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.

The Real Snobs

All this talk about snobs and elites.  And who should go to college.

I don't think any of us are really looking at the big picture.  I'm talking about the reality of day-to-day life, and making a living.

We have come over the years to learn to live without services that were once customary:  having our gas tank filled and our oil and tires checked, milk delivered to our doors, people answering the phone to direct our call to other humans or actually answer our questions themselves.  And there was a time, not so long ago, that people checked out our books, and other people checked out our groceries.

What has happened is automation, and while some say it is easier, and others say it is faster, what it has really done is cut out the cost of workers.

There will be fewer people to talk to at your local library.  There will be fewer teachers, because children will be sitting in front of computers getting educated.

Before you think I am going all futuristic on you, I would like to say that we have not done a very good job of figuring in the human factor on jobs that need to get done.  I have heard people say in the same breath how they have wonderful memories of going to the library as children, and how wonderful the proposed self-checkout will be.

Except that no one is going to tolerate paying for people who don't have observable tasks to do, like check out books.

Now, all of that is only part of the problem.

There are lots and lots of jobs that need doing that do not require a post-high school education.  And we as a society have forced a lot of people who really could care less about higher education to go to college, so that they can then be eligible for jobs that require a college education, not because of needed skills, or even because the pay is higher, but just because employers can use that to weed out applicants.

There are jobs that need to be done, and done well, that we can't automate, much as we would like to.  Hotel maid service and short order cooks, construction workers, retail clerks and stockers, and most factory workers will be necessary for awhile yet.  We should value them, because they work hard and we need them.

But we ignore them.  We pay them salaries that they can't live on, and insist that they work longer hours and more years.  And then we debate whether or not everyone should have access to a college education.

Here's the answer.

Everyone should be able to go to college if they so choose.  It should be affordable, and available.

But there will be those who are willing to do those difficult, back-breaking non-college jobs.  And they should be paid a living wage, with good health benefits, and a retirement that they can look forward to enjoying.

This is where the dems and the right-wing-nuts on the other side are sadly in agreement.  They agree that no one should want to do those jobs.  And then they fight about who is elite and who's a snob.

  

Contraception and Jobs

The republican plan to protect "our" freedom is moving along quite nicely.  Wonder that dems don't get it.


Once the Supremes determined that corporations are people, it became obvious whose freedoms the right wingnuts were fighting for.  Obviously.  Churches are people.  Not the church members, just the churches.  Hospitals are people.  Not, of course, the nurses, doctors and patients therein, just the hospitals.


So we want to protect their individual freedoms:  the freedom to pay low wages, the freedom to cut an employee's benefits, the freedom to charge anyone any amount for anything, the freedom to cut government services so that they might have the biggest share of the consumer-and-profit pie possible, the freedom to not have to pay taxes.


These, of course, are the job creators.  Much as their God, they should be all powerful.  Because the republican right wing, i.e. the republican party, are all about jobs.  Just ask them.  Which is why they are determined to outlaw contraception.


Now, a lot of people are confused about this.  How does preventing women from using contraception help with creating jobs.  Simple.


When you (or your wife, daughter, sister, mother) no longer have access to birth control, you are more likely to get pregnant.  Of course, since birth control is now illegal, abortion would also be banned, that leaves women (and girls) with a couple of options:  enforced pregnancy and childbirth, and illegal abortion with risk of death.


This is where the jobs part comes in.  Not only will there be thousands of job openings when women have to drop out of the workforce, there will also be openings resulting from women dying from illegal abortions.


And that is just the way God and the Republican Party have planned it. 

The Republican Inquisition

Bizarre that we are in the midst of debate about government required "vaginal probing".


This is, however, effectively sidestepping debate on the economy, at a time when President Obama is finally standing strong and gains are becoming more evident.  It is easier to take a moral stand on something you believe your God has told you to do than to stand in front of GM workers and criticize the actions the president took which saved the plant and the jobs within, although Mitt Romney will be the one to try.  It is also refocusing the attention deficit media from the economy to these ridiculous religious dicta.


It's always fun to make fun of Rick Santorum, but how on earth do we deal with the wackos in the various state legislatures that are introducing these bills which propose to reduce women to cattle, as does the bill introduced by, yes, I kid you not, Illinois' House Agricultural Committee.  At least you can say they are telling it like it is.


