National Republican Committee Chairman Reince Preibus
It’s not a beautiful day in the neighborhood this morning kids. The Supreme Court has dashed our hopes of repealing “Obamacare” and now we must ramp up our misinformation campaign to get voters to vote against their own self-interests yet again, We had hoped that our efforts would have convinced you that this law is not beneficial for our elderly and you poor kids that live outside our neighborhood, and here’s why.
Welcome to my neighborhood. Pictured ID’s required
We sent out a message to frighten warn everyone about how this law would tax new babies, people who have heart attacks and even sick puppies. How cruel can someone be. Yes, it may be a stretch for some of you who don’t buy into our hyperbole to see how this law can have adverse affects on the powerless in this country so let me twist apply reasonable thinking to help you with this.
We sent out this 90 second video for you to try to comprehend. The first 80 seconds of rambling distortions, outright lies and rapid images did stream by pretty fast but we slowed it down at the end so you could understand what steps to take to prevent these things from happening, if indeed our fantasy take on this becomes realty.
Notice on the front of end of the video we allude to the tax on heart attacks, new babies and sick puppies. Didn’t catch it? You may have to replay it over a few times. Sorry, we had so much crap information to lay on you in such a short time because we know most of you who repeat our bogus talking points have very short attention spans so we wanted to get to you before the ads for breast implants and penile erection distracted you.
Where do we get this information about such cruelties? We manufacture it from the real data that’s out there. Some may call this mining or cherry picking information. But we see it as a necessary public service to ensure that the GOP’s primary agenda and goal - limiting Obama to one term – remains on target.
The people over at FactCheck.org have supplied the truth details about such cruelty so all of you who doubt our sincerity will understand how we came to this unbelievable unique conclusion:
The video doesn’t mention it, but what it is referring to is a provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Sec. 9009) that spells out excise taxes on manufacturers of medical devices. In order to help pay for the expansion of health coverage for the uninsured, the law includes a 2.3 percent tax on certain medical devices starting in 2013. It’s expected to bring in $20 billion over 10 years. Proponents say device makers will sell more devices and reap more profits when an additional 30-some million potential customers gain health coverage and can afford them.
Not all medical devices are taxable. Those sold retail (directly to the consumer), for example, are exempt. So are device manufacturers that bring in revenues under $5 million a year.
Among the devices that are taxable: cardiac defibrillators, pacemakers, stents (“heart attack”-related devices) and ultrasound equipment (“new baby”-related). Most experts, including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, expect at least some of the cost of the tax on manufacturers of medical devices to be passed on to consumers via higher health insurance premiums.
So what about taxes on “sick puppies”? This also relates to the tax on medical devices. The NRCC passed along a report from the Internal Revenue Service that addressed the issue of whether veterinary devices would be subject to the tax. The gist of it is that taxable devices are those “intended for humans.” So if a medical device is exclusively used for veterinary medicine, it would not be taxable.
But there are also medical devices used in veterinary practices as well as in human medicine. The IRS says those would be taxable. SOURCE
We have been accused ourselves of being monsters by wanting to privatize Social Security that would allow us to get our grubby hands on people’s investment to be placed in the volatile stock market rather than the Social Security Trust fund, depriving low-income families from providing nutritional meals for their children for simply wanting to give them the freedom to use their own low-income wages without the aid of food stamps, and putting families on the streets who have lost their job in this recession by limiting needed unemployment benefits to see them through these hard times. It’s un-American to expect bailouts from the government, unless you’re a bank too big to fail.
Clearly these hurtful notions have been spread by people who don’t bother to read and watch programs and blog sites that adhere to our message. But one thing is clear! We have never included sick puppies into our efforts to defend freedom and the free markets, although some may define the Koch brothers as sick puppies for their efforts to protect the fossil fuel interests they profit from.
I’m not a big fan of Mayor Bloomberg but it’s always good to see a politician doing what’s in the interests of those who pay his salary as opposed to those who make large campaign contributions
An article on MSN Money caught my eye earlier this month regarding NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to ban super-sized fountain drinks in the Big Apple. The headliner for the story read “Coke comes out swinging against soda ban”indicating the soda conglomerate was going to fight this decision to strike a blow at obesity, a major health issue in this country to sustain profits.
According to Kim Peterson’s article, “ The company controls 70% of the fountain drink market that the proposal targets.” All other sizes, including those packaged in cans and bottles, will remain untouched by this action.
So how, you may ask, will this small step by Mayor Bloomberg impact the problems related to America’s addiction to sugar and sugar products? Very little … initially. But Coke knows that the Taoist wisdom that a “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” may be in play here and is circling its wagons to prevent any further advances.
“This raises the specter of this going to other cities as well,” said Bernstein Research analyst Ali Dibadj. “These companies may have to start playing whack-a-mole if this gains momentum.”
I think the writing however is on the wall for a lot of junk food. People are beginning to see much more clearly the connection between unhealthy diets and high medical costs. Not that junk food will disappear entirely but the vocal opposition to it is getting louder and more frequent … and in business, it just isn’t worth the negative images that come across when citizen protests get their message in front of the public. Obesity is a serious health issue and no one wants their brand tainted by appearing to look insensitive to this problem.
The soft drink giant however appears to want to protect what industry analysts say is a significant part of their sales. McDonald’s, a big distributor of fountain drinks, joined Coca-Cola in opposing this move, noting that 5% of their sales comes from soft drinks. How much of that is the super-size version isn’t clear.
Again, the scale of this decision only looms largely when you look at it 10 years down the road but what’s to say this turns profits south for Coke? If the free market principles are correct, Coke should be finding healthy options to market in order to eventually replace what will be a thing of the past. Digging their heals in here will only prolong the inevitable and be seen by many health conscious consumers today as the actions of a self-entrenched mentality that would rather secure higher profits than lead the way to a world where obesity is no longer the national health threat it currently is. But then again, I may be inhaling the second-hand smoke of some neighbor’s cannabis-filled pipe. We could all evolve into what Slate.com commentator Daniel Engber sees as the “weak-willed, indolent, and stupid” animated characters in the Disney Pixar film, Wall-E.
