What the #$*(P&? Enough Already!

Like hundreds of millions of folks in the country, I watched with hope and awe the inauguration a few weeks ago. It was one of those times when I really truly thought an era was ending, we had collectively pulled our heads out of…wherever…and were finally going to change course and fix what is so clearly broken in our economy.

This, after the ‘great bailout’ which (no surprises) turned out to be the great big Christmas bonus from us taxpayers to fatcat bankers and Wall Street bigwigs via their Republican buddies. You know, the guys who then took those ‘critically needed to save us’ trillions of dollars, then managed both to layoff thousands AND still give themselves ‘great job’ bonuses and continue fueling their private jets and ‘team building’ exercises in the Bahamas using our tax dollars.

I figured (hoped) that those payoffs/paybacks/lovely party gifts were the last gasp of a 30 year failed economic theory that if you cut taxes at the top, it spurs investment and that if you regulate less, the market takes care of everything. We can all see how that one turned out, right? (Lots of investment dollars channeled into suspect mortgage schemes and more and more Ponzis that then begat more and more suspect mortgage schemes and more and more Ponzis meanwhile real jobs eroding and pop! goes the economy).

Then we’ve had a succession of black Mondays, as they’re being called, as more and more employers ’shed’ jobs (like a dog sheds old fur? These are PEOPLE, not things to be ’shed’) and more and more people sink into unemployment and debt and despair and desperation.

Then comes Mr. Obama and his idea to take those dollars previously directed to fund private jet fuel and Bahamas massages and $30 Million bonuses for running us into the ground and use it to, well, fix our aging creaking water systems, our bridges that are falling down (remember Minn 35W?), and our schools that house our future and are becoming dangerously outdated. Sounds good to me. At least I get a better water system, safe bridges and good school facilities out of it. Maybe even some more energy independence. Under the previous plan, I got to read about how great it was to steal us all blind AND still maintain my standard of living AND get great bonuses for doing so.

So, OK. Obama makes a critical mistake though: He thinks that good ideas should be acknowledged, especially when so many of you have royally blown it (and don’t even pretend to be surprised that this happened since we all know you very well saw it a looong time ago and ignored it because it was making you rich as Rome was burning).

Imagine my surprise to read though that some are either more delusional than I thought OR they really don’t give a crap about the rest of us and are just looking for any way to derail their ‘opposition’ just for spite or because they want a return to the days when they’re lining their pockets with our tax dollars while we drown.

Because Republicans are now looking to ‘trim’ the rescue package, take tax dollars out of infrastructure spending (stuff we really need) in favor of tax cuts designed to ’stimulate spending’ – give us our tax dollars back to spend any way we like. Um, if we don’t have jobs, and don’t even have the prospect of getting jobs, we don’t pay income tax and we don’t get any tax dollars to spend, geniuses. What dollars we do get we’re saving like newly evangelized recovering grasshoppers who’ve just realized the storm is coming and we’re not ready.

Companies who make stuff for us to buy with our newly-freed-non-existent tax dollars aren’t investing either because, well, nobody’s buying their stuff (because we either don’t have income, are getting our income cut, or are terrified we’ll lose our income and are now socking away every extra dime). So, not much room for investment when you don’t have customers.

See, before any tax cuts ’stimulate’ anything there have to be tax dollars generated, and without jobs, people don’t pay so much in taxes. So what you’re really doing here is ‘rescuing’ all those who would still pay taxes even without jobs -those with trust funds, massive investments, large pots of money. You know, the ones who don’t actually work and are having to downsize from their Bentley to their Benz but will never lose their house or their family or worry about feeding their kids. Yeah, they’re the ones who really need help. Truly.

