Herman Cain Drops Out

Herman Cain announced on Saturday that he will suspend his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Cain’s campaign suspension comes after another allegation arose early this week. This time, it was not another sexual harassment allegation, but a woman claiming to have carried on an extra-marital affair with Cain for 13 years, right up to the point of Cain announcing his run for president. The timing for ending the affair is particularly interesting since it would seem that Cain chose to end it knowing full well his life would suddenly be viewed with additional scrutiny. Of course, it’s also worth pointing out that Cain fended off four separate sexual harassment charges and stayed in the race, yet this alleged affair is what ultimately drove him to end his bid. There will be much speculation as to why this latest allegation is the straw that broke Cain’s back.

And I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons. It may be something that slowing slinks into the shadows and we never hear of Herman Cain again (except in the tabloids of course). Now that Cain is out of the race people might stop digging. Maybe there’s nothing left to be dug up. If that is the case, I think Cain will stick to the promise he made to his supporters, that he’s not going anywhere. I think the chances are pretty good that if President Obama wins re-election next year that Herman Cain will run again in 2016. But that’s only if these allegations of sexual harassment turn out to be false, which is doubtful considering the National Restaurant Association (NRA) paid out settlements to the victims, or at the least we’ve seen the last of these allegations; and also this claim of the 13-year affair was nothing more than a conniving, deceitful lie, which also looks unlikely as this woman has records of a phone number with several calls and texts that Cain responded to when reached from that number by the media. Should any of these be true, especially the accusation of the affair then we can discount Cain from entering the 2016 race. If Cain is telling the truth though, that these things are part of a character assassination and hold no truth, then I do not think we’ve seen the last of Herman Cain.

Gingrich Putting the Children to Work

With the Republican Presidential nomination race maintaining its highly contested aura, the candidates are searching for ways each can pull ahead. Generally such a highly contested race might spur some candidates to veer more towards the middle, to a more moderate stance in their party to avoid becoming the outlier, the crazy one, and draw more supporters. If we look back at the 2008 Presidential election, there were many independents on the fence about voting for an untested Barack Obama, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t bring themselves to lay down their vote for the gaffe-prone, “rogue,” Sarah Palin, John McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. After the landslide margin of victory for the Democrats in that election, you’d think the Republican Party might have turned down the far Right rhetoric. But it only seemed to get worse after Obama took office. And now here we are one year out from the 2012 election and it seems the crazier the Republican nominee, the better chance they have of winning the nomination.

That’s where Newt Gingrich comes in. Once considered completely out of the race, suddenly the former Speaker of the House finds himself in the lead with a slight edge over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Romney has had his share of problems, mostly his John Kerry-like indecisiveness and “flip-flopping” on key issues. (I use the term ‘flip-flopping’ here loosely. Romney, I feel if elected, would actually move far more the Left of his current positions on certain issues. I believe he’s aware that the GOP has shifted drastically Right since Obama’s election and to simply court the vote, Romney is veering far Right until the nomination.) Gingrich, on the other hand, has simply maintained. He has not had the major flubs that Michelle Bachmann and Gov. Rick Perry have had. Also, despite Gingrich’s marital problems, no extra-marital affairs or sexual harassment allegations have sprung up, like nose-diving Herman Cain. What Gingrich has going for him thus far seems to be only that he is the GOP’s self-professed “ideas man.” What exactly has Gingrich come up with lately? Well, this week he once again attacked child labor laws defending a remark he made in mid-November for how ‘truly stupid’ they are. Frankly, if these are the types of ideas a Presidential nominee is going to come up with, I fear the Right is far more out of touch with the American public, and the American economy than most realize.

How exactly putting children to work will help the economy, and more specifically the unemployment rate, is something the prospective nominee does not purport to theorize. But, nonetheless, Gingrich is maintaining his stance on this issue. He believes that ‘poor’ children do not know how to work, that their work ethic is nonexistent because if they are poor, then surely their parents must not work. Gingrich glances over the fact that 15% of the country, 46 million people, are in poverty. The official unemployment rate is just below 9%. That means that 6% of the population works, but is still below the poverty line. That’s not lack of motivation, that’s lack of livable wages in the private sector. But say that Gingrich does somehow manage to rollback child labor laws, and his idea of putting school children to work with janitors in the evenings is implemented. How exactly does this help unemployment? Children are not officially counted in the unemployment rate. So, that would not dent the unemployed. But, if suddenly schools are allowed to hire children for less wages, thus more hands, they could feasibly layoff adults working in the school, which would actually worsen unemployment.

And what exactly does this do for a child? True, I’m sure they’d get valuable experience learning how to clean toilets and clean up kindergartener’s puke, if they aspired to be janitors when they grow up. Children should not be made to work in school. Parents should be raising their children. (Is this big government from Newt Gingrich?) Children should be concentrating on bettering their education, not what cleaning product works best on permanent marker scribbled on school lockers. A better education for the youth of our generation is the only means to a better future. India and China, the two fastest growing economies in the world, have invested billions into their education systems and they are leading the way in graduating math and science students, producing future innovators and entrepreneurs. It’s true that an after-school work program might keep a lot of kids off the streets and it will better prepare them for the future by teaching them needed skills, but it should be a voluntary, unpaid program. It should be like an internship program, or provide extra-credit for students struggling with their grades. Or perhaps it could be used as a reduction in school taxes for those parents whose children join the program. Lower taxes? Every Republican can get onboard with that one.

