Category: Political

Power to the ducks

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 10, 2004

Sunday after listening to Tim Russert interview President Bush, I was filled with a renewed sense of urgency to get involved with the Presidential race this year, but felt frustrated as to how I could make a difference.

I do write about politics in this weblog, and I thought that perhaps I should focus more time and effort on the race, but I haven’t felt inclined to do this kind of writing. I’d rather just write about what catches my fancy, but then I feel guilt – I’m not doing enough for the cause. However, it seems to me that no matter what I write, or how often I write it, it really makes no difference. Perhaps if I were one of the more well known pundits like Glenn Reynolds or Atrios or Kos Calpundit it would make more of a difference.

Thinking that I went to Calpundit’s site on Sunday and I read his post on the LA Times article on Howard Dean, and the Internet Echo Chamber effect. Kevin pointed out quotes from the illumanti who were mentioned in the article, including Clay Shirky and Dave Winer and Doc Searls and others and I noticed that in his writing, and in the article, there wasn’t a mention of a woman.

Well, huh, I said to myself. I thought it strange that there wasn’t one woman mentioned in the article, considering that there has been several women actively involved in the Dean campaign in one way or other – women like Betsy Devine, Halley Suitt, and Sheila Lennon.

It’s just this sort of thing that used to make me really angry in the past, but lately, I just don’t seem to have that same passion. Or at least, not it when it comes to what I read in weblogs. Still, I was feeling a bit peeved, and since the sun was out, decided to go for a walk and think about the situation before responding.

Most of my regular walks still had too much ice on the paths to safely traverse, especially when you’re still walking with a limp and are concerned about falling again. I decided to head to Tower Grove; I hadn’t been there for ages, and it usually attracts a lot of visitors – perhaps its walks were clearer.

When I got to Tower, the sidewalks were still too icy, but the area around the faux ruin and its lake was fairly clear so I walked around it, carrying my digital camera to get some shots because the late afternoon light was very pretty reflected on the snow and ice. The ‘lake’ is really nothing more than a clever pond, thick ice formed a bridge across the water every where except by where the water was disturbed by the fountain.

In this break in the ice, four ducks were swimming about, two mallards, and two ducks I couldn’t figure out their breed but one was dark gray and white, the other primarily white. I watched them for a bit, but then turned away to get a picture of the shadow of a tree across the ice, reaching between empty seats, reflecting the loneliness of the surroundings with just me, the four ducks, and an occasional squirrel.

As I was moving about, carefully, hands going red from the cold and nose running in what I’m sure was a most edifying manner, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye–the ducks had left the water and were climbing across the ice towards the bank, very near to where I was standing.

Well, three of the ducks were moving across the ice. The fourth one was still at the water’s edge, looking at me and looking at his friends and then back at me, sometimes making a hesitant move forward as if he would make a dash across the ice, but then holding back at the end.

I tried to stay very still to not alarm him further, and the other three ducks, now safely in the patch of the only bare ground in the entire area, were turned towards him, quaking like mad as if to say, “It’s alright George. Come on! She won’t hurt you!”

Finally, in a burst of inspiration, or hunger, George managed to find a solution to his quandry by flying over the ice rather than walking across it, thereby joining up with his friends without having to expose himself too much to the danger, which was me.

Unfortunately, landing on ice is not one of the easier things to do – at least it doesn’t look easy – and when George landed, he slid across the ice and ended up butt first in the bank rather abruptly and in, what I could tell, a very embarrased frame of mind. He shook his feathers out in a huff, stomped, not walked, up to his friends, and then turned around and glared at me.

I’d never been glared at by a duck before. I now have a whole new respect for this species of bird.

Leaving the group to their feast in peace, I carefully backed away and started walking across the ice crusted, snow filled lawn, enjoying the sound and the feel of breaking through the ice with my boots. I love to walk on snow, especially snow that’s not too deep. There’s something about putting one’s footprint where none has been before that leaves one feeling special somehow, even if the print will be gone in the next snowfall or melt.

I walked around until too cold to feel my fingers and headed home. I thought about writing my experience, but I wasn’t in a mood. Haven’t been in the mood to write about politics lately, either. It just doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’d rather just write about George and his friends. Or a new poem I found I decided to incorporate into my book:

HER even lines her steady temper show;
Neat as her dress, and polish’d as her brow;
Strong as her judgment, easy as her air;
Correct though free, and regular though fair:
And the same graces o’er her pen preside
That form her manners and her footsteps guide.

“On a Lady’s Writing”, a poem by Anna L’titia Barbauld first published in 1773

It was last night’s reading of Dave Roger’s most recent post discussing Joe Trippi’s appearance yesterday at the Digital Democracy Teach-In that insired me to write today. Trippi had said, There’s a reason Bush is vulnerable today. It’s because of the blogs.. As Dave writes:

One gathers Mr. Trippi and others like him would have us believe that somehow weblogs have made President Bush vulnerable. Apparently it’s not because of the loss of 2.2 million jobs during his term. It’s not because of Dr. David Kay’s revelations regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It’s not because of a half-trillion dollar deficit.

