 did, then his lower one income ever could. These two could not POSSIBLY raise one child, let alone two on one income.

The slow boil of the frog had started.

My Shock Doctrine, my Future Shock starts then…. he only missed what Naomi filled in, the INTENT.

Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation” – future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also coined the term information overload.

By the time I entered the workforce, lying about my age to get a job waitressing, I was merely 14. Babysitting was no longer supporting the horse I had purchased with my own money, rent went up on his field, hay went up, sweet feed was astronomical.

Waitressing paid minimum wage then. Within a year, someone had sued, saying they paid all these taxes against our minimum wage, while the businessmen got all those lunches and dinners tax free. The result? We got paid 1/4 minimum wage, since that proved our tips brought us up to minimum wage. We paid taxes on FULL minimum wage, making $1.82 at the time, and had to “claim all our tips” and pay full taxes on them as well. DOUBLE taxation. They kept their tax free lunches, only now, we had to sing their receipts.

The slow boil of the frog was already on.

Unions had already been pegged as getting ahead of themselves, and in all truth the UAW did. Hell, Hoffa was already missing, and there was backlash about people being paid for lay-offs, getting almost full wages for being off. What they never mentioned in THAT info-campaign, is that they paid over a $100 weekly into subpay (IIRC) that was an “investment” account OWNED by the factory, from which they supplemented unemployment. Michigan unemployment had a cap that nowher near reached the mortgage payers, and they foresaw the collapse, and negotiated for another way to supplement it. They PAID for it.

By the time I entered the Corporate World, benefits were almost as important as the pay. Health insurance had skyrocketed.

They had already incorporated, even in my college, bar-bistro-chain days it being mandatory to be drug tested and lie-detected. I passed both easily, I’m not a liar, and just refrained while job searching. I never even had to use the “Golden Seal” and other things they test for now. The TV was rampant with stories of that one bus driver who crashed a bus high, and they were pushing HARD on the war on drugs… “Just say NO!!”

Iran/Contra was in full force, or over, and the damned paraquat got us all trying coke.

They had only just begun. There had to be a way to slowly turn the heat up, for Americans held huge amounts of assets in the Middle Class, and were well armed and far too Cowboyish in nature to be suddenly thrust into poverty, as worked in Chile in the 50’s.

Enter 401k’s. Yeah, they convinced many they were BETTER than retirements, had higher returns, and flooded the already bubbling dot com market with more instant cash. Greed is Good became mantra.  So many thought it was their ticket to forever, but a few of us wary said NO. The stock market is not a real thing, and gambling is as easily gained as lost. But they pressed. We could not compete on a global level with all of the money spent on benefits… retirements and soon Health Care had to be privatized.

The boil just got hotter, and the propaganda fiercer.

Clinton was an aberration they didn’t expect, but they co-opted him easily enough. We were living in the falsely propped high market flooded by 401k dollars and internet sales. They sold him and us globalization without a shudder.

The easiest time to sell people anything is when they have a false sense of security, and boy howdy, that get rich quick dream had everyone clawing into the market with fervor.

It could not sustain.

Of course, it was time to take it out of all those private hands that so willingly put it at the mercy of the market, to take it back.

Enter GWB and 9/11.

You cannot jump out of the pot on boil when you’re under attack can you?

The long range plan was under way… Now, a war, an enemy to unite us. Gross expenditures with no oversight to move the assets into the hands of the designers.

Finally, after luring the populace into a false high market, to bring earnings back to where it was in my father’s times…. but!!! At todays prices.

The market collapse was not by accident. This is the long pork pull of planning, the ultimate design.

We WILL be impoverished, but we will think it by accident, exactly as planned, we will think it the fault of enemies and inevitable economic weirdness, and the fault of those we are at war with, and our own idiocy of overspending. Just as planned.

But it gets scarier, if you will bear with me a moment longer.

This attack, this war has lead many to believe that not only is it the fault of others that our monetary system failed, it has inured them into the very shredding of their rights… rights they think they are PROTECTING by GIVING UP to keep themselves from further monetary and physical harm.