And speaking of China: until recently the country had very lax child labor laws. Comparatively to the US, they still do. Maybe Mr. Gingrich doesn’t quite remember sweat shops? Maybe Mr. Gingrich doesn’t quite remember our own sordid history with child labor in the fields and factories of the early 1900’s? For someone who’s written so many books, especially on history, I find that hard to believe. Maybe someone needs to remind Mr. Gingrich of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911? The point is this country has already seen it’s more than fair share of needless accidents involving the deaths of workers, especially children who were put into unsafe working conditions. We enacted laws to better safety standards of factory conditions so that workers are not risking their lives to make below poverty rate wages. The funny thing that happened along the way though is that as American labor laws became stricter, the factory owners and “job creators” just took their industries overseas to China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, to name a few. Sure enough, however, the same thing that happened here is happening overseas. There have been countless reports of death and injury in Chinese factories where the labor laws were extremely lax. But after some very public, egregious stories of operose workers being hurt, especially poor children from China’s vast countryside coming to the booming cities for work, the country has had little choice but to enact stronger labor laws to protect its people from unsafe American business practices. Why then, in a bit of hyperbole, does Mr. Gingrich wish the United States to rollback our labor laws and become more aligned with Communist China? Isn’t Obama supposed to be the socialist Kenyan, Newt?

Finally, I think the biggest problem I have with this whole idea of Gingrich’s is that he specifically points out that “poor” children are the ones in need of a solid employed role model in order to garner some kind of proper work ethic. Why is it just poor children who need this? What kind of work ethic do rich kids have that poor children do not? Poor children do not see how their parents boss the maid around the house in order for the maid to pick up after the messy child. Do rich children by some under-reported phenomenon, some kind of osmosis of ambition, absorb the ingenuity, the entrepreneurial spirit that their parents supposedly have? What about the children of Bernie Madoff? What kind of work ethic do they have if their father’s wealth came from crime? And what of the executives on Wall Street who crashed the economy with fraudulent mortgage foreclosures, mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, etc.? Sure these people made a lot of money, and they stole a lot of money from the country and the middle class. Is this the type of “ambition” that Mr. Gingrich feels we should be instilling in all our children?

Public Health and Safety: Black Friday Edition

Yesterday was Black Friday. We all know what that means: streams of shoppers mobbing department stores for the "best deals" of the holiday season. This is the mark when stores no longer operate in the red (as they do much of the year) and finally turn over into the black, meaning they begin to profit and see returns for their past year's investments. What it means for shoppers? It means the consumer gets a great deal on an item rarely of necessity and more often of simple want. But over the last few years, the consumer bargains for much more in waiting on line outside the store in the (sometimes) bitter cold. A disturbing trend of violence has marred the past 3 years of Black Friday shopping.

Reports this year, at least the ones so far garnering national attention, have included an incident where a woman in an affluent neighborhood pepper sprayed 20 people in an attempt to get an upper hand on the purchase of an electronic device at a Walmart, and a more serious incident near San Francisco where a family was robbed of their purchases at gunpoint shortly after leaving a store Thursday night. Luckily, the shooting was not fatal and the man remains in serious, but stable condition. There have been several reports of other violence throughout the country, including this display of sociopathic tendencies resulting in a near-riot over a $2 waffle maker. (I will spare you the video, unless you really want to see it. Frankly, this discourages me on so many levels.) As despicable as these stories are, they are not the first time we have heard of violence on Black Friday.

As some of you may recall, in 2008, a Walmart employee was killed at a Long Island store when the fevered hoard burst through the doors at 5am. The man, and several customers, were knocked to the floor. When the wildebeests had passed, the man was dead and several others were injured, including a 8-months pregnant woman. After this incident, stores began taking precautions to minimize the threat to employees that their "deals" bring to the store. But that has not stopped the string of violent accounts over the years between customers vying for that coveted XBox, video game, or friggin' waffle maker(!).

And why is this allowed? A relevant question, especially when gleaned through the lens of Occupy Wall Street. Well, partly there seems to be a contingent of the population that feels businesses have the right to sell such "door busters" if it brings customers into the store, regardless of potential damages and injuries. Then you have this essay, which tries to rationalize that it's the economy warranting such behavior, attempting to argue that if people weren't all so poor they wouldn't need to fight (or kill) one another over TVs and video games. The problem with this clearly unreasonable, in no way thought out piece is that TVs, video games, waffle makers, etc. are not necessities. They do not belong in every home. He attempts to pardon businesses and people from any moral sense because, "Hey, times are tough. It's okay to act like neaderthals." What has the base of our moral value system become? On one hand, we have people camping outside for days to shop for a "bargain" they can get any other time of the year (Shh, retailers do not want you to know that). They are willing to fight and possibly kill, whether intentionally or not, to procure a gift. This is all okay. On another hand, we have a group of protesters who camped out for weeks to stand up against the forces which put normally rational people in situations where they might kill for a Playstation, or a pair of shoes. This, however, is not.

So I ask again, a question I've been asking a lot over the last two weeks, what really constitutes a threat to public health and safety in this country? Clearly, in the pursuit of profit, public health and safety is being ignored. Then, when a group of protesters of Occupy Wall Street demands accountability over the motives and consequences of that profit-hunger they are the ones put in jail. America, you are fighting the wrong battles. You are shackled to a media-induced life of greed and materialism. You are pitted against one another, you fight, and are ready to kill one another for scraps, for the meatless bone thrown off by the gluttonous plutocracy.

