Pranksters and Pollsters

Tuesday is supposedly a big day for the Republican presidential hopefuls as yet another round of primaries takes place. Don’t get me wrong...primaries, in and of themselves, are not a bad thing. After all, they allow for the winnowing of candidates as voters select their best choice from the field of wannabes.

But the media circus surrounding each primary and each participant is enough to turn even the staunchest political junkie to rehab. Speeches are parsed, venues are second-guessed, and (worst of all) polls are conducted so you and I have up to the minute information on who might be ahead. We have little control over the hordes of reporters that descend upon a given state approaching its primary, but we have complete control over the polling process. How? By choosing our answers.

A stranger comes up to you (or calls) and asks for your opinion regarding the upcoming primary’s issues, candidates, and what-have-you. And your answers are tossed in with everyone else’s to concoct a number that is fed to all listeners and viewers. Why do we answer this stranger honestly? Is it because this moment represents a portion of our 15 minutes of fame? Could it be the microphone? Who knows for sure and who cares? It just strikes me odd that many of us fib or stretch the truth or even flat-out lie in any given day (politicos call that spinning). We’re all so honest, though, with pollsters.

So, as we approach Super Tuesday (a week from tomorrow) let me offer suggestion: should any pollster ask you any question, fib...or stretch the truth...or flat-out lie! Think of the fun when the polls fail to accurately predict the winner. And the hilarity when important issues swing from the ridiculous to the sublime. We’ve lost nothing since the vote will be what it turns out to be and we’ve perhaps gained by watching to see if a candidate starts espousing views in line with “perceived” issues.

If the polls become untrustworthy, two things happen (and they’re both good): firstly, polls start to go away and, when they do, we are spared the incessant update of “numbers” along with a myriad of questions lobbed in our direction. Secondly, the electorate is forced to become more informed as we are denied viable front-runner predictions. Face it: many voters like to vote for the winner while thinking that any other choice wastes their vote. Nothing could be farther from the truth nor more destructive to our electoral process.

All of a sudden, watching the results is not only newsworthy, but entertaining as projected winners (based on exit polls) finish last while also-rans come out ahead. Think of it: voting results that reflect reality rather than conjecture. And we did it all by ourselves. If you want to see a new political dynamic this may be a great first step. And all we have to do is a little “spinning.

Put Up or Shut Up

Amid the cacophony of “smaller government...less spending” the New York Times recently ran two articles dealing with who, in fact, receives any kind of assistance from the government. One dealt with financial demographics (lower, middle, and upper income brackets) while the other concentrated on a political breakdown. While I usually avoid going over ground already plowed, I’d like to take a closer look at who, politically-speaking, reaps rewards from so-called social programs.

Many opponents of federal assistance have united under the Tea Party banner. They appear regularly on the airwaves or in print and their message is consistent: get the government out of my life, let me take care of myself, and lower my taxes. We’re each afforded our opinion and this one has taken center-stage as the Republican Party seeks a nominee for the fall election.

Call me old fashioned, or naive perhaps, but it seems to me that anyone opposing these assistance programs would be the last one to sign up for any of them. After all, we know the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. It turns out that many of these full throated “leave me alone” folks do, indeed, sip from the governmental trough while other same-minded folks gulp down every bit that might be available. Talk about mixed messages!

There are two possible explanations for such a dichotomy between philosophy and behavior. One is hypocrisy and the other is ignorance. I’m not crazy about hypocrites, but ignorance scares the hell out of me. Especially when applying it to the electorate.

I’ve written about folks who want to take someone else’s freebie away while protecting their own. It only makes sense, you know, because mine is important and I am deserving while yours is a waste and you’re a lay-about. And that’s why I’m supporting my candidates because they will take yours away while maintaining mine. How do I know? Because they promised to cut the waste and we all know that yours is wasteful and mine isn’t.

And that, I dare say, is about the most ignorant rationale I’ve come across. But guess what? It works! How do you think Tea Party activists were elected in the mid-terms of 2010? Somehow, they continue to hold sway in spite of the fact that, if given the chance, they’d cut all programs for everyone regardless of need.

It’s no secret that the Republican Party has evolved into a group looking for a social agenda with which to stoke the visceral fires of its base. Gay marriage, abortion, birth control, and the like seek to obscure the fact that the party is really aligned more with corporate America than those it pretends to represent: the God-fearing, family loving Joe and Jane Citizen living somewhere in the heartland. Sadly, Joe and Jane have eaten up this rhetoric despite the fact that they fall farther and farther behind. This is called voting against your own best interests and the right has capitalized upon this phenomenon to a far greater degree than the left.

Assistance programs are designed for those that require a helping hand, but many take advantage of the program simply because they qualify. Regardless of political affiliation, this is just plain wrong and everyone pays in one way or another for such behavior. Granted, some assistance is all or nothing. Perhaps some recipients don’t need the full amount, but I don’t recall hearing of anyone paying excess funds forward to a charity or another individual in need. No, anything extra goes toward discretionary purchases.

And for anyone railing against federal assistance programs: the only program you are required to participate in is Social Security. Should you take one more dime from any government agency for any other reason whatsoever you need to shut your pie-hole. You might be a hypocrite, you might be ignorant, you might be both. But you sure as hell have no business in claiming to loath a system in which you participate. You may well continue to vote against your own best interests, but at least the thinking voters will not have to listen to your drivel.