It’s because of the blogs. I couldn’t believe that Trippi would say something such as this, until I heard it myself in a recording . In it he talks in this vein for quite a long time, of how Dean’s campaign has revitalized the Democratic party and if Dean had never run for office, this wouldn’t have happened. He also talked about this new form of democracy and how the Internet is going to give democracy back to the people.

For some reason, this reminded me of my first protest demonstration, back when I was 15. Unlike most of my later ones, this one had to do with transporting spent nuclear fuel across Washington State, and a large group of us obtained permission to take our protest down the Express Lanes of I-5 in Seattle.

It was an astonishing experience – thousands and thousands of people, as far as the eye could see, all pulled together in common protest against a move decided by both the federal and state goverments in definance of the people’s wishes. I attended with the niece of one of the activists and he tried to get people to cross from the Express Lanes into the actual freeway to stop all traffic, but this crowd was a peaceful one. Besides – they made a much stronger statement by not crossing the freeway.

A strong enough statement to force a change.

That was a long time ago and the first of many political activities to come. I even worked on some campaigns, such as Senator Henry Jackson’s bid for the White House. Henry Jackson was an environmentalist before the term was popular, and a man I really liked. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination, but he still made a difference.

I didn’t always agree with him, but he was a good man. When or lose, he continued to work for the people.

Back to the here and now and Dean and this ‘new democracy’.

Dave Winer writes:

He did raise a lot of money on the Internet, and that’s interesting, for sure, and he taught us so much, and if he had gone all the way, I believe he would have survived the onslaught of CNN, ABC and NBC, who were his real competitors, not the other candidates for the Democratic nomination. Read that sentence again, please. That’s the core premise of this piece, and the point that all the analysis so far has missed. His challenge wasn’t to get the most votes, because that would inevitably follow, once he won the battle with the television networks, a battle which he failed to even show up for.

And from this we can only assume that Dave is saying that if Dean had stayed on the Internet instead of wasting money on commercials, he would have won.

David Weinberger writes:

I came away reinvigorated, with a sense that we’re going to be build an infrastructure that may de-boob the White House in 2004 and over the longer term could help revive a diverse, strong, democracy.

Jeff Jarvis wrote, in response to Trippi:

“This campaign was the first campaign really owned by the American people. Now we have to build a movement owned by them.”

Movements are, by definition, owned by the people.
These tools are not owned by one movement or one campaign. They will be used by anyone; that is their power.
I love what Dean created. But it’s not proprietary to any ideology. And I do have problems with the chronic anger, defensiveness, and hubris.

And I have a lot of problems with statements such as This campaign was the first campaign really owned by the American people.

I could go on and on, but the talk is the same and about the only person who really caught my attention was Joi Ito (who provided photos of the Teach-In) as quoted by Jeff Jarvis:

Joi notes that there have been a lot of white American males talking about blogs.

(later)

Joi says that when Americans want to spread democracy they mean putting it under American control. Unfair. In a more balanced audience, that would have gotten a loud moan.

A lot of white American men talking about blogs, and American democracy and American control. I wouldn’t have moaned – I would have applauded, and he would have probably been the only person I would have applauded. Would have given him a bit wet one, too.

All this fuss about the ‘new Democracy’ has got me thinking how Democracy has changed over the years. All the efforts of women to get the vote and blacks to get equality and protests for war and against war and all the changes that have resulted from a determined people coming together. I was reminded of the workers striking for decent conditions at the turn of the century, and the Chinese students run down by tanks, and the millions of people who protested wars and oppression even to today, and wonder what these people, many of whom died for their efforts, or had tubes shoved down their throats to force feed them, or who had lost loved ones, or been tortured, or now face a new form of McCarthyism – I wonder what they would think about claims being made that only now, and only in the Net and among weblogs is true democracy happening.

Rather than a Ghandi or a Martin Luther King, this year the hero of the revolution is the fired campaign manager of a failed campaign, and it makes me angry, the first time in a long, long while, I’ve been truly angry.

But out of that anger comes laughter, and why not? The two are next to each other on the emotional circle, and come from the same center in all of us.

I laugh because I think on what Joi said and how much of this new ‘revolution’ has been centered around white American males; and how we women, long used to it, can now sit back and enjoy watching how the men deal with being ignored.

I laugh because none of this really matters. Change comes from people, many people, walking the streets, and sometimes the streets are made of bytes, but most of the time the streets are made of concrete. The means doesn’t matter – it’s the passion that counts.

Democracy was not invented online, and there is no ‘new’ revolution – there’s only new methods of fighting the same one that’s been fought by countless people in the past. And if I want to write about George and his paranoia, I can – whether it be George the duck, or George the President. And it makes no difference in the great scheme of things that I’m doing the writing, and not Kevin Drum, or Glenn Reynolds, or Clay Shirky, or Dave Winer.