Elitists Vs. The 1%

I was reading through Paul Krugman's piece today in the New York Times and was struck by a sudden realization. We hear quite a bit in the media about these "elitists" who are these privileged, upper class, intellectuals that have ruined the country in numerous, countless ways. Now, there are "Right Wing Elitists" such as former President George W. Bush. And then there are "Left Wing Elitists" such as our current president, Mr. Obama. But I believe there is a discordant variation of the way the media portrays these two "different" groups.

If you were to Google "Michelle Malkin elitist" you'd find a few links to her blog and the above image will come up. These blog entries chastise the President for his apparent hypocrisy of pointing out other elitists while trying to play himself off as an average American. And we hear all the time on Fox News of "liberal elites" who are subverting the country and have taken it over(!) already. Just refer back to Glenn Beck's satirical, conspiracy-theorist run on Fox for plenty of reference material. And these elitists must be stopped at all costs from further damaging the country.



What we have from the other side of the aisle is a fixation on the 1%, the wealthiest Americans who have siphoned money for the last 30 years from the middle and lower classes, who have bought elections, and silenced the press and freedom of speech. But these are the "job creators" and hence are sacrosanct in GOP rhetoric. And therein lies the hypocrisy of the Right's defense of the 1% in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The right cannot stand that a contingent of the population is protesting the abuses of the wealthy, but it is the wealthy 1% who are the "elitists" the right seems to believe have destroyed the fabric of America. They can't have it both ways. Either the elites are helping the country by creating jobs, or the elites are hurting it by fundamentally stripping away our freedoms and luring us into a socialist state. The GOP needs to come to this same realization: elitists are the 1%. The funny thing is: I tend to agree with the assessment that elites have thrusts this country into a tailspin of corruption and greed.

Robert Reich: Occupy Democracy

Reich has consistently supported the Occupy movement. It's safe to say he was one of the original "occupiers," at least in spirit. He's been calling for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and the decrease in private money in our elections for a long time now. It's good to see him not only talking economics, but addressing the violations of freedom of speech and egregious police brutality on display in this country. I guess I'm not surprised that Fox News is defending the use of pepper spray on seated, unarmed, unthreatening college students, and that MSNBC is denouncing it. It'd be nice if our President had something to say about it though...

Public Health and Safety

As we reported last week, the Occupy Wall Street camp down at Zuccotti Park was raided in the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 15th. The occupiers were removed from the park, either obeying a city ordinance to clean the area, or disobeying the ordinance and removed forcibly by police. When the cleaning was done (tents, books, their personal belongings trashed or packed up and taken to a holding area where they could be picked up later), the occupiers were allowed to return, but no longer could bring tents or sleeping bags back into the park with them. The city, and notably Mayor Michael Bloomberg, rationalized their decision citing the encampments dangers to public health and safety. I wish the Mayor, and other city officials, were more concerned with risks to public health and safety in other areas of the city.

To Mayor Bloomberg's credit, I will say that his concern for public safety in this situation seems synchronous with some of his other social and political stances. He is a large voice in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, and generally believes lax gun laws in urban environments leads to higher rates of crime and homicide. Though Republican, Bloomberg is not a climate science denier. He believes global warming is a serious threat to people, our children, and our world. Couple these things with his reasoning to effectively shut down the Occupy Wall Street camp, and it's easy to draw the correlations of his concern for the safety of the public. However, it still was not right to trash constitutional rights of citizens.

But more importantly here, we must ask the Mayor, or any right-wing pundit who seems to have no problem reporting and parroting the Mayor's excuse for raiding the camp: why does this "threat" to public health and safety of the Occupy Wall Street camp bear any more danger to lower Manhattan than crime in other parts of the city? Why doesn't the Mayor send a military-style police force into Bed-Stuy, Chelsea, or Midtown to "clean" that part of the city? Why doesn't the Mayor send a military-trained police force into the subway system to clean the crumbling platforms, the filth-covered drainage gutters between the tracks, or the rust-streaked white tiling on the walls? Most importantly, why aren't the police invading the buildings down at Wall Street not to arrest and disperse Occupiers, but to raid the offices of commercial banks whose practices are a threat to the public health and safety of America, whose packaging of mortgages into derivatives collapsed the economy, who skirted and lobbied Washington to waterdown Dodd-Frank so they could build another economic bubble just to see it pop again, to get bailed out and to hemorrhage even more money from the poor and middle class? The people on Wall Street represent a clear and present danger to the public health and safety of New York City, Mr. Bloomberg. Just ask Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, since he told the Congressional panel investigating the causes of the financial meltdown that "crises" should be expected "every five to seven years." If you take into account that every crisis only serves to hurt the poor and middle class while the rich get more well-off, then it seems to me like these crises are planned and actually the financial sector hopes for them. They get the bailout. America gets the bill.

