What a curious analogy by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint: if Republicans and others opposed to “socialism” can stop President Obama and Democrats in Congress from passing health care reform, it will be Obama’s Waterloo. He will be doomed to finish out an ineffectual term, kind of like Jimmy Carter.
Most of us Americans have a hazy idea at best about The Battle of Waterloo. A quick recap for those of you who might have been asleep during the lecture on European history: in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon had managed to return to power in France after being exiled to the island of Elba off Tuscany. (It would be like Obama losing a second term, and then later winning another term.) Napoleon had already held power for a decade. Having been bitten many times by Napoleon, allied powers quickly organized to defeat him again. English and Prussian powers were able to defeat his armies rather handily in June of 1815 at Waterloo in Belgium. After all, they knew what they were up against and brought forty thousand more soldiers than Napoleon to the battle. After the battle, Napoleon went to live on another island, this time St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he died rather ingloriously of stomach cancer in 1821.
In short, Waterloo was the concluding battle of Napoleon’s resurgent short second reign. In contrast, President Obama has been in office a little over a year. The closest analogy one can make between Napoleon and health care reform legislation was Napoleon’s administrative reforms, which included a tax code, a public road and sewer system, establishing a central bank, and a set of civil laws known as the Napoleonic Code which were, at least in theory, quite progressive. Many of these laws and institutions survive today and may be Napoleon’s true legacy in France.
In this health care battle, if any side has superior forces, it is the establishment. It is true that Democrats have the political advantage in Congress. However, the watered down legislation making its way toward the reconciliation process represents significant concessions to the health care and health insurance industries. Single payer health care? Gone. A public option health care plan to compete with private health insurance plans? It has virtually no chance of being added during the reconciliation process, based on press reports. If brought up, it stands little likelihood of making it through reconciliation.
In many ways, if the current legislation were enacted, it would be a great victory for the health insurance industry. These companies understand that in the end they cannot sell health insurance if no one can afford to buy it. The legislation requires most uninsured Americans to buy health insurance from the private health care insurance industry. The government is basically requiring Americans to dole out more of their hard earned money to give to private corporations, not the government. That sounds like the government is assisting the corporatocracy, not socialism. If Americans cannot afford to buy the product, in many cases the government will offer subsidies and tax credits to make it possible.
To label these reforms as socialism is ridiculous. If regulating the health care industry is socialism, then one has to ask the obvious questions of what else the government is doing is socialism, because most of the federal government could be construed as socialist. Regulating drugs for safety and efficacy must be socialism because it interferes with the free market for drugs. Federal highway transportation standards and interstate commerce regulations must be socialism. Most significantly, Medicare and Medicaid must be socialism. Yet, few of those railing against socialized health care are talking (at least openly) about getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid. Many of them loathe Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) but to vote against Medicare would estrange them from virtually every senior citizen in the country. Republicans, of course, thrive on cognitive dissonance. So sure, of course they can be for socialized medicine for senior citizens yet bitterly oppose it for the rest of the working class whose taxes, by the way, are funding the Medicare system that seniors are using.
The only health care legislation that would truly be socialist would be a certain forms of a single payer health care system. This would have the government pay all Americans health care bills. In return, you would have to get health care from a government approved health care provider. Even so, as envisioned, the single payer health care approach is probably not socialistic, because the government would not directly provide the care. Most single payer health care systems follow this model. Great Britain’s Public Health Service is a major exception. Curiously, in Great Britain the Conservative Party is aligning itself as the savior of the PHS.
Is a public option socialistic? A public option provides a government administered (not owned) health care plan open to all legal U.S. residents. It would probably look a lot like Medicare; in fact, it might be Medicare extended. However, practices currently do not have to accept Medicare patients, and many do not (or do so only with grumbling) because they do not feel they are adequately reimbursed. A public option would probably not be wildly successful. A public option would probably be like buying a “good” or “better” model refrigerator. Most Americans would lust for the “best” models available from companies like Blue Cross. However, having a public option, even if it is not as great as Blue Cross, beats having no health care at all. Ask forty seven million uninsured Americans. What a public option does is help make health care more affordable because health insurers would have genuine competition. However, as I noted, the public option has little chance of passing with health care reform.
The argument really amounts to whether the federal government should mess further in the health insurance marketplace. It’s about making sure the government does not grow any further, except in ways that matter to Republicans, like having large defense contracts to privileged contractors like Halliburton. It is apparently okay for the government to ensure that securities are traded in a fair and open manner. However, it is not okay for the government to require a level playing field for health insurers. State corporation commissions ensure level playing fields all the time with electric, sewer and water rates and we don’t fret about it. Some states even regulate health insurance providers. We recognize that industries that are monopolies, or near monopolies like the health care industry in many states, need regulation to ensure that a vital service is available at all. It is hard to think of any service more vital than health care. Moreover, it’s hard to think of an area more in need of regulation, given astronomical premium increases and no constraints about whom a company can insure.
It is clear what the cost of inaction would be: eventually there will be no health insurance industry at all. Maybe that is what Republicans are secretly hoping for, although the way they take major contributions from the health care industry it is hard to believe. After all, if no one but the very wealthy can afford to pay out of pocket for health care, perhaps with all these surplus doctors costs would finally drop to an affordable level. I personally think it’s more likely I will get a visit from the tooth fairy than this ever happening.
So I would not hold my breath there. I can guarantee you one thing: if health care reform does not pass, eventually the health care industry will be petitioning Congress for regulation. The last thing they want is not be the broker between you and receiving health care. So take your health insurance reform now or later. The reality is the current legislation is a great gift to the health insurance industry, which will likely ensure its survival with, at best, only a light touch from government.
Waterloo? In this case, Napoleon is not President Obama, but the health insurance industry. Perhaps the rock group Abba got it right:
Oh Lord, I am worried! I have lived in Virginia for more than twenty years but until recently, I had not realized I was living in a socialist state. Why? Because Virginia is one of four uppity states not content to be just ordinary states but which insisted on calling themselves “commonwealths”.
This is quite alarming. What is socialism? According to Merriam-Webster, it is “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”. Granted, thanks to the “enlightened” people at Fox News, most Americans now believe the word has an entirely different meaning. Socialism now apparently means the government taking any action to redistribute wealth, particularly from the richer to the poorer. (Don’t worry, patriots. The other way around is perfectly okay, as always. Screwing the poor is a sacrosanct American tradition.)
All I know is that the meaning of “common wealth” is obvious enough! It means that some poor bugger down in Tidewater, Virginia must be entitled to some part of my six-figure salary! Virginia felt so strongly about being a commonwealth that in its original constitution passed in 1776 it declared that “Commissions and Grants shall run, In the Name of the commonwealth of Virginia, and bear taste by the Governor with the Seal of the Commonwealth annexed.”