We’re all just ducks swimming in the same pond. Some may quake louder then others, have brighter feathers, and fly across the ice instead of walk, but ultimately we all just fly, float, fuck, eat, and shit – and do what we can to make sure our pond lasts a little while longer, our babies don’t get pecked by assholes, and try not to end up as someone’s dinner.

Quack. Quack.

People Political

Share the Wealth

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 7, 2004

Outsourcing, legal visitor worker programs, and immigration – these are issues that will hopefully become part of the political campaigns this year in the US. They should be issues talked about in every country; this world is getting smaller, and we have to start thinking globally. Time to share the wealth. Unfortunately, when it comes to sharing, it tends to be those who can least afford it who are required to give the most.

There was a tragedy in the news today–19 Chinese die collecting cockles (a shellfish) in a dangerous bay in England. Gangs had bussed the workers in, most if not all assumed to be illegal aliens, and then left them to die when the tides cut them off from shore.

Imagine paying someone all that you own to flee to a new country for a better life for your children, a country where you can’t speak the language, and don’t know the customs. Then, once you arrive, you’re coerced into backbreaking work in order to get enough money to feed your family. Rather than the ultimate prize you hope to get – citizenship for your children if not for yourself, safety, enough to eat–you get death.

And now we see that it happens in England, too.

In come the heroes on horses. The conservatives will say, “Let’s legalize the worker’s status so that they can come into the country and do jobs our people won’t do. They’ll have a better life, and our companies will prosper.”

What happens though is that a new underclass of worker is created and formalized; where before people could hope to break out of the status of being an illegal alien into being a citizen, now they’re boxed into that status forever. Yes, it may be safer, and they may live longer – but they’ll be consigned to a dreamless existence as a member of the worker Class. Paid enough to survive but not enough to hope. Living longer, but not living better. That’s what conservatives promise.

But the liberals are not much better when it comes to steedmanship as stewardship.

Protectionism doesn’t work, they say. Let jobs go overseas to help people in other countries. Open our borders. Help create new jobs in other countries. Spread the wealth.

So we create factories in Mexico through NAFTA, to provide jobs for the many people who need it and to funnel needed money into the Mexican infrastructure. And jobs are created, and there is some prosperity. But rather than the equalizing effect that was hoped for by NAFTA, we now have two countries whose people have been tossed from jobs: those in the United States because of jobs going to Mexico; and now those in Mexico, when these same jobs have moved to other countries such as China, because the sudden affluence and competition for workers in certain areas in Mexico have suddenly made them too expensive for corporations seeking a quick buck. What’s left is more colonias, empty factories, and broken promises.

Of course, Mexico’s loss is other countries gain. Countries such as China, Nicaragua, and Indonesia.

But no one has embraced outsourcing more than India. The people of India have prospered with outsourcing, especially in the IT field, and this has pissed some people off. They talk about how sloppy the work is from offshore efforts, but contrary to these disparaging viewpoints, the people from India I have worked with have been intelligent, well trained, capable, dedicated, and with terrific senses of humor. There is nothing wrong with the quality of the work, and, as a confirmed liberal, no, as a member of humanity, I don’t want to deny them work. I don’t want to see their country harmed.

Besides, you have to admire the sheer energy of the Indian people in their determination to not only embrace their new role in world economics, but to expand on it. Indian universities now include computer training for all degrees, and much of the college system has been regeared to this new economy, with a new emphasis on training engineers. Out of the two million graduates this year from colleges, over 200,000 will have engineering degrees.

The “Teching” of India is so pervasive, that it has even impacted on the culture of gender in the country. For instance, rather than more traditional beauty contests, the Miss High Tech Bangalore contest is opened to women in the IT industry, to show that women in IT can be feminine as well as competent. Instead of questions about world peace, the women have to demonstrate IT knowledge. And poise, and beauty, and look good in a bathing suit, that sort of thing. Well, it is a beauty contest.

There’s even a term for the new woman CEO: sheEOs.

And this new embracing role in India won’t stop with just call centers or IT jobs. Business process analysis has moved, as is accounting, some medical analysis, and upcoming biotech work. As Chris Anderson at Wired writes:

Today’s Indian call centers, programming shops, and help desks are just the beginning. Tomorrow it will be financial analysis, research, design, graphics – potentially any job that does not require physical proximity. The American cubicle farm is the new textile mill, just another sunset industry.

Chris thinks this is a good thing, freeing American workers to take on new roles of innovation and enterprise, leaving the debugging work, and spreadsheet calculations to others. Leaving aside the implications to the people in India, in actuality, what is happening in the US is that there is an erosion of the middle class, with a few escaping into the rarified atmosphere of those who make it, the rest slipping down into an ever increasing number of lower paid Wal-mart workers, literally creating and then eating themselves by only making enough money working at Wal-Mart to shop at stores like Wal-Mart.