The genius in that is supreme.

This media? The electronic age, the one that allows me to speak of this? It has been compromised. Not only by our enemies, by ourselves. They know that this media has over written theirs, the MSM, so there are now legions of paid bloggers, or formerly independent bloggers now on the payroll.

We all know that.

They let us know that.

But we ourselves, me included, add to that noise to signal ratio, each of us sure we have the message, that nothing gets truly through. I can think of at least three worth campaigns I have started that went nowhere.

The internet is not the “only place people have community anymore,” it can and may become exactly what divides us. Now, instead of opining about one writers words we opine about millions words…. and as such FIND division.

And here I am asking you to read me, and I am part of the problem. We are all more interested in what we write, and the reactions to it than the solutions, me included. We are at fault too.

Trippy.

This, watching Iran, and what has happened with Obama’s electronic victory (not unlike Kennedy’s TV victory… without comparing the men, just the media) has me convinceed we are doing it wrong.

This is a long plan. Theirs has been along plan and we are playing into it every day, even I, with these words which will do nothing.

We need to relook at ourselves.

We need to find a way to unite.

I am totally lost on how.

But I am wide awake and aware of what I am up against, I have been since I was 10.

/ Part One

Help me out here. I am going to go out on a limb and accept the statistics at face-value. That may turn out to be a mistake on my part, but I want to examine this argument on its merits. Let’s say it is misleading to claim that Medicare has significantly lower administrative costs than private health insurance. Why? Because Medicare covers elderly people that use a lot of health care, so when you say that only 3% of Medicare’s payout goes to cover administrative costs, you need to factor in that it is 3% of a giant pie. Private health insurers cover the healthiest people, so the 12% of their payout that goes to administrative costs is 12% of a much smaller pie. If, as the Heritage Foundation alleges, Medicare actually spends more than private insurers on a per-patient basis, then maybe we shouldn’t expect to see any cost savings from a public option. The 12%-3% difference is an illusion.

I can see how this argument can be made, but I think Tom Bevan goes too far when he says:

But here’s the catch: because Medicare is devoted to serving a population that is elderly, and therefore in need of greater levels of medical care, it generates significantly higher expenditures than private insurance plans, thus making administrative costs smaller as a percentage of total costs. This creates the appearance that Medicare is a model of administrative efficiency. What Jon Alter sees as a “miracle” is really just a statistical sleight of hand.

See, I think Bevan is engaging in a sleight of hand, too. Because the key to the comparatively lower per-patient administrative costs of private insurers is that most of their customers do not use the system and thus it requires very little to administer their accounts.. The real question is whether private insurers could maintain their administrative costs if they had to administer a pool that included everyone over sixty-five years of age in this country. Or, conversely, could the government vastly improve their per patient costs by taking on a pool of healthy adults? I’m guessing that we don’t learn much by making apples-to-oranges comparisons, and what we’re seeing is just two-sides using statistics to suit their own arguments.

A better way to judge is to compare our system to Canada’s and the other large population industrialized nations’ health care systems. How are we doing in the aggregate compared to them? What kind of improvements should we anticipate if we mimic their systems?

Hey folks, excuse the interruption but I was wondering if I could pick your brain.

First read this (it’s a large image).

Then check out this and this.  

Anybody know anything about these guys?

-Pax

The Star-Tribune reports that Franken can expect a signed certificate of election if the Minnesota Supreme Court, as expected, rules in his favor.

After hedging for weeks about how he’ll react to the state Supreme Court ruling on Minnesota’s Senate race, Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave his clearest answer to date Sunday.

“I’m going to follow the direction of the court,” he said during an appearance on CNN. “We expect that ruling any day now. I also expect them to give guidance and direction as to the certificate of election. I’m prepared to sign it as soon as they give the green light.”

Yet, I am beginning to wonder about the eventual ruling, as the Court seems stuck on something. I expected a quick ruling in what appears to be a fairly straightforward case.