Virginia is not alone. Three other socialist states are out there: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky. All have the audacity to call themselves commonwealths. And we let them into the U.S.A.! How could we? Don’t these uppity states know that socialism is un-American?
I am afraid to say there is rampant evidence of socialism here in the Old Dominion. For example, if you want to purchase hard liquor, you must buy it at a Virginia ABC store. Warning: before reading further, if you are standing, please sit down. Virginia ABC stores are owned and operated exclusively by the State of Virginia. In fact, we have a Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control! Virginia law allows no other legal means of acquiring hard liquor within the state! This has some obvious problems. First, there is no competition! The government sets whatever price it wants to for liquor and residents must pay it! This encourages bootlegging and an illegal moonshine industry, which is still going on today! Even worse, when Virginia ABC stores make a profit, the profits are used to fund state services! This also means that Virginians who enjoy hard liquor are disproportionately overtaxed.
If it were only Virginia ABC stores, perhaps this socialism would be tolerable. Yet, Virginia also has a state lottery. It allows no other lotteries in the state, so private industry has no opportunity at all to run their own betting parlors. This is by law! Moreover, Virginia prohibits most other forms of gambling. If you are into gambling on horses, you can only place bets on races at state owned and managed offsite betting parlors and only for races at Colonial Downs east of Richmond. This is clearly more socialism as well as stifling free enterprise!
My suspicion is that there are similar socialist things going on in the commonwealth socialist states of Kentucky, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as well. It should be obvious that Massachusetts is already a socialist state, given their tendency to elect Democrats! It’s like they want to be socialists! How weird is that?
If you are a red-blooded, all American citizen, you should be alarmed by these socialist trends. I have heard other states are doing similar things, but are masquerading as “states” rather than the communist/socialist/tree hugging commonwealths they actually are. Clearly, drastic action is required. We can start with a constitutional amendment kicking any state out of the union that labels itself as a commie “commonwealth”. Actually, it would be much cooler if it allowed residents of other states the right to rape, pillage and plunder these states. That would show them the way the natural order actually works. Maybe they will eventually see the light. In fact, we should be able to kick any state out of the union we feel that may even be thinking about socialism. Why? Because socialism is bad, obviously! It stifles competition and free markets.
I guess I need to move across the Potomac River and back to Maryland. There may be many Democrats over there, but oh Lord, at least they are not a commonwealth!
Trying to find bipartisanship these days on any political issue is virtually impossible. So when I see a poll where there is strong agreement between Democrats, Republicans and Independents, I take note. What do eighty percent of very polarized Americans agree on? They agree the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission sucks. Moreover, Americans are as mad as hell with the decision. In the 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court said that corporations and unions could spend as much as they wanted on political campaigns, overturning long-standing regulations that limited this spending for individual candidates within a few months of an election. According to The Washington Post poll, eighty five percent of Democrats disagree with the Supreme Court, as well as 76 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Independents.
The only ones who seem to disagree, not surprisingly, are congressional Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he plans to oppose any legislation that would attempt to blunt the impact of this ruling. Americans of all stripes though understand what is really going on. Just like in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others. With this Supreme Court decision, it’s official.
Most Americans understand what happens when one group of well moneyed interests can outspend and out organize us ordinary citizens. The result is clear in Congress: a strong resistance to change in any form and a tendency to serve the interests of those with the money. Nowhere was this more evident than in the recent health care debate. By throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying efforts, the health care industry gummed up process rather effectively. Clearly, the status quo works fine for the health care industry, as evidenced by record health insurance company profits and exploding health care costs in general. How does it work for the rest of us who aren’t self financed multimillionaires like Rush Limbaugh? Not so well, as evidenced by outrages like 39% premium increases on some Anthem Blue Cross plans in California and the growing percentage of Americans who simply cannot afford health insurance.
Health care reform is the issue of the day but the same can be said about most of the problems that Americans care about that are affecting this country. If we were happy with the status quo, there wouldn’t be historically high levels of unhappiness with Congress in the polls. However, it’s not easy to throw the bums out and elect new bums, particularly now that the Supreme Court has given the green light to corporations and unions to spend as much as they want to elect their preferred candidates. All this does it raise the bar even higher for those of us who have less money to convince our fellow voters to vote for this other guy (or gal). And we happen to be actual breathing U.S. citizens.
Of course it also doesn’t help that most states carefully draw congressional districts to ensure they are either highly Republican or highly Democratic (generally, depending on the party in power at the time the district boundaries are drawn). The effect of this practice is to disenfranchise anyone who is not among the highly partisan wing of the predominant party of their congressional district. It also inflames partisanship in Congress and creates very safe districts for incumbents. Once elected, these incumbents can create large war chests that discourage challengers. Even with a challenger, their war chests allow them to dominate the media prior to Election Day. Not that they have to worry much about losing anyhow because their districts are specifically drawn to make it likely they will be reelected.
The effect of this policy is to reduce the influence of ordinary citizens for those who have influence money. Republicans in Democratic districts feel disenfranchised, as do Democrats in Republican districts. My congressman is Frank Wolf, who first won election to Congress in 1980. That means he has spent thirty years in Congress. Part of his district is in Fairfax County, Virginia where I live, which is principally Democratic. A much larger part of it is in safe Republican counties like Loudoun, Fauquier and Prince William. It seems likely that when Virginia redraws congressional boundaries after the census, his district will somehow manage to remain predominantly Republican. Frankly, Congressman Wolf is more likely to die in office than retire from it.
Who is funding his campaign? According to OpenSecrets.org, it’s a lot of the usual suspects. In the 2008 elections, organizations representing retirees gave him the most (about $180,000), so don’t expect him to be voting to cut Medicare or Social Security just because both are tending toward insolvency. Next were real estate ($171,000), lawyers ($99,000), Republicans and fellow conservatives ($65,000) and various Israeli lobbies ($48,000). As for the health care industry, they came in at sixth at $48,000. Needless to say, he voted against the health care reform bill in Congress.
The effect of all this extreme gerrymandering is to end up with a congress that is more deeply polarized than it would be if congressional districts were drawn up impartially. At the same time, because they are fed by well moneyed special interests, we get a Congress that is resistant to change. This is turn means that current problems like deficit spending and entitlement reform are less likely to be solved, thus making problems that much more chronic. This ultimately is what is bankrupting the country, not Bush tax cuts or prolific spending on social welfare programs.
