As a retired newspaper reporter, my tendency is to investigate things before actually making up my mind.
Many indicators have convinced me that we need stricter gun control (not a ban, but stricter laws). Mental illness of shooters may be a problem, but other nations have mental illness and they don't have these dramatic shooting incidents in schools, theaters, and concerts. Besides, statistically, black women in the United States have less access to mental health services than any other group, while white males have more access to mental health services than any other group, and I've yet to see a black woman turn up as the shooter at one of these events. So there is that.
Other nations do not have guns and they do not have shootings like we have. Guns may not kill people but the availability of guns make it easy for people to kill others with guns. I have to go through more hoops to obtain certain prescriptions than I do to buy a gun. I have to go through more paperwork to keep and maintain my driver's license. I have to send my county money every year in order to continue to work as a freelance writer and editor. I have to have insurance on everything.
So I don't really get why guns are so sacred here - they have become like a worshipped object (as has money) and that flies in the face of not only my own moral code but also the Christian one that folks like to work themselves up over. This falls under Exodus 20:23, in case you're wondering. It only mentions gods made of silver and gold but I think anything metal, wood, etc., counts. So money and guns should not be our gods, but they do appear to be items that many worship.
I'm also not interested in turning this nation into a police state, with officers everywhere. Children should be in learning institutions, not prisons, and I'm not sure what the difference between a well-defended school and a prison is, except that the kids can leave at the end of the day. Most teachers don't want to be armed. I respect their right to not have to carry a weapon.
Other arguments that I would refute are: you own guns to protect your family (if you're that scared, you need therapy, you're also lacking empathy for others, and the things should be locked up in a safe anyway so you don't have time to get them in a break-in), and you own guns because of some abstract idea that you are going to gun down the government boys when they come after you. I have news for you. If the government really wants you, no amount of weaponry is going to save you. You're just going to end up dead.
We already have gun laws. You can't own a tank, can you? Or an air-to-ground missile launcher. Or many other items available to the military.
Anyway, I wanted to know what the difference is between these AR-15 semi-automatic weapons and my husband's hunting rifle was, so we went to a local gun shop so I could see for myself.
My husband hunts with a .270 caliber rifle. It is a semi-automatic. He was under the impression that under Virginia law he could only have a magazine for his gun that holds four bullets, but I can't find that anywhere in the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries rules. But anyway, that is all his magazines hold, so he can have 5 bullets, one in the chamber and four in the magazine, before he has to either reload the magazine or insert another magazine. I don't know if he could purchase larger ones for it, but he seldom needs more than one shot to make his kill anyway.
His .270 is a heavy long rifle. I can hardly lift it. I most certainly couldn't aim it with any accuracy and I'd have to put it down after a round because of the recoil. The recoil means that if I were to pull the trigger and shoot the rifle, my shoulder would probably be bruised if not dislocated. I'm not strong enough to handle this gun.
In contrast, a .22 rifle, which I have of my own, is smaller, and it is also a semi-automatic. However, it is a rifle and requires time to aim and shoot. It also must be held at the shoulder, and while it doesn't have much kick, there is some. It also doesn't do the damage a larger bullet can, although a .22 could certainly kill if aimed at the head or heart. But it's still a rifle, with length and weight. I haven't shot it in a while but I have very good aim, when I take my time. I don't usually kill with it although I have shot two groundhogs and a snake in my lifetime. One of the groundhogs was after the dog and the other groundhog was after me (I think that one was sick). The snake was, well, a snake. Usually I chop their heads off with a hoe but I couldn't find the hoe.
So I am not standing here with no blood on my hands. I have used a rifle to kill something. I hated it each time (even the snake) but I live in a rural area, and sometimes stuff happens.
Anyway, at the gun shop we checked out the AR-15. This gun is at least as light as the .22, if not lighter. We could have purchased magazines up to 30 rounds at the shop we visited, and I imagine more are available. I did not shoot the gun, but my husband, who has fired one, says it has as much or less recoil than my .22 rifle. Additionally, because of the lack of recoil, the AR-15 can be held down at the side, and a person could strafe a crowd without aiming and be sure of inflicting major damage to a vast amount of people. Let's be honest, you can click a trigger many, many times in the space of second with your index finger.
Because the gun is light, someone could run with it, and because it is smaller than my .22 in length, it is more easily concealed (say, beneath a coat). The bullets in an AR-15 can kill and maim because they use .223 caliber and up. You have to hunt deer with a .223 and higher caliber bullet, so the bullets for this gun (and similarly made guns) are made to kill.
After reviewing this gun and holding it, moving around with it, and understanding more about its use, I agree that this is a weapon that should not be in the public's hands. It is too easy to use, and anyone with no skills can obtain one because of our lax background checks, conceal it, walk into a crowded space, and fire. It also is not a sporting rifle, and frankly someone who uses this gun to hunt with is not a sportsman. This weapon takes no skill, and hunting should challenge the sportsman.
I know people will argue that a pistol could do the same kind of killing in a crowd, but I held a pistol also. It requires more control than the AR-15, plus a pistol with the same or similar caliber bullets would have a recoil that would preclude strafing in a mass of people, unless you have wrists the size of baseball bats or something.
This AR-15 gun and guns like it were once banned, and our legislators let that ban slip away. That was a mistake. That ban should be reinstituted.
My solution to this problem would be to ban assault rifles and then institute a voluntary buyback program for folks who have guns and would like to be rid of them. Note I said voluntary. The rest should be voluntarily registered. After all, if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?
Then I would require additional insurance on gun owners. That means we would be paying more insurance but I would rather do that than see another innocent soul lost.
Background checks should be uniform nationwide and the process should require a waiting period. Women have to wait to have abortions; young male dudes should have to wait to get their gun. I can't think of a single reason why I would need to go in and purchase a gun and have it within 20 minutes, aside from the convenience of not having to return again. I have to keep making trip after trip to the drug store because they can't figure out when they can actually give me my prescriptions, so if I can be double inconvenienced over something I have to have to survive, then surely everyone can be slightly inconvenienced over something they don't need.
Parents should be held responsible for any injuries caused by their children if they own guns. I don't care how much they lock them up, some smart kid can find a way into a space to obtain what they want.
Notice none of this takes away your guns. It might inconvenience you a little bit, but if your convenience is worth more than a life, then you have something seriously wrong with your thinking. To me, this is simply a sensible way of dealing with a horrific problem.
None of this would stop what is going on immediately, but I think it might slow it down and eventually halt it. Maybe we could return to a nation with some sanity about us. Wouldn't that be a welcome change.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2018
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
*This is a work of fiction.*
I am going to run for President of the United States.
I don't have a platform, but I don't need one. I promise you this: under my administration you will not pay federal taxes to the United States of America. None.
That's because I promise that within my first year, there will no longer be a United States of America.
Within one hour of my swearing in, I will call a special session of every state governor and its two senators (forget Congress, bunch of yahoos). Together we will divide up the country, and end this fiasco.
We will negate the U.S. Constitution forever. Each new little country can do what it damn well pleases.
This means you will no longer have Social Security, Medicare, interstates, free movement about this vast land, national parks, or a big military. No welfare, nothing to keep you from starving except the goodwill of your neighbors, and no rule of law. You'll have to create that yourselves. You can adopt some form of the U.S. Constitution if you want, or you can use a state's constitution, or you can just play it by ear, for all I care. You can have a president, a dictator, a queen, a king, an emperor, empress, dictator, whatever. Go for it.
Unfortunately, because the U.S. is running at a deficit, there will be nothing to return to each citizen. Instead, you will each (every man, woman and child) owe at least $70,000 and change to pay current outstanding bills. However, that will be payable to your new little nation-state, not the federal government, because this unpaid balance will be handed off to each new little country on a per capita basis. Sorry about that. That means all of these little nations will probably be in the hole to begin with, so no other country is going to help you out or loan you money or anything. But I'm sure you can handle it. After all, this seems to be what everybody wants now, no federal government, no oversight. Just the ability to do what you want.
I looked at a map and here is how I anticipate distribution of land mass:
Starting from the west:
the state of Hawaii will be Hawaii.
the state of Alaska will be Alaska (unless Canada wants it).
the states of California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington will become Calivadagon.
the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will be Monomaha.
the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska will be Dakato.
the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa will be Winnesowa.
the states of Utah and Arizona will be Arizona.
the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma will be New Radohoma.
the state of Texas will just be Texas.
the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi will become Missarkiania.
the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and the southern part of Virginia will be Carolina.
the state of Florida will remain Florida.
the states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan will be Illindiano.
the northern part of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington DC, Maryland, and New Jersey will be Pennaryland.
The northeastern states from New York up, which include Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, will be New Massachusetts.
Of course, the name choices can change, and some states may decide they need to be divided, like I divided Virginia. I live in Virginia and I know it's politically divided, but I would have to leave that to the governors to determine if say, part of New Mexico should really go with Texas.
After all, while I may be a fairly stable genius, I'm also intelligent enough to know I don't know everything.
Now all of this is going to create a lot of instability for a while, so the United States Military will remain viable until things settle down. We'll offer some protection from conquests for a bit. We will take military bulldozers to all the connecting roads and interstates so that people can't move from one new area to the other. I will plant a soldier every 20 feet along every boundary until each little nation state can get its wall built. We can't have any cross-over because that will mess up the math. Don't want no Pennarylanders trying to become New Radohomas now, do we? Orders will be to shoot on site until the walls are built, so don't try to move, okay?
However, once every little nation is up and running, which I think will take about three years, the U.S. Military will completely disband and each little nation will be on its own. If Florida wants to go to war with Carolina because they need the food Carolina produces, have at it. And of course Florida folks don't care if China moves in and takes over Alaska.