The conservative heros say, but moving jobs to cheaper places is good because more profits mean more jobs and more taxes in this country, or other Western countries. The liberal heros say, well we’ve had our time in the sun, now its time to share the wealth. And look at how much it improves the situation for women in countries like India? Both groups jump up on their steeds and race away from what they see in an inevitable fact of life, each knowing that they have done good.

Both groups couldn’t be more wrong, because both see the workers having to be the ones to adapt, to pay the price. To share the wealth.

Just as with Mexico, as prosperity increases the costs of outsourcing to India over time, the same jobs that fueled that economy will begin to, have begun to, drift to other countries promising yet more cheap labor. What happens when a country the size of India stakes its future on the outsourcing needs of other countries?

In another article in Wired, this was addressed specifically:

“Someday,” Janish says, “another nation will take business from India.” Perhaps China or the Philippines, which are already competing for IT work.

“When that happens, how will you respond?” I ask.

“I think you must have read Who Moved My Cheese?” Aparna says to my surprise.

Janish gets up from the couch, and to my still greater surprise, pulls a copy from the bookshelf.

Who Moved My Cheese? is, of course, one of the best-selling books of the past decade. It’s a simpleminded – and, yes, cheesy – parable about the inevitability of change. The book (booklet is more like it – the $20 hardcover is roughly the length of this article) is a fable about two mouselike critters, Hem and Haw, who live in a maze and love cheese. After years of finding their cheese in the same place every day, they arrive one morning to discover that it’s gone. Hem, feeling victimized, wants to wait until somebody puts the cheese back. Haw, anxious but realistic, wants to find new cheese. The moral: Be like Haw.

Janish gave Aparna a copy of the book for their wedding anniversary last year. (He inscribed it, “I am one cheese which won’t move.”) She read it on a Hexaware commuter bus one morning and calls it “superb.”

The lesson for Aparna was clear: The good times for Indian IT workers won’t last forever. And when those darker days arrive, “We should just keep moving with the times and not be cocooned in our little world. That’s the way life is.” Or as Haw more chirpily explains to his partner, “Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same. This looks like one of those times. That’s life! Life moves on. And so should we.”

If you’re among the pissed off, such advice – especially coming from talking rodents chasing cheddar around a maze – may sound annoying. But it’s not entirely wrong. So if Hem and Haw make you hurl, return to where Aparna began when I met her that first day – the sacred text of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, whose 700 verses many Indians know by heart.

The Gita opens with two armies facing each other across a field of battle. One of the warriors is Prince Arjuna, who discovers that his charioteer is the Hindu god Krishna. The book relates the dialog between the god and the warrior – about how to survive and, more important, how to live. One stanza seems apt in this moment of fear and discontent. “Your very nature will drive you to fight,” Lord Krishna tells Arjuna. “The only choice is what to fight against.”

How to survive. That is the question of the new century, isn’t it?

According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSC) in India, this won’t be a problem because by the year 2010, there will be a population shortage in the United States, leading to a shortfall of 5.6 million workers:

The National Association of Software and Services Companies, India’s premier IT lobby, said in a recent report about 1.3 million US jobs will move offshore between 2003 and 2010.

The US, it added, would face a domestic labor shortfall of approximately 5. 6 million workers by 2010 due to slow population growth and an aging population.

“If the labor shortfall is not met, the US economy will lose out on growth opportunities resulting in an estimated cumulative loss of two trillion dollars by 2010. Global sourcing in the form of immigration, temporary workers and offshoring can overcome this shortfall,” it said.

Not only the US – according to the reports the NASSC is putting out, every Western country, from the Italy to New Zealand, will also be suffering labor shortages. The impact will be felt elsewhere, too. China will be undergoing its own labor shortage by the year 2020

This leads me to a recent article that came out in Business Source today. In it, the author, Paran Balakrishnan, talks about how India looks towards the future and its role in the world:

It was a Nasscom executive who put the New World Order in perspective. Yes, he said, in the coming decades India will face competition in fields like software services and business process outsourcing (BPO).

But by 2020 we will be the only country in the world left with enough manpower to meet global needs. ‘We have a sustained competitive advantage to 2020 because of sheer demographics. In terms of working age population India will be the only people-surplus country,’ he said.
…
But consider the fact that by 2020 the even the world-beating Chinese will be facing the unimaginable – a tiny population shortage. That will impair their efforts to compete in fields like high technology where India has a competitive advantage currently.

Other reports support this assessment based on the average retirement age of the existing working force, but with a caveat: human behavior tends to have a habit of screwing of labor projections.

For instance, some tasks will be automated to increase the productivity of workers, as has happened with our own timber industry in this country. Additionally, many of those who have left the job force now due to unemployment can return to it, and many older Americans are choosing to work past the retirement age. Shortages in specific types of work, such as the current ones in education and the health care industry will be met by retraining existing work force members – as is happening now. In other words, people adapt to meet the demand.