Really, even Glenn Beck and Arianna Huffington should be able to find common ground here. Last week at the odious CPAC convention in Washington, Glenn Beck was railing about the need to elect true Conservatives instead of Republicans. Arianna Huffington is one of many liberals, like me, feeling disenfranchised by supposed “Democrats” in Congress. Beck is frustrated because he cannot get rid of the welfare state. Why? Because Republicans will ultimately do the bidding of those who give them money. There are plenty of Republicans, like Congressman Wolf, who take heaps of money from senior citizens lobbies, so don’t expect him to vote to kill Medicare. Huffington meanwhile is in a huff because Democrats like North Dakota Senator Ben Nelson vote for the interests of Blue Cross instead of supporting a public option health care plan. Why? It is because Nelson gets a ton of money from the health insurance industry. Yet it’s not only the extremes that are upset, but also those in the middle whose interests are also not being served. That’s why hardly anyone is happy with the status quo. That’s why eighty percent of Americans are irate about the Citizens United decision while also realizing it is just more evidence of who really is running the country. It sure is not the people! Conservatives and liberals should come together to kill off corporate lobbying simply so they can actually advance their agendas!
It’s the system that is providing disincentives to pragmatically solve current problems. Congress gives highest priority to those who give them the most money. Otherwise, partisanship triumphs. For those few issues that are non-partisan and which there is no vested industry with their hand in the public till, we may get bipartisanship. Consequently, the two biggest things we can do to end our national dysfunction become easy to identify.
First, and probably the hardest thing to get Congress to do, is to change the process by which Congressional districts are drawn. We have an opportunity because the 2010 census is underway. A law that required states to have an impartial commission or judges draw up congressional districts would make it possible for more moderates to be elected. Moderates tend toward being pragmatic rather than idealistic. This would have the tendency to better balance Congress so that bipartisanship is more likely.
Secondly, the power of corporations and unions to influence elections must be checked. At the Washington Post poll demonstrates, there is overwhelming support for restricting the amount of money that these institutions can contribute. Congress could probably succeed in passing a law reforming the most egregious abuses, but this is one of those cases where a constitutional amendment really is needed to settle the issue of corporate “personhood” once and for all. Nowhere in our founding documents does it say that corporations are entitled to the same rights of citizens. This was due to an earlier Supreme Court interpretation that it has now effectively codified to mean without any restraints. If an amendment could pass Congress (a tough hurdle), it is likely to be easily ratified by the various states.
If these two systemic problems could be addressed, we might actually get a government representative of its people again. Consequently, government would be more likely to do the bidding of a majority of its citizens. We might as a result still find ourselves polarized, but it won’t be because of special interests or gerrymandering. Whether America swings to the left or the right as a result is really not as important as restoring a fully representative democracy. The truth is that these days our republican form of government is at best 30-50 percent representative of the people.
Perhaps to really appreciate Valentine’s Day, you have to be single or divorced. When you are an old married dude like me, Valentine’s Day has a perfunctory feel to it. Of course, I get my wife a card, some chocolate and sometimes even some flowers. She does likewise. It should be a special day since after all it is a day that celebrates romantic love. Perhaps we could find ways to make the day more special. For us the truth is that we love each other the same every day of the year, so there is not much point in making a fuss over Valentine’s Day, beyond what is expected.
Absence does make my heart grow fonder. There are times when I feel if we really wanted to rekindle the old flame, we should spend a month apart. A week apart, which happens a couple times a year when I am off on business travel, definitely makes me miss my wife. I miss her as well as all those comfortable, somewhat nebbish things we do both together and apart, like sit three feet from each other while she inhabits one computer and I another but largely never speak. I imagine to feel so distracted that I craved her most of the time would take about a month. I really don’t know because in nearly a quarter century of marriage, we have not been apart for more than two weeks at a time.
Passionate love is designed to be fleeting. It tends to get more passionate with increased separation, up to a point. If your hormones remained as high as they are during the passionate love phase, you would live happy but die young. This is why many of us crave a lower intensity kind of love that amounts to the comfort and routine of being married. After a while, you take it for granted simply because it is so always available. We have someone to come home to. He or she may not be perfect, but neither are we. This low-key love that most of the time is pleasant rather than passionate seems to be the key for many to low blood pressure, health and long life.
Some of us would like this pleasant kind of love but haven’t found the right person yet. Others of us may have found the right person but cannot get married. The person they love inconveniently has the same sex as they do. Except in a handful of states they are out of luck. Perhaps they can live with their love, but they cannot do anything to make their relationship legal.
I do not know exactly how things would be between my wife and I right now had we decided to live with each other the last quarter century instead of tying the knot. I do know they would be a lot different. Would we have ever had a child? These days there is a lot less stigma associated with having a child out of wedlock but childrearing is so much less complicated when you are married. Our daughter could fall under my insurance. My wife of course would not be my wife, unless you count her as a common law wife, so she would have to fend for herself in the health insurance market. Frankly, I doubt we would still be together. We both wanted to settle down. Inhabiting a house together was nice, but until we were tied together legally, it didn’t feel quite right. Marriage was important because it meant we were an established and committed couple and could plan a future together in a straightforward and structured way.
It baffles me, particularly with the passing of each Valentine’s Day, why gays and lesbians cannot enjoy the simple right to a civil marriage. I could enumerate the many reason why denying civil marriage is so counterproductive to our society. However, the Reverend Evan Keely, an interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend pretty much said it all in his succinct sermon Forty-Seven Theses that he delivered appropriately on Valentine’s Day Sunday. In addition, I have talked extensively about this injustice before.
Today, I simply want to say to my gay and lesbian brethren just how sorry I am that they were born into a society where they still cannot know the everyday pleasure of waking up with and interacting with a spouse. I never have to worry that my wife will be denied hospital visitation privileges, or that someone I trust can direct our financial affairs when I am unable to do so. I don’t have to worry about finding someone to accompany me to the hospital for outpatient surgery or to drive me home afterward. It comes implicitly with marriage. Having a spouse makes live so much less complicated in so many ways, while of course it introduces relational complexities as well. It is not fair, but I am fully vested in society and you, unless you live in a state that allows gay marriage, are not. Even if you happen to live in a progressive state like Massachusetts, in the eyes of the federal government you are still not married, and are treated as such.
Rest assured that this will change. In time, this injustice will be rectified and you will be treated as equally as the rest of us who happen to have been born with heterosexual orientations. I will not rest until you too can enjoy the right to live pleasantly (but not always with burning passion) with the blessing of civil society with the person you love.
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) lampooned, “It’s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries ‘uncle’.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), observing the record snowfall in the Washington D.C. area wonders where Al Gore was to defend his thesis on global warming against this outrageous assault by winter. Global climate warming skeptic Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had his kids build an igloo for Al Gore on Capitol Hill and posted photos of it in Facebook.
