Keeping Us from Gulping to Death

Big Brother may be late, he's slow but persistent.


Our need to have the government keep us safe began well before the 1980's, but it was in or around that time that our men in blue began, with the blessing of Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- the aptly named "MADD" (and I don't mean angry) -- to hold alcohol check-points.  It was infuriating, it was frightening, it was illegal.  That is, it was illegal until the courts approved the right to stop and search --our bodies -- for alcohol level, without cause.


It amazes me still that we allowed that to happen.  But the alcohol nazis knew that it was easier to get the police out there doing random alcohol tests than to get the police and the courts to do something about people who were actually driving dangerously, and observedly, drunk.  All these years later, check points demean but don't prevent drunk driving.


One thing that those searches did accomplish, however, was to open the door to other illegal searches.  Next were cameras at intersections, making sure we all stopped at those stop lights, and then on city streets, because they would keep us safe from crime.  Like heavy petting in public.


When 9/11 shocked the hell out of the American people, there was nothing they -- the government -- couldn't do enough of to make us feel safe.  Search our bags, then our shoes, and eventually, no surprise, when all that wasn't working, our entire bodies.  Each time there is a news article on airport security, and some bimbo gets interviewed saying, "I don't care (if they have to search my 2-year-old son or my 80-year-old mother) as long as they keep us safe," I marvel at the stupidity, gullibility, and fearfulness of the American people.


And here we are:  in New York, police are free to stop and frisk a person walking down the street, in Arizona, the fact that they say "please" doesn't make it any less horrifying that you must always leave home with papers proving you are a U.S. citizen.


When Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, and a hero of Macbethian proportions, stopped smoking in public places, I approved, only because the smoke one breathes out is the smoke another breathes in.  Just as in gun control, if you are walking around with a gun it may be decorative but the only possible use is to shoot it.  So why is it that Bloomberg can keep people from smoking but is helpless to change gun laws?  A question for another day I'm afraid.


But today it's the War on Obesity that makes me quake with fear of what's in store.  The insurance industry has been using the pretense of protecting us from ourselves for some time, and now online, your doctor and the world now knows how many glasses of wine you drink and whether you or any relative is or was diabetic.  It is only a bit obnoxious when Michelle Obama, dressed down in designer clothes and fit and muscular, appears in public with just-picked carrots and lettuce, but we are certainly crossing another dangerous line when a law limits the size of a soft drink.


As with drunk driving, it is far easier to make such a law than to educate people as to the hazards of unhealthy eating.  As with the TSA "security" checks, making such a law means that other people are taking care of our business.


I don't think this law is likely to last long.  After all, if you can limit the size of a soda, you can regulate the amount of alcohol served to a customer in a bar.  And regulating business as opposed to an individual is just not done in this country in 2012.


But I have been wrong.


Simple solutions are, like the Big Gulp, the way things are done here.  Overweight?  Your mayor will make you pay more for the extra sugar.  And your insurance company will cash in by charging higher premiums at the scale.


And you can bet that when the story is in the news, some idiot will be interviewed saying, "I'm just glad Mayor Bloomberg is keeping us safe."

Suspension of Reality

One of the most impressive news items of the day is the buzz about the TSA workers in Florida.  Their crime was failing to do the required random screenings of passengers.


I, for one, applaud these brave men and women of the TSA.  From my flying experience, I can only assume that shirking their duties resulted in far smoother operations at the Fort Myers Airport.


Isn't it time we started to yell, loudly, and non-stop, about the TSA harassment, done in the name of our very own security?


Because if we do not riot in the streets, this situation will continue to worsen.  Our liberties, our personal space, will continue to be assaulted by new weaponry, in the name of security.


But what is being called security is in fact capitalism at its best.  It is millions upon millions of dollars in government contracts to private industries, to do research, to create technology, whose sole purpose is to make money for the industry, and whose by-product is the taking away of privacy and dignity.


Safety?  Not likely.


So thank you for sacrificing your jobs rather than continue daily to act out the criminal absurdity of the TSA.  Please note that no lives were lost in the shirking of responsibility by these former employees at Fort Myers Airport.

DeMint's Freedom Watch

It was with a mixture of dread and glee that I opened the email from Jim DeMint a few days ago.  I enjoy seeing how long it takes for him to throw out the word "freedom" in his "pro-America" missives.  Today he did it in fifteen words.  (Of course, you can't count the title of his newsletter – "Freedom Alert" – that would be cheating.)  Kudos, Senator DeMint.

DeMint was all up in arms about the possibility that the House would pass the bill renewing the Export-Import Bank.  Okay, I admit, I had no idea what the Export-Import Bank actually is or does, which puts me in good company, I believe, with most American voters.  But I gritted my teeth and did the bare minimum of research, so that I could attempt to form a barely minimal intelligent opinion on this issue.

It appears that the Export-Import Bank makes loans and guarantees to American businesses so that they can sell goods to foreign countries.  The original intention was to help businesses that would otherwise not be able to compete, but apparently has – surprise – been used to finance big corporations like Boeing.  Causing other big corporations, like Delta, to get up in a huff over the preferential treatment.