We teach our kids to wash their hands during flu season, we teach them to wear a seat belt in the car, we teach them not to talk to strangers.  We do these things in order to give our children the knowledge to protect themselves and achieve all that they are capable of.  Part of ensuring that American children have access to the opportunity is ensuring their safety.

However, there is one kind of health about which parents are more reluctant to teach their kids– sexual health.  No parent wants to see his or her child "grow up too quickly."  Even the thought of a sexually transmitted infection harming one’s "little boy" or "little girl" can be overwhelming.  However, the reality of the sexual health of America’s youth suggests that action needs to be taken to provide the tools to keep America’s children safe.  For example, Lee Che Leong, Director of the Teen Health Initiative of the New York Civil Liberties Union made an official statement on the dire state of New York City’s health education system in 2007:

In our work… we hear countless tales from students who are not receiving the basic knowledge necessary to understand, much less protect, their health. The questions we field from teens reveal the sad state of sexuality education in New York City public schools. We’ve heard sexually active teens ask what penetration is, if emergency contraception is abortion, and whether douching with Coke prevents pregnancy.

Not only is there a need for comprehensive sexual education, research shows that there is popular support.  For example, the ACLU tells us:

A 1999 nationally representative survey of 7th-12th grade teachers in the five specialties most often responsible for sex education found that a strong majority believed that sexuality education courses should cover birth control methods (93.4%), factual information about abortion (89%), where to go for birth control (88.8%), the correct way to use a condom.

Such research shows that these educators understand the value and the need for keeping kids safe.  In the nation where, according to Advocates for Youth and Public Health Reports the median age for engaging in sexual activity is 17, compared to a median age of marriage of 25.8 for women and 27.4 for men, abstinence-until-marriage programs are simply not realistic, nor do they reflect American culture.

All of America’s children deserve to be healthy, and comprehensive sexual education is integral to this goal.  Sexual health classes should respect cultural differences and religious beliefs while making health a top priority.  This means teaching students about contraception and STD’s, including HIV, and empowering students to talk to their partners and their parents about what can be life-altering decisions.   In 2007, the CDC recorded 1,108,374 cases of Chlamydia in the United States, compared to 21,499 cases of H1N1, or Swine Flu.  If we taught our kids as much about Chlamydia as we did about the Swine Flu, it might not continue to be more than 51 times as prevalent.

Read more on The Opportunity Agenda Blog

Hey, right wing, racist, xenophobic terrorists aren’t just an American phenomenon anymore. Case in point: Neil Lewington of Reading, Berkshire who had constructed a bomb factory in his parents’ home to take out all those he considered not British enough.

Neil Lewington, 43, had developed a bomb factory at his parents’ home in Reading, Berkshire, targeting those he thought “non-British”, jurors heard.

The Old Bailey heard he was carrying bomb parts when arrested at Lowestoft, Suffolk, for abusing a train conductor. […]

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said Mr Lewington was found to be carrying the component parts of two “viable improvised incendiary devices”.

Later searches of his home revealed a notebook entitled “Waffen SS UK members’ handbook” which contained drawings of electronics and chemical mixtures, jurors were told. […]

He also had an “unhealthy interest” in the London nail bomber David Copeland, America’s Unabomber and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said Mr Altman.

Mr Altman said: “The effect of these finds is to prove that this man who had strong if not fanatical right-wing leanings and opinions was on the cusp of embarking on a campaign of terrorism against those he considered non-British.”

Sounds like the Brits dodged a bullet a few IED’s from a guy who was not a Muslim and who allegedly planned to “take out” anyone not white enough for his tastes. Yes, racist right wing terrorists are a now going global. Another American cultural export? The BBC reports. You decide. But from where I sit, it sure looks like that. I mean, when one of his heroes is Timothy McVeigh, you have to ask whether our right wing extremists are influencing other like minded members of the lunatic fringe to act out their violent, racist fantasies in real life. The Brits were luckier than we were. At least they stopped this guy before he could put his plan into action. the question remains, however: how many more are there like him, not only in the UK but across Europe? After all, France, Germany and Italy all have Neo-Nazi and Neo-fascist groups, and even political parties dedicated to the eradication expulsion of foreigners, especially Turks, Arabs and other brown skinned folks. Not to mention their long history of hatred for the Jews.