Meanwhile, over at the Fox “News” network, Fox used the occasion of the record snowfall to also castigate Gore and those scientists documenting the unfolding global warming disaster. Naturally, some of the news that Fox “News” did not choose to air was the unnatural lack of snow in Vancouver where the Winter Olympics are underway and where the snow and refrigeration is largely manmade. Nor did they cover the lack of seasonal snow in places like Vermont, which is usually hip deep in the stuff this time of the year but has settled for ice. Nor are they devoting much airtime to the rains and subsequent mudslides in Southern California, which are exceptionally strong this year.
Back when I was studying communications in college, I learned about the phenomenon of selective perception. Most of us go through life with blinders on, perceiving what we choose to perceive and ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn’t match our view of the world. This seems to be a reflexive human trait. Sometimes selective perception can get in our way. George Washington, our first president, essentially bled to death at the hands of his physician. At the time, bleeding someone who was ill was considered good medicine. No one was studying whether this practice was stupid or smart, but it was the conventional wisdom, such as it was. Eventually enough research was done and the practice was stopped when it was deemed counterproductive.
In the real world, we hire scientists and researchers to tell us fact from fiction because we need to infer knowledge based on evidence, not fantasy. Unfortunately, to be elected to Congress you do not have to have accreditation as a scientist or researcher, although a law degree helps. An educated American would look at the Jim Inhofes and Glenn Becks of the world and know their opinions on these matters are ill informed. Instead, particularly when it came to topics like global warming, we should be listening to people like Jane Lubchenco. You probably have no idea who Jane Lubchenco is, which is a shame. She is the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as a professional scientist with sterling credentials. Prior to her nomination by President Obama, she had an illustrious career and received a number of notable awards including the 8th Heinz Award in the environment in 2002. Lubchenco has not abandoned her position on the reality of global warming because of one snowstorm in the D.C. area. She would be a moron to do so.
Could it be possible that Fox News is just a wee bit biased on the whole global warming question? Could it possibly be that they are far more interested in returning Republicans to political power at any cost than they are in learning the true about global warming as a result of human activity? As if I needed more proof, this reality was driven home to me yesterday at the health club where I happened to watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox “News” redefine the term socialism. Before, it has always meant that the government controlled the means of production. In O’Reilly’s weird world, socialism is anything the government does to shift wealth from one class of Americans to another class of Americans. Clearly, O’Reilly was asleep during the lectures on socialism when he was in school. Communism attempts to make everyone live at the same socioeconomic level, not socialism. Such ignorance is appalling, particularly when the whole point of government is to redistribute wealth. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no roads, no public schools, no bridges, no military, no regulated airwaves, no assurance that our drugs would be reasonably safe, ad nauseum. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no food stamp program, which due to the bad economy now feeds one in eight Americans. These fellow Americans would be starving, but that apparently is okay in O’Reilly’s world. (O’Reilly does seem to be okay with redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich, which has been underway for years.)
In short, the people who are spouting such opinions are either delusional, have an agenda or both. If they really believe that thirty something inches of snowfall on the Washington region means there is no global warming, then they are really morons who cannot see two inches beyond their own nose. Rather than taking them seriously, the media should be laughing them off for being such fools. Meanwhile, glaciers keep melting, the Arctic sea ice recedes to lowest levels ever, mountains of evidence shows winter snow melts beginning earlier every year, tiny Pacific countries are in imminent danger of disappearing due to rising sea levels, and devastating droughts are happening both here in the United States and elsewhere. Climatologists have overwhelming evidence that these are a direct result of shifting climate patterns due to global warming.
The last time I had the flu back in 2005, I remember regularly monitoring my temperature. For much of it I had a temperature in the 102 to 103 degree range. There were other times that I took my temperature and it was normal. Then it would go back up again. The moment it reached 98.6 did I no longer have the flu? My experience suggested this was the wrong inference to draw. The same is true with large snowstorms. One large snowstorm does nothing to disprove global warming. Scientists record temperatures across the globe, look at available evidence, measure carbon emissions and carbon levels in the atmosphere and draw inferences.
In fact, our snowstorms if anything give more credence to global warming, not less because they are more extreme. What makes a snowstorm bigger? It is the amount of water vapor in the air. How to you put more water vapor in the air? Well, if the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic is warmer than it was, the atmosphere above it is capable of holding more water vapor. This is why we get hurricanes during the warm part of the year and not in the middle of the winter. If you move that body of water vapor over a part of the country that is still cold enough in the winter to generate snow, not only do you get snow but a whole lot more snow. Looking for evidence? Look at the length of the Gulf Stream this year, which extends further north than usual. Why? Well, I am not a climate scientist but it seems likely to be that if you have a warmer body of water it has more energy so it can push further north. These changes are likely causing the unusual snowfalls experienced in Great Britain and elsewhere in Northern Europe this year, where it is still cold enough to turn rain into snow, but where there is also more water vapor to turn into snow.
If you “get” global warming, I think you have a duty to get the facts out. We must vigorously challenge these global warming Luddites. If these people succeed in their agenda, not only will the planet rapidly warm up but also we will also likely be dooming ourselves as a species on this planet. Climate change will also drive human migration and competition for resources, increasing the probability of war, conflict and endangering our national security. Speak up! Do not let the sirens of ignorance get away with these outrageous claims.
The recent set of snowstorms here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area made many headlines. It’s not often that federal government offices shuts down at all, let alone for four days straight. Newspapers were full of reports on the cost of the storm including this one: $100M a day in lost productivity because federal workers like me could not get to work. Hmmph. Call me skeptical.
As someone who survived the Snowpocalype (Dec 19-20, 2009) and then Snowmageddon (Feb 5-6, 2010) and another eight inches (Snowmageddon Part Two) that ended on Wednesday, I can report first hand that, yes, we did get a lot of snow. By my count, my neighborhood received 27 inches from Snowmageddon, Part One. Add in the eight inches and that is nearly a yard of snow. Now there was some time between the two latest storms to attempt a recovery, but we never quite got there before part two arrived. Snowplows had nearly (but not quite) finished clearing the roads from the first storm when the second hit.
Clearing the road in my neighborhood did not mean getting the road down to bare pavement. It means your road becomes a teeth-rattling washboard where two cars can barely pass each other. Driving down my road is a slow process requiring lots of caution, good shock absorbers and plenty of clearance between your car and the road. There are a dozen feet between the lane where it was plowed and my driveway. To get our cars out at all, in addition to shoveling my driveway, I had to shovel a dozen feet into the street.
Yesterday, the major arteries were at least back to bare pavement. Yet, like with the Snowpocalypse in December, lanes frequently narrowed or disappeared altogether. Even if federal buildings and parking lots had been cleared, it would have been gridlock for federal workers to try to drive to work because so many lanes had disappeared. Taking the metro was out for most as well because the outdoor tracks were still being cleared of snow.
