Nov 18, 2012

Too early for New Years predictions, but to late to ignore.

“Tax the rich, feed the poor

Til there are no rich no more?” 

--- Ten Years After

I’m doing song lyrics again. Old songs. Songs from my impressionable youth. Songs from when we knew we could change the world and make it a better place for everyone. 

I’m old, and one of the symptoms of this disease is the cold realization that the world is not going to be a better place for everyone. The other is the obsession with listening to the music that once floated my heart. It’s kinda like remembering hip hugger bell bottom jeans, except that particular vision floated something else, way back then. I just like the old music, for it brings back feelings of that time of false hope.

I heard this song on the satellite radio while driving to the clinic yesterday. It tasted rather bitter, particularly in light of who some folks just re-elected to run the country for the next four years. So I looked up the lyrics on line, and the site I found suggested the question mark located at the end of that lyric. I wondered if the band had a question mark located there way back when. 

Was this a question about the wisdom of taxing the rich into oblivion? I couldn’t tell from the radio if that’s what the band intended, or if they were actually making a different statement that didn’t include a question mark and didn’t bode well for the rich. Many of us back then had little sympathy for the rich, and these days it is up for discussion yet again. Certainly it doesn’t seem as if the President and his impassioned boosters in The Media have any sympathy for the rich. More on that later if I can keep that thought in this old mind for that long.

“Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand

Maybe I’ll be there to share the land

That they’ll be giving away

When we all live together.”

---The Guess Who

No question mark this time, from a song about the same age old. Clearly these lyrics suggested the upcoming better world that would be characterized by some mass redistribution of the available land. The Sixties version of 40 acres and a mule. Everybody would have a place to raise a family, with home grown veges and home grown dope, and happiness would swell the hearts of all. And when the next generation came along, they’d be giving them land too, and the next and the next. Until….

Wait a minute…

What were they gonna do when they ran out of land? Land is a finite quantity, and as any real estate speculator knows, they’re not making any more. So if they’ll be giving it away in any sustainable way, they will have to take some land from that guy over there and give it to this one over here. So I guess that guy over there must be rich. That’s how this works, right?

And who are these “they” folks who will be giving away the land? I suppose it could be the rich who have all the land so the others don’t. They might give it away. You know, like all those movie stars who have all those millions who think more people need government handouts, so those rich movie stars all give up all their own money first to set the example. Yeah, like that. 

So instead I guess” they” will be taking the land away from the folks “they” gave it to a few paragraphs back, to give it to somebody else. That will make those folks who had 40 acres and a mule real happy as they raise their families and grow their dope on somewhat less land, but at least these citizens will have the satisfaction of watching their land that they’ve worked for those generations  going to some folks who didn’t.

So if it won’t be the rich giving away their land, who is “they”? Raise your hands if you think it will be some government. Very good, children. And who can tell me how the government will do this without really annoying the folks with the 40 acres? Right!!! They don’t have to make those people happy, because the government can do whatever it wants. Thank goodness we have a government to make the other people happy.

Now, this next bit is a little long, but it leads to a point, so pour another cup of coffee and let’s go for a ride.

My friend and I were unrepentant liberals 40 years ago. Those were fun times but with the passage of years we drifted onto different paths. I became a small business owner and had to deal with employees, stupid silly government rules, and taxes. He became a mover and shaker in the union and he had to deal with bosses, stupid silly rules, and the shift to a world where unions became the problem, rather than an answer to the problem. We had the occasional difference of opinion, but remained friends, albeit polite friends who didn’t discuss certain things.

We met up again recently, and he told this story:

Last year he visited India, and passed through Singapore coming and going. I listened intently, for even though Singapore is a city and I don’t do cities, this story was interesting. 

Singapore is not suffering a recession right now. Business is good and the people are making money and the government isn’t yet running out of money, so that place is an anomaly right now.

The city is clean, the buildings new, and order is everything. Singapore is doing so well that people wander in from Malaysia looking for the good paying jobs. And many are thus employed. 

The Malaysians who do not find work are eventually rounded up, sent to camps for food, shower, clothing, and then shipped back to Malaysia at state expense. And they are given enough money to keep them on Malaysian terms for 6 months. What a benevolent government! And no pesky Malaysians are wandering the streets doing the pesky things folks do when they cannot find work.