This will give everyone everything they seem to want. No reliance on any federal government, just reliance on themselves.
Good luck to you all.
You can send money for my election when I set up a gofundme account.
*Again, a work of fiction. I can't believe I feel like I have to write that twice.*
I am going to run for President of the United States.
I don't have a platform, but I don't need one. I promise you this: under my administration you will not pay federal taxes to the United States of America. None.
That's because I promise that within my first year, there will no longer be a United States of America.
Within one hour of my swearing in, I will call a special session of every state governor and its two senators (forget Congress, bunch of yahoos). Together we will divide up the country, and end this fiasco.
We will negate the U.S. Constitution forever. Each new little country can do what it damn well pleases.
This means you will no longer have Social Security, Medicare, interstates, free movement about this vast land, national parks, or a big military. No welfare, nothing to keep you from starving except the goodwill of your neighbors, and no rule of law. You'll have to create that yourselves. You can adopt some form of the U.S. Constitution if you want, or you can use a state's constitution, or you can just play it by ear, for all I care. You can have a president, a dictator, a queen, a king, an emperor, empress, dictator, whatever. Go for it.
Unfortunately, because the U.S. is running at a deficit, there will be nothing to return to each citizen. Instead, you will each (every man, woman and child) owe at least $70,000 and change to pay current outstanding bills. However, that will be payable to your new little nation-state, not the federal government, because this unpaid balance will be handed off to each new little country on a per capita basis. Sorry about that. That means all of these little nations will probably be in the hole to begin with, so no other country is going to help you out or loan you money or anything. But I'm sure you can handle it. After all, this seems to be what everybody wants now, no federal government, no oversight. Just the ability to do what you want.
I looked at a map and here is how I anticipate distribution of land mass:
Starting from the west:
the state of Hawaii will be Hawaii.
the state of Alaska will be Alaska (unless Canada wants it).
the states of California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington will become Calivadagon.
the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will be Monomaha.
the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska will be Dakato.
the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa will be Winnesowa.
the states of Utah and Arizona will be Arizona.
the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma will be New Radohoma.
the state of Texas will just be Texas.
the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi will become Missarkiania.
the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and the southern part of Virginia will be Carolina.
the state of Florida will remain Florida.
the states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan will be Illindiano.
the northern part of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington DC, Maryland, and New Jersey will be Pennaryland.
The northeastern states from New York up, which include Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, will be New Massachusetts.
Of course, the name choices can change, and some states may decide they need to be divided, like I divided Virginia. I live in Virginia and I know it's politically divided, but I would have to leave that to the governors to determine if say, part of New Mexico should really go with Texas.
After all, while I may be a fairly stable genius, I'm also intelligent enough to know I don't know everything.
Now all of this is going to create a lot of instability for a while, so the United States Military will remain viable until things settle down. We'll offer some protection from conquests for a bit. We will take military bulldozers to all the connecting roads and interstates so that people can't move from one new area to the other. I will plant a soldier every 20 feet along every boundary until each little nation state can get its wall built. We can't have any cross-over because that will mess up the math. Don't want no Pennarylanders trying to become New Radohomas now, do we? Orders will be to shoot on site until the walls are built, so don't try to move, okay?
However, once every little nation is up and running, which I think will take about three years, the U.S. Military will completely disband and each little nation will be on its own. If Florida wants to go to war with Carolina because they need the food Carolina produces, have at it. And of course Florida folks don't care if China moves in and takes over Alaska.
This will give everyone everything they seem to want. No reliance on any federal government, just reliance on themselves.
Good luck to you all.
You can send money for my election when I set up a gofundme account.
*Again, a work of fiction. I can't believe I feel like I have to write that twice.*
Tuesday, October 03, 2017
I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy - 2017
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Gunman in the streets,
people running around in sheets.
Nothing made me laugh
Death and destruction in my path.
They marched the streets in Charlottesville.
In Las Vegas an old white guy set out to kill.
People running everywhere
Trying hard just to get out of there.
Politicians sent their "thoughts and prayers."
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Statues pulled down from their bases
Angry smirks on unfriendly faces.
People of color, and rightly so,
kneeling on astro-turf before the show.
The guy in the White House could only tweet
evil words of fear that had no beat.
No song to cover all this hate.
All the lawyers want to litigate.
No time to change the world, it's much too late.
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Hurricanes wiped out cities and small towns
When people cried, the White House tore them down.
Watching women's rights decline
Makes the Handmaid's Tale seem just sublime.
People dying every day
mass shootings now a news mainstay.
The only country here on the earth
where guns are worshipped more than any birth.
Tells me how little life is really worth.
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Spittle flying from the mouths
of angry white men from the south.
Seems they've had enough of me
and every woman who denied their blow-job fantasies.
People safely locked at home
groceries brought to them now by wordless drone.
Hell's here now, we've let it win
no need to die for our own sin.
Maybe time to try again?
I heard the news today, oh boy.
I could only turn away
I have nothing left to say.
No way I can help, I'll just cry
And wonder how many more today will die.
Gunman in the streets,
people running around in sheets.
Nothing made me laugh
Death and destruction in my path.
They marched the streets in Charlottesville.
In Las Vegas an old white guy set out to kill.
People running everywhere
Trying hard just to get out of there.
Politicians sent their "thoughts and prayers."
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Statues pulled down from their bases
Angry smirks on unfriendly faces.
People of color, and rightly so,
kneeling on astro-turf before the show.
The guy in the White House could only tweet
evil words of fear that had no beat.
No song to cover all this hate.
All the lawyers want to litigate.
No time to change the world, it's much too late.
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Hurricanes wiped out cities and small towns
When people cried, the White House tore them down.
Watching women's rights decline
Makes the Handmaid's Tale seem just sublime.
People dying every day
mass shootings now a news mainstay.
The only country here on the earth
where guns are worshipped more than any birth.
Tells me how little life is really worth.
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Spittle flying from the mouths
of angry white men from the south.
Seems they've had enough of me
and every woman who denied their blow-job fantasies.
People safely locked at home
groceries brought to them now by wordless drone.
Hell's here now, we've let it win
no need to die for our own sin.
Maybe time to try again?
I heard the news today, oh boy.
I could only turn away
I have nothing left to say.
No way I can help, I'll just cry
And wonder how many more today will die.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
The Sound of Silence - No More
I strongly condemn the events in Charlottesville, VA this weekend. Not my values. Not my friends.
If you are one of those people - and I am sure there are many - who voted for Mr. Trump but wouldn't run over people or bash in someone's face because they disagree with you, what are you going to do about it?
President Trump did not condemn these actions. His words were weak and pathetic. They were not the words of a leader. They were not words that bring a nation together. They were not even kind words. And then he went on to brag about himself and how good things are under his so-called administration. Basically we have no government at the moment. This man can call everybody else names, but he certainly can't name his supremacist friends what they are - domestic terrorists. This was a planned racist event.
Expect more of them.
"Some members of Trump’s own party called on the President to specifically cite the Charlottesville tragedy as a terror attack, or to call out white nationalists. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that it was “very important” for the country to hear the president “describe events in Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by white supremacists. . . . Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) wrote that “we must call evil by its name.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) echoed that “we should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”' - Variety
"In the naked light I saw 10,000 people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. . . . No one dare disturb the sound of silence. . . . Silence like a cancer grows."
If you are one of those people - and I am sure there are many - who voted for Mr. Trump but wouldn't run over people or bash in someone's face because they disagree with you, what are you going to do about it?
President Trump did not condemn these actions. His words were weak and pathetic. They were not the words of a leader. They were not words that bring a nation together. They were not even kind words. And then he went on to brag about himself and how good things are under his so-called administration. Basically we have no government at the moment. This man can call everybody else names, but he certainly can't name his supremacist friends what they are - domestic terrorists. This was a planned racist event.
Expect more of them.
"Some members of Trump’s own party called on the President to specifically cite the Charlottesville tragedy as a terror attack, or to call out white nationalists. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that it was “very important” for the country to hear the president “describe events in Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by white supremacists. . . . Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) wrote that “we must call evil by its name.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) echoed that “we should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”' - Variety
"In the naked light I saw 10,000 people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. . . . No one dare disturb the sound of silence. . . . Silence like a cancer grows."
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Poor Baby Bird
I came home the other day and spied a black lump on the patio.
It was a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. The nest, alas, is in my gas BBQ grill.
I took a wide piece of mulch and coaxed the baby bird up on the stick, then, stooping over in a very uncomfortable position, I carried it back to the grill. I even opened the grill, expecting a bird to fly out at me, but the nest was not accessible from there.
I left the little baby as close to the grill as I could. I know next to nothing about song birds and I have no idea if they can somehow lure babies back to nests once they fall out. In my head, I had visions of the parent bird somehow placing the baby on its back and flying it home.
One of the parents showed up after I was inside, and while I ate lunch, I listened to it sing and cry and coax its little one to fly home. The little one attempted to comply, and I could see it lifting its tiny wings and occasionally moving around.
The song bird's trill was excited and anxious, and finally I went into the front of the house where I could not hear it.
When I returned a little later, all was quiet. I could not see the baby bird. I went outside and found that it had somehow flopped itself off the patio and landed upside down. Apparently unable to right itself, it died.
I was sad. The world can always use another songbird.
No sound came from the grill, and I came in and researched the bird to see how many eggs the female would have laid. Apparently, wrens lay about 5-6 eggs. But I'd heard no chirping.
Later, though, I saw the parent bird fly back to the nest with a worm. I opened the back door a crack and I could hear the faintest of little chirps. I felt better knowing the birds had not lost their only little one.