And hopefully what happens is that traditionally low paying jobs like teaching and nursing get a much needed and deserved boost in pay scales. That is, unless there’s a source of disposable workers that can be tapped in order to deliberately keep wages down.

This leads to the another option, which Balakrishnan writes about:

For as long as anyone can remember the Government’s slogan has been: Hum do, hamare do (ed: One couple, two kids). Is it time to take a re-look at that slogan? Should we still be campaigning to persuade poorer people in this country to have fewer children?

Or, is it time to look at the entire issue once again in the light of what’s happening in other parts of the world. Once upon a time these might have seemed like futuristic problems for the next century. But now in 2004 we are well and truly into the next century and its problems are racing to catch up with us.

Should we still be campaigning to persuade poorer people in this country to have fewer children?

These are words to chill your soul if you were to hear them spoken in a country like the US, much less the most heavily populated country on Earth. My dear Reader, meet the Disposable Worker Class.

Round and round and round we go and where it stops, nobody knows. This game of musical workers doesn’t end with the workers; it ends with the people playing the music, and pulling out the chairs.

Rather than thinking of a ‘decreasing labor pool’, we should be looking more positively to a decreasing world population with less stress on the resources of a badly overextended planet. Where now a child is a commodity to plug into a factory, or the window of a drive-in McDonald’s, in the future a child should return to being a gift.

Share the wealth. Yeah.

Where employers – from work gangs to major corporations – now shift jobs, or workers, around at the whim of a dollar, they should be the ones made to share the wealth, not to strip it from the skin, and the dignity, of the workers.

Political

Monuments

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 6, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Outside of the polls at the church where I vote, two men stood, handing out flyers regarding a a bond issue and more money for the fire department. I already knew how I was going to vote for Presidential candidate, as well as the two other issues on the ballots so I declined the papers.

After voting I walked past the men, but instead of just nodding and smiling hello, I stopped and asked them who they supported. It was a rather rude question and I wouldn’t haven been surprised if I were politely but firmly rebuffed, but both seemed eager to chat.

“I’m supporting Kerry,” the first said.

“Kerry and Edwards for VP”, said the second.

“Yeah. Kerry and Edwards. That’s the ticket we need.”

They continued back and forth.

“Kerry is careful, but Edwards is optimistic, which makes a good mix.”

“And Kerry’s a Vet.”

“Edwards will bring in the South. Kerry the rest of the country.”

“And Edwards is young and good looking..”, one started.

“…and Kerry is not!” laughed the second.

Both men were older white guys, one in his early 50’s the other in his 60’s. But their views aren’t that uncommon in Missouri–there’s been a lot of talk about a Kerry/Edwards ticket here even before Iowa. And Kerry isn’t seen as the best of a bad lot – these men were enthusiastic. They liked Kerry.

They think he can win.

I haven’t seen much enthusiasm for Dean in the mid-west, something I’ve written about before. Ultimately in the end, it cost him in Iowa. And there was no surprise that he didn’t even bother to come to Missouri, as he knows the folks here don’t like him that much. But then, according to people I and my roommate have chatted with, doesn’t seem like Dean much likes the people here, either.

Oh it wasn’t just the ‘pickup trucks with Confederate flags’, crack. It was a lot of things that people didn’t like. My own particular one was when Dean talked about how his supporters may not go with any other candidate. I didn’t like that. If this was a brand of Dean activism – our way or the highway – that wasn’t what I was looking for in a President.

I was watching interviews at different candidate headquarters after the New Hampshire vote. I noticed that at the Kucinich camp, folks were dancing about and having a grand old time, but the man barely got any votes. Didn’t matter to his people – they’re not out to win, just making sure their voices are heard.

People say that Dean is the ‘liberal one’, the ‘outsider’, but Kucinich owns both of these – and a lot of class for saying at a lunch attended by Kerry’s wife, Teresa:

“While I intend to be the next president, this country would be well served by a first lady like Teresa Heinz Kerry.”

I remember getting an email from the Kucinich camp after New Hampshire, with words to the effect, “We got ‘em on the ropes now, people!” You have to admire that enthusiasm, especially when you realize – as I didn’t last year– that Kucinich keeps the potential Green Party members and others of the far left included in the Democratic party. Hopefully, gracefully, he’ll bring these people to the vote for a Democratic candidate come November. As the OpEd piece that quoted Kucinich said:

Yesterday, Heinz Kerry noted that both Nader and Kucinich are men who have asked “very important questions” and deserve “respect” for what they say.

She then made a vital point: “I do not know if we can afford any third party right now.”

Will the political left give up its self-indulgence in order to get George W. Bush out of the White House? Around here, that’s asking for a lot.

I know that there’s a lot of criticism of Kerry for voting to support the war in Iraq. But voting to support a war and starting one are two different things. I ask myself, “If Kerry were President during that time, would he have invaded Iraq without UN support?” And my answer is, without a doubt, absolutely not.