My friend says there are no homeless people camped under bridges in Singapore, for the government rounds this lot up too and funds housingfoodclothingetc  for them. Apparently, the old folks don’t want to be rounded up, for they have pride, so the government cons them, telling them it built that housing especially for them, and that makes it OK. Pride, it would appear, limits the number of folks living off the government to a reasonable level, unlike what we all know would happen here. 

And the city is clean. Perhaps you’ve heard, but if not here is the warning….do not take bubble gum to Singapore, for this is a serious crime in this city. Bubble gum makes a city dirty. You get caught with gum and the punishment is caning. That’s where they take a stout stick and they whack you on the bare back a few dozen times until you are bleeding and scarred. Why do they do this? Presumably because it’s mostly young folks who might do bubble gum, and hanging them by the neck until dead or standing them in front of seven guys with rifles might not look very good. But you make their city dirty and they will get you.

The fine for not flushing a public toilet….$230.00. That’s harsh, but if you ask how they would ever know you didn’t flush, they will assure you that they are watching. Watching. 

They are watching public toilets. They are watching for bubble gum. They are watching for littering. Vagrancy. Homelessness. A bunch of things. Whatever “they” want to watch.

Now, this is my friend’s observation, not mine. And he is still the avowed liberal, so he likes when government is running things. He thinks government should. 

But now he says the city of Singapore appears nice, nearly a utopian world, and the people are well cared for, but for all this there is a price. “They” keep it their way because the government is totalitarian. 

BINGO!

This is only my conclusion, but it seems that the folks in government, any government, are forever doing things to the people in the guise of doing things for the people. Totalitarian rule is one way to do government, and certainly a popular version over all of history, but it is what it is.

The guy the people just re-elected over here says he wants to do things for the people by taxing the rich to feed the poor. Some who work at trying to get rich might object, but that’s only because there is something terribly wrong with them. Selfish bastards. Ambition only hurts the country. But the Prez can fix that.

The Prez will take the land from one to give to another, claiming to be fixing things. He garnered support for this notion, and we the people re-elected him and his minions so they get to stay in charge, and thus they get power and they become rich, while they make others less rich and less powerful, and the rest of us get 40 acres which becomes 20 which becomes ten. 

“The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

---Margaret Thatcher

Eventually every over-reaching government runs out of money, and then they fail to hold to their promises, leaving the folks who have become utterly dependent upon these gifts  drifting and vulnerable. But if anyone objects, they get to eventually meet that totalitarian part. That’s the plan, ya know. We had one of the few governments in the history of things that answered to the people.  The plan is to change that.

Now, if those other folks had been elected, they might be helping us by forcing their corruption of religion and its oppression upon us, and then they would become rich and powerful, and that guy we re-elected wouldn’t. And guess what… if we were to object, here comes the totalitarian part again. There is a common theme here.

Government always grows. People running government always grow rich and powerful, at the expense of everyone else. Government always eventually becomes totalitarian, so the rich and powerful running government can remain rich and powerful and running government. People who want to be in government will tell us they are there to help the people, but …ah no. They ain’t. They be helpin’ themselves to rich and powerful. And if the people object…well, governments hit harder than the people.

When we ask the government to fix things we should fix ourselves, government grows larger and more powerful. And people will lie like crazy so we will be silly enough to put them into power.  And to keep themselves in power. The more we ask government to fix, the sooner we turn control of our lives over to government.

Some people voted to re-elect that guy because he promised to help, and to tax the rich to feed the poor and to give away the land when we all live together. And although deep down they all knew he lied, they voted for him. And instead the people will get nothing but the pleasure of watching the guy become rich and powerful. 

Now the other side offered much of the same, but perhaps a little less and maybe not so fast. But they brought along the other extreme, an oppressive religion to do their dirty work for them, and even the stupid saw the harm in this, so they chose to re-elect the guy who promised only government control. Or they didn’t vote at all, because there no longer was a vote that made any sense at all. 

We the people are in an inexplicable rush to turn our lives over to the government, to see if we like totalitarian rule, and we were willing to drink the lemonade.