DeMint, who apparently is a big fan of freedom, claims not to be taking sides against Boeing, he just doesn't think the US should be making loans to businesses at all.  Even though, according to the Washington Post,

"The bank operates through fees and interest charges and does not receive money from the government."

Now the thing is, Demint has gotten so extreme that he is to the right of Eric Cantor on this, who was willing to work out a compromise in the House.  But he has learned to have people write such purple patriotic prose under his name that people like me who know little or nothing about things like the Export-Import Bank just want to stand up and salute.

It is hard to grasp the intricacies of our government.  I tend to believe that if I can't do it, Jim DeMint surely hasn't a clue.  But he does tend to go with his heart, and his heart lies right inside his ego.  He has gained so much notoriety in right-wing and Tea Party circles, that titles like "king maker" have gone right to his head.  And with little sense or reason to fall back on, DeMint does what has worked up till now, which is to veer ever farther right.

So when he becomes so extreme that he loses friends and allies in big business and in the republican party, he continues to tell himself and all who will listen, that he is single-handedly fighting the fight for freedom.  And what is freedom?  It is, of course, whatever Jim DeMint is fighting for.

Wasting Breath

I just opened yet another email today asking me to contact my representative.  This time, yet another excellent group wants me to plead with Tim Scott to vote no to taking funds away from poor women and children.


Again?


How often do you expect me to call or email Representative Scott's office only to get an email back telling me once again why it is so critical to our nation's well-being that he keep those poor women and children from sucking the country dry?  I understand that these poor folk are not job creators, unless you think that spending every penny of government assistance on goods and services which in turn will require more goods and services to be created....  But obviously, Tim Scott disagrees.  He believes that the only way to create jobs is to free up big industries to pollute, pay lower wages, and charge whatever they want for needed goods.


This, you see, is the problem.  There is no reasoning with Mr. Scott.  He has never been in the position of having to decide whether to take a child to the doctor or buy groceries.  He is, however, able to do basic math, and understands that giving $1 to a mother to buy a loaf of bread (store brand, on sale), is a dollar out of one of his constituent's pockets.  Of course, not my pocket, because I, too, am not a job creator.  I, on the other hand, would waste any dollar offered me by spending it on bread and medical care.  And unfortunately, for Mr. Scott, that is higher math.

What's the Matter with SC?

I don't think it's the children that are slow....

Helping the Less Informed

When I get unwanted phone calls, I can be brusque, okay, maybe even rude.  My home is my castle.  A double-wide castle with old carpeting, a leaky toilet that the plumber can't seem to fix, and furniture far older than the house, but my castle nonetheless.


But I promised myself some time ago that I would listen patiently to find out who was encroaching on my serenity, and perhaps use the situation to offer some of my own wise thoughts to the outside world.


That said, I do get incensed when I send an email to one of my congressional representatives and they make me leave a phone number.  That means you, Jim DeMint and Tim Scott.  And when Scott also made me look up the last four digits of my zip code, it was the last straw.  I added to my email the impression I had that requiring that information made it appear that Scott was attempting to cull the number of constituents that annoyed him with emails.


Well, being the go-getter that is our Tim Scott, he actually had some nice young guy call me, proving that he really made use of the phone number he required.  We had a pleasant conversation, I think.


When the young man pointed out that someone without a phone number could just fill in zeros, I advised him that many people don't know that.  And that interestingly, over the many emails I have sent Mr. Scott, the only call I have gotten was the one in response to my questioning his requiring the phone number in an email.


The plus-four part of the zip code was even more inspiring:  this is so Scott will know exactly which area in his district the constituent is from.


Anyway, we went around on that nonsense for a couple of minutes and then I said, "Let me ask you this -- why do you support Tim Scott?"


And the nice young man began to tell me how much good Scott has done for his constituents, including when he was on the Charleston County Council...


I was glad he mentioned that.  I brought up the fact that Scott voted against reinstating the $25 property tax that had  been cut when tourism was booming, calling it a new tax and refusing to raise taxes.  In fact, that $25 per $100,000 would have allowed the library to continue to function without cuts in the book budget and the county hiring freeze that has lasted over four years.  The library may be the institution that most serves the poor, unemployed and underemployed.  The library has provided books that schools can't afford for their classrooms and even school libraries.


I told the young man that I would have been happy to pay the additional $25 per year, but Mr. Scott's real constituents, those with the million dollar homes, would have then had to pay far more.


I then told him that I hoped that he would reconsider his support for Mr. Scott, and he politely said that he still believed that Scott's policies would help us all.  I suggested that he might believe that now, but would be likely to think otherwise if he hit a rough patch.


I was proud of myself for being able to carry on a civilized conversation with this polite young man.  I can't guarantee that I will be able to do it again, but I tell myself that just maybe my words will have given him a moment's pause from his support of a man who truly serves to fill the pockets of the greedy in an area in which so many are struggling to survive.

News -- April 1

In Churches Across the country today, God proclaimed that Rick Santorum does not exist.