In the meantime, I do not have a BBQ grill to use, but we don't use it that often anyway. This one is 20 years old and I have told my husband that when the birds are through with it, I would prefer he take it to the dump rather than try to clean it out. I am not keen to eat burgers or steak on it after it has been infested with birds and lice and whatever else they may bring with them. The grill is quite old and it looks junky so I don't mind if it goes away.
Nature is cruel because it has no choice. Baby birds die because they fall from nests. That's the way it is.
People have a choice, though. They are not birds. They can pick up a human baby if it falls. Instead, people are just cruel because they want to be.
Human babies die because we choose to withhold care via lack of funding or services. Last year, six out of every 1,000 children under the age of one died in the United States. [CIA World Factbook]
They didn't fall out of a nest. They just didn't receive the care they should have.
Bosnia, Guam, Poland, New Zealand, the European Union, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, and Japan, among others, have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. In fact, 56 countries have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. Monoco, with less than 2 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one, has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.
And we think we have good health care? Just wait until the vile old white guys in the government finish with it, and you'll see how bad it can be.
How many babies will fall out of the nest then?
How many mothers will sing sad, sorrowful songs?
How many of those songs could be prevented, if we only cared about one another, and not about the dollars in our pocket?
It was a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. The nest, alas, is in my gas BBQ grill.
 |
| Incredibly ugly baby bird that pulled at my heart strings anyway. |
 |
| The bird nest is in the bottom, not in the jar hanging down, but up in the grill itself, in the burner part. |
 |
| This is one of the baby bird's parents. I think it's a Carolina Wren. |
I took a wide piece of mulch and coaxed the baby bird up on the stick, then, stooping over in a very uncomfortable position, I carried it back to the grill. I even opened the grill, expecting a bird to fly out at me, but the nest was not accessible from there.
I left the little baby as close to the grill as I could. I know next to nothing about song birds and I have no idea if they can somehow lure babies back to nests once they fall out. In my head, I had visions of the parent bird somehow placing the baby on its back and flying it home.
One of the parents showed up after I was inside, and while I ate lunch, I listened to it sing and cry and coax its little one to fly home. The little one attempted to comply, and I could see it lifting its tiny wings and occasionally moving around.
The song bird's trill was excited and anxious, and finally I went into the front of the house where I could not hear it.
When I returned a little later, all was quiet. I could not see the baby bird. I went outside and found that it had somehow flopped itself off the patio and landed upside down. Apparently unable to right itself, it died.
I was sad. The world can always use another songbird.
No sound came from the grill, and I came in and researched the bird to see how many eggs the female would have laid. Apparently, wrens lay about 5-6 eggs. But I'd heard no chirping.
Later, though, I saw the parent bird fly back to the nest with a worm. I opened the back door a crack and I could hear the faintest of little chirps. I felt better knowing the birds had not lost their only little one.
In the meantime, I do not have a BBQ grill to use, but we don't use it that often anyway. This one is 20 years old and I have told my husband that when the birds are through with it, I would prefer he take it to the dump rather than try to clean it out. I am not keen to eat burgers or steak on it after it has been infested with birds and lice and whatever else they may bring with them. The grill is quite old and it looks junky so I don't mind if it goes away.
Nature is cruel because it has no choice. Baby birds die because they fall from nests. That's the way it is.
People have a choice, though. They are not birds. They can pick up a human baby if it falls. Instead, people are just cruel because they want to be.
Human babies die because we choose to withhold care via lack of funding or services. Last year, six out of every 1,000 children under the age of one died in the United States. [CIA World Factbook]
They didn't fall out of a nest. They just didn't receive the care they should have.
Bosnia, Guam, Poland, New Zealand, the European Union, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, and Japan, among others, have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. In fact, 56 countries have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. Monoco, with less than 2 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one, has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.
And we think we have good health care? Just wait until the vile old white guys in the government finish with it, and you'll see how bad it can be.
How many babies will fall out of the nest then?
How many mothers will sing sad, sorrowful songs?
How many of those songs could be prevented, if we only cared about one another, and not about the dollars in our pocket?
Friday, March 31, 2017
Can't We Look At the Big Picture?
The front page of the Virginia Department of Health's web page says:
You can find information there about how this issue has been declared a public health crisis (November 2016). New rules are in place that now keep primary care physicians from managing their patients' chronic pain and instead they will have to send them to a pain specialist.
I feel for anyone who loses a loved one for any reason. But opioids are not the only reason people die. People die from gun shots, too. More people die from gunshots, actually, than from opioid overdose.
Many stories I am reading indicate that people with chronic pain issues are being caught up in this government effort to crack down on opioid drug use. However, from what I have read much of the problem is coming from heroin addicts and people using synthetic opioids brought illegally into the state, not people who are receiving prescription medication from their doctors.
Apparently the government is not making this distinction even though their own reports indicate this to be so:
“As we see the nature of drug addiction shift, from prescription opioids to heroin and synthetic fentanyl, we must be vigilant and ready to respond quickly,” said Secretary of Health and Human Resources Dr. Bill Hazel in a news release from the Virginia Governor's Office.
Even the White House thinks the problem is not with prescription drugs - "In a Wednesday press briefing . . . the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, blamed the crisis on "cheap heroin" flooding the market . . ."
So the opioid drug addiction and overdose problem is really . . . what? Prescription drugs or not?
This article from the People's Pharmacy explains how chronic pain sufferers have been caught up in this opioid crack down. "Many patients suffering long-term severe pain are having a hard time getting relief. We have heard from hundreds of people who never abused opioids or increased their dose," The Peoples' Pharmacy writes. The article then lists numerous stories from folks who feel they are now suffering because the actions of others have made it harder for them to receive the medication they need to live a better life.
Here is a chart from the Virginia Department of Health on Opioid Deaths. According to this information, 801 people died in the state in 2015 from opioid overdose.
Here is a chart that lists the number of gun deaths in the state of Virginia, current as of 2014. According to this information, there were 889 gun deaths here compared to 733 opioid deaths that same year.
As you can see, more people die from gun shot wounds than from overdosing on opioids.
However, there is little discussion (practically nothing) on the Virginia Department of Health's website about guns at all.
In fact, in their list of "health concerns" from A-Z, there isn't a mention of firearm safety or guns.
There is stuff on nuclear power plant accidents, fish consumption, and radon. I wonder how much any of us worries about nuclear power plant accidents. I know they don't cross my mind at all.
In the search box, I finally pulled up a .pdf on firearms, apparently last updated 11/10.
It says this on the .pdf -
I don't know if overdose and poisonings are the same thing in the eyes of the VDH.
Here's the whole .pdf, which I snagged as .jpg before it disappears -
I know there is a second amendment argument in the U.S. Constitution about gun right ownership, but I don't see how we can look at one thing that kills people when a similar amount of people - more, even - are dying from something else.
Isn't that like pointing to a pigeon while denying that blue jays exist?
Personally, I do not know anyone who has died from an opioid overdose, or at least I am not aware of it. My husband who is in emergency services sees it and he says overdoses do seem to be occurring more frequently but he says it is due to heroin, not prescription pain killers. Perhaps if there was not a drug available to "bring back" those who overdose, the number of deaths would be significantly higher.
But his squads also run many gunshot wound calls, most of which never make the news. Those folks are also saved by medical intervention, so feasibly gun death numbers would be higher, too, if our medical heroes didn't have so much expertise at fixing up holes in people.
While I know no overdose victims, I know people who have been affected by gun violence. My friend's son was dating one of the victims killed at Virginia Tech in April 2007. He was shaken to the core. One of my husband's firefighters, long ago, killed himself - he was a nice guy and his wife and I had a lot in common. That shook me to the core.
A very long time ago, one of my father's friends accidentally shot himself in the leg during a poker game. I had nightmares about it for years. I sometimes still do.
About 18 months ago, I was watching TV when two local news reporters were shot live on the air. I am friends with some of the staff of that TV station, and they will never be the same. I'm not sure I will be, either. As a print news reporter myself, it certainly has left me thinking twice about whether or not I want to be out in the public, open and available, a target to anyone.
Why are we emphasizing one cause of death and ignoring another? Shouldn't we try to combat all of them in some fashion (including vehicle deaths, which I know someone will bring up, and heart attacks, etc.)
Let's follow the money to see who gains from this particular war on drugs, because in the USA it's always about the money. Pharmaceutical companies. Here's an article dated 3/29/17 that says Big Pharma is really behind this problem, the result of a concentrated marketing program.
An article in the same publication notes that the remedy to an overdose, introduced in 2002, "has generated $1-2 billion a year in revenues, first for its initial British manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, and the Richmond, Virginia-based company that it spun off two years ago, Indivior."
That sounds like a good reason to sell one drug so you can sell another drug to fix the first drug, doesn't it? Billions of dollars.
The article also claims the remedy is as addictive as the drug it is saving the person from. So more sales.
The pain doctors will have more patients. They are specialists so many patients' co-pays for insurance will increase. (In my case, my co-pay would increase from $30 to see my primary care physician to $50 to see a specialist of any kind, as an example.)
Fighting drug wars in America has always been a losing proposition. From LSD to marijuana to cocaine, efforts to remove drugs from communities have only enriched drug smugglers and criminal organizations.
Wars on drugs don't work.
With Republicans in control of the federal government and many states, gun laws are off the table. The Republicans don't even mind if you're mentally ill and you own a gun.
These are not separate issues. These are one and the same. Both of these issues are about people dying and they are about money. Neither is about your right to live or my right to live, because the people who make the rules really don't give a crap about that.
They just care about their big donors, and unless your name is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, that isn't you.
We already have gun laws. You can't legally own an automatic rifle, or a Sherman tank. You can't legally own a rocket launcher. I don't want you to not have a gun if you want one. I am a crackerjack shot with a .22 rifle.