So, my advice for Mr. Obama? Quit looking to make peace in the sandbox. Don’t look to create ‘bipartisanship’ with those who clearly are not interested at all in the ‘common good’ unless the ‘common good’ is only the top 5% of earners. These are the folks who think (truly) that another Great Depression would be ‘good’ for us as it would allow the market to ‘fix’ itself and rid ourselves of all this unnecessary spending and teach us all a ‘lesson’ in how to be self-reliant and strong. End the welfare state! Let them all starve and let only the strong (rich) survive. That’s the right stuff! It’s time for us all to say no more, folks. It just doesn’t work and what you’re proposing is not going to fly.

Enough, already.

Bait and Switch

One of the things I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks was talking with others about this whole bailout. Talking with the young man driving the hotel shuttle in Charlottesville VA. Talking with my seat mate on a train. Talking with waiters and campaign workers and colleagues and telephone customer service folks and friends and my doctor and the grocery store clerk. My principal question: What the heck are they going to use our $700 billion for and how will that fix the mess we’re in?

The answers I got:

Somehow pay off people’s mortgages so they can keep their houses (no one was really clear on how this would work or who would benefit)

Buy the mortgage loans and keep collecting them

Buy the foreclosed houses from the market

Let people refinance their bad loans through the Government

Give banks money they can lend out to people and businesses

Not one person could describe how any of that above would fix the economy, and nobody was really sure of any of what they said above. Almost universally, the answers started with “I don’t really know, but I think…” We’re talking about $700 Billion (or, in other terms, 75% of the gross national product of Mexico) of our tax dollars, and we couldn’t say how this would work to help us get out of this Second Great Depression. Do you smell a rat too?

Guess what? None of us were right. We’re now starting to see how this great Bailout (which our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren) will save us:

Banks will use the money to buy other banks whom the Treasury believes are ‘weaker’, using Bailout dollars and getting special tax breaks (meaning paying less in taxes) on top of that. Stronger banks will get stronger, and weaker banks will get absorbed, and all at our Federal Government’s behest and direction.

Who says Republicans can’t be Socialists? (Not to mention hypocrites – progressive tax plans are Socialist but direct ownership and control of our banking system is not. Amazing.)

Now, notice, there’s not a word in there that talks about loans – in fact, what’s coming out that despite telling Congress that they’re insisting that banks use the money to make loans, they’re essentially asking really really nicely with sugar on top and hoping that this is what banks will do. These same banks who lied about so much, who cheated and stole, are being asked rather than told what to do with our taxpayer dollars that they insisted they needed to fix things, and then turning around and enriching themselves even further at our now very direct and very equally distributed expense. In other words, they’re still lying, cheating, greedy bastards. Heck, there’s even more of them begging for our money so they can remain, well, rich. White Collar Gangsters on Welfare.

I say we repeal that law that gives Treasury the $700 Billion, recoup the money given out already, and have Really Smart People who don’t have an interest in their post-election private sector big money jobs develop a bailout that really works

Something like the We Deserve it Dividend. Now, when I outlined that fabulous We Deserve it Dividend program (which can be accomplished for a fraction of the Fatcat Bailout), there was also not one person who could not describe exactly how they would use their dividend, and relate how that would help solve the economic conditions for which the ‘bailout’ was designed. People would pay off their mortgages, pay off their cars, buy a new car, invest, put the money in the bank, save for kids’ college, do home improvements, buy a condo or house (if they didn’t own one) and near the very bottom of the list they would take a small vacation. All of these things would fix problems – of debt, infusing capital, distributing wealth, helping businesses survive. What a great idea! Much better than the “We-have-no-idea-how-this-works-bailout”, don’t you think?

Or, and maybe alongside the Dividend, something like Paul Krugman’s idea of taking those dollars (he didn’t say these specifically) and getting people to work fixing our crumbling bridges and roads, infusing dollars into our National Parks and schools and public transportation and developing new industries so we don’t make money only lending to each other so we can buy big screen TVs. Something not totally unlike FDR’s WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps. Both programs worked – giving people jobs, building infrastructure we still use today (many of our National Park buildings were CCC projects). Many regard the programs as lifesavers and sources of great hopes during our First Great Depression.