Occupation's Coming Anniversary

With November 17th looming -- the 2 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street -- it seems that Mayor Bloomberg has taken a preemptive strike against the protesters to try to thwart their planned Day of Action. Last night at around 1am, the NYPD raided the camp at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square after issuing an eviction notice to the occupiers in order for the city to clean the park. The caveat: once the occupiers left, they would not be able to return to the park with tents. Naturally, this was the Mayor's way of attempting to effectively end the protests. And as any one could have guessed, some protesters would refuse such an order. Reports are mixed right now, but it seems that anywhere from 70 to 200 people were arrested, including one New York City Councilman. There were also several journalists arrested, my brother's girlfriend included, who was detained after being kettled by police. But was this the right move on the Mayor's part? The movement had begun to dwindle, losing the eye of the media, and still without much cohesion. The movement looked stagnant, ready to dissolve away. From watching the local community boards in alliance with the protests, it seems that Bloomberg has only awakened the beast once again.

Already there has been legal push back from the National Lawyers Guild, who immediately sought a court order to allow the protesters back into the park, which was never an issue, but more importantly, that they would be allowed to bring their tents back with them. The NLG argues the protesters right to free speech and to peaceably assemble, as granted in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, were violated. (They have now been denied privilege to bring tents into the park.) But barring that, the Occupy movement isn't much concerned with the law. It's the "Law" that has for too long been used to benefit the richest people in this country and to silence the rest. Laws have lead to the widest gap in income inequality this country has ever seen. Laws have lead to the reduction of worker's rights in lieu of granting personhood to corporations. Laws have allowed countless individuals to be jailed for stealing food to feed their families, while corporate executives and CEOs get off scott-free, with maybe a bare minimum fine and often no admission of guilt for committing massive fraud, money-laundering, illegally foreclosing homes, and many other egregious white-collar crimes committed over the past decade.

And what has Bloomberg now proved by his -arguably- desperate attempts to silence and break-up the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park? Has he shown that indeed the Occupy movement has validity in what they are protesting, that the system is so corrupt even our right to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble are no longer infallible? He has only provided the Occupiers with more "belly-fire" for civil disobedience. They will not be deterred by simply removing their tents. They will not be silenced.  Their voices grow louder. They will be more broad and more bold. They will use this to further their cause against the moneyed corruption that has overtaken our government, our way of life, and our very democracy.

More On Occupy Oakland

Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland's advisor resigned over her handling of the Occupy Oakland eviction.

Shifting of the Debate

Here's a great piece from The Huffington Post about the excess of government subsidies afforded to the rich in the country. Republican Senator Tom Coburn released a thorough, detailed list of many of the outlandish taxpayer-funded mechanisms that are afforded to millionaires in this country, everything from federal subsidies for preservation of their ranches and estates, to business entertainment deductions, to nearly $75 million in unemployment benefits. Coburn argues that "not everyone is in need of government handouts." I'd have to agree with him.

I'll be the first to say that when government is run efficiently, it can be the greatest ally to a society that the people have ever seen. But for too long government has not had the interests of its greatest number of constituents in mind, but rather has turned law to benefit more greatly a dwindling minority of the population: the rich. And it's really not hard to see why that might be. The most recent data shows that Congress is made up of about 46% of millionaires. And these elected officials are working tirelessly, it seems, to write law that benefits them, even if it might not be so great for the people who put them into office. In America as a whole, only 1% of the population is making over $1 million a year. So, wouldn't it be better to focus our policy-making on those people to balance the budget? That seems to be what Senator Coburn is looking to do. "The government's social safety net, which has long existed to help those who are down and help them get back up, is now being used as a hammock by some millionaires, some who are paying less taxes than some middle class families."

Government should never "pamper" people, as Coburn continues. It is there to act as a crutch, just like when a football player breaks his leg and is in need of a support staff to keep him off the leg so he can heal properly. That is what the social safety was put in place for. Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance: these are some of the most successful and popular government programs in history. But when you're a millionaire, why are you in need of these programs? Isn't the whole purpose of becoming a millionaire so that you can support yourself and your family without the need of government aid? Did Senator Coburn just totally debunk one of his parties most storied, staunch arguments to government interfering in people's lives? Kind of seems like he did here.

Sources of Crime

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/27250235

Occupy Oakland was closed down last night after the city issued eviction notices to the occupiers because a murder was committed nearby late last week. The police, and Mayor Quan, purport that the murder took place on or near Occupy Oakland's encampment. The ambiguity of this statement strikes me oddly, that they refuse to give an exact location to the public. Secondly, they contend the murder was a result of the occupiers, and that the encampment as a whole has become a source of crime in the city. Yet this statement too should be scrutinized. It is clear from eye-witness reports that the murder was in no way associated with the camp, and took place where groups of kids hang out after school. Maybe I'll post more videos from there, but the violence that I have seen in Oakland looked pretty similar to the violence that is seen from all over the country at Occupy camps: it's a violence induced by the men and women in uniform against the protestors exercising their 1st Amendment Rights.

Numerous incidences have been captured on film showing police brutality on men and women (pepper spraying, beatings with a baton or club). These egregious acts are in response to no threat of violence from the protestors, but from, what, annoyed policemen, bored policemen? The protestors are protesting the class warfare by the richest 1% of people in this country against the remainder of the population. They are protesting the Right-wing demonization of public workers, who happen to include the very men and women in uniform trying to close down the Occupy movements, and the reported "high life" public employees supposedly live. While the police work to close down the encampments, the 1% work to close down the policemen's pensions, their rights to bargain for better wages and safer working conditions, their health care. The police are working for the very people who do not want to pay for their protection, but want protection from people attempting to point out their crimes. Occupy Wall Street seeks justice and accountability to the widespread abuse, corruption, thievery, and subsequent scott-freedom they received due to lack of prosecution on behalf of the courts and government. And it is a government wholly paid for by the 1%, corrupt to its very core, to the highest office in this country. Why doesn't the government, or the courts (barring NY and California's Attorneys General from this generalization) want to shut down the sources of crime evident on Wall Street and the large financial institutions in this country? Who will start to hold these people accountable for the countless White-Collar Crimes that they have committed on behalf of capitalism and the free-market system? When will justice come?