But stiffer background checks might save a life, just as making it hard for Grandma to get her pain killers might save a life. So why is Grandma suffering while Joe Gunslinger isn't even having to wait more than 20 minutes to pick up his new firearm?
I could not find a chart that compared opioid overdoses to firearms for Virginia. I did find one for Colorado that I want to share with you. It is from the Colorado Department of Health (apparently they do keep track of gun deaths there.)
OPIOID ADDICTION IN VIRGINIA
Learn More
You can find information there about how this issue has been declared a public health crisis (November 2016). New rules are in place that now keep primary care physicians from managing their patients' chronic pain and instead they will have to send them to a pain specialist.
I feel for anyone who loses a loved one for any reason. But opioids are not the only reason people die. People die from gun shots, too. More people die from gunshots, actually, than from opioid overdose.
Many stories I am reading indicate that people with chronic pain issues are being caught up in this government effort to crack down on opioid drug use. However, from what I have read much of the problem is coming from heroin addicts and people using synthetic opioids brought illegally into the state, not people who are receiving prescription medication from their doctors.
Apparently the government is not making this distinction even though their own reports indicate this to be so:
“As we see the nature of drug addiction shift, from prescription opioids to heroin and synthetic fentanyl, we must be vigilant and ready to respond quickly,” said Secretary of Health and Human Resources Dr. Bill Hazel in a news release from the Virginia Governor's Office.
Even the White House thinks the problem is not with prescription drugs - "In a Wednesday press briefing . . . the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, blamed the crisis on "cheap heroin" flooding the market . . ."
So the opioid drug addiction and overdose problem is really . . . what? Prescription drugs or not?
This article from the People's Pharmacy explains how chronic pain sufferers have been caught up in this opioid crack down. "Many patients suffering long-term severe pain are having a hard time getting relief. We have heard from hundreds of people who never abused opioids or increased their dose," The Peoples' Pharmacy writes. The article then lists numerous stories from folks who feel they are now suffering because the actions of others have made it harder for them to receive the medication they need to live a better life.
Here is a chart from the Virginia Department of Health on Opioid Deaths. According to this information, 801 people died in the state in 2015 from opioid overdose.
Here is a chart that lists the number of gun deaths in the state of Virginia, current as of 2014. According to this information, there were 889 gun deaths here compared to 733 opioid deaths that same year.
As you can see, more people die from gun shot wounds than from overdosing on opioids.
However, there is little discussion (practically nothing) on the Virginia Department of Health's website about guns at all.
In fact, in their list of "health concerns" from A-Z, there isn't a mention of firearm safety or guns.
There is stuff on nuclear power plant accidents, fish consumption, and radon. I wonder how much any of us worries about nuclear power plant accidents. I know they don't cross my mind at all.
In the search box, I finally pulled up a .pdf on firearms, apparently last updated 11/10.
It says this on the .pdf -
I don't know if overdose and poisonings are the same thing in the eyes of the VDH.
Here's the whole .pdf, which I snagged as .jpg before it disappears -
I know there is a second amendment argument in the U.S. Constitution about gun right ownership, but I don't see how we can look at one thing that kills people when a similar amount of people - more, even - are dying from something else.
Isn't that like pointing to a pigeon while denying that blue jays exist?
Personally, I do not know anyone who has died from an opioid overdose, or at least I am not aware of it. My husband who is in emergency services sees it and he says overdoses do seem to be occurring more frequently but he says it is due to heroin, not prescription pain killers. Perhaps if there was not a drug available to "bring back" those who overdose, the number of deaths would be significantly higher.
But his squads also run many gunshot wound calls, most of which never make the news. Those folks are also saved by medical intervention, so feasibly gun death numbers would be higher, too, if our medical heroes didn't have so much expertise at fixing up holes in people.
While I know no overdose victims, I know people who have been affected by gun violence. My friend's son was dating one of the victims killed at Virginia Tech in April 2007. He was shaken to the core. One of my husband's firefighters, long ago, killed himself - he was a nice guy and his wife and I had a lot in common. That shook me to the core.
A very long time ago, one of my father's friends accidentally shot himself in the leg during a poker game. I had nightmares about it for years. I sometimes still do.
About 18 months ago, I was watching TV when two local news reporters were shot live on the air. I am friends with some of the staff of that TV station, and they will never be the same. I'm not sure I will be, either. As a print news reporter myself, it certainly has left me thinking twice about whether or not I want to be out in the public, open and available, a target to anyone.
Why are we emphasizing one cause of death and ignoring another? Shouldn't we try to combat all of them in some fashion (including vehicle deaths, which I know someone will bring up, and heart attacks, etc.)
Let's follow the money to see who gains from this particular war on drugs, because in the USA it's always about the money. Pharmaceutical companies. Here's an article dated 3/29/17 that says Big Pharma is really behind this problem, the result of a concentrated marketing program.
An article in the same publication notes that the remedy to an overdose, introduced in 2002, "has generated $1-2 billion a year in revenues, first for its initial British manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, and the Richmond, Virginia-based company that it spun off two years ago, Indivior."
That sounds like a good reason to sell one drug so you can sell another drug to fix the first drug, doesn't it? Billions of dollars.
The article also claims the remedy is as addictive as the drug it is saving the person from. So more sales.
The pain doctors will have more patients. They are specialists so many patients' co-pays for insurance will increase. (In my case, my co-pay would increase from $30 to see my primary care physician to $50 to see a specialist of any kind, as an example.)
Fighting drug wars in America has always been a losing proposition. From LSD to marijuana to cocaine, efforts to remove drugs from communities have only enriched drug smugglers and criminal organizations.
Wars on drugs don't work.
With Republicans in control of the federal government and many states, gun laws are off the table. The Republicans don't even mind if you're mentally ill and you own a gun.
These are not separate issues. These are one and the same. Both of these issues are about people dying and they are about money. Neither is about your right to live or my right to live, because the people who make the rules really don't give a crap about that.
They just care about their big donors, and unless your name is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, that isn't you.
We already have gun laws. You can't legally own an automatic rifle, or a Sherman tank. You can't legally own a rocket launcher. I don't want you to not have a gun if you want one. I am a crackerjack shot with a .22 rifle.
But stiffer background checks might save a life, just as making it hard for Grandma to get her pain killers might save a life. So why is Grandma suffering while Joe Gunslinger isn't even having to wait more than 20 minutes to pick up his new firearm?
I could not find a chart that compared opioid overdoses to firearms for Virginia. I did find one for Colorado that I want to share with you. It is from the Colorado Department of Health (apparently they do keep track of gun deaths there.)
Personally, I think this chart really says all that needs to be said. We're chasing after farts and rainbows, people.
Somebody, please, stop and think about what is really going on here. FOLLOW THE MONEY. And always remember that your life really doesn't matter to anyone but you, no matter how smooth the huckster talks. Your life sure as hell doesn't matter to anybody in Washington DC or to anyone who runs a drug company. They just want whatever money you have left.
This issue matters to me. It is personal. I know people who are affected by this new "war on drug" episode. They are hurting and will hurt more.
Maybe the government is hoping grandmas and grandpas will shoot themselves when the pain becomes more than they can stand.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
A Philosophical Budget
Last week when the current Republican administration unveiled the presidential wish list for a budget, many of my friends gasped and panicked.
Knowing that the thing has to go through Congress first, I held my tongue. I think, though, that an examination of this budget proposal shows a vision of America that is currently being led by a bunch of black-hearted buzzards who are cruel, at best, and evil and inhumane at worst.
If you like wars, blowing up people, and enriching those who are part of the military industrial complex, it's a great budget. I suppose millions of people think that is good stuff.
However, if you dislike stepping over the body of someone's grandmother while you're walking down Main Street USA, it's not such a good budget. If you like art, learning, museums, libraries and Amtrak, it's not a good budget.
If you're a human being who has a heart, it's not a good budget.
Why Should I Pay for Thus and Such Is Not the Right Question
Recently the Republican administration wanted to know why coal miners should pay for PBS (public television) or why a single mother with two kids should pay for something or another.
For the same reason that I have to pay for a F-15 fighter jet when I am a pacifist who staunchly disbelieves in wars and fighting.
You pay your taxes and your representatives put the money where they want it to go, that's why.
I mean, why should either I or the coal miner have to pay for the president to go to his "south White House" and play golf? Why should the coal miner lose his black lung benefits? Why should I have to worry about my health care so that the CEO of any Wall Street corporation can receive a tax break? Why is the entire country paying for the president's wife and son to live in New York when she should be in the White House?
Questions like these are stupid, and I could ask them all day. Phrasing something like that is just a way to throw off the real question, which is: do these people have any sense of morality and/or a conscience? Do they know what "empathy" is? Do they not care about other people at all? Did they not read that "do unto others" thing (Luke 6:31) in their guidebook, the Bible?
Did somebody take their teddy bear when they were in kindergarten and not give it back, and now they're having some kind of subliminal payback frenzy?
Do they not know what common decency is?
To Hell With Everything Else
So this is the budget proposal that says "government pays only for military and security" (and a wall) and to hell with everything else.
This is the budget that would let grandmas starve, and poor people rot in prisons because they can't afford a lawyer and the government would stop providing them with one.
This is the budget that would allow industries to pollute and people with lung-related illnesses to die because of dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. I have asthma; watch me wheeze.
This is the budget that would make all of our water look like it came from Flint, Michigan, because of the same reason.
This is the budget that would force rural people to drive 200 miles out of their way to reach an airport (it would no longer subsidize rural airports).
This is the budget that stops Amtrak in its tracks.
This is the budget that takes PBS and NPR out of the very rural areas that voted Republican in the last election. (I suspect those entities will survive in larger cities, like New York and San Francisco, but we will see. I think the rural stations will close.)