I wish I could offer them some good advice, but America isn’t doing very well eliminating our own right wing terrorist threats. If anything we’re behind the curve in that regard. Way behind the curve based on what’s happened here over the last year with the assassinations of George Tiller, that poor security guard at the Holocaust Museum, Stephen Tyrone Johns, Bill Gwatney, the Democratic party chairperson in Arkansas, and the liberal church goers gunned down by David Adkisson in Knoxville, Tennessee. Not to mention the aborted assassination plots against Obama, the guy in Maine who was assembling a dirty bomb until his wife killed him because he abused her, or the recent radical fringe anti-immigrant Minuteman members in Arizona who murdered two people, including a nine year old girl.

Maybe they can give us a few tips, however, on how to stop these freaks. God knows we need all the help we can get.

.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

There was a brief period of time, probably in 2004, when I thought Dana Milbank was doing a decent job of showing a sane level of skepticism about the Bush administration’s pronouncements and behavior. He wasn’t striking for his wit or his moral outrage. He just stood out as someone who was occasionally willing to call bullshit in a town where that seemed never to happen. His schtick appeared to be irreverence of a kind slightly more substantive than that provided by Lady Dowd. But something changed. If I had to guess, what changed is that Milbank started getting invites to be on the cable news. And that made him somebody. He joined the Big Boys like Howard Fineman and Ron Brownstein. His opinion was supposed to move the national discourse. He became a connoisseur of the cocktail frankfurter. And then…he began to suck.

He lost his outsiderish up-and-coming edge. His condescension stopped reaching up and started hammering down. Instead of telling us that our betters are full of crap, he told us that his lessers were unworthy. And, at some point he reached a stage of inness where he felt comfortable enough to wallow in his sense of accomplishment and to develop a sense of entitlement. He worked hard to get where he is and, dammit, who is some blogger from the Huffington Post to get an invitation to ask the president a question?

That blogger is Nico Pitney who has been covering the Iranian elections with indefatigable energy. Milbank’s sense of vanity was on full display today when he appeared on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources with Nico, and whined about a mere aggregator of news getting called on in a presidential press conference. When the segment was over, Milbank turned to Pitney and told him, “You are such a dick.”

It’s hard to say exactly why Milbank decided to insult Pitney to his face, but it’s a good bet that his feelings were hurt when Nico pointed out that Milbank once asked candidate Obama numerous questions about how he looked in a swimsuit. I think it should go without saying that a journalist’s opportunities to ask a presidential contender questions are limited, and Milbank blew one of the few chances he will ever get. The truth is, only someone whose bowels are bloated with cocktail weenies would ever waste such a golden chance to probe the mind of a presidential candidate by asking about his pectoral muscles.

I can’t believe that the U.S. lost a 2-0 halftime lead against Brazil and lost the Confederations Cup by a score of 2-3. That totally sucks. And I can’t make up my mind if I am disappointed that I forgot to watch it. I think Brazil needs to work on their defense if they are going to win next year’s World Cup.

I was looking for the latest news on the Minnesota senate race when I found this:

While most Minnesotans are waiting for their never-ending U.S. Senate race to be decided by the Supreme Court in St. Paul, folks in the hamlet of Nevis, Minn., have taken matters into their own hands.

During the Hubbard County town’s July 4th celebration, a pair of piglets named Norm Coleman and Al Franken will race through downtown to determine the winner of the still-vacant Senate seat.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Mayor Dave McCumin explained: “I’m thinking, geez, this thing has taken eight months and a gazillion dollars, and we can decide this in 15 seconds. And it’ll probably be as accurate as anything the Supreme Court decides. And we’ll be done with it.”

This seems slightly more reasonable than Coleman’s court challenge.