There is a difference. And there still are a lot of countries that the shadow of our current President’s ‘preemptive defense strategy’ hangs over.

I’m not a pundit, and make no claim to be one. I’m not going to provide post political process overviews of why Dean seemed so popular and is now fighting for his political life. I’ll leave all that to the guys who get the nods. I do know that when I read about an email being sent with the Dean name, asking for 50.00 for a “must win campaign” in Wisconsin, or he’ll quit the race. my first inclination was to say – what did you do with the 41 million? Well, $7.2 million of it went to Joe Trippi’s media firm for managing the Dean ads.

Joe Trippi. So much for darlings of the New Media. Now that we have that out of the way, maybe we can focus on what’s important – making sure Bush doesn’t have four more years.

Speaking of what’s at stake: there was a local item in the news here, about a change in the mandatory covered items for the so-called ’stripped down’ health insurance policies – policies that basically provide minimum coverage, primarily for catastrophic illness or injury. There’s a new bill in the Missouri legislature that would remove these mandatory items so that insurance would be affordable to small businesses here. The bill was pointed out at the St Louis Blogger site, and at Punitive Art, Rev Matt’s place.

What would be removed if this bill were passed? Well, maternity stays in hospitals, new born health screenings, mammograms, child immunizations, in addition to screenings for prostrate and colon cancer.

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I had to pay for my mammogram, I wouldn’t get it. I just don’t have the money for it. I’m not ure what the women will do about having babies. Return to the good old days of having babies at home, I suppose, and hope to God they can rush the baby to a neonatal ward in time if something goes wrong.

But, says the Missouri legislature, the costs of including these items is too high and small businesses can’t afford the premiums. Well, that’s a load of hogwash – these items are fixed cost items, and costs can easily be negotiated between carriers and providers.

No, the insurance companies can make big bucks from ‘catastrophe only’ insurance policies. It’s the odds thing – the costs of cancer screenings you know will happen by the number of people who get them, versus the cost of treating those that do get cancer. And usually, by the time cancer is discovered in later stages, most people only have an option to die. This is very cost effective from a health maintenance point of view.

That’s the kind of insurance that the President wants to give credits for in our income taxes. Not the kind that pays for screenings, and lets a woman have a baby in a hospital.

On and then there’s the Medicare Bill. This is so controversial, the White House has started a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote it. They say its to provide important information. If so, then why not play the ads in 2005 or 2006 when the Bill goes into effect. Why this year? An election year?

Then there’s the situation about jobs in this country. I don’t personally know a lot of people in St. Louis, but those few I do know, about half don’t have jobs, or have lost their jobs recently.

On the other hand, my roommate will get back about $300.00 from his share of the Bush tax cut. $300.00. I told my roommate he has an obligation to go out and spend that money, in order to generate jobs. But he wants to pay off a bill.

What can I say? The man just is not following the Bush plan.

A budget that increases spending for defense and Homeland Security, while cutting spending for domestic policies; weak job growth in the face of record corporate profits; tax cuts that add to the deficit, while primarily benefiting the more affluent; an astonishing disregard for the environment; an increasing encroachment of religious views and doctrine in every aspect of our lives, partnered with increasing loss of our rignts; and a pugnacious foreign policy based on shoot first, ask questions later…

These are things that concern me more than what will happen to Dean’s Blog for America if he drops out.

I say, give it to Bush. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it will do for him what it did for Dean.

Bandwidth sucking photos were taken in and about San Antonio, Texas, and were posted in answer to a special request. I hope you have enjoyed them. Feel free to leave comments about the photos even if you don’t like the words. And vice versa. If you didn’t like the photos or the writing – why did you stay around long enough to read this?

Environment Political

Bet you can’t eat just one

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 30, 2004

For decades, government policies have allowed large amounts of underbrush and small trees to collect at the base of our forests. The motivations of this approach were good. But our failure to maintain the forests has had dangerous consequences and devastating consequences. The uncontrolled growth, left by years of neglect, chokes off nutrients from trees and provides a breeding ground for insects and disease.
…
The new law directs courts to consider the long-term risks that could result if thinning projects are delayed. And that’s an important reform, and I want to thank you all for that. It places reasonable time limits on litigation after the public has had an opportunity to comment and a decision has been made. You see, no longer will essential forest health projects be delayed by lawsuits that drag on year after year after year.

(From President Bush Signs Healthy Forest Restoration Act into Law)

Despite the Bush administration’s disingenuous rhetoric about ‘thinning underbrush,’ the Forest Service really focuses the vast majority of its projects on the removal of economically valuable mature and old-growth trees. The sale of such timber pads the agency’s budget, creating a bureaucratic incentive for mismanagement.