This is the budget that would offer you a miniscule voucher to send your kid to a private school, like that is going to actually cover even six weeks of education. You get to pay for the rest.
This is the budget that would allow housing discrimination to creep back into our communities, because funding to keep that at bay would be gone.
This is the budget that would let the wife beaters go on to be murderers, because the money to help domestic violence victims obtain protective orders would be wiped out.
This is a budget that says if you're a senior citizen and you've lost your job and need retraining, too damn bad, because the $434 million for that program would be gone.
This is the budget that would take the nation's national parks and turn them into oil drilling and fracking industrial zones. Say bye-bye to that little fuzzy blooming plant over there that might have been the cure for breast cancer, 'cause we will never know. Science has no place in this Republican administration.
This is the budget that would let people who can't afford heat freeze to death; you know, the one that would give us the headlines that say "Ten people in trailer park in up state New York found frozen." Or maybe it would say, "Two dozen elderly die from heat stroke in Birmingham, Alabama high-rise hotel" because the funding for helping low income folks with their energy bills will be gone. Apparently paying for heating and/or air conditioning assistance for poor people is not in the Bible.
This is the budget that would cut funding for Meals on Wheels (which will survive because thankfully much of its funding is from state and local monies, not federal, but again, the rural areas that voted for this Republican Administration will suffer the most from these cuts), because we can't have a 77-year-old man who lives alone (because his wife died and his Army-loving son was killed in Afghanistan) being visited by a young guy who will give him something healthy to eat and ensure he's not sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor.
That would be humane, to continue to pay for that kind of thing out of federal dollars. And the federal government is no longer in the business of humane (or humanity). It's just in the business of business.
And business, by definition, is heartless.
Eliminating the ARC
This is the budget that would eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, which serves the heart of the president's base of support. This Commission, which I have written about innumerable times over the last 30 years, has helped decrease the number of high poverty counties (295 in 1960) to 107 today. Its programs increased graduation rates, reduced infant mortality, made potable water available to untold numbers of families, and helped create more then 2,000 miles of new highways. In my state alone, the ARC has helped folks increase household income, reduced poverty, and added indoor plumbing to places that otherwise would still be shitting into the creeks and sending their waste into the major waterways of the state. The ARC region, in case you don't know, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including my county). Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.
Here's a map of the region (I circled my county in yellow, for those who may not believe we're part of this loss of funding):
Community Block Grants
This is the budget that would eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which I have also written about multiple times over the last 30 years. I know New Castle in Craig County received one of these grants, because I was writing over there at the time. I think Fincastle's sidewalks were put in place in part with a CDBG, and I suspect but can't remember for sure that much of Buchanan's recovery from the 1985 flood came about because of a CDBG. These grants are used for a multitude of things, from reinventing "blighted" areas to installing plumbing to revitalizing business districts. If people think this money is handed out willie-nillie, they are wrong. Communities go through extensive processes to receive these funds, and their projects have to be well composed and thought out before requests for funding are considered. It takes communities years to obtain these funds. They're not gifts, and regardless of the FAKE NEWS coming out of the Republican Administration, these grants do have measurable results. I've seen them myself.
Yes, I'm a Liberal
This budget proposal does not reflect what I want to see the United States be or become. I hope it is not who we are, because it is a callous document.
I want museums, libraries, parks, and streets. I don't ride on Amtrak but I want to see it continue. I want poor people to receive the help they need, those who need to work receive the education they require in this new world of technology, and all of the other stuff that apparently the black-hearted buzzards in Washington, D.C. have no respect or regard for.
The other day during a phone conversation I was informed with every other sentence that I am a Democrat. I'm really more of a social liberal, but whatever. The word "democrat" was hurled at me as if it were some kind of taunt or insult. This same person (who is a Republican) was unhappy because someone could go into his establishment and sue him if they touched a hot water heater and there was a sign up that said "don't touch."
Hey, that's the free market, Mr. Republican. If there's a lawyer out there who will take the case to take your money, that's the way it is. If you want regulations to stop that kind of thing, then move on over to my side. Otherwise, pay your insurance premiums, which will go unchecked and keep rising. That's the free market capitalism that you love so much.
He also noted that he didn't have to worry about health care because he was on Medicare. Republicans opposed Medicare (and Medicaid) in the 1960s when it began and are doing their best to defund Medicaid now and Medicare is in their sights. So welcome to my side, Mr. Republican. You're enjoying the fruits of my bleeding heart and that of those who came before me. How sad that you would deny that same security to your own children and grandchildren.
People who deride me for being liberal say that word like it's some kind of curse. It isn't. If I must be labeled, it's a label I embrace.
Jesus was a liberal, and that should say something about how one should act. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. But here you go:
· In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus proclaims that how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and other "least of these," is how you treat Jesus himself. And if you fail to help the "least of these," Jesus promises, he will send you to Hell.
· The Old Testament is permeated with an overwhelming concern for the poor and for economic justice.
· In the Old Testament Jubilee Year, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners. That's called redistribution of wealth.
· And last but not least, there are the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:25: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
None of that says throw grandma under the bus and give taxpayer money to the rich guys who own Halliburton while we build nuclear weapons so we can blow up the world.
I favor that part of the U.S. Constitution that says "promote the general welfare." I take that to mean we as a society have been instructed to make sure that everyone has clean water, the roads don't have potholes, people who are sick receive the care they need, and that folks who find themselves in trouble have a safety net underneath them so they don't end up living in the streets. We're a wealthy and rich nation and there is absolutely no reason for the abject poverty that I have seen in my lifetime.
Promoting the general welfare doesn't ignore the other parts of the Preamble - establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. But it is the part that I think is currently being ignored and the part certain people do not recognize or want to recognize. Justice is first, defense is last; domestic tranquility and general welfare are in the middle. But defense - the one listed last and therefore perhaps the least important to the framers of this revered document - is the one that seems to be uppermost in the minds of the current Republican administration.
Most of us want the same things in life, I think. Freedom to move about, live where we want, work at the job we like. We want prosperity, however one defines that. For a select few, apparently, it is vast amounts of money; for others, like me, that means the ability to go the art museum and learn something. It's rather like success - you can define it a million ways and none of them are wrong. You may think I am not successful but I would tell you that as far as I am concerned, you are wrong. And you may think you are successful, and I might disagree. What does it matter if we both are happy?
I would hope that most of us would prefer that our fellow human beings do not suffer; that we want them and their children (as well as our own, of course), to be healthy; we want to live without fear of crime and other boogie men.
The argument is how to achieve these goals. We did the no-regulations-and-work-people-until-they-drop thing already, 100 years ago. We did that back during the beginnings of the Industrial Age and into the early 1900s, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York took the lives of 146 garment workers and showed us the error of allowing industry to go unchecked by regulations and government oversight.
Must we watch hundreds of people die again before we wake up and realize that industries do not police themselves? That churches cannot, or will not, serve and help all who are poor and needy? That $7 an hour doesn't feed, house and clothe a single individual, much less a family?
It looks like it. I feel like we're moving backwards in time, heading into an era of the plague.
I hope the people of this land find their heart again, or there will be nothing here left to save.
Knowing that the thing has to go through Congress first, I held my tongue. I think, though, that an examination of this budget proposal shows a vision of America that is currently being led by a bunch of black-hearted buzzards who are cruel, at best, and evil and inhumane at worst.
If you like wars, blowing up people, and enriching those who are part of the military industrial complex, it's a great budget. I suppose millions of people think that is good stuff.
However, if you dislike stepping over the body of someone's grandmother while you're walking down Main Street USA, it's not such a good budget. If you like art, learning, museums, libraries and Amtrak, it's not a good budget.
If you're a human being who has a heart, it's not a good budget.
Why Should I Pay for Thus and Such Is Not the Right Question
Recently the Republican administration wanted to know why coal miners should pay for PBS (public television) or why a single mother with two kids should pay for something or another.
For the same reason that I have to pay for a F-15 fighter jet when I am a pacifist who staunchly disbelieves in wars and fighting.
You pay your taxes and your representatives put the money where they want it to go, that's why.
I mean, why should either I or the coal miner have to pay for the president to go to his "south White House" and play golf? Why should the coal miner lose his black lung benefits? Why should I have to worry about my health care so that the CEO of any Wall Street corporation can receive a tax break? Why is the entire country paying for the president's wife and son to live in New York when she should be in the White House?
Questions like these are stupid, and I could ask them all day. Phrasing something like that is just a way to throw off the real question, which is: do these people have any sense of morality and/or a conscience? Do they know what "empathy" is? Do they not care about other people at all? Did they not read that "do unto others" thing (Luke 6:31) in their guidebook, the Bible?
Did somebody take their teddy bear when they were in kindergarten and not give it back, and now they're having some kind of subliminal payback frenzy?
Do they not know what common decency is?
To Hell With Everything Else
So this is the budget proposal that says "government pays only for military and security" (and a wall) and to hell with everything else.
This is the budget that would let grandmas starve, and poor people rot in prisons because they can't afford a lawyer and the government would stop providing them with one.
This is the budget that would allow industries to pollute and people with lung-related illnesses to die because of dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. I have asthma; watch me wheeze.
This is the budget that would make all of our water look like it came from Flint, Michigan, because of the same reason.
This is the budget that would force rural people to drive 200 miles out of their way to reach an airport (it would no longer subsidize rural airports).
This is the budget that stops Amtrak in its tracks.
This is the budget that takes PBS and NPR out of the very rural areas that voted Republican in the last election. (I suspect those entities will survive in larger cities, like New York and San Francisco, but we will see. I think the rural stations will close.)
This is the budget that would offer you a miniscule voucher to send your kid to a private school, like that is going to actually cover even six weeks of education. You get to pay for the rest.