The popular libertarian scree was struck by Coke as a spokesman asserted that “New Yorkers expect and deserve better than this. They can make their own choices about the beverages they purchase.”
Here’s where a part of the industry’s plan could succeed or fail. If supporters of the ban point out that children, who often purchase these larger drinks, are easily manipulated by advertisement, then the notion that freedom of choice will be affected may not hold up to scrutiny. Childhood obesity and diabetes are on the rise with adolescents. When pounded routinely everyday with ads that encourage such consumption can true choice be a factor here when not balanced with the disadvantages of drinking such large quantities of sugar? True choice is also negated with children and adults who have genetic factors that lead to overconsumption.
One could argue that how you raise your children will depend on how they make such choices but many obese kids are raised by parents who display similar “choices” in the way they eat They hardly serve as a role model for their own kids. Bloomberg’s decision to ban super-size drinks is not a violation of one’s personal freedom as much as it is a statement in how little the commercial interests in this country seem to have about the growing national dilemma we face with an overweight population. Bloomberg supporters should point out that some choices are not always in the best interests of more vulnerable populations.
Obesity has been declared a disease by the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization and numerous other scientific organizations. We allow laws to limit smoking, drinking alcohol and taking illicit drugs because they threaten the health and well-being of society. It is only logical that some steps need to be taken to do the same with excessive quantities of food and drink that adversely affect many individuals.
To be honest too, the industry is less concerned about freedom of choice than they are about their bottom lines. When you can sell products in a larger volume you reduce your inventory quicker. This works fine for useful commodities that don’t have adverse affects on our health. But I doubt there is any evidence that a 36 oz. drink will sufficiently quench thirst better than a 24 oz. drink or even two sixteen-ounce drinks.
I may not represent the normal population but in the few times I have purchased the super-size drink, thinking I really needed that amount to quench a thirst, I have almost exclusively wound up throwing part of it away. On other occasions, especially when I was younger, I would consume the entire amount simply because it was there and I didn’t want to see myself wasting something I paid for. But my thirst was quenched long before I drained the cup.
This is where the deception lies with people like Coke. By attempting to make it an issue about freedom of choice they conceal the heart of the matter which is about consuming large amounts of product to increase profits. I have nothing against a business wanting to boost their profit margin but in this case at least, its being done with little regard for the impact it has on our national health.
Coke needs to step up to the plate and pretend to be the human being that the Supreme Court claimed it was in Citizens United. Show a little integrity and try and do something that promotes the general welfare over your greed to increase profits and bonuses. Such humanitarianism can go a long way and may actually boost your brand’s image. Now’s there’s a marketing strategy that probably gets very little consideration in board meetings.
At a time when there is growing concern about the safety of our food supply and the often hazardous means to produce it, home-grown organic suppliers can fill the need to supply families with nutritional food at reasonable costs.
Though still around today, farmers markets were more commonplace and visited routinely when I was growing up in the 1950’s
There’s a movement afoot that is reminiscent of an earlier time for me and the entire baby boom generation as children in the late 1940‘s and 1950‘s. Though we always idealize our past there are those real aspects of it that elicit fond recollections of things simple in nature that encompass family and a smaller community.
One of those experiences was buying our food at grocery markets where the produce, meats and dairy products were processed by local farmers and ranchers. There was also the regular visits to the farmers market with parents and grandparents in downtown Dallas. Before there were Safeways and Krogers there was Jerry’s Meat Market and Kettle’s Food Store.
It was a community of people that we were dependent on for basic needs and who we shared certain values with. In today’s global markets this perception is imbued in many of the advertisements for products bought and sold but in reality, much of what we purchase in markets today no longer originates within those finite boundaries we consider local. Today, the nostalgia of small, local food co-ops is seeing a rebirth in many areas across the country.
The post-WWII baby-boom generation is perhaps the last generation that fully realized a time when most of your food needs were met with purchases from a local mom and pop operation whose food supply was from local farmers. If you wanted prescriptions, toiletries and greeting cards you went to Skillern’s Drug Store. There was no such thing as a latte but if you wanted a cup of coffee you could only get that at places like Norma’s cafe. Pretty much everything else you needed could be purchased at Sears, Roebuck & Co.
The corporate supermarkets that have emerged since the 1960’s changed this, providing the consumer with the convenience of one-stop shopping. My generation saw this as a good thing at the time because it was new and exciting; not something old-fashioned that our parents and grandparents were accustomed to. But in our acceptance of this future transition I think we were emotionally robbed of the personable interaction once found dealing with an independently owned business operated by people who lived in your area. Many businesses today are national or International, run by managers for some corporate ownership far away.
Co-ops are regaining popularity again, perhaps by those who want to regain that lost sense of the past but mostly as a local source of nutritional food you won’t necessarily find in the supermarket chains. Not only do the larger, modern supermarkets tend to diminish a sense of community but they leave a larger carbon foot print in order to stock their stores with the vast array of goods they provide consumers with today. My home town of Denton, Texas is lucky enough to have a food co-op but it is struggling to find a bigger consumer base and sufficient suppliers to compete with the commercial giants.
The Cross Timbers Food Co-op (CTFC), run by a small group of people, is working to re-establish a system to purchase food products from local producers, keeping our money here while also providing sources of income for these people along with job opportunities for future growth. Buying local home-grown products gives consumers fresher food and it reduces the carbon-foot print created by transporting such goods over long miles from other states and countries. Less energy for storage and packaging is also required since your food gets from the farm or ranch to your table quicker.