I wish us luck. We will need that. Jefferson warned about this. He suggested that government always trends toward oppression. That’s why he wanted that clever bunch of ten amendments. He wanted rules to protect the people from their own government. So he suggested we don’t have government religion, and he thought we all should be armed to keep government in check. This election offered government religion or the guy who promises a loss of freedom of arms. We, the people, are so freaking stupid to let it get to this, that we deserve to lose our freedom. And sadly, we will.

Nov 11, 1012

The touch of evil>>>>>

I always figured I’d feel badly about it if I killed someone.

I’m sorry. I mean, wow, what a statement to spew out, to be tossed amid unsuspecting folks. But bear with me. I have my reasons for bringing this up.

I suppose this is a rather odd thing to introduce here, the first sentence on a blank computer screen. Who would write such a thing? Who would even think it? Reasonable people don’t go around killing other people. It’s rather an uncommon action. So why would I even contemplate my own reaction to this? It’s not like I figured on ever learning how it would feel.

But my mind does wander into varied places, and I have actually found myself wondering about such a thing. The Vietnam War offered up an opportunity. College kept me out of the draft for years, but I faced one year in the lottery after graduation. And in those days it was not unusual for the candidates for canon fodder status to consider their options.

For instance, the wife at the time had told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be reporting for duty if invited. Nope, we’d be moving to Canada. But in spite of her dictates, I did consider the possibility of attending, doing my duty, testing my immortality in war. So I mulled about in my head the various consequences of such a decision.

Dying came to mind, as did living on with various body parts missing as a side effect of combat. And I contemplated the taking of life. War excuses many of the behaviors we avoid most days at home. In war, killing folks is not only accepted, it is mandated. So I suppose that contingency would make it all just fine. Strike down a few of them other folks, and then come home and take up my life again as if nothing had happened. Don’t give it a thought.

But I gave it a thought. Several, in fact. Missed out on any real experience, for my lottery number didn’t come up, but I finally concluded that I’d probably feel bad about killing someone if I was compelled to do it in war. And I didn’t feel wrong for that.

I’ve been around for several of the more significant episodes of civil unrest in the last 50 years. I’ve seen civilization suspended following Dr. King’s murder and when the disputed verdicts came down following Rodney King’s arrest in Los Angeles. I’ve seen the videos of the enraged mobs in the streets, the beatings and the attempted murders. I watched neighborhoods looted and witnessed blocks of businesses burned to the ground.

And I sat in my little business here, feeling vulnerable and threatened by possibilities with those images in my head. And I wondered, when faced with such a mob, if I would defend my life’s work, and also my family and my employees who are both friends and family to me. Or would I simply run away and hope to survive, and take the loss of everything as just the price of participation in history.

I brought the rifle to work on the day the OJ Simpson verdict was read, for I wondered what that night would hold for civilization. Would the mobs be in the streets of my town this time, and would the buildings soon be burning around me? Didn’t end up needing it, but that old question was again in the front of my mind. Would I feel bad if I had to kill to defend that which was important to me, or would I instead choose to run away in terror, or die rather than kill?

We received the news via the internet. The young woman arrived at work at the veterinary hospital in Florida early in the morning, to care for the animals and get things ready for the day. The practice owner arrived an hour later and was greeted by carnage and gore. The walls were splashed with blood, the floors flooded by it. The woman had been viciously beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, after the savage had raped and tortured her. He was a twice convicted sexual predator, but of course he’d been let out of jail early both times, for someone didn’t want to keep a man like this away from society. That wouldn’t be fair.

The owner of that practice has a concealed carry permit now, and she is armed always. Her practice is located in a marginal area where crime is common, a neighborhood into which criminals are often released from prison to prey upon the decent folks, kinda like my place.

We hear of the doctor nearly beaten to death in his own hospital in Southern California because he annoyed a client, and of the strong-arm daytime robberies of veterinary hospitals for the few drugs found on the premises. And yeah, I know of all the armed robberies and those several murders that have been committed in the businesses just around the corner from my clinic. So yeah, that haven we call our clinic isn’t all that safe a place after all.