This is the budget that would allow housing discrimination to creep back into our communities, because funding to keep that at bay would be gone.
This is the budget that would let the wife beaters go on to be murderers, because the money to help domestic violence victims obtain protective orders would be wiped out.
This is a budget that says if you're a senior citizen and you've lost your job and need retraining, too damn bad, because the $434 million for that program would be gone.
This is the budget that would take the nation's national parks and turn them into oil drilling and fracking industrial zones. Say bye-bye to that little fuzzy blooming plant over there that might have been the cure for breast cancer, 'cause we will never know. Science has no place in this Republican administration.
This is the budget that would let people who can't afford heat freeze to death; you know, the one that would give us the headlines that say "Ten people in trailer park in up state New York found frozen." Or maybe it would say, "Two dozen elderly die from heat stroke in Birmingham, Alabama high-rise hotel" because the funding for helping low income folks with their energy bills will be gone. Apparently paying for heating and/or air conditioning assistance for poor people is not in the Bible.
This is the budget that would cut funding for Meals on Wheels (which will survive because thankfully much of its funding is from state and local monies, not federal, but again, the rural areas that voted for this Republican Administration will suffer the most from these cuts), because we can't have a 77-year-old man who lives alone (because his wife died and his Army-loving son was killed in Afghanistan) being visited by a young guy who will give him something healthy to eat and ensure he's not sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor.
That would be humane, to continue to pay for that kind of thing out of federal dollars. And the federal government is no longer in the business of humane (or humanity). It's just in the business of business.
And business, by definition, is heartless.
Eliminating the ARC
This is the budget that would eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, which serves the heart of the president's base of support. This Commission, which I have written about innumerable times over the last 30 years, has helped decrease the number of high poverty counties (295 in 1960) to 107 today. Its programs increased graduation rates, reduced infant mortality, made potable water available to untold numbers of families, and helped create more then 2,000 miles of new highways. In my state alone, the ARC has helped folks increase household income, reduced poverty, and added indoor plumbing to places that otherwise would still be shitting into the creeks and sending their waste into the major waterways of the state. The ARC region, in case you don't know, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including my county). Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.
Here's a map of the region (I circled my county in yellow, for those who may not believe we're part of this loss of funding):
Community Block Grants
This is the budget that would eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which I have also written about multiple times over the last 30 years. I know New Castle in Craig County received one of these grants, because I was writing over there at the time. I think Fincastle's sidewalks were put in place in part with a CDBG, and I suspect but can't remember for sure that much of Buchanan's recovery from the 1985 flood came about because of a CDBG. These grants are used for a multitude of things, from reinventing "blighted" areas to installing plumbing to revitalizing business districts. If people think this money is handed out willie-nillie, they are wrong. Communities go through extensive processes to receive these funds, and their projects have to be well composed and thought out before requests for funding are considered. It takes communities years to obtain these funds. They're not gifts, and regardless of the FAKE NEWS coming out of the Republican Administration, these grants do have measurable results. I've seen them myself.
Yes, I'm a Liberal
This budget proposal does not reflect what I want to see the United States be or become. I hope it is not who we are, because it is a callous document.
I want museums, libraries, parks, and streets. I don't ride on Amtrak but I want to see it continue. I want poor people to receive the help they need, those who need to work receive the education they require in this new world of technology, and all of the other stuff that apparently the black-hearted buzzards in Washington, D.C. have no respect or regard for.
The other day during a phone conversation I was informed with every other sentence that I am a Democrat. I'm really more of a social liberal, but whatever. The word "democrat" was hurled at me as if it were some kind of taunt or insult. This same person (who is a Republican) was unhappy because someone could go into his establishment and sue him if they touched a hot water heater and there was a sign up that said "don't touch."
Hey, that's the free market, Mr. Republican. If there's a lawyer out there who will take the case to take your money, that's the way it is. If you want regulations to stop that kind of thing, then move on over to my side. Otherwise, pay your insurance premiums, which will go unchecked and keep rising. That's the free market capitalism that you love so much.
He also noted that he didn't have to worry about health care because he was on Medicare. Republicans opposed Medicare (and Medicaid) in the 1960s when it began and are doing their best to defund Medicaid now and Medicare is in their sights. So welcome to my side, Mr. Republican. You're enjoying the fruits of my bleeding heart and that of those who came before me. How sad that you would deny that same security to your own children and grandchildren.
People who deride me for being liberal say that word like it's some kind of curse. It isn't. If I must be labeled, it's a label I embrace.
Jesus was a liberal, and that should say something about how one should act. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. But here you go:
· In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus proclaims that how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and other "least of these," is how you treat Jesus himself. And if you fail to help the "least of these," Jesus promises, he will send you to Hell.
· The Old Testament is permeated with an overwhelming concern for the poor and for economic justice.
· In the Old Testament Jubilee Year, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners. That's called redistribution of wealth.
· And last but not least, there are the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:25: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
None of that says throw grandma under the bus and give taxpayer money to the rich guys who own Halliburton while we build nuclear weapons so we can blow up the world.
I favor that part of the U.S. Constitution that says "promote the general welfare." I take that to mean we as a society have been instructed to make sure that everyone has clean water, the roads don't have potholes, people who are sick receive the care they need, and that folks who find themselves in trouble have a safety net underneath them so they don't end up living in the streets. We're a wealthy and rich nation and there is absolutely no reason for the abject poverty that I have seen in my lifetime.
Promoting the general welfare doesn't ignore the other parts of the Preamble - establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. But it is the part that I think is currently being ignored and the part certain people do not recognize or want to recognize. Justice is first, defense is last; domestic tranquility and general welfare are in the middle. But defense - the one listed last and therefore perhaps the least important to the framers of this revered document - is the one that seems to be uppermost in the minds of the current Republican administration.
Most of us want the same things in life, I think. Freedom to move about, live where we want, work at the job we like. We want prosperity, however one defines that. For a select few, apparently, it is vast amounts of money; for others, like me, that means the ability to go the art museum and learn something. It's rather like success - you can define it a million ways and none of them are wrong. You may think I am not successful but I would tell you that as far as I am concerned, you are wrong. And you may think you are successful, and I might disagree. What does it matter if we both are happy?
I would hope that most of us would prefer that our fellow human beings do not suffer; that we want them and their children (as well as our own, of course), to be healthy; we want to live without fear of crime and other boogie men.
The argument is how to achieve these goals. We did the no-regulations-and-work-people-until-they-drop thing already, 100 years ago. We did that back during the beginnings of the Industrial Age and into the early 1900s, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York took the lives of 146 garment workers and showed us the error of allowing industry to go unchecked by regulations and government oversight.
Must we watch hundreds of people die again before we wake up and realize that industries do not police themselves? That churches cannot, or will not, serve and help all who are poor and needy? That $7 an hour doesn't feed, house and clothe a single individual, much less a family?
It looks like it. I feel like we're moving backwards in time, heading into an era of the plague.
I hope the people of this land find their heart again, or there will be nothing here left to save.
Wednesday, March 08, 2017
International Women's Day
Today, the annual International Women's Day, is a global day that celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. Some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, make International Women's Day a national holiday.
It isn't a national holiday in the United States. We don't celebrate women here. We castigate them, grab 'em where it counts, take away their reproductive rights, call them names, offer wolf whistles at them, offer non-support to one another because one woman might get something another doesn't have, and otherwise do little to enhance and develop the one half of the population that the other half cannot do without.
That's one side of it, anyway. I went to an all-women's undergraduate college whose motto was "Women Who Are Going Places Start at Hollins." In that environment, I heard no castigation, no catcalls, had no one grab me, and found support from teachers and fellow students unlike any that I had experienced. It remains my go-to place when I feel a need for support and encouragement. The campus is not far from me and sometimes I simply drive there and sit in the parking lot, watching the young women stroll across the grounds, backpacks flung behind them. The world is wide open to them.
I'd love to think they would find a better world - a better place - than I have. A place where jobs are welcoming and open, not stifling and under paid. A place where men treat women as human beings, not as objects. A place where the "male gaze," so prominent in movies and TV, has been eliminated. (The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. As an example, Hardee's commercials are good at this. That company, whose CEO was thankfully not named head of the federal Department of labor, has ads where voluptuous women in skin-tight clothing sit on a car and chow down on a hamburger like they're giving a guy a blow job.)
U.S. women frequently point to women in Arabic countries as counterpoints to indicate that we have come a long way, baby, but have we?
Women's rights are still denied in many parts of the world, where women live as second class citizens. In the US, men and women have the same legal rights, but we still experience discrimination against women on a large scale. While women in the United states may have the right to vote, but females are still discriminated against in terms of educational and career opportunities.
The pay gap, in particular, remains a problem in the United States. Gender gaps in labor force participation are associated with lower growth rates the world over.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a woman doing the same job as a man can expect to earn only 79% of what the male does if she works in the United States. In other words, for every $100 the man earns, the woman earns only $79. Over time, this adds up significantly, leaving the woman to have less Social Security income in her retirement years, as well as having fewer dollars to spend annually during her work life.
Fifty-seven percent of all women participate in the labor force. (Almost all women work at home, unpaid, doing laundry, taking care of sick children or parents, or simply being a mom. Staying at home ain't easy.) The most common jobs for women are secretaries/administrative assistants, teachers, and nurses. Among the top 25 most common jobs for women, being a CEO is not one of them.
Here's a little graphic of what has changed for U.S. women over the last 50 years:
One of those "helps," the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), is in the process of being repealed and "replaced" by the current Republican Administration. The new proposal, unveiled yesterday, is not being met with much pomp and circumstance even from within the GOP, so it remains to be seen how that will affect women if and when it passes. Obviously, Republicans will continue their war on women's reproductive rights and their ability to manage their own health care. Apparently some of the good ol' boys still believe women shouldn't run when they menstruate, or sweat, or otherwise exert themselves, for fear of a fainting spell a la Scarlett O'Hara. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it," a phrase I heard frequently growing up, seems to be the political mantra when it comes to the so-called fairer sex.