If it really costs $100M a day in lost productivity when the government closes, you would think taxpayers might not mind chipping in $50M or so a year in order for DC, Maryland and Virginia to have more snowplows and drivers available. This way commerce could resume a lot more quickly than it did. Unfortunately, Congress is pennywise and pound-foolish, and with so many overlapping jurisdictions, making it work is pretty much impossible. So taxpayers pay for it in federal closures that are sometimes simply a result of neighboring states like mine being niggardly about paying for promptly plowed roads.
What the average American may not realize is that just because the government is closed does not mean it is really that closed. Congress was in session, at least for part of it. The White House was busy doing things as well. Social security checks went out as usual. Homeland security kept running. In short, news stories gave the incorrect impression that the whole government was shut down, at least in the D.C. area. In fact about the only thing that was working was the government, mostly state and local governments pushing snow out of the way and providing emergency services. In some ways, the federal government had to “close” so state and local governments could do their jobs. As for the federal government, except for emergency personnel, offices were closed. Maybe the State Department could not process visas for a few days, but it is likely that some of their other offices away from Washington took up their slack. In general, Washington may seem dysfunctional and politically it is often gridlock. But we have all sorts of backup and contingency plans that the most essential parts of government will keep chugging away no matter what the weather.
It is true we civil servants in the area stayed home because basically we were landlocked. So, incidentally, was virtually everyone else. Some of us did kick back and watch HBO on your tax dollars. Most of us had more pedestrian things to deal with, like simply shoveling our long walks and driveways or fretting over the volume of snow on our roofs and wondering if it would cause them to collapse. We also waited for snowplows that were loathe to arrive, tried to figure out ways to keep our kids from driving us crazy and hoped our power would not go out. For hundreds of thousands of us, the power did go out. For the rest of us, we had to hope we had stashed enough provisions to ride the storm out. In short, we weren’t necessarily being lazy, we were overcome by events beyond our control.
As for the $100M in lost productivity, I really question that figure. One thing the storm demonstrated to me is that I could telecommute nearly as effectively as if I were in the office. So I did! I did not work full time during those days; because of the snowstorm, I had other things I had to do. Nevertheless, I did work part-time even though the Office of Personnel Management excused us from working altogether. Maybe I got lucky but I had no problems telecommuting. The telecommuting infrastructure worked: the high speed internet, the VPN, the access to internal file servers that I needed, the email system, the whole shebang performed flawlessly.
Moreover, I was hardly the only federal telecommuter. All the other members of my team were also spending significant parts of their snow days working. If I had to guess, most were working half to full time. They did so because they felt the professional responsibility to keep things moving. Federal employees have deadlines that must be met as well just like the private sector. In my case, I had an executive steering committee coming at me like a freight train in two weeks. My schedule did not allow for a four-day snow holiday. So I kept plugging away at home. We also had a couple of servers with issues to deal with during the storm, but we were able to fix them working remotely. On Thursday, I also attended a two and a half hour conference call from home. Most of us working in this information age can work anywhere there is electricity and high speed internet. Yes, it is convenient to come together daily in a shared office setting, but it is not essential. When you are working from home, you are still working even if the office is “closed”.
Unfortunately, the Office of Personnel Management’s policies for snow days are still 20th century oriented. They should be updated. If the telework infrastructure is as robust as it was while the government was “closed”, the policy should be to simply require employees to work from home, like I did. Granted, the people who maintain the telework infrastructure may not be able to fix certain problems if they cannot get to the office. Moreover, if everyone is working from home at the same time, it might overtax the network. It appears though that most technical issues can be addressed remotely. It seems like everyone with a white collar job has an employer furnished laptop and high-speed internet at home these days. All we need is a phone and a desk and we are at work. There is also the advantage of having no commute whatsoever.
If you are inclined to think that federal civil servants are lazy and pampered SOBs, think again. It is true that we may get more holidays than you get, but most of us are not lazy, spend our days at the water coolers, or take two-hour lunch breaks. Most of us are very much vested in our work. It gives a lot of meaning to our lives. I was glad to work from home because I felt useful and I had no lack of work. I just hope next time we will have policies that are more realistic in place. In addition, I hope in the future that the public relations folk at the Office of Personnel Management paint a more realistic portrayal of what “shutting down” the government actually means. It does not mean what you think.
In case you haven’t noticed, I just love news stories about politicians that cannot keep their zippers zipped. One rarely learns anything new from these news stories, but they always amuse and entertain even though they are heart-wrenching experiences for the aggrieved spouse and family. It seems that cheated ex-wives (and ancillaries who facilitated the cheating) are competing with each other for Amazon bestseller status. There has been a whole rash of books lately. Elizabeth Edwards recently released Resilience, her tell all book about her marriage to John Edwards. Also hot off the presses is The Politicianby Andrew Young, the former myopic and masochistic aide to John Edwards wherein we get all sorts of details we probably did not want to know. These include that Edwards’ bit on the side, Rielle Hunter, couldn’t be bothered to clean up a pot of spilled coffee. Why bother when there are maids for these sorts of things? Anyhow, perhaps John would have commanded Young to lick it off the floor. If pretending to be the father to Rielle Hunter’s love child was not beneath him, licking up spilled coffee off a hotel room floor should not be either. God, what a sap.
There is also Jenny Sanford’s recent book Staying True. Jenny is of course the soon to be ex-wife of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who earned his day of infamy last June when he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail alone but was instead in Argentina crying over losing his mistress. Good news, Mark. Within a few weeks, you will be legally able to marry your soul mate. Some how I’m betting she won’t let you come within a hundred clicks of her.
Staying True seemed like a good name for the book, for there are few things that women like to read more than stories of courageous women who take their vows seriously. Jenny may have had a philandering husband, but at least she was faithful to her vows: score! It’s hard to feel sorry for any philanderer and I certainly felt no sympathy for Mark when I learned of his indiscretions. That is I didn’t until yesterday when I read this news article.
South Carolina’s first lady says her wedding was a “leap of faith” because Gov. Mark Sanford, who famously cheated on her with a woman he described as his soul mate, did not want to include a vow of fidelity in their marriage ceremony.
…
Not having a vow of faithfulness “bothered me to some extent, but … we were very young, we were in love,” Jenny Sanford tells Walters. “I questioned it, but I got past it.”
In her memoir, a copy of which The Associated Press obtained Tuesday, Sanford writes that her groom was worried “in some nagging way” that he might not be able to remain true.
“With the benefit of the knowledge I have about Mark now, I could point to this moment as a clear sign of things to come,” she writes. But at the time, she found his honesty “brave and sweet” and thought he just had cold feet.