How Safe Is the Food You Purchase? Over 40 percent of all fresh fruit consumed in the U.S. comes from Mexico, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and other foreign countries, traveling hundreds, even thousands, of miles to reach our grocery-store shelves. Eating food grown elsewhere in the world means depending on the soil, water, and sanitation conditions in those places and on the way their workers farm, harvest, process, and transport the products. According to the CDC, each year in the United States 76 million people suffer from foodborne disease; 325,000 of them are hospitalized and 5,000 die. SOURCE
These co-ops provide produce, dairy and meat products from suppliers who use organic techniques that avoid the use of synthetic chemicals and antibiotics to enhance production. These chemicals can pose health hazards for consumers if safety measures are not regulated and monitored. They also use measures for growing that strengthen soils and avoid industrial agriculture practices that continue to damage and deplete this valuable natural resource.
While intensive plowing and monocrop agriculture systems have caused nutrient depletion and wide-scale soil erosion, over-application of fertilizers and pesticides have contaminated our soils and polluted our waterways – Sustainable Table
Current purchaser membership in CTFC stands at 339 active accounts but only a fraction of those use the co-op on any kind on a regular basis. Approximately 53 members have ordered more than one time over the years the co-op has been in existence. Memberships cost a one-time, refundable $50 fee. There is also a small service fee added to each order that is based on the amount of your purchases.
CTFC uses Hilltop Montessori School at 1014 N. Elm in Denton to distribute its food every other Saturday between 1:30 and 3:30pm. The Montessori school is owned by CTFC member Julie Winnette who made the facility available after the food co-op lost their previous delivery site located a couple of blocks off of Denton’s town square. Orders are placed on-line during the week preceding the delivery date, allowing suppliers time to process the orders and have them ready a week after all orders have been submitted. There is no delivery so all items are picked up by each consumer.
Wylie Harris is usually in place to hand out orders on distribution days and has been doing this since August, 2006; several months after he and some others first incorporated the co-op. He lives the organic way of life. “I got interested in starting a co-op like this after seeing what Bob Waldrop had done in Oklahoma after I was assigned to interview him about it for my ‘formal-sector’ job”, Wylie explains. “The Peace Action Denton group was hosting a conference intended to spark efforts toward local sustainability not long after that, and I managed to get Waldrop included on the slate of speakers. He stuck around ’til the evening of that conference to come to the first co-op organizing meeting.”
When not contributing his time to CTFC he works out of his home in Sant Jo writing web and newsletter content for the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture (KCSA) in Poteau, Oklahoma, “an award-winning non-profit educational foundation [that has] committed its resources and programs to the goals of ‘sustainable’ agriculture.” Then there is the time that Wylie and his wife Ozlem spend with their own farm where they tend to the cattle, chicken and vegetables that primarily serve their personal needs.
Along with building up CTFC’s membership Wylie would also like to see a larger supplier base. The ultimate goal for the Cross Timbers Co-op is to increase the number of delivery locations and expand down into the metroplex.
“There’s always a kind of chicken-or-egg dynamic going on in that nobody wants to buy if there’s not a good product diversity”, Mr. Travis tell me,“ and nobody wants to sell if there aren’t enough customers to make it happen. At the moment I feel like we’ve hit a pretty good product mix, and now need to advertise the co-op to a wider audience to increase sales to make it worth the existing producers’ while. The organizing group envisioned the co-op serving a wider area – Sherman to Wichita Falls to D/FW – and I’d like to see progress toward that goal, however incremental. Our core customer group to date has always been solidly based in Denton proper.”
Wylie Harris checks supplier list at CTFC’s distribution location
CTFC lists some thirteen suppliers currently who provide products ranging from chicken and beef to an assortment of vegetables and spices. There are also suppliers who provide soaps, coffee beans, eggs, baked sweets and goat cheeses. About half of those provide their product on a seasonal basis.
Rose Creek Farm supplier Pamela Johnson with Wylie Travis preparing orders for another Saturday distribution
The current and only chicken supplier, Rose Creek Farms, is owned by Pamela Johnson and her husband Ronnie. On a visit to Rose Creek Farms in mid-June I met up with Pam and Ronnie to see just how invested they are in supplying healthy, organically raised chickens. They’re raised in mobile pens so they can be shifted to areas on the Johnson’s 30 acre farm that will provide a continuous supply of sun, grass, insects, and left over veggies from their own garden. Besides these natural food sources for the chickens the Johnsons grow some of the feed for them and supplement it with a Certified Non-GMO product.
The Johnsons also serve as the primary supplier of vegetables and spices for CTFC. Below are just a sample of the vegetables they grow on about 3 acres that are fertilized with an organic “tea compost” that runs through a system of soaker hoses running parallel with the plant rows. It is a mixture of water and compost they have composed with some molasses and alfalfa to enhance the microbial life to feed their plants. Their soils are mainly sandy so they use a wood chip compost to stabilize this growing medium, allowing it to retain moisture longer.
From top to bottom: Beets, cherry and yellow pear tomatoes, Armenian cucumber and green beans
Rose Creek Farms is located on CR 2788 just outside of Alvord, Texas which sits about 10 miles north of Decatur in Wise county.
Prior to getting into the organic farm business Pamela was a civil engineer, building bridges and other infrastructure items for Isbell Engineering Group out of Sanger,Texas. Her husband Ronnie began framing houses when he was fifteen and eventually started building homes, which he did for years in the North Texas area before buying their farm in 2007.
Though Ronnie and Pamela are a primary source of produce for CTFC they are also part of the grass-roots organization, Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) that originated out of Poughkeepsie, New York. Their first obligation is to supply a local customer base that pay an annual $30 fee per family for the privilege of ordering in advance freshly grown produce directly from Rose Creek Farms. Pamela feels the CNG approach better accommodates the needs of small farmers with lower fees and insuring the organic quality of members
CNG’s approach is called a Participatory Guarantee System. PGS is employed by tens of thousands of farmers worldwide. These programs minimize paperwork and certification fees and employ a peer-inspection process built on local networks. They’re typically a better fit for small-scale producers who sell locally. SOURCE
Rose Creek Farm owners Ronnie and Pam Johnson
Small organic farms like Rose Creek are a challenge, economically and physically. It requires a devotion from people like the Johnson’s to supply healthy foods to consumers who want to know not only where their food comes from but what’s in it. Buying from a local food co-op like CTFC not only gives this assurance to consumers but allows them to make healthy choices that protect their families against potentially harmful additives and minimizes the carbon foot print that large-scale operations require.