Penn State's Students

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Jon Stewart sums up the absolutely appalling response to the Joe Paterno firing by students at Penn State this past week pretty clearly, and I think points to a much broader issue of cover-up, denial, lying, etc. by those in power, most often, men in power. He probably could have gone on about this story much longer in the opening segment of the show, but I think it's pretty clear, judging by how unfunny this clip is, how upset he is over the whole situation and chose to keep his response short. This is the kind of anger that should, and rightfully is, down on Occupy Wall Street. Joe Paterno was fired unceremoniously from his job for not taking stronger action against his Assistant Coach for molesting children. Wall Street criminals should be fired for what they have done to our world.

Oh Perry, Perry

Well, Rick Perry proved once again he can't handle the big stage. Perry has made multiple gaffes over the many, many, many Republican presidential debates, yet he still manages a front-runner status. In the debates, he has trouble maintaining focus, especially as the debates wind down. He's often been inarticulate when trying to put forth his policy agenda, and in criticizing his opponents viewpoints and policies as well. And then there was that awful, possibly inebriated, campaign speech he gave in New Hampshire in late October. It's been so bad the Perry camp has said that they will limit the number of presidential debates the Texas Governor will attend. That makes sense considering his abysmal track record thus far. Maybe they should have let the Governor skip Wednesday night's debate in Michigan.

I didn't watch the debate (reason #488 why I sometimes wish I had a TV), but from what I know, Perry was being mostly ignored throughout the night -- the media's usual way of telling a candidate they're taking them less seriously. Even with Perry being close to center (Herman Cain is the current front-runner, and was centered), the moderators were not allowing Perry much in the way of getting his answers out there. Maybe they were trying to limit the Governor's chances of a misstep? But Perry would not be denied. He jumped into the discussion when an opportunity arose for him to trumpet his reduce-the-government mentality. If he gets into office, he would cut three government agencies: Commerce, Education, and "um, uh, oops." He stumped himself on the third. It was cringe-worthy. As has been want for the candidates to do after these missteps, they attempt to laugh it off, or blame others. "I'm glad I had my boots on," Perry quipped to a round of reporters backstage, "because I really stepped in it tonight." Governor Perry might want to look into getting himself a full body suit. I think he's in way over his head.

Ron Paul and the Role of Government

In the latest Republican debate, Rep. Ron Paul was presented with a hypothetical question: suppose someone is able to afford health insurance, but chooses not to. That person then finds themselves terminally ill in the hospital in a coma about to die. With care, he would live; without, he will surely pass away. The question was, even though the man could afford insurance and chose not to purchase it, should he be given medical care on the taxpayer’s dime? Should society let the man die? Rep. Paul evaded a direct answer, audibly saying, “No,” as shouts from the crowd erupted with “Yes,” and “Yeah.” To the Texas Rep’s credit, the look that came over his face as he heard these shouts was one of disconcert and disturbance, as if he couldn’t believe people who voted for him so eagerly affirmed this. By avoiding the question Rep. Paul instead mused that one of the great things about liberty was how it allowed individuals to take those risks. Predictably Rep. Paul went into his main talking-points against any government intervention – ever. Mr. Paul seems to believe that too much  government intervention over the past 70 years or so has lead America away from some idyll time in this country where the community and the church took care of its neighbors, when a person was sick, it wasn’t some bureaucrat stepping in to help, but that person’s friends, neighbors, and church. Rep. Paul’s argument revolves around some unsubstantiated claim that government has usurped the community and in essence, destroyed the communal togetherness that once existed in this country, and apparently now does not.

I think it’s best to analyze this claim simply by the words themselves, and to wonder, is this even true? How could we really tell? Do we have statistical data that shows the percentage of sick people back in say, 1920, and how often their families, neighbors, and church came to their aid? I remember growing up going to the Methodist church in town and often Pastor Al talking about how one of the church members had fallen ill and that we would pray for that person to be healed. I do not, however, recall the collection plate being passed around specifically for someone at any given time, where we took up a collection not for the church itself to then dole out aid as it saw fit (and pay its bills), but rather only to help someone in need. Maybe it’s just a lapse in memory on my part, but even so, if it happened, it was not something happening often enough to make an impression on me. More often my family and I were giving toys to Toys-For-Tots or singing Christmas Carols with the Salvation Army, church-affiliated programs, but not directly through any one church. But this is only my experience, and I’m more willing to accept that my old church did run collection drives – not just useless prayer sessions- for some of our neighbors. And I bet countless churches across the country have done so in the past and do still today. But what evidence is there to suggest that government intervention in a person’s health care through Social Security or Medicare has in any way dwindled the budding communal ideal that Rep. Paul fantasizes about?