The first time I read this I thought, “This has to be a joke.” Apparently not. Here is the aggrieved soon to be ex-wife of the conservative South Carolina governor writing a book called Staying True for crying out loud wherein she gets to proclaim how justifiably aggrieved she is. She gets to say how important fidelity is to her in a marriage and yet she went into the marriage knowing that her husband could not promise fidelity. She found his honesty “brave and sweet”.
Oh kay… Jenny, you must have been high on something at the time and I will be charitable and say it must have been the love hormones that made you temporarily lose your mind. I applaud you for your honesty with this admission but really, anyone who bought your book should demand their money back. Yep, your soon to be ex-husband is still a philanderer and a snake. But it’s not like he didn’t warn you. Most philanderers leave their spouse in the dark until the evidence becomes impossible to ignore, you pick up a STD or they mysteriously move out in the dark of night. Here Mark told you up front that he wasn’t sure he could be faithful to you and you married him anyhow.
Now I haven’t read the book to know if there is more to this but if fidelity is so important to you that you write a book called Staying True, for crying out loud, don’t you think you should have made it a requirement before agreeing to take the marriage vows? Granted, the Guv’s stepping out on you was not right. I hope you at least had the understanding that his extramarital relationships would be in the sunshine. But it’s not like he was not up front about his feelings before marriage. Basically, the Guv was saying he too had doubts about marrying you, but when he disclosed how he was honestly feeling, you swept an issue of such critical importance under the rug.
We all make mistakes in our marriages and I know I have made plenty. This one though was a whopper. You absolutely should not have married the guy if fidelity was important to you. And you certainly should not be writing a tell all book called Staying True saying what great character you have in contrast to your soon to be ex-spouse. Maybe it should have been titled, God, I was such a Putz.
The Guv told you he was a snake. Snakes bite. You married him it appears on the expectation that through the course of marriage you could change this. Smile sweetly, raise a bunch of healthy kids and perhaps your hope was that all such concerns would simply vanish. It sounds like you projected your feelings about fidelity onto him once the marriage was underway. He probably snuck around in part to spare your feelings. Granted it was a stupid thing for him to do, but no more stupid, in fact a lot less stupid than you were for marrying him. His behavior after marriage was not decent, but at least he was decent up front about it before tying the knot.
I haven’t read what you plan to do with the profits from the book, but here’s hoping that you at least donate the money to a good charity. Here’s a spouse abuse shelter I can recommend that desperately needs your money. I’ve given them quite a handful this year as the D.C. government greatly reduced their contributions due to the recession. Perhaps this would be a way to atone for your serious lack of judgment thirty some years ago.
If you ever decide to remarry, I hope this time that you will have the good sense not to marry the dude without making sure he first agrees to a sexually and emotionally exclusive marriage with you and you alone.
I woke up this morning and realized I was living in the Divided States of America.
Actually, I have known this for quite a while, but in the last week or so, it has all become so very crystal clear. Like dust on the furniture so thick you cannot see the wood underneath it, I have been sort of pretending to myself that we really do not have completely dysfunctional government. You might say this morning I awoke fully from my intellectual stupor.
Here is what is clear: Republicans will put party and wacky extremist principle before their country. In fact, so will many Democrats. It’s my tribe over your tribe. Our country can go to hell for all they care, and as long as their base is happy, it does not matter. Take the latest cause for bitching: our exploding deficits. Republicans, who were happy when they were in charge to cast votes that caused the deficits in the first place, are now all about fiscal discipline. However, they are not enough about fiscal discipline to, like, actually do something about exploding deficits like maybe raise a tax or two, or simply let a tax cut expire. That might show leadership and political weakness. It’s too scaaaary for them to go there. What would their fellow tea baggers say if they actually moved toward a middle ground?
What an irony. Instead of showing courage, they are actually showing cowardice, not to mention abuse of their public office. When a nation has two wars going on, exploding deficits, ten percent unemployment and hosts of other major problems clearly it is the job of government to come together for the good of the country. At times like these, we need a government that cares more about whether the nation holds together at all, than whether a party gains or loses seats in the next election. By digging in their heals, of course, these political obfuscators only make the situation much worse and I might add much more costly. Inaction only breeds the bigger deficits about which they claim to be so upset.
Scared of rising deficits? It’s not too hard to figure out what’s driving most of them. It’s health care costs. What gives when they rise unchecked? Pretty much everything else gets short shrift, just the way your house would if you neglected the roof and invested it all in lottery tickets instead. If you don’t fix health care, everything continues to get much, much worse. So what is Congress busy doing? It’s trying to not fix health care, even though through a reconciliation process there is an obvious way to do so. Can’t do it. Too scaaaary.
It’s too scaaaary to do lots of things apparently. Too scaaaary to stop telling our military industrial complex to make lots of weaponry we don’t need. To scaaaary to raise taxes on the wealthy back to where they were when Bill Clinton was president and we enjoyed record prosperity. Change is just so darn scaaaary, at least when it requires political compromise. It’s in to be extremely partisan. It’s scaaaary to compromise.
I do give President Obama credit for trying. He was quite brave standing in front of the Congressional Republican Caucus in Baltimore last week. He could not have been more polite and respectful. He simply told Republicans that they have an obligation not just to oppose but also to find middle ground and work on behalf of all Americans. What an idea! It appears that it was not a message they wanted to hear.
It would be nice if there were any leaders in Congress willing to move toward the middle, but it’s hard to see where they will come from because to lead you necessarily take risk. The “leadership” got where it is primarily by moving toward the extreme and eschewing political compromise. What we need is someone with a very firm paddle to move these recalcitrant assholes. They are not leaders. They are pathetic whiners too busy covering their backs to care about the country they claim to love.
It sure would be nice just to hear a tad bit of honesty from these weasels. A mea culpa would be nice. How about this for a start: “You know what? At the time we passed those enormous tax cuts, they seemed like a good idea. They were a mistake. A big mistake. I regret with my whole heart voting for them because they caused this fiscal mess we are in right now. I also regret my vote for the Iraq War. What a waste of money and precious American lives! I cannot undo those votes, but I can vow to do what is right for my country from now on. I will vote to let those tax cuts expire as my contribution to helping reduce our $1.3 trillion dollar deficit. Moreover, I will work with my colleagues from the other side of the aisle to find some middle ground to solve many of our other pressing problems, like health care reform. It’s going to hurt, but I will give a little. In return, I expect the other side to give a little too. It may cost me my party’s nomination, but this time I really will act in the best interest of the American people as a whole, not for my political base. I know this process will be imperfect, but it will be better than the mess we have now. I will not contribute toward anymore of it.”
Gosh, I would vote for someone like this if he (or she) were sincere and actually followed through, even if they were a Republican. It’s not being mavericky, it’s being a statesman. It’s called doing your fucking job.