Having a single distribution point and paying prices that are slightly higher than you find at supermarkets may seem a disadvantage for many who would like to make this healthy choice but there are advantages that outweigh these considerations. The time and drive are often not any more than most people incur shopping at Kroger’s, Safeway or Tom Thumb’s. There’ no fighting crowds are standing in lines shopping in the store because your selections have already been made on-line. And though organic foods are a bit higher because of the time and effort involved to produce them, the health benefits offset such cost by keeping you out of the doctor’s office and away from pharmaceuticals often needed to correct physical ailments that result from deficient diets.
FACTOID:Just how big is each individual’s carbon foot print with the conventional means of supplying food in today’s markets?In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American. SOURCE
For further information about the Cross Timbers Food Co-Op and their organic food suppliers, contact Wylie Harris on the CTFC website at crosstimberscoop.org/
Eating healthy foods avoids contracting many of the illnesses society pays for in high medical costs
“We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion.” – Bill Moyers
A great little piece found on the Global Economic Intersection (Econintersect) website addresses the issue of manufacturing public opinion; something that many in today’s crowded information markets are charged with and where a good portion of them are actually guilty of it. One of the compelling aspects of this article is it’s re-introduction to the terms of Immanuel Kant’s “conceptual reality” and Georg Wilhelm Hegel’s “perceptual reality”.
Good science is an example of the application of perceptual realism. Somebody comes up with a hypothesis, a possible theoretical explanation of how some reality works, then real world experiments are designed to test whether reality actually works like that. If reality consistently behaves contrary to how the hypothesis says it should behave, then the hypothesis is judged to be false. If test results are uniformly consistent with the hypothesis, then scientists can tentatively believe that they might have discovered some truth about how reality works. For perceptual realists, reality is the ultimate judge of the truth or falsehood of our ideas, no matter how attractive or comforting those ideas might be to us.
Conceptual realists, contrarily, take their ideas to be prior, and reality must be made to conform with their ideas. “Ideologues” judge beliefs and ideas by conceptual realism. They decide beforehand that they “know” how reality is, then they interpret everything in the real world so that it conforms to their “worldview”. You cannot change their ideas by showing them facts that contradict their beliefs, because they will simply interpret those facts in ways that support their preconceived beliefs. Just as perceptual realists reluctantly abandon their favored ideas to preserve the sanctity of evidence, conceptual realists readily abandon contradictory evidence to preserve the sanctity of their cherished beliefs. – Manufacturing Public Opinion
The subject matter that this article stimulates is itself a blog piece yet to be written by me but I bring it into play here following another interesting story on a recently released study that suggests there is a correlation between a country’s crime rate and the christian notions of heaven and hell. It is my suspicion that this study on religious views will be taken out of context to enhance the conceptual reality of those within religion who have pounded us over the head for centuries that we’re going to hell in a hand basket if we don’t turn from our “godless ways”.
Religion is often thought of as psychological defense against bad behavior, but researchers have recently found that the effect of religion on pro-social behaviors may actually be driven by the belief in hell and supernatural punishment rather than faith in heaven and spiritual benevolence.
In a large analysis of 26 years of data consisting of 143,197 people in 67 countries, psychologists found significantly lower crime rates in societies where many people believe in hell compared to those where more people believed in heaven.
“The key finding is that, controlling for each other, a nation’s rate of belief in hell predicts lower crime rates, but the nation’s rate of belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates, and these are strong effects,” lead author Azim Shariff, professor of psychology and director of the Culture and Morality Lab at the University of Oregon said in a university news release.
Shariff noted that because the findings were based off of correlational data, they do not prove causation. SOURCE
Though the authors of this study points out that a correlation between these religious views and a nation’s rate of crime do not prove causation, somehow this critical piece of information will be omitted in the sermons of the most fundamentalist church pulpits in this country. The perception that the heinous act of 9/11 was an act of God was invoked by Jerry Falwell to explain why a God, who has the power to protect what many feel is a God-blessed country, but who chose instead to allow evil of this level to occur on our soil. What else could a devout follower do who holds to the myth that godlessness is the cause of all that is wrong in society today? Surely we must be the recipients of God’s wrath because like the Jews of the Old Testament, we have strayed from our religious moorings, as people like Falwell have claimed.
But the study does not indicate that “godless” people and high crime rates are connected. In fact, it points out something quite the opposite. It is the nation that believes more in God’s mercy and thus his willingness to forgive wrong doings that sees higher crime rates. God-fearing people thus are the factor in the study that shows a correlation between good and evil.
“Ad Exstirpanda” issued by Pope Innocent IV in 1252 stated that heretics were to be “crushed like venomous snakes”.
It is religion as a whole that seems to be in play here. It is the belief by millions who have a conceptual reality of a divinity who watches our every move and knows our every thought that forces behavior that may or may not lead to higher rates of crime. The non-religious, like myself, are not absolved of committing crimes against the state but neither are their actions that hurt other people viewed with the notion that in the end, when they die, they will not be prevented from entering the gates of heaven if they have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior and seek absolution from the clergy before their death. To them, death is final. Rewards and punishment in another life carries little weight with their actions this side of death
The fear that the non-religious have no moral code is also a bogus conceptual notion put forth by the more ardent apostles of godlessness-is-evil-incarnate school of thought. Yet the thought of murdering another human being didn’t stop the anti-abortionist Scott Roeder from gunning down Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his longtime church as he handed out the church bulletin back in May, 2009. Neither does the insult to military families who have lost a loved one in the service of their country stop the “God Hates Fags” crowd from the Westboro Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas to picket the funerals of these soldiers. Roeder and the Westboro clan are like many christians who have conceptual perceptions that feel their actions are warranted against gays and those people who choose to end an unwanted pregnancy and the doctors who assist them.