What is it they say? Those who don’t remember history are condemned to repeat it? Yep. I’d rather say “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

And Then There’s This…

From the Associated press, this article , on the trials of our wounded veterans once they return home.

He was one of America’s first defenders on Sept. 11, 2001, a Marine who pulled burned bodies from the ruins of the Pentagon. He saw more horrors in Kuwait and Iraq

Gamal Awad, the American son of a Sudanese immigrant, exemplifies an emerging group of war veterans: the economic casualties.

More than in past wars, many wounded troops are coming home alive from the Middle East. That’s a triumph for military medicine. But they often return hobbled by prolonged physical and mental injuries from homemade bombs and the unremitting anxiety of fighting a hidden enemy along blurred battle lines. Treatment, recovery and retraining often can’t be assured quickly or cheaply.

These troops are just starting to seek help in large numbers, more than 185,000 so far. But the cost of their benefits is already testing resources set aside by government and threatening the future of these wounded veterans for decades to come, say economists and veterans’ groups.

“The wounded and their families no longer trust that the government will take care of them the way they thought they’d be taken care of,” says veterans advocate Mary Ellen Salzano.

How does a war veteran expect to be treated? “As a hero,” she says.

Surprise, the VA is ill-equipped and severely unfunded. Soldiers are returning with more severe injuries than in previous combat situations, largely because of body armour and of more sophisticated weaponry. We’re encountering new syndromes – for instance, they’ve found that penetrating brain injuries, like those seen in IED encounters, leave the memory completely intact. This compares to blunt force trauma, where the memory is largely spared.

So we’re maiming, crippling, psychologically and physically scarring a generation, calling them heroes, then leaving them essentially ‘to the wolves’. Financially destitute, unable to cope, with limited medical and psychological help. Yep, that’s supporting the troops. NOT. God Bless America. Just be sure to not be a wounded hero.

Isn’t it interesting….

That a terrorist plot is ‘foiled’ or another ‘Bin Laden’ video surfaces right around the time that things domesically are in the crapper? I wonder if anyone’s correlated these ‘events’?

In our current scene, forclosure looms for thousands, Mattel I believe is Chinese for “lead poisioning” (and I don’t believe for one minute the company was an ‘innocent victim’ here) and the credit market’s in the crapper as nobody wants to buy bad mortgage bonds (which is impacting lots of other things, trickling down of course to jobs). People are generally unhappy, scared and maybe just starting to think that unbridled capitalism isn’t always such a good thing.

Thanks to unbridled capitalism, now they’re losing their house that they probably paid too much for, they may lose their job too and Happy Times Barbie is giving their kid brain damage. Oh and they’ll have a hard time finding another job that isn’t low paid service b/c all the jobs making things that aren’t bombs have gone overseas, where it’s OK to poison people and ruin the environment again as long as you make a buck.

So what’s a good Neocon to do? Enter Bin Laden and ‘real’ terrorist plots.

Hmmm…

I Am the Guardian of a Compassionate Soul

Lately, I’ve noticed something more and more about my son. He is an unusually compassionate soul.

The first truly ’standout’ event was at another child’s birthday party about a year ago. One of the other kids was upset because his balloon broke. Our son (then age 4) went up to the crying boy and said “Here, take my balloon. It’s okay.”

I’ve also begun hearing from other parents at his school that their children are coming home with his toys. When they ask why, the children are saying “I asked him, and he gave it to me.” So I asked my son, concerned that maybe he was either A) getting demands for toys (“The Godfather” syndrome in preschool) or B) doing this because he doesn’t think people will like him/be his friend if he doesn’t give them gifts. His answer: “I don’t mind. They are happy.” (age 5).

I mentioned this to one of the teachers at his school, an older woman named Celeste who’s taught for many years. Her answer surprised me. “Oh, my. You’ve got a very rare quality there. Your son is a compassionate soul. At this age, this is not something he’s been taught, it’s just how he is. It’s a gift, means he’s here for something very special.”