The problem with this is that while the removal of mature trees severely degrades wildlife habitat, such logging also increases the risk of severe fires by reducing the forest canopy, creating hotter, drier conditions on the ground. Also, the increased sunlight reaching the forest floor causes more rapid growth of flammable brush and shrubs.

Essentially, the Forest Service is removing the largest, most fire-resistant structural elements of the forest-the large trees with their thick bark-and leaving behind the smallest, most flammable material.

A century of intense logging in National Forests has not prevented severe fire conditions: it has created them.

(Chad Hanson Director of the John Muir Project, and national director of the Sierra Club.)

Report from a Forest Logged by
the Weyerhaeuser Company

Three square miles clear-cut.
Now only the facts matter:
The heaps of gray-splintered rubble,
The churned-up duff, the roots, the bulldozed slash,
The silence,

And beyond the ninth hummock
(All of them pitched sideways like wrecked houses)
A creek still running somewhere, bridged and dammed
By cracked branches.
No birdsong. Not one note.

And this is April, a sunlit morning.
Nothing but facts. Wedges like half-moons
Fallen where saws cut over and under them
Bear ninety or more rings.
A trillium gapes at so much light

Among the living: a bent huckleberry,
A patch of salal, a wasp,
And now, making a mistake about me,
Two brown-and-black butterflies landing
For a moment on my boot.

Among the dead: thousands of fir seedlings
A foot high, planted ten feet apart,
Parched brown for lack of the usual free rain,
Two buckshot beer cans, and overhead,
A vulture big as an eagle.

Selective logging, they say, we’ll take three miles,
It’s good for the bears and deer, they say,
More brush and berries sooner or later,
We’re thinking about the future-if you’re in it
With us, they say. It’s a comfort to say

Like Dividend or Forest Management or Keep Out.

They’ve managed this to a fare-thee-well.

David Wagoner

(Thanks to Loren for poem.)

Political

State of the Union: a Citizen response

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 20, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I sit at my computer and I think about all the reasoned things I could say in response to President Bush’s State of the Union speech. I am one that has been pushing for moderation from my brothers and sisters in this, the family of those who believes that it is imperative we make a change in leadership this year. I wrote and I polished and I erased and I paced and I read again.

But it was a life affirming moment when I realized that I didn’t have to make a reasoned response. I am not a Journalist, no not even a wannabe one. I am not an elected official or member of the government or candidate for office. I am a regular person, nobody of any importance, and as such I can take all that massive swirling heaving, maelstorm in my brain and literally paint this page with it – and it’s okay! Because I am a Citizen.

Our greatest responsibility is the active defense of the American people. Twenty-eight months have passed since September the 11th, 2001…

Twenty-eight months? Why stop there? Over seven years have passed since Timothy McVeigh decided to ‘teach the government a lesson’ and blew up a Federal building in Oklahoma. Over forty years have gone by since the Russians tried to ship nuclear missles over to Cuba. And over sixty years have passed since the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

But if we’re determined to be frightened, truly frightened, let’s not stop there.

Over 100 years have passed since the Maine was sunk during the Spanish American War. And let’s not forget those sneaky Southerners and them wanting to bust up the Union. Well that happened 150 years ago, more or less. And close to 230 years have passed since we kicked the British out during the Revolutionary War. Damn Brits, thinking they could tax our tea. Let’s go get the Aussies and beat the shit out of the Brits, shall we? We can pretend it’s a soccer game.

Inside the United States, where the war began, we must continue to give homeland security and law enforcement personnel every tool they need to defend us. And one of those essential tools is the Patriot Act..

Fuckin’a, you got that bud. And I want to tell you Prez – I can call you Prez, can’t I – I love your anti-terrorist strategy. Let’s treat every person that enters this country as a terrorist. Let’s fingerprint them, abuse them, prohibit their planes from landing, make it impossible to get a visa, and just make a visit to this country an all around miserable experience. Eventually the regular folk won’t want to come here, and our job will be a whole lot easier because the only ones who will want to come are the terrorists! Brilliant! Shooting fish in a barrel.

Then, once we make all the visitors to our country into terrorists, let’s do that to most of the people in this country – starting with the Democrats. And everyone in San Francisco.

Since we last met in this chamber, combat forces of the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Poland and other countries enforced the demands of the United Nations, ended the rule of Saddam Hussein – and the people of Iraq are free.

Man, is Bush our guy, or what? Of course Iraq and the people are free now – most of the wealth of the country has either been stolen or destroyed so it’s dirt cheap. Sure, you could probably get a hotel room anywhere in the country for less than a Motel 6. Get a hooker for less, see what hides underneath those scarves.

And can you dig that statement about our enforcing the demands of the United Nations? What’s with this “unilateral” shit – we’re only doing what the UN asked us to do. I’m sure I heard them say, “US, please go bomb the bejesus out of the Iraqi people and make us all safe from them horrible Weapons of Mass Destruction.”. Why it’s no different than a girl saying No, she don’t want sex, but you know she does. She really does, she needs to be coaxed.