The christian fundamentalist will cherry pick this study to foster the comfortable lie many of them live with that their religious faith is a superior form of belief. That belief allows them to condemn anyone who doesn’t believe as they do and thus see it as anything but wrong to persecute non-believers. It ignores those tenets in their own scriptures that call for tolerance and compassion for those outside their circle, without fully understanding that this isolationist view prevents them from seeing that some of the greatest human atrocities have been committed by religious zealots around the world.
In the final analysis however it seems that this study by the University of Oregon is flawed if you accept the notion that punishment is a deterrent to prevent evil. After all, my home state of Texas is at the heart of the Bible belt in this country yet the numerous executions that this state carries out tends to show that the murder rate, with the exception of Michigan, is higher than the non-death penalty states in this country. Not that executions are always an exact indicator of guilt.
This is a piece I wrote over two years ago before I began my blog here at Woodgate’s View that addresses the issue of being a new dad; a timely topic since tomorrow is Father’s Day. Looking back allows us to realize that being a Father entails quite a bit of sacrifice but makes it all worth while when your kids still want to celebrate you on this date set aside for Dad’s
“If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.” - Bill Cosby
Based on Bill Cosby’s evaluation of it you might presume that no matter what people tell you about it you’re apt to be surprised none-the-less about what fatherhood actually entails. It is the experience itself, not the knowledge of it, that can never be accurately conveyed for what awaits a new dad. Here is my attempt in a humorous fashion to set your expectations.
1. Sleep Deprivation. Forget about Circadian rhythms. Normal sleep cycles are a thing of the past. No amount of money will motivate the wife to take your turn at late night feedings and diaper changes.
2. Vomit Reflex. If you thought that only heavy bingeing would extricate your previous meal, you’re in for a rude awakening. Between my heaving and the diaper poop, my dog – who would eat his own feces – ran screaming from the house.
3. Loss of credibility. Feeling vulnerable when they discover YOU are Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
4. Teddy-bear syndrome. No, not the stuffed animal you put with your child as they crawled into bed but the sensation that overcame you while watching them sleep. Awwwhhhhhhhhh.
5. Unexpected elation upon putting the kids to bed. The fact that someone could be asleep and it would bring you such a feeling of rapture.
6. Sexual abstinence. Not only being unable to “fool around” (with your wife of course) right before and after the birth of your first child but seriously contemplating celibacy for yourself 6 months later. I mean, do you really want to go through this more than once?
7. Forget that Harley and a week-long “freedom” ride. Tucking extra money away now goes to a college education fund. Maybe they’ll qualify for Pell Grants?
8. Sand-castle meister. Going to the beach is no longer about “cruising chicks” unless you count driving the family to Miami.
9. Securing the bathroom. There are actually (little) people in the house now who don’t mind “visiting” you while reading a magazine on the throne. You did burn your copies of Playboy, right?
10. Knowing you have contributed to your future security. One day, if you survive, they will compensate you for all your sacrifices by contributing to your Social Security benefits.
Being a father takes a sense of humor. Have fun and watch with astonishment. You don’t get any re-takes.
How much confidence does a political Party exude when they only have a bumper sticker slogan for dealing with the complex issues we face as a nation?
The GOP hype that continues to over promise and under delivers
As we approach the November elections were are faced with selecting a candidate from one of two Parties that seem more bent on propping up wealthy interests than with promoting an environment that focuses on fundamental fairness for all people. Clearly the GOP is more cast in this mold than Democrats and this seems evident in their approach in their efforts to win come November. We seem to hear less touting of their own candidate and his policies than we do of their negative campaigning against President Obama. Their hollow message is summed up in three words and plastered on bumper stickers and websites across this nation – “Anyone But Obama”.
This is a scheme that offers nothing more than a return to the status quo we bled from under George Bush and Republican majorities in the legislative branches. Restoring political power to a Republican Party that has been hijacked by extremists could easily result in a return, perhaps in spades, to policies that created our worst economic nightmare since the Great Depression nearly 85 years ago.
The extreme view they hold that all government is bad and only free markets can save us from ourselves is one that created the environment that allowed Wall Street to plunder the savings and investments of millions of people and ultimately causing the collapse of the economy. The GOP and Mitt Romney have no plans to reduce health care costs in this country or any intention of keeping risky speculative financial interests from engaging in ventures that prompted bailouts back in 2008. What they do have a plan for is to squeeze the middle class and the poor to pay more and more of the taxes that focus more on subsidizing private capital interests, leaving more for their profits to pay themselves and their stockholders. This is a condition that has steadily increased the income gap in this country over the last 30 years.
Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth
Mitt Romney has campaigned on his experience as a businessman, claiming he knows how to create jobs. Yet this country needs someone with more than mere business experience. Businesses focus on their bottom line and the interests of a few - their shareholders. Many like Romney also hold to the view that trickle down economics, that allows the rich to get richer, will pass on some of this wealth in the form of more jobs, better wages or a combination of both. Yet those Republicans who have won office lately have killed many pubic sector jobs that contributed to the economy and built up a strong middle class while showing little gains in private sector jobs.
People want to blame the President or praise him when the job reports come in each month but job creation in this country doesn’t rest solely at the feet of the federal government. How effective have GOP governors and legislatures been in creating sufficient jobs? Where some states have shown job increases they are too often of the quality that pays lower wages and has fewer benefits than in times past. Republicans reward so-called job creators by supporting policies that have seen many employers ship their industries to foreign job markets where people work for wages that barely meet subsistence levels for them.
” …one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts,evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.” - It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J.Ornstein
The GOP has also been more willing to allow wealthy business interests to conceal their tax revenue in off-shore accounts and both Parties continue to create loopholes in our tax system that allow some of the wealthiest people in this country to pay less income tax than wages earners who make under $100,000 annually. Tax reform may be talked about a lot but where the rubber meets the road there are no signs of tread marks anywhere to be found. It’s one of those issues that keeps getting kicked down the road.
