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.