We have contingency plans in place, and ready access to weapons in the clinic, and I acknowledge that it is not a stretch at all to consider that I might someday be faced by that old question again. And no… I don’t want to be put into that untenable position.

I resisted the assignment to jury duty last month, for I did not wish to be inconvenienced by closing my clinic for 5 weeks. But I did sit in the jury box for a short while to be questioned by the judge and the DA before a jury was selected without me. And I spoke briefly with the murderer who was serving as his own attorney. It’s not fair perhaps, to judge a man prematurely, particularly when charged by the judge with the notion that you must only consider his guilt or innocence based upon evidence presented later at his trial, but this man was a sociopath.

Twice I watched him walk across the hall to enter the courtroom while a gaggle of potential jurors wasted time in the hall. He walked tall, quickly, confident…or was it arrogant? But when he got up from his chair to question me, the potential juror, he was bent over, limping, smiling, shucking and jiving. A simple, humble man, trying to pull wool over eyes. But I also watched him as the attorney from the public defender’s office tried to offer advice, and he transformed into the monster, flashing anger and hatred and that look in his eyes as he ripped into the man who tried to help him.

He dripped with anger, narcissism, thinly veiled unspoken threat, and no suggestion of a conscience. Simply watching him for those few hours was instructive, for I am a trusting person, and a tad naïve. And he had killed trusting, naïve people.

So I missed experiencing the murderer’s day in court. The internet yielded the details, of how he gloated and abused his moment in the limelight of his own trial, and enjoyed being the center of the universe, even though that universe extended only to the limits of the room. He taunted his accusers, insulted his jury, and hurled pain and hatred at the families of the two he had murdered, screaming at them, torturing them, enraging them for his own amusement. He was glad to be alive, and utterly dismissive of those who were dead by his hand. No remorse. No second thoughts. No cares for anyone but himself. Capable of harm to anyone he chose.

He is the sociopath I had spotted in the first moments. He is a monster, but in his mind, he has done no wrong at all.

There is not even the suggestion that he feels badly about killing someone.

He is the kind of un-human that every person in that courtroom, having witnessed his evil and felt the touch of fear in their heart when looking into his eyes, likely would consider for a moment seizing the opportunity to kill him on the spot. But yeah, they would all feel badly, after.

That jury now is deciding his fate, choosing between the slim chance that California would eventually abruptly end his wretched life, or simply gifting him with a life sentence without parole, which he referred to as his “retirement”.

And I am left to contemplate, with the likelihood perhaps increasing every year that someone with this murderer’s eyes will one morning barge into my clinic armed and angry and conscienceless, that I’ll have to face that choice that I’ve dodged for all this time.

Nov 4, 12

Who remembers the way back time before the arrival of the ubiquitous ATM machine, when if you wished cash money to go out for pizza on Friday night, you cashed a check to get it? As long as you had money in the bank to cover the check, this was a viable system. You flashed your ID, or the cashier recognized you as a frequent customer of the store, or because she went to high school with your dad, and that was usually enough. This system depended upon a degree of trust, which generally worked out back then. You could trust some people back then.

Other people violated that trust. On the board behind the cashier, fastened by thumbtacks and on display for all to see, resided a few of the checks that had bounced because they were presented by folks who knew there was no money in their account to cover said checks, and yet they cashed them anyway. You’d see names of people you knew, and from this you also knew that you would never again trust them, for anything.

This leads to the story I’ve told before, of the little girl living with her mother. It was that end of the month moment, when the checking account was close to nil, but the little girl still wanted pizza for Friday night dinner. The mother had nixed the idea, but the child persisted. Mother stated that there was no money, for she knew the reality. The child, not understanding, wondered why. 

“Why can’t you just cash a check?”

A reasonable request in her child’s reality, for that trick had always worked before. The mom was frustrated, for there was nothing for her to do. She had already used up whatever trust remained with her family and friends, and they no longer would loan her a few bucks until payday. And she couldn’t even count on that ole float, where the check she cashed on Friday wouldn’t hit her bank until Monday, and she could deposit her paycheck in time to beat the bounce. For that Monday was further in the distance.

So the child fumed, and the mom raged at the un-fairness of it all, and life went on for everyone else.