The Democrats have done their share of inaction too and the President has not kept all of his promises but these pale in comparison to a Republican Party that is bent on establishing a wealthy oligarchy in this country who continue to privatize the public commons and whittle away at the vital programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid until only for-profit interests have complete control of all the natural and monetary wealth in this country. Instead of demurely responding to the Republicans, the Democrats need to relocate their FDR, Truman and JFK roots and proudly support those programs that built up the greatest middle class in modern times.
Why don’t Democrats just say it? They really believe in active government and think it does good and valuable things. One of those valuable things is that government creates jobs — yes, really — and also the conditions under which more jobs can be created.
Decades of anti-government rhetoric have made liberals wary of claiming their legacy as supporters of the state’s positive role. That’s why they have had so much trouble making the case for President Obama’s stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009. It ought to be perfectly obvious: When the private sector is no longer investing, the economy will spin downward unless the government takes on the task of investing. And such investments — in transportation and clean energy, refurbished schools and the education of the next generation — can prime future growth. E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
We have serious issues with people going without basic medical care, children who experience starvation, elderly having to choose between needed medications and paying the rent or utility bill each month and an environment that threatens us all as toxic pollutants continue to contaminate the air we breathe and the water we drink. In the meantime the GOP has no problem finding money to subsidize oil companies who have had record profits, protect health insurers who fail to cover anyone with a pre-existing condition or who use less of your premium dollar to pay for services, and defend financial institutions “too big to fail” who continue to devise products that risk throwing the economy back into a tailspin and losing what gains we have made to recapture jobs and the housing market.
The republican form of government that was handed us by the framers of the constitution two and half centuries ago is ours to keep as Franklin suggested, if we are willing to fight for it. lf we don’t, the special moneyed interests will. These hounds are already at your doors dressed up as patriots screeching about “taking our country back”. But are they talking about a time when we emerged from a Great Depression and a World War where there was a large and vibrant middle class? Or do they refer to the one they nostalgically pine for in pre-Civil War days when only white male property owners were allowed to vote and control the mechanisms by which we are governed?
“Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid [them] at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.”- Acts4: 34 &35
When early christian communities formed and they shared equally all their worldly possessions, who would have thought that this gesture would be viewed by some as a source of immorality. The notion that we all share much in common has a tradition that goes back beyond the time of the gospels but which has been slowly eroding since corporate personhood came into being back in the 19 century, making a handful of people very wealthy. Laws protecting their monopoly on wealth were successfully challenged at the end of that century and into the early decades of the 20th century.
But a hundred years later we are once again battling those elite few who would re-establish those conditions where people who work hard and play by the rules often find themselves on the opposite side of forces that control law making bodies and the courts. As a result, the disparity between the wealthiest and everyone else has grown significantly and more people are now finding themselves at or below poverty levels as the middle class slowly shrinks.
In his recent column, conservative economist Walter E. Williams attempts to make a case linking immorality to our current economic crisis. Though I would agree that the behavior of some that created our current crisis was deplorable and immoral, I would not be fingering the same people who Mr. Williams seems to be.
Like a broken record, Mr. Williams repeats a theme that he has hit on many times in his columns. He insists that the social contract the people have made with their government to provide for the weakest amongst us is akin to theft. Yet poll after poll seems to reflect the opposite and have most Americans in support of a payroll deduction that helps fend off poverty for those elderly, small children and handicapped individuals in our society that tend to fall through the cracks of a free market economy.
Greed Trumps Need
Without any regard for the recent actions of those who inhabit Wall Street and who carelessly risked the fortunes of many Americans, sending the global economy into a downward spiral, Walter Williams wants to prop up the red-herring about entitlement programs and their existence for being the source of immorality in our country. To Mr. Williams it’s the government who has robbed us of our jobs, homes and savings. The financial captains of Wall Street are mere victims of some invisible hand of the market and need to be protected against the regulations of government put in place to prevent abuses with our money. Yet another misperception by Williams and the libertarian theology he subscribes to.
Williams seems to be oblivious of the human element of greed that permeates much of the financial private sector and like many who support his ideological view, is convinced a strong ethical character pervades corporate America. To concede that greed by a few rather than need by many is the main factor in this country’s moral demise would be counter productive to the laissez-faire view that people like Williams hold. Greed in laissez-faire terms is just another name for fulfilling self-interests that motivate people to seek financial gain for themselves believing that society as a whole will also benefit. To people like Williams, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, the Gordon Gecko character in the movie “Wall Street” would be seen as a heroic figure.
But as Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel points out in his book on justice “Greed is a vice, a bad way of being, especially when it makes people oblivious to the suffering of others. More than a personal vice, it is at odds with civic virtue.(emphasis mine) In times of trouble, a good society pulls together. Rather than press for maximum advantage, people look out for one another. A society in which people exploit their neighbors for financial gain in times of crisis is not a good society. Excessive greed is therefore a vice that a good society should discourage if it can.” (Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? p.7)
Yet Williams never seems to point out the lapses in moral behavior by the bankers and wealthy investors within society and instead goes after a system that benefits those who are often the victims of greed. In doing so he makes a good case I think that calls his own morality into question.
One in five in poverty: 14.7million – or 20 per cent – of children in the U.S. live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level
In his book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do” Sandel points out a difference between two opposing views. One from the libertarian, laissez-faire side; the other from an egalitarian frame of reference:
“ … some of the most hard-fought political arguments of our time take place between two rival camps within it — the laissez-faire camp and the fairness camp. Leading the laissez-faire camp are free-market libertarians who believe that justice consists in respecting and upholding the voluntary choices made by consenting adults. The fairness camp contains theorists of a more egalitarian bent. They argue that unfettered markets are neither just nor free. In their view, justice requires policies that remedy social and economic disadvantages and give everyone a fair chance at success.” (p. 20)
Williams plants himself firmly in the laissez-faire, libertarian camp, whose approach to social issues rests primarily on the premise that “markets promote the welfare of society as a whole by providing incentives for people to work hard supplying the goods [and services] that other people want”. (Justice p.6) How exactly small children, the elderly and the mentally and physically handicapped are fairly represented in this scheme is ignored by people who think like Williams, unless of course we want to exploit them despite their limitations.