I would like to see the leadership on both sides of Congress come out with statements like these where they honestly acknowledge their mistakes, pledge to end the pointless finger pointing and pledge to do their jobs. I would like to see the leadership arm-twist their whips and committee chairmen into following along. If necessary, I would like to put the leadership of Congress and the White House in a room with nothing but Dominoes pizzas slipped under the door until they find middle ground. Moreover, I would not let them see their spouses or their children until we have a health care bill that contains costs and covers all the uninsured, a jobs program that puts people back to work doing meaningful work and a climate bill that actually shows Americans want to join the rest of the world in surviving as a species.
Then perhaps we ordinary Americans could feel hopeful again. Most likely we would be so thrilled to see government work again, we would reward those who showed the courage to compromise. In fact, mine is a fool’s hope. Instead, our political parties appear to favor dismantling our country piece by piece than compromise on anything. And so we sink further into the muck, sinking in part because we keep throwing more muck on each other. At some point in our not too distant future, the U.S.A. is nothing will be nothing but an ugly mud pit, fit only for the partisan pigs who brought it down.
As for the rest of us ordinary citizens, we sure would like to have a government that works for us again. Unfortunately, there is no place that three hundred million of us can emigrate to in order to get it.
In case you haven’t heard, not only does Massachusetts have a new senator-elect, but Virginia has a new Governor. Bob McDonnell, your typical grey haired white Republican male with a toothy smile and a blonde arm candy wife was sworn in a week ago. He won election by promising no new taxes (a position few find hard to argue with) but also by promising all these new services. Yes, he has a four billion dollar budget hole to fill, but somehow he’s going to cut spending and add services. This includes increasing funds to the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is already decades behind where it needs to be in providing sufficient roads to handle Virginia’s burgeoning population.
Good luck with that, Governor McDonnell. Not that I am wishing you any bad luck or anything, but you are hardly the first governor, Republican or Democratic, to promise all these magical new services without raising any additional taxes. In a way, it’s an easy promise to make. After all, you don’t have to worry about reelection. Virginia governors can only serve one term.
I guess it wouldn’t work to tell voters the truth: that state services, already cut to the bone, have zero fat in them already. To close the four billion dollar gap outgoing Governor Tim Kaine outlined, most residents are going to squeal when they see what it actually means. Virginia’s total budget is around $38 billion, so $4 billion is hardly a drop in the bucket and amounts to about ten percent of the budget. I doesn’t take an accountant to figure out that if you are not going to raise taxes, you are going to add services and you already have a large projected deficit, then you are going to have to further cut services somewhere. You already promised to give more money to transportation and increase the portion of state money given to fund teacher salaries. The only problem is that both the easy and the hard cuts were made years ago.
How crazy has it gotten? The last cut to VDOT budget was $42 million from the road maintenance fund. How much is Fairfax County getting from the state for road maintenance this year? Zero dollars. That’s right, despite being the most prosperous county in the state as well as providing more tax revenue to the state than any other county as well as tons of revenue in gas taxes which is supposed to go for things like highway maintenance, we will get zero dollars for maintenance. So either we just let the potholes get bigger or we raise county taxes to pay to fix potholes which hitherto has been at least partially a state responsibility.
Now as a frequent driver, I’m all for changing this, so I think it’s great that our new governor is going to add to VDOT’s funding but I just don’t see where the money is going to come from. Education, health and human services, and transportation, in that order, are the biggest consumers of state tax dollars. It doesn’t look like education will be cut, unless it is subsidies to state universities, which have already been dramatically reduced and have students howling over their tuition rate increases. You say that transportation will get more funding which leaves human services as a likely place to use your budget knife. These services of course have already been pared to the bone. It’s hard to see how you reduce spending more there. It’s not like Medicaid is optional. It’s a nice gesture that you and your senior staff are going to be taking pay cuts, but that’s all it is and will do almost nothing to address a four billion dollar shortfall.
As best I can tell, you are pinning your hopes on two scenarios. One: the overall economy will improve to the point where more tax revenues come in. I would not take that one to the bank at least for a year or two. The other is your hope to sell oil leases off Virginia’s coast in 2011 and using some of that money to fund the state budget. I’d say the odds are pretty long there too. First, you have to get the federal government to agree to do this. Second, you have to hope that oil companies will be willing to front the money. Lastly, you are assuming that environmentalists won’t tangle this up in the courts for years.
So good luck governor but as Virginia is not licensed to print money, it’s pretty easy to see what’s going to give. Since you promised not to raise any taxes, it likely means that our overstretched state services are going to be more overstretched, which is to say the state will have to stop doing stuff that states typically do and we’re already pretty much giving up on road maintenance. I think it is much more likely that you will find reason to consolidate prisons and let non-violent prisoners out early in an attempt to make your budget math work. You just have to hope Virginia voters do not notice. As costly as prisons are, you still won’t be able to cough up four billion dollars in savings from them.
One promise I can make is that when you leave office in four years we will be lucky if our transportation funding is where it is now and our public school teachers do not have an extra four or five pupils in their classes. As for my fellow Virginians, shame on us for falling for these lies once again. Just once, I’d like to hear a Republican run for office promising no lower taxes and fewer services because that’s what it always means. Virginians would be well advised to buy extra heavy-duty shock absorbers for our cars. There will be many bumpy days ahead.
Perhaps it is just winter, always a dark time of year. Or perhaps I have spent too much time reading Joe Bageant who lives life without the rose colored glasses on so well he makes my head groan. Republicans winning a special election for Ted Kennedy’s seat didn’t help either. I am finding it hard to escape the feeling that our species is toast. We are rearranging the deck chairs on our Titanic. The ship is going down but conventional wisdom is it is good somehow. “You know, we are ten feet deeper in the water than we were an hour ago. But it’s good. It gives us more ballast. Gives the crew something to do pumping out all that bilge water. Another margarita anyone?”
Then terrible tragedies like the Haitian earthquake occur that reinforce that not only are bad things happening all around us but also that they are getting worse. The human toll from the earthquake is but a wild estimate at this point, but 200,000 deaths seem to be the current working number. For many Americans, or at least some Americans like that usual jackass Rush Limbaugh, it’s like who cares about the freakin’ Haitians? Oh, and by the way, Obama is using this for his political advantage. But what else would you expect from Rush? This same guy checked into a hospital in Hawaii recently complaining of chest pains. Of course, he used it as an opportunity to gush about how we have the most wonderful health care system in the world, at least for self insured multimillionaires. As for the rest of us, well since we are not multimillionaires I guess we don’t count. In Rush’s mind, we’re just Haitians. If a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck downtown Washington D.C., Rush would doubtless be calling for us to do no more than bulldoze the whole city under. God bless his compassionate soul.