Month by month, Iraqis are assuming more responsibility for their own security and their own future. And tonight we are honored to welcome one of Iraq’s most respected leaders: the current President of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi.

Is that the guy over in the corner, with a gag on, a soldier standing over him with a rifle, and a ball and chain around his ankle? Just curious.

Different threats require different strategies. Along with nations in the region, we’re insisting that North Korea eliminate its nuclear program. America and the international community are demanding that Iran meet its commitments and not develop nuclear weapons. America is committed to keeping the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes.

And we’ll bomb the bejesus out of anyone we think is dangerous. You hear! You hear! We’re going to make this world safe if we have to kill every god damn one of you.

I have had the honor of meeting our servicemen and women at many posts, from the deck of a carrier in the Pacific, to a mess hall in Baghdad.

Yup, prime turkey photos in both places, too.

We’re seeking all the facts – already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.

Damn teleprompters! It played parts of the State of the Union speech from 2003. You know, you just can’t trust technology.

America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.

Because Bush is the baddest matha fucka in the hood, and all your bases belong to him.

I propose increasing our support for America’s fine community colleges, I do so so they can train workers for the industries that are creating the most new jobs.

Is that the 200 million or so that will be spread real thin and make virtually no difference in programs for the unemployed? Ahh, that’s real nice, but McDonald’s and Wal-Mart said I didn’t have to know anything to work for them. Oh, oh, sorry, slip of the tongue – they said I didn’t have to know anything special to work for them.

Unless you act, Americans face a tax increase. What the Congress has given, the Congress should not take away: For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be permanent.

And we wouldn’t want to deprive ordinary citizens like Instapundit his 1500.00 in tax refunds, would we?

I urge you to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

You got all that farm and ranch land in Colorado to sink oil wells in, do you have to go for the Wilderness in Alaska, too?

In two weeks, I will send you a budget that funds the war, protects the homeland, and meets important domestic needs, while limiting the growth in discretionary spending to less than 4 percent. This will require that Congress focus on priorities, cut wasteful spending, and be wise with the people’s money.

Let’s see now, was that discretionary spending for the 43 million people with no health care? Or was it the schools that have closed because state governments no longer have federal help to keep them opening? Or perhaps since we’ve drilled up the conserved land, and relaxed clean air and water restrictions, we can save some money firing all the park rangers.

I oppose amnesty, because it would encourage further illegal immigration, and unfairly reward those who break our laws. My temporary worker program will preserve the citizenship path for those who respect the law, while bringing millions of hardworking men and women out from the shadows of American life.

You see, that’s just what we told the blacks when we brought them here several hundred years ago. But dammit, they wanted something more and in a moment of weakness, we gave it to ‘em. Now we have to find another disposable worker class.

After all, who else can we lock them into stores all night, or make work seven days a week, or kill quickly by spending ten hours a day hunched over pesticide laden crops in 105 degree sun? People in this country think they’re too good for these types of jobs – lazy SOBs.

In January of 2006, seniors can get prescription drug coverage under Medicare. For a monthly premium of about $35, most seniors who do not have that coverage today can expect to see their drug bills cut roughly in half.

I know someone with emphysema, who spends 2000.00 a month on prescription medicine. I bet she’s relieved to know that when she heads toward death, the same medications will only eat 1000.00 a month into the saving she and her husband spent a lifetime building up. Maybe she’ll die while there’s still a little bit left for her husband to live on.

And tonight I propose that individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes.

Hmm, well you see, this is tricky. The way our tax system works, unless you have several thousands of dollars of tax deductions, they’re pretty useless for lower, or even middle income families.

But you know, your Daddy didn’t know how computer cash registers worked, maybe you don’t know how the tax system works for the rest of us?

So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.

43 million Americans don’t have health coverage, and you’re worried about steroid use? 43 million Americans can’t afford steroids! Isn’t that good enough?

We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

President Bush I have just one question for you: were you a virgin when you married?

The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God’s sight.

Dignity and value but not equality or rights, is that it? Mr. President, you’re giving Gays an empty cup and pointing to the desert and telling them to drink deeply from the compassion of your God. I think their mouths are too dry to express their thanks.

By executive order, I have opened billions of dollars in grant money to competition that includes faith-based charities. Tonight I ask you to codify this into law, so people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate against them again.

This is the same billions of dollars that you’ve taken away from institutions that have offered comfort, and food, and support in the past. The only difference is these non-religious organizations offer help without forcing the recipient to accept it on bended knee, or while standing over them while those helped speak hollow words of faith because they are too hungry, or too scared, or too sick, or too young to stand on their dignity.

We can trust in that greater power who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that his purposes are just and true.

May God continue to bless America.

But he isn’t my God, Mr. President. Mr. President, do you hear me? He isn’t my God. We each have the right to pick our own god or gods, and your God isn’t my God.

And you’re not my President.