But we have to worry about it, because no one is going to care of me but me, just as no one is going to take care of you but you. I am fortunate to have a loving and respectful husband, but not everyone woman is. Lots of women are married to assholes who do not deserve them.
Nor will my husband live forever. Even though I am not healthy, the odds still favor my outliving him. Women outlive men by about five to six years. By age 85 there are roughly six women to every four men. It is important that women prepare for this eventuality, but lower wages make that harder than it needs to be.
Today women went on strike all over the globe. On articles about a school system in Virginia that shut down completely because so many teachers requested the day off, I saw comments from women (and men) that were the verbal equivalent to being spat upon. Why should women "strike," when they supposedly have everything, these commenters said.
Because they don't have everything. Statistics everywhere back that up. Women who think they have equality are sadly mistaken and have been misled into believing that because they are not suffering hardship, others do not, either. But I assure you, that is not the case. In my work as a news reporter, I saw plenty of women who were mistreated, underrated, underappreciated, and unloved. I sat in the trailers of single women who had lost their husbands who had nowhere to turn, and I held the hands of other women who cried because they'd just lost their jobs at the sewing factory in New Castle and had no clue what they would do next (that was back in the mid-1990s; we don't have textile factories here anymore). Life isn't pretty, and it can be downright ugly even for the most beautiful female.
And while I'm speaking of ugly, I will leave you with these ugly facts from the CDC (which stands to lose funding under the new Republican Administration, by the way) to ponder (hit the first link for the .pdf if this is hard to read):
One last thing: if you're a guy, would you want to be a woman? Think about that, and if the answer is no - then think about why not. List those. That list of "why nots" are the things that need to change.
It isn't a national holiday in the United States. We don't celebrate women here. We castigate them, grab 'em where it counts, take away their reproductive rights, call them names, offer wolf whistles at them, offer non-support to one another because one woman might get something another doesn't have, and otherwise do little to enhance and develop the one half of the population that the other half cannot do without.
That's one side of it, anyway. I went to an all-women's undergraduate college whose motto was "Women Who Are Going Places Start at Hollins." In that environment, I heard no castigation, no catcalls, had no one grab me, and found support from teachers and fellow students unlike any that I had experienced. It remains my go-to place when I feel a need for support and encouragement. The campus is not far from me and sometimes I simply drive there and sit in the parking lot, watching the young women stroll across the grounds, backpacks flung behind them. The world is wide open to them.
I'd love to think they would find a better world - a better place - than I have. A place where jobs are welcoming and open, not stifling and under paid. A place where men treat women as human beings, not as objects. A place where the "male gaze," so prominent in movies and TV, has been eliminated. (The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. As an example, Hardee's commercials are good at this. That company, whose CEO was thankfully not named head of the federal Department of labor, has ads where voluptuous women in skin-tight clothing sit on a car and chow down on a hamburger like they're giving a guy a blow job.)
U.S. women frequently point to women in Arabic countries as counterpoints to indicate that we have come a long way, baby, but have we?
Women's rights are still denied in many parts of the world, where women live as second class citizens. In the US, men and women have the same legal rights, but we still experience discrimination against women on a large scale. While women in the United states may have the right to vote, but females are still discriminated against in terms of educational and career opportunities.
The pay gap, in particular, remains a problem in the United States. Gender gaps in labor force participation are associated with lower growth rates the world over.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a woman doing the same job as a man can expect to earn only 79% of what the male does if she works in the United States. In other words, for every $100 the man earns, the woman earns only $79. Over time, this adds up significantly, leaving the woman to have less Social Security income in her retirement years, as well as having fewer dollars to spend annually during her work life.
Fifty-seven percent of all women participate in the labor force. (Almost all women work at home, unpaid, doing laundry, taking care of sick children or parents, or simply being a mom. Staying at home ain't easy.) The most common jobs for women are secretaries/administrative assistants, teachers, and nurses. Among the top 25 most common jobs for women, being a CEO is not one of them.
Here's a little graphic of what has changed for U.S. women over the last 50 years:
One of those "helps," the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), is in the process of being repealed and "replaced" by the current Republican Administration. The new proposal, unveiled yesterday, is not being met with much pomp and circumstance even from within the GOP, so it remains to be seen how that will affect women if and when it passes. Obviously, Republicans will continue their war on women's reproductive rights and their ability to manage their own health care. Apparently some of the good ol' boys still believe women shouldn't run when they menstruate, or sweat, or otherwise exert themselves, for fear of a fainting spell a la Scarlett O'Hara. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it," a phrase I heard frequently growing up, seems to be the political mantra when it comes to the so-called fairer sex.
But we have to worry about it, because no one is going to care of me but me, just as no one is going to take care of you but you. I am fortunate to have a loving and respectful husband, but not everyone woman is. Lots of women are married to assholes who do not deserve them.
Nor will my husband live forever. Even though I am not healthy, the odds still favor my outliving him. Women outlive men by about five to six years. By age 85 there are roughly six women to every four men. It is important that women prepare for this eventuality, but lower wages make that harder than it needs to be.
Today women went on strike all over the globe. On articles about a school system in Virginia that shut down completely because so many teachers requested the day off, I saw comments from women (and men) that were the verbal equivalent to being spat upon. Why should women "strike," when they supposedly have everything, these commenters said.
Because they don't have everything. Statistics everywhere back that up. Women who think they have equality are sadly mistaken and have been misled into believing that because they are not suffering hardship, others do not, either. But I assure you, that is not the case. In my work as a news reporter, I saw plenty of women who were mistreated, underrated, underappreciated, and unloved. I sat in the trailers of single women who had lost their husbands who had nowhere to turn, and I held the hands of other women who cried because they'd just lost their jobs at the sewing factory in New Castle and had no clue what they would do next (that was back in the mid-1990s; we don't have textile factories here anymore). Life isn't pretty, and it can be downright ugly even for the most beautiful female.
And while I'm speaking of ugly, I will leave you with these ugly facts from the CDC (which stands to lose funding under the new Republican Administration, by the way) to ponder (hit the first link for the .pdf if this is hard to read):
One last thing: if you're a guy, would you want to be a woman? Think about that, and if the answer is no - then think about why not. List those. That list of "why nots" are the things that need to change.
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
A Statement from the Authors' Guild
We Are Not the People’s Enemies
First President Trump complained that “the media” was biased against him. “Dishonest.” Presidents have made such complaints before, in moments of weakness and self-pity.
Then he labeled the media as “the opposition party.”
Now he has declared journalists to be “the enemy of the American People.”
We at the Authors Guild hear that as a declaration of war. We know our history. Enemy of the People is a phrase long favored by authoritarians and tyrants. The “correct Russian term,” Gary Shteyngart points out, is врагнарода, vrag naroda. Long before Lenin and Stalin used it, Robespierre inaugurated the Reign of Terror by declaring that the Revolutionary Government “owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
An earlier president, John F. Kennedy—when he was taking a beating in the press after the Bay of Pigs fiasco—was asked if he resented the media. He said this:
“It is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check, really, on what is going on in the administration … I would think that Mr. Khrushchev operating a totalitarian system, which has many advantages as far as being able to move in secret, and all the rest—there is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily …Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”
President Kennedy was a member of the Authors Guild. So are many of the journalists now covering the Trump presidency, the historians who will soon reflect upon it, and the novelists who challenge us with their imaginative—and, yes, subversive—visions.
The administration is now said to be preparing the elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities under the false guise of budgetary necessity. We understand this, too, to be part of an attack on the free expression of diverse views.
The Authors Guild serves writers as a nonpartisan advocate. Our members represent a broad spectrum of social and political views. But blanket attacks on writers and journalists, as a class, are not a partisan issue; they are attacks on democracy itself. And, as advocates for authors and the first amendment rights of writers, we cannot let these attacks go unanswered.
We are not the people’s enemies. We are the eyes and ears of the people. And we are the people’s memory.
First President Trump complained that “the media” was biased against him. “Dishonest.” Presidents have made such complaints before, in moments of weakness and self-pity.
Then he labeled the media as “the opposition party.”
Now he has declared journalists to be “the enemy of the American People.”
We at the Authors Guild hear that as a declaration of war. We know our history. Enemy of the People is a phrase long favored by authoritarians and tyrants. The “correct Russian term,” Gary Shteyngart points out, is врагнарода, vrag naroda. Long before Lenin and Stalin used it, Robespierre inaugurated the Reign of Terror by declaring that the Revolutionary Government “owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
An earlier president, John F. Kennedy—when he was taking a beating in the press after the Bay of Pigs fiasco—was asked if he resented the media. He said this:
“It is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check, really, on what is going on in the administration … I would think that Mr. Khrushchev operating a totalitarian system, which has many advantages as far as being able to move in secret, and all the rest—there is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily …Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”
President Kennedy was a member of the Authors Guild. So are many of the journalists now covering the Trump presidency, the historians who will soon reflect upon it, and the novelists who challenge us with their imaginative—and, yes, subversive—visions.
The administration is now said to be preparing the elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities under the false guise of budgetary necessity. We understand this, too, to be part of an attack on the free expression of diverse views.
The Authors Guild serves writers as a nonpartisan advocate. Our members represent a broad spectrum of social and political views. But blanket attacks on writers and journalists, as a class, are not a partisan issue; they are attacks on democracy itself. And, as advocates for authors and the first amendment rights of writers, we cannot let these attacks go unanswered.