I faced down four hungry cats this morning. Part of this was my fault, for it was my duty to bring home the food from the clinic. I knew the supply was perilously low. I knew where the food was stored in the clinic. I knew it was my responsibility to see to it that the cats never go hungry, for they don’t like that. I forgot and left the cat food at the clinic yesterday. And I feel real bad about it, but I ran out of food last night. There was none left for this morning.

And to make things worse, the clocks changed at 2 AM, and so I selfishly slept in for that one extra hour while the cats slowly closed the circle around our bed, silently tapping their toes on the carpet. Watching me as I slept. Watching me.

I stirred in my sleep, and suddenly three cats appeared on the bed, watching me, prodding me, beseeching me. Breakfast was already one hour late, and someone was going to pay. 

COME ON!!! WAKE UP!!!

GET YOUR FAT ASS OUT OF BED AND FEED THE CATS!!!

There was to be no more sleeping for this fellow. So up I got and I walked down the hall. Assuming that food was FINALLY forthcoming, four tails accompanied by four swinging prodigious bellies led me toward the kitchen. They were in a hurry. They kept looking back. HURRY UP!!!

Cats differ from dogs. Dogs ask for food. Dogs beg for food. It’s as if food magically appears when the person produces it. Cats don’t ask. They demand. Ya see, dogs have masters, and cats have staff. They say jump, and we persons are supposed to ask, “How high?” Cats demand food and they expect obedience. Cats have entitlement.

Cats expect to be fed. That’s kinda my fault too, for I once began to feed them, and then from that point on, the cats decided not to chase and catch to eat mice and such. Food showed up in the bowls every morning and night, and that was how it was gonna be. Worked out fine for the cats. The heck with the mice. Entitlement.

So, I lied to the cats. Lying to cats is OK, for lying is part of their culture. I lied and said I needed to wash their food bowls, so while the bowls soaked, I drove down to the clinic and came back with cat food. So I got to live. I didn’t end up like the crazy cat lady who runs out of cat food, and all the people find later are picked over cat lady bones.

There are lessons here. You can’t have pizza every Friday night if you can’t afford pizza every Friday night. You should watch how much money you have in the bank, and know when you can refill the bank, and not spend more money than you can expect to find in the bank. And you shouldn’t feed so many cats that you face all those angry faces when you run out of cat food.

Which brings us to this election on Tuesday.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but California can’t afford pizza this Friday night. The kids still want pizza, but California cannot afford it. Hasn’t been able to afford pizza for some time. And California is trying to feed way too many cats. And the cats aren’t finding a full bowl whenever they want. The kids have come to enjoy pizza every Friday night, and the cats are, as always, entitled. And now they are all pissed off.

When the kids and cats are both annoyed, you will hear from them. They will, in fact, nag you.

Somebody runs this state. Poorly, but somebody runs it. Nobody wants to admit to screwing the whole deal, but somebody did it. They screwed it up. They ran out of money, stupidly and irresponsibly. And now they want to be re-elected so, they say, they can fix it. That makes sense.

The teachers’ union, the public employee unions, and the various folks  who don’t hunt mice anymore because we feed them better when they don’t, are all getting shortchanged since the government ran out of money. They are angry. They are nagging. Those folks who don’t work for the government, but are responsible for paying for the government, are just a bit miffed too. Because we know what comes next.

What comes next is the folks who don’t work for the government, but are responsible for paying for the government, are gonna be told to pay much more. For certainly the children are not going to ask for less pizza, and the cats are still going to feel entitled. And we sure as heck aren’t gonna see the people actually responsible for this mess volunteering to stand down and let others give an honest and intelligent effort, rather than the stupid and crooked performance we generally get.

We can vote some people out of office. And should. We can vote against the propositions that are nothing more than higher taxes on the folks who didn’t create this mess. We can vote to limit the power of the unions that orchestrated most of this mess. We can disappoint the people who have run the government for their own benefit, and our loss, who stupidly let this mess happen. And on a national scale, we can depose a President who guarantees our children will be saddled with a similar disaster for generations to come. 

Or we can stand by impotently and watch a way of life die because of greed and incompetency. Our choice. We get the government we deserve.