If you are able to take a step back to see the bigger picture, I guess it is safe to say that every state has its resident elected wacko, and in many states they are religious wackos.  And now, the Catholic church, who no one has ever listened to in this country anyway, has proudly taken center stage on their belief that God has determined that sex is for procreation, and any attempt to stop it is a sin.  And add the megalomaniacal Santorum, whose conversations with God have gotten louder and more shrill over the weeks since his primary successes.


What you have is the perfect climate for brewing crazy.


Forgive us women for being slow to rise up against this idiocy.  Even though our U.S. House of Representatives has been running its own special sexist Inquisition for the past two years, we honestly didn't think it would catch on.  I mean, even Mississippi voted down the "personhood amendment".


I would like to make more jokes about this situation, because it is so ridiculous that this is happening in 2012.  But there have been so many signs that the religious wackos are taking over the country that I must rely on Jon Stewart for the humorous perspective.  It is also too personal for me as a woman with an adult daughter, to laugh it off.


But I should.  After all, these are men whose idea of stimulating the economy goes no farther than "vaginal probing".


See, it's easy.

Still Protecting Us from Terrorists

I opened a savings and checking account at a credit union yesterday.  Apparently, I hadn't done anything like that for some time.  Even though the account I was opening was small, requiring the less onerous senior savings plan, the credit union required two proofs of identification, not just a driver's license.


They also did a credit check.


This seems strange, because I am depositing money, not applying for a loan.  I have to admit, I probably wouldn't have known she was doing it if she hadn't told me, and if she hadn't informed me that she was required to do this credit check because of the Patriot Act, I probably wouldn't have questioned it.  Shame on me.


But she did let me know she was pulling up the credit report, and told me my score and what it meant.  We shared snide comments about how the government requested unnecessary private information, claiming to be protecting us from terrorists, and were able to do this just because they could.


But then I got home and started to wonder about this.  Apparently, banks are not required to pull up a credit report, but they are required to confirm a person's identity and note any unusual financial activity.  The requirement, since 9/11 and the Bush regime, is apparently so frightening that banks have taken the easiest way out by accessing as much private information as they can.  And your credit report is easy.


You also don't want to come in to big amounts of cash out of the blue, or your account could be frozen while the bank reports you to the government.


But, said the online banking article from 2006, most people won't be affected by this; they won't even know it is going on.


So just hope you're one of those many people who haven't got a clue that the government has got your bank's eyes on you.

The Moral of DeMint's Fairy Tales

I was pleased to see our own Senator Jim DeMint take center stage for two whole pages in Thomas Frank's slender new book, Pity the Billionaire.


He very clearly describes DeMint's twists and turns in attempting to create a reality that conforms with his own self-serving belief system.


DeMint sings his eternal chorus of "socialism bad -- capitalism good" when he invents Europe's decline after World War II due to the adaptation of socialist programs (like national health care).  As Frank points out, France, Italy, Belgium and Sweden actually thrived during those postwar years.


But how can this be???  Simply, to Jim DeMint, it can't be, because it is not supposed to happen that way.  His reality is that Europe declined after their move toward socialism.


And Frank notes that DeMint does not ever offer proof of his claims; he merely tosses out inflammatory accusations to which his followers respond predictably, with fear and anger, and of course, loyalty to DeMint and his cause.


We see it over and over in the republican right wing.  Facts are shunted aside like an annoying gnat, while the rhetoric is repeated, as though the repetition makes it so.  And Senator DeMint, while not the brightest star in the firmament, like ex-President George W. Bush, knows how to tell a story.


As Frank says, DeMint's "fondness for fairy tales" combines simplicity (or simple-mindedness) with a moral rigidity that becomes ever more rigid as its tenets are questioned.


The success of this method is apparent as voters continue to support and elect those whose policies have failed, and which policies have torn down institutions we have for generations held as essential to our American democracy.


How do we fight this wave of delusion?


Fighting the fallacies will only work to a point.  President Obama, turning the tide of his presidency in the past several months, has demonstrated how to convince people that he, and not Boehner and DeMint and the rest of the right wing-nuts, is protecting our rights and freedoms.  He has done it through action.  Upon action upon action.  From recess appointments to enacting programs that will help turn the economy around and protect the American people, Obama has proven through his actions that he believes this is the way to get us back on our feet, and subsequently, it is working.


And, ironically, by standing up to the moneyed interests, he has also increased confidence and growth in the business community.


So we have learned something important from idiots like W. and DeMint.  We have learned that we too need to speak loudly and clearly about our values, and we need to act towards making those values once again central to our Democracy.