I’m willing to bet that if there has been any loss of “community” over the decades in this country, it does not pertain to government involvement in health care, but rather to an eroding middle class in America and stagnant wages for much of the lower and middle classes. As everything has become more expensive, the vast majority of the population has seen no substantial increase in their earnings and, in fact, many have seen their wages decline when adjusting for inflation. People barely earn enough to pay their own bills, are drowned in debt due this imbalance between inflation and wages, and just do not have the additional money for benevolence. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss government’s involvement in this trend: they’ve consistently lowered taxes benefitting the wealthiest and corporations most, and eroded workers’ rights hurting the lower and middle classes most. So, yes, government is partly to blame, but not how Rep. Paul believes it has exacerbated this problem. But I will point to one incident, a very important one that happened not that long ago, when government already interjected into society’s welfare and when Rep. Paul believes government had already overstepped its bounds. This incident shows that when things are the worst in this country, people still unify to defy adversity and pull together, reforging our sacred bonds of brotherhood and community that make the United States of America so great. I’m referring, of course, to 9/11. In that one morning the course of modern human history changed more than anything before it, probably since the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. And what we saw in the days after was a renewed sense of pride and nationality in this country where individuals came together and dropped their petty differences and animosities, their hatred. At least, for a short time. And Americans have shown a penchant for doing this over and over again.

I believe it completely false to assert that Americans have lost some sense of community in this country based purely on government intervention. For one, there is no statistical data to suggest such a thing; secondly, several examples go to show that this just is not true, and that people come together when times are their worst. Perhaps people seem more selfish because of monetary policy in this country, which has benefitted the wealthiest far more than the majority of the population, exactly the opposite of what Rep. Paul is arguing.

And this leads me to a broader point on Paul’s argument: the idea of the community itself. Rep. Paul wants less government and more community “interaction,” more neighborliness that he believes no longer exists. But say you live in a community of 100 people and you get sick. Say your medical bills total $100,000. If the community chips in to help you, each person pays $1,000. But say your community has a constituency of 1,000 people; then, each person only pays $100. But wait! What if your community has 100,000 constituents! Guess what? Everyone pays $1. One dollar. Based on the arguments Rep. Paul has put forward, he would have no problems with this scenario, as long as there was no government “bureaucracy” in the way of the community voluntarily coming together to help. But when the community only has 100 people, how many of them realistically could afford $1,000? Based on current census data, about 18. 18% of the population has no health insurance. And that’s not because they do not want it; they simply cannot afford it. That number is consistent with the population in the US who live in poverty, which currently stands at 15.2%, according to the census. And of course, that number does not include the portion of the population that though they are not technically in poverty, they have very little disposable income where they could afford to pay their neighbor $1,000 when that person gets sick. For, what should happen if they give their neighbor that $1,000 and the next month they are the one in the hospital? Would their neighbor, just out of the hospital and attempting to get back on their feet, be willinge to throw $1,000 into the pool? Doubtful. So, say the government steps in and says, well, there’s only 100 people in this community, but there are 100,000 in the state, or in the country, so if we mandate everybody to pay, they each pay $1 and no one really feels the adverse affects of helping out their neighbors, whether they know the person or not. I’ve ridiculously simplified reality, admittedly. But I’m only illustrating a point. And that is to say if you think the “community” should be responsible and willing to aid its’ neighbors, why isn’t the US one large community? We are after all, as italicized above, The United States of America. We are by definition one country of millions of interlocking communities, that though they may be separated by arbitrary borders, and more definitive state lines, we are one whole. We are supposed to help one another out when times are tough. We are supposed to send aid to another state when they are struck by some natural disaster, whether hurricane, flood, or drought. Rep. Paul seems so blinded by his staunch resistance to anything government that he’s blinded himself to the idea that this very country was founded on togetherness, common purpose, and common prejudice. It was together the colonies repelled the British. It was together the country defeated the advance of the Nazis. It is together that we can make this a country far better than any other, and far better than we have been in the past.

Factotum by Charles Bukowski

3 out of 5 Stars

Not quite as enjoyable as some other things I've read from Bukowski, but this was also my first full-length novel of his. Certainly there were those moments of squeamish delight, like Henry's failure to properly wipe after a particularly messy episode in the restroom, which he nonetheless returns straight to bed with Jan. But it's hard to keep the reader enthralled without a central plot or an overwhelmingly interesting narrator, or protagonist. There's little, if any, plot to speak of and Henry just isn't engaging enough. What I found most interesting was Bukowski's treatment of Henry's various bosses, and their seeming opposition to Henry when really they were in fact similar in many important regards. Henry's father berates him when he returns from a drunken escapade that lastest, I think, about a month. The father belittles his son with no ambition, disparages his drinking, and his aloofness. But Bukowski offers us another side to this story. Whereas Henry is definitely without ambition and is surrounded by seemingly ambitious men who own their own business and are the source of Henry's many, many flirts with a career, we constantly see these "ambitious" men cutting-corners at work, or cheating the system (the guy who sells three "types" of brake pads, which all come from one large pile of identical brake pads heaped onto a table). Where Henry is honest in his laziness, and is actually quite happy with being poor, others are not, and in fact their dishonesty is a product of their own laziness, their own insouciance, to the point where it may cause harm to innocent people. So I guess we're left to wonder who is worse in the whole scheme of things.