I fully expected to have a selfish child I’d need to teach generosity and compassion to.  I never expected the opposite – to teach a generous child not so much selfishness, rather wisdom and judgement.

I’ve seen the first glimmer of this – him saying later he was “just joking” when he gave something he really wanted to another child.  Used that as an example of first, to be sure you really want to give something and second, to make clear that giving is a complete act – can’t take back later because you regret or didn’t think through it.

So, be careful, son.  I’ll do my best to show you wisdom, though it will I suspect take some soul bruising on your part to learn.

At least you won’t be a Republican .

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Jesus

Lately my son has been excitedly wiggling a tooth, waiting impatiently for it to fall out so he can put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He told me she leaves a gold dollar for him, takes the tooth up to heaven so baby Jesus can give it to a new baby waiting to be born to use.

This from a child who hasn’t set foot in a church since he was, oh, about two. That would be about the time our ‘new’ Catholic Archbishop in Virginia announced that a good Catholic couldn’t take communion unless they followed every single Church teaching completely, including those on birth control (being a sin), abortion, etc. That would be when I once again had it with the Church.

My son is fascinated by the Baby Jesus. Thinks about him, talks about him, wonders what he’d like for Christmas (his birthday). He came up with the Tooth Fairy thing completely on his own. Well, not the dollar part. That’s the other kids in his school. But the part about the teeth going to heaven for new babies – as far as I can find, all his. It just astounds me, his ability to create meaning.

Which makes me think: What is it about Baby Jesus that bothers me? Why am I perfectly fine, encouraging even, of other social constructs such as Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, even delighting in them and dreading the day he discovers the deception? Why do I thrill in the magic of their belief, yet feel slightly sick at the concept of Baby Jesus?

As a child, I liked church. Loved hearing the stories. Thought the ideas were pretty good – love each other, don’t lie, cheat, steal, don’t kill, etc. As I reached conciousness, I remember being quite shocked to see that all these people professing these beliefs – my parents even – ignored them the rest of the time. I mean, they all pretty well followed the “Big 10″ but the other things – like feed and clothe the poor, be charitable towards other, don’t envy or covet, don’t speak ill of others, etc. – nah.

Now to be Catholic, Italian and Irish is to have the faith woven in the fabric of your world. Leaving the church is like cutting part of you off – it’s so woven in your life you can’t figure out what threads to pull out without it all falling apart. So I became a ‘cultural Catholic’ like so many others around me – following the rituals, marking the days, all while realizing we’re all hypocrites. Eventually I stopped going altogether, except for family rituals, visits home, and mostly holidays.

Then my son came, through amazing circumstances. And I was astounded by him and his world. Rekindled my faith, found a Catholic church I really liked and a pastor whose words really spoke to me. Found a community. Then, an Archbishop changed and the wheels came off. Back to hypocracy. I mean does God really care whether you vote Republican or Democrat?

Yet I feel conflict when I see my son reveling in the wonder. I recognize that the Church, for all it’s flaws, gives us a cultural, spiritual, framework that for me seems childish now but for my son, the child, seems to find strength in. His world *is* black and white, brilliant colors, magic and miracles. Greys, pastels, and reality have not found their way into his world yet. I hope it’s a long time before they do.

So, maybe I should give him the joy of Baby Jesus, teach him the Big 10 and the importance of loving others, caring for the old, clothing the poor and feeding the hungry. He will at some time I’m certain see the hypocracy I do in Organized Religion. What I hope will endure in him, as it has in me, is that little burning ember in my heart, that belief that we really can do all those things, and that they’re important. Maybe that’s enough.

Mountains from Molehills…

OK so everyone who’s heard of how painful and/or difficult or unpleasant a mammogram is (i.e., the jokes about slamming your breast in a refrigerator door, etc.), listen up: It’s not.   Yeah, they smush your breast in-between two plates.  For like 15 seconds a pop (4 total – that’s a whole MINUTE of your life).  Yes, it hurts, like a big pinch.   Not nearly as bad though as many other tests or ‘procedures’.  Honestly, I found a pap smear to be more uncomfortable than this, and that lasts longer.