Our world is rapidly devolving into the dystopia Neal Stephenson chronicled back in 1992 in his prophetic novel Snow Crash. Unable to afford to live in our own homes, or even an apartment, how long will it be before we, like Hiro Protagonist, call a room in a U Store It home. In fact, newspapers periodically chronicle people in my area doing just that. Ask any homeless Haitian and they would be thrilled to call a room in a U Store It a home. At least it is clean and in many cases heated. Those Haitians who are still alive are fleeing the capital Port-au-Prince. Tent cities full of refugees are emerging, but international aid can address just a tiny portion of the overwhelming need. Those who survived for the most part cannot find clean water and food. If the earthquake didn’t kill them, perhaps the cholera and dysentery which will soon be rampant will do the trick. It sounds like it would make Rush Limbaugh happy.
Meanwhile, Pat Robertson believes Haitians made a pact with the devil. That’s why they died in such large numbers. Seriously. This is what religion can do otherwise sensible people. And this guy somehow runs his own university. I guess that long established fault line running though Haiti had nothing to do with the earthquake. Or God told all the sinners to build houses right above it. Any illiterate and starving Haitian has more sense than this Robertson fool, including those who believe in Voodoo.
The sad reality is that hardly anyone without relatives in Haiti gives a shit about Haiti. We do our best to keep Haitians out of the country so their impoverished relatives won’t join us in the states and lower our property values. To the extent that we have cared over the years, we have used Haiti as an experiment in our capitalist values. Organizations like the International Monetary Fund loaned money to Haiti then turned the screws, making repayment virtually impossible.
It’s not like in the best of times their lives were not already miserable. They have the lowest standard of living and life spans in the Americas. They also sit in the middle of hurricane alley. When hurricanes arrive, like earthquakes, they tend to collapse an already fragile infrastructure. Now this: half of the buildings in and around the capital are destroyed or unusable. Of course, they could be rebuilt to modern building codes. Think that is going to happen? In your dreams! Building codes take money you can’t afford living on a dollar a day or less, and Rush Limbaugh certainly doesn’t want to give the ingrates any more. As for Robertson, it would be the same as giving money to the devil. After a year or so, we will have largely forgotten all about their plight, but they will still be as miserable and hopeless as always. Incredibly, when there seems no possible way to make their lives any more miserable, a subsequent disaster proves us wrong.
No, we will soon go back to ignoring Haiti, as will most of the world, because we will need to become xenophobic. As the health care debate has demonstrated, in America we believe in every man for himself, come hell our high water. We are not far from a time when we will leave the uninsured bleeding to death outside our emergency rooms because we won’t want to shoulder even their emergency room costs. With our national wealth quickly moving overseas to countries like China, America continues to be one big fire sale. Soon we are going to emerge from our collective hangover to discover that we are no longer a first world power. This is what happens when you neglect your infrastructure and human capital costs long enough because you are intoxicated by ever lower taxes. The whole neighborhood just goes to hell. We will realize that we can no longer afford our military, our international commitments, or even Social Security and Medicare because our creditor China says we can’t. And that means when we have no more means to beg or borrow, we move toward second-class status, which is sort of like Mexico. America will become a harder, meaner, more intolerant, more polluted place that will border on anarchy. The gated communities will go up just like in Snow Crash, but this time there will be armed guards patrolling the fence and manning the gates.
What we can do, like almost every country in the world, is keep adding recklessly to our population, which today guarantees a lower standard of living. More natural wilderness is transformed into ugly sprawl. With more mouths to feed, we have more reasons to punt issues like global warming because trying to maintain our standard of living will always trump over serious action on the environment. We are already there. The social contract is fraying. Living on social security alone means you are living in wretched poverty. At best, so long as you do not get sick you can afford to inhabit that trailer somewhere. However, there won’t be enough left over to fix that hole in the rusted trailer roof, let alone buy your heart medicine.
I see it in my own in-laws. To the extent they have a middle class lifestyle, it is thanks to a reverse mortgage on their house in a burb outside of Phoenix. It was not worth that much to begin with and is worth even less now. Most likely their equity is gone. When their air conditioner broke down, they were looking under the sofa cushions for money to get it fixed. About the only thing they can count on is Medicare and getting that monthly social security check. They allow them to exist, but certainly not to live. It’s been more than a decade since they took a real vacation. Instead, you eat light and watch a lot of Fox News.
A chain always breaks at its weakest point. In the western hemisphere, that has traditionally been Haiti. The conditions that caused Haiti are leaching all over the hemisphere. This includes here in the good old United States of America. As is well documented, in the 2000s when we had the bliss of Republican rule, our wages stayed flat, our net worth declined, our stocks lost value and we added no more jobs to the economy. Naturally, upper class Republicans did well. Their plan worked great, for them, as it always does because they are experts at screwing those who make less than they do and getting applause for doing so. Those jobs that we did add were at Wal-mart instead of IBM. However, our waists expanded. Perhaps that’s progress. All that extra eating and lack of exercise though helped cause health costs to explode.
No wonder that these days we prefer to escape reality, if not in traditional vices like booze and drugs, then, like Hiro Protagonist, in our virtual worlds in cyberspace. There we make our own pretend reality. We kill demons online in multi-user role-playing games while our first world status crumbles around us. It’s true in the U.S.A. but is also worldwide: collectively we have exceeded our resources which means we are all driven to figure out how to get a bigger share of a smaller pie. We already sense the truth. There is no magic technological fix. Anyone whiz bang new technology invariably brings with it other hidden costs. Nuclear power begat vast quantities of nuclear waste and tragic nuclear accidents. More recently, our new compact fluorescent lights carry the burden of all their mercury vapors, most of which leaches back into our already toxic atmosphere.
We are doomed and we are in denial, but in Haiti, denial is not an option. Eventually we too will have to acknowledge the truth. If we ever reach that point, it’s unlikely that we will be able to summon the nerve to actually change our situation for the better. Instead, we’ll be eyeing our neighbor trying to figure out how to make his life more miserable so we can profit from his misery. This is the new American way: ask not what you can do for your country; ask how you can profit at your neighbor’s expense.
We should weep not just for the Haitians, but also for ourselves for Haiti is our destiny too. The more we deny our connection to Haiti, the worse it will be for us and the sooner we will share their misery. We have already laid out that path in front of us.
Is Twitter a fad that is ending? I am seeing less tweets from those I follow, and I certainly put out fewer myself.06:29:53 PM March 08, 2010from Echofon
I kept coming back for your excellent writing and clean designs.
Your political posts really do help me understand things better as it's hard for me to read through all the rhetoric out there and see what's what.
I like your style. You're not afraid to dish it out to both major political parties -- I wish everyone could be as willing to accept the faults of both.
You've always got something interesting to say.
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