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

54/100

5 out of 5 Stars

Though it may be considered the greatest novel in American literature concerning politics, politics are only a vessel for which this remarkable story unfolds. We are introduced to Willie Stark, a caricature of a real-life Louisiana Governor, and his rise to political fame and success, both of which come at the expense of morality, the expense of truth, and the expense of the soul. Most synopses focus on Willie Stark, indeed the back cover of my copy is testament, but the real focus, our hero, our child of history, is Jack Burden, a journalist who comes to work for Willie Stark. But maybe that isn’t even a proper assessment. It might be correct to categorize them as both the focal point of the story, dual protagonists- interchangeable. “And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost,” says Warren. Burden and Stark are the good and bad churned together throughout the story, ever fluctuating; Burden righteous at the outset is drawn to vice under Stark’s command, and Stark morally corrupted yet he sees that the bad he creates in essence breathes life into the good, in fact argues is the only thing that can. But this dichotomy does not begin and end with Burden and Stark, but is present throughout, juxtaposed between many characters, overlapping pairs: Burden and Adam Stanton; Stark and Stanton; Anne Stanton and Sadie Burke; Burden and Tiny Duffy- and the list goes on- in a stylistic chronology of past interwoven seamlessly into the narrative. The “student of history,” at times unconsciously delves into long remembrances of the past to bring needed weight to the present, to show us bad birthing good, and good creating bad. “[T]hat we can keep the past only by having the future, for they are forever tied together,” Burden muses over Anne Stanton, years ago, when they were still so young. And then later, when it’s nearly all said and done, “I tried to tell her how if you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other…” Certainly, all this could be linked to politics, but for all the boasting of political insight, Warren captures a wide, wonderful, roaming portrait of the human condition, and the failures and triumphs of man. Many have come to this novel for the corruption and disenfranchisement of our politics, but I, and I hope others, walk away with a greater sense of who we are.

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


52/100


While the merits of the book lie mostly in Ford's ability to write believable, interesting dialogue and pages-long conversation, I found it incredibly difficult to connect, or even really like the protagonist, Frank Bascombe. He is a man emotionless, or at least purposely emotionally distant from events and the people around him. "I don't think I have any ethics at all, really. I just do as little harm as I can," Bascombe tells Walter Luckett, both members of The Divorced Men's Club. Here is a man of wanton convictions, and to me, someone who lets life lead them instead the other way around. But it wasn't always like that for Frank, who took chances and gave up dreams prior to the beginning of the novel, which we are dealt in musing flashbacks. The events which carry the greatest opportunity for a profound link between the reader and writer (Ralph, his eldest son's death, and the consequential divorce from his wife) are all given to us from Frank's disconnected present, a narrative of little action and mostly retrospection. And this makes for a slow, dolorous read, which I questioned to abandon. But I guess one could argue this structuring was entirely Ford's purpose. As he writes towards the beginning, "All we really want is to get to a point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life."




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The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Such a beautiful fusion of the horrors of war, and the introspection on life and how it affects the writing process. Sounds strange, I know. But it is wholly unexpected and wonderfully rewarding.




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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


50/100. I really feel I should have read Bronte's "Jane Eyre" before taking this on. There is a lot of ambiguity about the characters at times, which I guess Rhys is counting on her audience to have read the "sequel," if you will. So, that made the story slightly hard to follow. But there's a passion to the writing casting a moody atmosphere over the story, which is fitting, as our heroine is descending into madness and everyone seems frightened of the "zombi."




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Deliverance by James Dickey


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


49/100: Having never seen the movie, which itself is iconic, I was able to wade into "Deliverance" with a near clean perspective. I can only hope the film captures the raw intensity and page-turning suspense of the novel. The fight for survival, not only for the "city folk" from the "hillbillies," but the struggle to survive against nature itself is beautifully captured. Dickey seemlessly juxtaposes the fear modernization feels towards the untamed wilderness alongside the reluctance our harsh, aggressive, unapologetic past has to the unstoppable sophistication, progression, of our future, which will surely lead the past to its demise.




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In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hemingway is oft criticized for his terse, simplistic prose. But it's hard not to fall in love with his stories and characters when the prose is so affecting.




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Book Review: Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Bradbury doesn't quite offer a full fledged tale in "Dandelion Wine", but more of an episodic account of Summer, 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, and its' inhabitants as seen through the eyes of two young boys, Douglas and Tom. Seldom, outside of Douglas and Tom, who always seem to know where the action is happening in town, is the reader offered more than a 10pg. snippet per character. And that is not to put that decision in a negative light. Bradbury offers us just enough to know these people, to care about them, to care about who they love or hate. And he does it incredibly well. We turn the page wanting more, only to discover he's shifted gears and it's now several weeks in the future, and the children are observing someone else, but the same meticulous introspection persists and again we find ourselves caring, yearning. And we might hypothesize Bradbury consciously did this, fore if anything persists throughout this book, it is death, and its' embodiment: The Lonely One. For the boys to experience so much fatality at such a young age might trouble some out there, but where darkness resides, light is ever near. As Douglas ecstatically proclaims at the onset, "I'm really alive!" He certainly does not fail to find any shortage of that in the Summer of 1928.