In contemplating whether are not Americans today are virtuous and moral he focuses almost exclusively on those who support taxing all wages to support Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and how it accounts for nearly half of federal spending. Revealing as he does that monetary considerations outweigh social responsibility, Williams seems willing to allow suffering and depravations that accompany poverty. To me, this raises a moral qualm.
This notion is hit upon in Sandel’s book:
Taken to it’s extreme a libertarian’s “idea of self-ownership, consistently applied, has implications that only an ardent libertarian could love – an unfettered market without a safety net for those who fall behind; a minimal state that rules out most measures to ease inequality and promote the common good; and a celebration of consent so complete that it permits self-inflicted affronts to human dignity such as consensual cannibalism or selling oneself into slavery.” (Justice p103)
Charitable Giving
Williams would likely inject that charitable organizations would fill the gap where free market economies fall short. Though I agree that charitable organizations fulfill a great need, I am not as naive as he appears to be to think that such personal choices suffice to meet critical economic deprivations in this country. If this practice alone were sufficient to temporarily provide for those who fall between the cracks and find themselves destitute through conditions beyond their control, then the need for federal programs aimed at this population would likely never have arisen.
The fact is though that individual charities fall way short of meeting the needs of a growing population who lack the resources within a free market society to provide basic essentials for themselves and their families. When economic hard times occur as they often do, charities are pressed harder to provide not only for those who lack the means to actively participate in our economy due to age and physical limitations but also to fill the void at times when more people who can find themselves unable to when jobs dry up.
To add insult to injury, recent testimony from Frank J. Sammartino, the assistant director for tax analysis from the Congressional Budget Office shows that though the wealthiest give slightly more of their income to charitable organizations, only 4% of that goes to organizations devoted to helping meet basic needs while those who make below $200,000 give on average about 11%. The wealthy tend to give significantly more to health and education organizations. Institutions that they and their progeny can benefit from over other charitable organizations. Would billionaire David Koch have given over $500 million to cancer research had he not been diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 2004?
The Side Benefits of Public Programs
In the documentary “The Corporation”, Noam Chomsky points out the side benefits of public institutions, even when they run at a loss.
Public institutions … may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So for example if a public steel industry, runs at a loss, it’s providing cheap steel to other industries. Maybe that’s a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter-cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps to get us out of a recession.
I bring this up here because the argument that spending in the public sector is always detrimental to our economy is not an absolute. In providing health care services to those in our society that have fallen through the cracks, even if it’s done at a loss, there are counter-cyclic advantages to this. Without federal aid in the form of Medicare and Medicaid most low and middle-income families would be hard pressed to provide the time and financial means to support a handicapped child or a spouse with a long-term illness or an aging parent who needs assisted living care. Without unemployment benefits able workers would find themselves deeper in debt before regaining employment. Their productivity at work could suffer from their need to deal with these issue monetarily and emotionally and those lost hours will have a negative effect on our economy.
And then there of course are those, especially the elderly, who have no family to speak of to assist them in their time of need. What are to be done with such people? A humane society will have to pay for their care but will they do so at a level that respects these disadvantaged souls or simply warehouse them and treat them as unclaimed freight?
Virtue Has No Self-Interests
Our system of entitlements in this country is a mark of a civilized society that seeks to remedy the shortfalls of our free market economic system. There are areas we can address that will reduce costs for necessary programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid but they don’t have to reduce essential care for those who can’t afford what “the greatest health care system in the world” makes available for financially successful people. We can eliminate fraud within the private sector that costs billions each year, initiate some means testing, eliminate unnecessary medical tests that have been proven ineffective and notch up the rate people are taxed on to pay for these benefits.
The germ that infects the thought of people who feel they are unduly burdened to provide for the powerless in this country have a convenient view of morality that ignores the consequences of their actions. Once this germ infiltrates so deeply into the social mindset of a people, virtue suffers a blow. Securing individual wealth to the detriment of those who find themselves outside the means to provide for themselves may be “naturally” appealing to many but to assert it has greater moral value is a fundamentally flawed philosophy.
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.” - Immanuel Kant
Technology is always advancing and making life easier, safer and healthier but there are often unexpected consequences that come with progress.
THEN …
Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone
… And Now
Today’s latest version of the hand held phone
Fellow blogger Ron Byrnes over at his Pressing Pause website had an interesting post about futuristic products. The products were on a list in a NY Times magazine article entitled “32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow”. After reviewing the list I thought I’d share some thoughts on some of these and then make a point about one of the consequences of building a better mousetrap.
From the technology that gave us video games and the resulting sedentary lifestyles that ruin our health comes a product intended to get us back into the game, so to speak.
There’s the underwear “embedded with electromyographic sensors that tell you how hard you’re working your quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus muscles.” This information can be sent to your computer or Ipad with the intent to motivate you to get off of your dead ass when you see how flabby and weak you’re becoming. Though this has great benefits for athletic and healthy-minded people, it is less likely to be used by those who really need some motivation to lay the video games down and get outside, absorb some natural Vitamin D and improve muscle tone from reality based games.
However, regardless if you exercise or not, a recent study shows that because most people’s muscles are inactive about 70 per cent of the day, health issues can still result. Moving about is key here. If you routinely engage in daily fitness training but have a job that keeps you behind a desk all day you are not much more likely to improve muscle tone than a gamer who moves a round quite bit between games.
Another inspired idea on this list is the adaptive cruise control (A.C.C.) — which automatically maintains a set distance behind a car and the vehicle in front of it. The idea is to prevent people from running up on someone’s tail during peak traffic times, only to hit their breaks when they get to close which has a domino effect on those behind them. Voila! Unnecessary traffic congestion. Cars installed with the ACC device keeps drivers evenly paced and avoiding tapping the brakes allowing motion to remain constant and smooth. Of course this doesn’t prevent someone from yelling obscenities at the slower driver, so the next futuristic device could come into play here - the Speech Jammer.