Plus, my FP referred me to a practice that reads the films while you wait, and the only thing they do are mammograms.  SO, no waiting for days, no making another appt to get new films done. I waited about 10 minutes before the doctor called me in.

The result?  Clear as a bell.  And thanks to age, I do NOT have ‘very dense breast material” as I had been told before. I saw the films, and she answered all my questions.

Whew.  I hadn’t realized how much it was scaring me until I heard that.  I’ve been grinning ever since.

Senior Citizen Free Preview Month

So, I’ve always heard about how, when you age, visits to the doctor proliferate like dandelions, right? I just always figured it would happen right around the time your Medicare ID shows up.

I think I’m getting a free preview month.

After my friend Larisa was diagnosed with Breast CA last month, I made a new commitment to taking care of myself.  Yes, I did go to an OB/GYN, and have my prescription for a mammogram.  I’ve also ended up at:

Dermatologist

Cardiologist

Family Practice

and am headed to:

Radiologist

Plastic Surgeon

All before Memorial day. Dang.

BTW I’ve also experienced the surreal.  Dermatologist was to check out a strange cut-that-wouldn’t heal on my shoulder that DH spotted and kept an eye on. As it turns out, it’s a basal cell carcinoma.   Wow. I have skin cancer.  What’s weird is that it completely does not phase me, even after I went to the FP and for the first time circled “cancer” on the new patient questionnaire.

What’s also strange is that since I’ve gotten that DX, nearly everyone I’ve told has reacted like this: “Oh, yeah, I had one of those…” Who knew?

So now I have a great excuse to not go to the beach, or at least cover up a ton, and have rededicated my life to sunscreen.  I love Coppertone Continuous Spray stuff. It rocks.  Must go search for large floppy hats.

Oh, Plastic Surgeon is to remove said lesion, as it’s in a tricky place according to Dermatologist.  Maybe when I go there I can ask why it seems my entire body has slid 2″ towards the floor.  I kid you not.

As it would happen, FP directed me to a radiologist nearby who does only mammograms and reads them in her office right after you take them – no going home and wondering, no terrifying callbacks to get ‘better pictures’, only according to FP like 10 minutes wait.  Cool.  This works well with my aforementioned sheer terror something will be wrong. No coincidences.

Anyhow, it does seem like I’ve spent a great deal more time in doctor’s offices in the past month than ever before in my life (even when we were doing infertility TX or the time I blew out my knee).  I suppose a nice perk is that I’m now caught up on People and Good Housekeeping.   I also have a new appreciation for the life of a Senior Citizen, that’s for sure.

Busy!

Dear God, who knew living with ONE almost five year old could keep a person so darn busy? Yesterday was like running a marathon – breakfast (our weekly Saturday at a local ‘greasy spoon’ diner mmmmm), then swimming, then t-ball, then a birthday party for one friend. We didn’t rest until 3 PM, then child wanted to go ride bikes at 4:30.

We do it all again next weekend, except this time it’s my baby’s 5th birthday (when the heck did that happen?).

This much energy has got to be unnatural. I mean, seriously, if we could harness this energy, we’d have no need for petroleum. We could power the world with the output of the under 5 set.

The most amazing part? I’m loving every single minute of it. Parenthood is the absolute best way to ruin your life.

Death of an Old Friend..

or at least that’s how it feels. Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. Never met the man (I did meet Ray Bradbury once though). I feel like I’ve lost an old friend though. I grew up reading his novels. His and those of Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and so on. These were my escape from bordeom, cold days, hot days.

There are some books you read and forget – I read a lot of those when my mom was sick. There are some that make you think. Then there are those that are like comfortable shoes or a sunny quiet corner – you want to visit them again and again through the years. That’s Vonnegut to me.

So, I think I’ll go visit again, once more for old times. The marvel is that while the man has gone on, the work remains. I hope for quite a long time. Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.