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Clinton Did It

Yesterday, Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP's next up-and-coming cretin released his Republican budget plan to reduce the deficit and reign in government, because government spending is out of control, or at least it has been since 2008 when George W. Bush left office (that's a strange coincidence). It'd be nice to think that Representative Ryan were sincere in his recommendations to reduce spending and balance the budget, but when he marks 2008 as a good point to return and then strictly stabilize spending, it's only political posturing. GWB increased the federal budget by 104%. In comparison, Pres. Bill Clinton increased the federal budget by only 11%. If Rep. Ryan were truly sincere about reducing the government, he might choose a better marker than the notoriously poor fiscal policies of George W. Bush. But besides this glaring omission from Ryan's reasoning, let's examine a few other interesting points, perhaps treating Rep. Ryan to a little history lesson in the meantime.

15 years ago, Pres. Bill Clinton balanced the budget and created a surplus. He did it with common sense fiscal austerity, not the extremely dangerous musings of the Tea Party-elected freshman in the House. Tthese people cry that cutting Planned Parenthood and NPR (just to name two examples) will magically fix our budget crisis it's almost laughable. But then you have polls released that show Americans think the government spends nearly $200B a year on such programs and you have to wonder how dumb this country actually is. But Clinton balanced the budget with those programs still wholly intact. Pres. Clinton did not make sweeping changes to Social Security or Medicare. He did raise taxes, but only 4.6% on the highest earners in the country. And in spite of Republicans' continued arguments that tax cuts lead to more jobs and tax increases lead to fewer ones, the economy boomed. Maybe Mr. Ryan should have just taken up a chair next to the former president to learn a thing or two.

Secondly, piggy-backing off the comment that Pres. Clinton created a surplus prior to leaving office, is that the current deficit was largely created by only two factors: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003. Yet Rep. Ryan likes to talk up that "entitlement" programs have been the main driving force behind our deficit problems, which just makes no sense mathematically.

And lastly, it should be noted that Pres. Obama has increased the federal budget. For a Democrat, that's not terribly surprising. But Rep. Ryan and all the other GOP windbags pout endlessly about some huge socialist agenda implemented by the President. Yet again there selectivist memory about history has quickly forgotten that the President increased spending so quickly because the country was on the verge of a depression and money needed to be poured into the economy or else it would have failed completely. And again, it should be said that George W. Bush watched idly as the housing bubble inflated and burst, without action- except of course to reward the companies that inflated the bubble. It would be nice to take Rep. Ryan's budget proposal seriously, but it'd just fill me with a lot of hot air.

A Little Bit of Arithmetic

As the ground swell of protests continues to build in favor of increased taxes on the millionaires and billionaires, some (most notably on the Right of the political spectrum) continue to blame the poor for so many of our problems in this country. The Right continues to argue that the poor game the system, take advantage of lax oversight laws and are the thieves taking so much of the hard-earned money from the middle class. In light of the Great Recession, one should be inclined to think such an argument ridiculous, but still some continue to shout angrily that it's all the fault of the poor, or even, the not so poor, but the folks in the middle class who bought houses with the encouragement of the deceitful lies of the mortgage companies. But how much farther can this argument go? How much wealth need be concentrated so heavily in the blood-soaked hands of the richest people and corporations of this country before it becomes unarguably their wrong-doing which has lead to such a disastrous state for this nation. Right now, 400 people in this country, four-zero-zero, hold the same amount of wealth as 50% of the rest of the population. This trend has spiraled beyond control over the last decade, made worse with the recession. How exactly can it be that with so much wealth concentrated at so few points that the poor of this country are the ones leeching the very blood of the middle class? There certainly are those welfare scum who do nothing, and have done nothing, to earn the government paycheck that comes to their subsidized home each month, but I'm not inclined to think that these few are the root of our economic woes when so much wealth is concentrated in the upper echelons of the rich. The numbers just are not there to support the claims that the few poor who actually cheat the system can control so much of the wealth being stripped from the middle class. To suppose otherwise is ridiculous beyond measure, and math.

Parasites

"We are all parisites[sic]..." read part of a post to Facebook in the aftermath of Japan's March 11, 2011's devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami. My friend went on to say, "God help us all." I was quite struck by the phrase. I attempted to discern what exactly my friend believed in based on this post (probably unwise to base an entire theological viewpoint on one post, but I'm just speculating here). Should God actually exist, wouldn't it be precisely Him who caused such devastation? The all-knowing, all-powerful being spurred such disaster, so why on earth would He be called on for assistance? And furthermore, to the former part of the post, humans are "parisites"? But we are made in God's image. If we are draining this world of all its resources then God must be equally complicit in draining the vast cosmos of its own.

What I find so disturbing is the bleak world view highlighted by such a statement. If God actually existed and caused such needless destruction, I would hope it would be to illustrate the point that we, humans, are all alike, coexist here together in this world and that when harm befalls a group of our people, we don't look to God for miracles, but create our own by helping one another, by helping the most needy of our people. Alan Moore's Watchmen culminated in this idea. Wars in all corners of the world, impending doom knocking on the door; it would take a disaster of worldly significance for humans to set aside their differences and come together.

But I don't believe that God exists and therefore do not attribute any particular meaning to the earthquake and the tsunami outside of the natural occurrences of the earth, the ever-changing planet that we inhabit. We are not malicious parasites attaching ourselves to the innards of the planet, but are the white blood cells flowing through the bloodstream to heal, to heighten our immunity to the very dangers that cut our skin and infect our wounds, i.e. the earthquakes and tsunamis. We are the only cure for what ails a planet in peril.