When the Speech Jammer is aimed at someone screeching expletives or other nonsense “it records that person’s voice and plays it back to him with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This seems to gum up the brain’s cognitive processes — a phenomenon known as delayed auditory feedback — and can painlessly render the person unable to speak”.
This device however may have the potential for even greater abuse. Something tells me an insensitive husband might use this device inappropriately when his wife is laying her heart out about their relationship. A likely news headline could read, “Husband killed by spouse with speech altering device”.
The last innovation I wanted to bring attention to on this list is the idea of play ground equipment that pushes the envelope for kids. If they are the type that you’ve finally gotten off of the video games and outdoors, this may prove to be too much too soon. On the other hand, it could resemble some of the fantasy landscapes that challenge them on their video screens. Leif Kennair and Ellen Sandseter’s ideas suggest that “instead of short climbing walls, there should be towering monkey bars. Instead of plastic crawl tubes, there should be tall, steep slides. And balance beams. And rope swings. The rationale is that the more we shield children from potential scrapes and sprained ankles, the more unprepared they’ll be for real risk as adults, and the less aware they’ll be of their surroundings.” This may be especially beneficial to kids who are raised in violent, dysfunctional homes.
However, I’m not sure such suggestions will find acceptance amongst over-protective parents who currently armor plate their kids when riding bikes or skate boarding. Then there are the insurance companies and city attorneys who will want to protect themselves and block such efforts.
Where does all that technology go when it becomes unwanted and outdated?
Technological advances are harbingers of man’s evolution. Each new creation pushes us toward a future where some idealistic life will no longer experience suffering and pain or want. From one perspective it also shows how our lives seem to fall short of some sense of perfection The notion that the grass is always greener over the hill is dangled before us. Our humanity tends to become less evinced by physical interaction, customs and spirituality and more played out in what we possess in material terms.
Any invention that improves our life however isn’t always for the better. The ideas above are attempts to adapt to lifestyles that have made our lives more challenging from previous technology like video games, TV’s and automobiles and the manufacturing processes that produce such goods. It’s a junk-in/junk-out cycle. For everything we create to make life better or more fun we have to offset the negative side effects with other new technology. Ultimately though, most of this consumption to make the new technology wounds up depleting the limited available resources we have on this finite planet, tossing them when we tire of them into already overloaded landfills.
Innovation however need not always deal with consumption and waste. A partial solution to this may be along the line of thinking of Harvard bioengineer David Edwards. David has devised a way to convert foods into shell-like containers and films that he calls Wikicells. Wikicells are edible packaging for food items like the skin of an apple that can be washed and eaten along with the contents or disposed of like an orange peeling that’s biodegradable.
Similarly a biodegradable casket or burial shroud will break down quickly and harmlessly become part of the earth, an economical and practical solution as land for cemeteries are becoming less available. In one year, “22,500 cemeteries across the US buried 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, 104,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods and 1.6 million tons of concrete. In purely ecological terms, how we bury our dead is unsustainable.”
Clearly we need to look beyond our urge and need to find new and better ways to improve the quality of life on our planet for all people by insuring that what we do create doesn’t rapidly deplete resources and inundate habitable areas with vast quantities of waste that will prevent future generations from living the life most of us have enjoyed.
If anyone was wondering why I haven’t been publishing on a regular basis, there are a combination of things that factor into my lack of postings.
I’ve been undergoing some writer’s block and a lack of interest in my subject matter I’m known to write about – politics, health care and energy. It’s kind of put me in a funk and without the ability to find a hook to address these topics in a fresh manner I find myself uninspired to put pen to paper, euphemistically speaking.
However, I have begun to stir an interests in writing a piece about a local food co-op. I’m not only interested in raising awareness about this topic and how it provides great benefits to local communities but I am working to put it together in a fashion that can be presented to my local newspaper as an item for print. Denton, Texas, where I live has a fledging food co-op that I have been a member of for better than a year and it continues to struggle and gain popular acceptance. I have agreed to work with the people who have made this co-op a reality here to see if I can stir some local interests. Not only with potential members but with a greater base of local food source suppliers.
This will require a bit more time and research on my part so bare with me if you see less posting on Woodgates’s View over the next week or so. In the mean time, here’s my good friend Donna Cavanagh stepping in for me during this lull with a short piece on a humorous take about a news item you will likely not see on many venues. If you haven’t yet, I encourage all my readers to visit Donna’s creation at HumorOutcast for a daily laugh and for some clever humor writing by various contributor’s, including yours truly on an irregular basis.
An armed robber in Brazil, burst into a luxury sex toy shop, tied up the sales associate and stole just one item: an 18-carat, gold-plated vibrator. This might turn out to be the ultimate exercise in frustration for the robber as he forgot to steal the charger that keeps the vibrator going. I fear there are so many lessons to be learned here, so let’s examine a few:
1) Golden Idols come and go, but they seldom stand strong for long.
2) Sometimes it is the shiniest of objects that are the most fragile.
3) Batteries Not Included: Maybe the most important words ever written.
4) Simplifying one’s life NEVER includes an 18-carat, $4,000 vibrator unless your name is Liberace.
5) It might look like a duck and quack like a duck, but if it doesn’t have a plug, it’s a dead duck.
And finally,
5) It doesn’t matter how pretty it is; if you can’t turn it on, it’s probably worthless.
Donna Cavanagh, the Founder of HumorOutcasts.com, is a veteran journalist whose detour into humor writing has landed her on the pages and blogs of MORE Magazine, theSOP.org, and FIRST Magazine. A former humor columnist for Journal Register Papers, she was a USA Books Contest finalist for her first book “Life On The Off Ramp.” Host of BlogTalk’s HumorOutcasts Radio, Donna’s goal is to make HumorOutcasts the first place people go for a laugh.
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