We are not the people’s enemies. We are the eyes and ears of the people. And we are the people’s memory.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Cardboard Bob
Virginia's 6th District Congressman, Bob Goodlatte, choose not to show up at a town hall meeting today in Vinton.
The folks talked to his cardboard likeness instead.
I believe in education, environmental protections, and taking care of people.
I do not support Bob. Bob, by his actions, has proven to me that he does not believe in any of those things.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Burning Bridges Beyond Repair
I am not an enemy of the people. Nor are any of the local news media folks I know "enemies of the people" - and I know many of them.
They are all good people - beautiful people - who do their jobs with determination and grit, and who would never dream of making up a news story, or of using their position to go after someone just because.
People who are in the media are your neighbors. We send our children to your schools, we walk our dogs, we spend our money in your community.
No, the people who write the local news are not CNN or FOX or MSNBC. But the jobs they do are similar. Just not so, well, big league.
The recent tweet from #45 cut me to the core. I am not longer a working news reporter, but I took my job seriously. I lived and breathed it 24/7 for decades. I wrote enough words to have created numerous books, but instead I chose to write small articles, deciphering information so that you, my neighbor, would have some inkling as to what was happening in the immediate world around you.
I was a government reporter and at various times I have covered meetings in multiple counties. I've written for more than a dozen publications, including The Fincastle Herald, The Roanoke Times, The New Castle Record, The Roanoke Star, The Roanoker magazine, The Vinton Messenger, The Salem Times Register, and several that are no longer in existence. So take nothing I say here as an implication of my resident county alone, because I have covered meetings in eight different counties over the years, as well as numerous towns. Regardless of location, the routines are the same. The elected folks gather in a place in a meeting open to the public to do the public's business. The public seldom shows up.
I was there. I was your watchdog, ensuring that your representative was really representing you.
While you were at your 9-5 job and then settling down with your children and/or spouse, sometimes I was working on hour 14 of my job that day. Breaking news doesn't wait. Meetings that are supposed to run for two hours sometimes go on for seven. I didn't get to close up my notebook and go home simply because the clock said I was heading into overtime.
While you were fixing dinner, I was making sure local government officials followed the rules (they don't always) and obtaining the facts offered at a planning commission meeting, a board of zoning appeals meeting, or a supervisors meeting. Afterwards, I dissected them as honestly and truthfully as I could so that you, the reader, could see what your government was doing.
Because I was there, officials could not go into a closed session to discuss things behind closed doors. I would call them on it if they tried. I knew the Virginia Freedom of Information (FOIA) front to back and didn't hesitate to cite it if I had concerns. My presence alone was enough to keep them in line, usually. They knew I would write "the council then went into closed session, refusing to cite a legal reason under the Virginia FOIA" if they tried to do that. I did write that more than once, and on occasion that was enough to upset a few residents and create a stir. They didn't do it again.
That's what the media does. We keep you, the people, informed. We sit for hours at boring meetings, taking notes and listening to mutterings of elected officials so we can quote them correctly.
I spent long nights watching the electoral board count votes during elections. I watched school boards make decisions that affected your children. I drove home at midnight after long public hearings on battleground issues such as budget figures and tax hikes. I woke up at 3 a.m. to finish an article due by 7 a.m.
I sat with your representatives and talked to them about current issues. Then I wrote about it. I never wrote with an agenda, though I have been accused of that a time or two. I just wrote what happened at meetings or what an official said. I have been told that most people liked my work because they considered it to be fair and balanced. Republicans thought I was a Republican and Democrats thought I was a Democrat. I used to laugh at that, and for the longest time I never told anyone my political leanings. If you read this blog regularly, you know now I lean left - and being a journalist is one reason why. I have been in the homes of many of our poorer residents, seen how they live, and watched the "free market" system screw people over without a second thought. It's not a very fair, or even Christian, economic system.
Supervisors frequently found me problematic, because I quoted them. On more than one occasion, I had to produce a tape of the meeting to an editor (I used to tape them all), to prove I'd quoted someone correctly. Most frequently the complaint was "I might have said that, but that is not what I meant."
Mind reading is not part of a news reporter's job. If #45 or one of his representatives are speaking about something but mean something else, there is no way to know that they have misspoken. Unfortunately, in the visual medium, the news is immediate, taped, and hard to fact-check during live appearances. That makes the fact-checking look like the speaker is being picked on - but the media has a duty to go back and correct errors. If there was not a massacre in Sweden or Bowling Green, then the media has a responsibility to make note of that.
If a supervisor said he was going to do away with this or that, and I reported that, but he really meant something else - who's at fault? Usually I was on a deadline, with the story due two hours from the time the meeting ended, if I was lucky. I had little time to call someone who seldom answered my calls anyway.
But I did double-check frequently, and as a result I am pleased to report that during my career there were very few corrections on my stories. Occasionally I would mistype a number, and I am terrible at computing percentages, so sometimes, yes, I messed up. One of the most aggravating corrections I ever had to make came about because an editor thought he knew more than I did and rearranged my article to the extent that he completely changed the facts. I stopped writing for the publication after that story ran.
Once I wrote an article about local volunteer fire departments that did not go over well with the volunteers. Volunteer fire departments can be cliquish, and many members attacked me. Hard. They sent letters that the editor would not even let me read, they were so hateful. The story came out of a town hall meeting held by an elected official. Several members of a local volunteer department showed up to report that calls were not being run efficiently, that volunteering was down, that, frankly, the community was suffering and people were dying because the locality needed paid firefighters and emergency service workers. I checked with the county dispatch and did follow-up on rescue calls and sure enough, the locality constantly was having to ask for assistance from neighboring communities or from volunteer departments on the far end of the county. I did the legwork; the story was right. But a certain segment of the community demonized me for writing it. The irony of it all was that my husband used to be a volunteer firefighter, and is a paid firefighter. I knew what was going on probably better than most reporters, and I was sure of my facts. What I had miscalculated was the ego of the volunteers involved.
News reporters spend hours at dull meetings, often coming home after midnight to type out or record a story, just so you, the reader or listener, can know what is going on. So you will know that your next-door neighbor was killed in a car wreck, that your landlord's house burned down, that your government just decided to give millions of tax dollars to a private corporation for a few jobs that won't pay more than $40,000 a year.
That is not being your enemy. That is doing a job so you can stay informed. It is offering you information so you can act upon it, if you choose.
One of the things I learned over time was that no two people read a story the same way. People frequently do not read the bylines of articles. Many times I was stopped and someone said, "Did you know thus and so happened, I read it in this publication." I would smile and say, "Yes, I wrote the story. I believe you must have missed a paragraph during your review, because the article actually said . . ."
So even though I gave it my 100 percent, the readers (and viewers) didn't - and don't - give it their 100 percent. They skim, they read only headlines, they take away from a story only the things that confirm their world view. Reporters can't be responsible for how a reader comprehends a factual, well-written article or news report.
Unfortunately, issues between the press and politicians are long-standing. *In 1800, a newspaper wrote this of Thomas Jefferson: If he were elected, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced . . . the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes."
Despite that villainous description, it was Jefferson who supported what has come to be known as The Fourth Estate. He said that if he had to choose between "a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government," he would take the newspapers without a government.* And don't forget, the press and the freedom thereof is explicitly mentioned in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Knowledge is key to democracy. That means reading things you do not agree with, learning things you don't care to know, and understanding that the world is about more than just you and your opinions.
The present day hostility toward the news media is terrifying. The current Republican administration needs a common enemy, and it has chosen the press to vilify for the moment. (Incidentally, creating a common enemy is on the list of how to become a dictator at WikiHow. Controlling the media is also listed frequently in discussions about how to create a fascist state. (WikiHow is not a source I would use in an article, but this is a personal blog entry and therefore opinion. Different rules.))
*The current Republican administration has gone after the media, and been openly hostile towards it, almost from day one. #45 said he had a "running war" with the media; his pal Bannon called the press "the opposition party" and said it should "keep its mouth shut."* Some of his other representatives have been openly critical as well.
Once public trust in the media has been undercut - once it has become even more politicized than it already was - the damage will be very hard to undo. Maybe the public trust has already reached that point where it will be very hard if not impossible to repair, I don't know. I hope not. Society here has depended upon a free and vibrant press to move forward and to keep politicians on their toes for more than 200 years. If the Fourth Estate goes down, we will all suffer mightily because of it.
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*Quotes taken from Time magazine, February 13, 2017 edition, page 4.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Autocracy v. Democracy
"With someone like this barging into your consciousness every hour of every day, you begin to get a glimpse of what it must be like to live in an autocracy of some kind. Every day in countries unfortunate enough to be ruled by a lone dictator, people are constantly subjected to the Supreme Leader’s presence, in their homes, in their workplaces, as they walk down the street. Big Brother never leaves you alone. His face bears down on you on every flickering screen. He begins to permeate your psyche and soul; he dominates every news cycle and issues pronouncements — each one shocking and destabilizing — round the clock. He delights in constantly provoking and surprising you, so that his monstrous ego can be perennially fed. And because he is also mentally unstable, forever lashing out in manic spasms of pain and anger, you live each day with some measure of trepidation. What will he come out with next? Somehow, he is never in control of himself and yet he is always in control of you.
One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all. The president of a free country may dominate the news cycle many days — but he is not omnipresent — and because we live under the rule of law, we can afford to turn the news off at times. A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene. In that sense, it seems to me, we already live in a country with markedly less freedom than we did a month ago. It’s less like living in a democracy than being a child trapped in a house where there is an abusive and unpredictable father, who will brook no reason, respect no counter-argument, admit no error, and always, always up the ante until catastrophe inevitably strikes. This is what I mean by the idea that we are living through an emergency."
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