And for those of you practicing what you preach: good for you. At least you show some conviction. Keep in mind, though, that one’s fortunes can turn in a moment. With that in mind, a word of caution that is older than the original Tea Party: be careful what you wish for.

Full Circle

As we age, we find previously outdated items coming back into vogue. Paisley ties, for instance. I can remember wearing them in high school (late 1960’s) along with paisley shirts. There may have even been paisley pants, but I’m pretty sure I never wore a pair. Countless other examples can be found in music and movies. Some things, though, don’t make a comeback. I’m thinking that the telephone, or at least its influence, is on the wane.

If you’re over 50 you can recall party lines and the “wonder” of long-distance calling. Your grandparents may have had a two piece phone or maybe even the old one piece with a crank on the side that hung on the wall. The telephone. What a wonder.

In earlier times one had to rely on hand-written letters from family members to stay connected and business correspondence, while centered on the typewrite, had to similarly rely on the postman. The advent of the telephone brought up to the minute news from far away that included items missing from the written word: inflection and emotion. The ringing of a phone conjured up imminent greetings from afar and household members would race to be the first to hear from the other end of the line.

Over the past twenty years or so, the phone has evolved from a beloved part of everyone's day into something to be avoided. Caller ID became the norm as we wanted to know who in the hell was calling before we committed to a simple “hello”. And email made it possible to avoid any conversation without going back to writing, stamping, and mailing letters.

Texting is now considered to be the accepted form of communication complete with a whole new lexicon. No superfluous letters or thoughts. Terse and pretty much unemotional, texting has been adopted by much of society as the best way to reach out and touch someone. Parents have gone so far as to say that they text because it is the only way to communicate with their kids. This leads me to wonder who the parent really is, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

So, within in the last sixty years or so, we’ve gone from a reasonably isolated society to one that was better connected by the telephone to our current state where we choose to remain isolated by relying, once again, on the written word. It has become our choice rather than a necessity and it speaks volumes (pun intended).

I’ve often diagnosed society’s ills as resulting from a failure to share our convictions with others. In so doing, we adapt them to new information or adopt others. Our conviction feeds directly to our expectations and, if they are high, we expect more from our environment. And that is generally a good thing. Without high expectations the quality of our lives slowly, yet surely, declines as we recite the “it could be worse” and “at least I have a something-or-other” mantras.

Sending an email or text does not spell disaster for society, but using it as a first choice of communication won’t do us much good. Last week, I was at my computer and received an email from an old friend. I replied and received a reply almost immediately. OK, so he knows I’m home and available, but he continues to rely on his keyboard rather than dialing my number. (I replied once more, but refrained from a subsequent one to his next note.) Why didn’t I pick up my phone? Well, he initiated the “conversation” so I left it to him to decide. We both lost out though, I’d say, on the chance of a side note or segue into another topic. We didn’t share a laugh or a sigh or anything else of merit. A simple exchange of words with nothing added. Sad.

I can live with paisley going back out of style, but I mourn the continued erosion of our desire to hear another human voice and share thoughts and ideas different than our own. How else do we grow and adapt to the ever changing world around us?

Harry Chapin’s trademark song was “Circle” in which he described all things as coming ‘round again. I can’t help but see the old rotary dial on telephones of another era in thinking of never-to-be-had chats and the realization that this may be one instrument destined for obscurity. 

Protection Racket

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it usually refers to a local gang or wise guy offering protection from harm in return for money. Extortion, in other words, because this same individual will cause the harm should one be reluctant to pay. Unfortunately, we are all involved in another kind of protection racket where we provide funds to institutions expecting them to be there should we need protection from costly events in our lives. Specifically, banks and insurance companies.

While the banking industry has borne the glare of the spotlight in the past several years, the insurance companies were ever-present, lurking in the background, collecting premiums while devising methods to avoid the paying of claims. More than ready to take our funds, but when it comes time to ask for something in return we find that they are not nearly as interested. 

Do you know that many major auto insurers will summarily drop a policy holder for a DUI conviction? The driver may have a spotless record yet this one blemish exiles them to lesser known companies with, of course, higher rates. The higher rates can be understood in light of the gravity of the offense, but to toss a client to the curb is cruel (though not unusual) punishment.

If your home lies in what is classified as a fire zone you may find your long term insurance provider unable to provide any future coverage. After all, you may one day have a claim and they’d rather just collect your premiums without entertaining such a payout. California, by and large, is considered a fire zone. Florida? Well, that’s a hurricane zone and we’ve seen how many were unable to obtain insurance for their homes in the past several years. Having enjoyed years of premiums, some companies now find it more profitable to cut and run before claims start rolling in.

As you can see, these examples paint a pretty good likeness to the gangster on the corner asking for money while guaranteeing little in return. It is a racket, albeit a legal one, that creates a façade of “good hands” or “good neighbor” while plotting to deny as many claims as possible. And we all know that should a claim be paid it will be at the last possible moment after all other machinations have failed.

The worst part lies in the fact that we have little choice in the matter. True, we can take our insurance needs from one provider to the next, but if they’re all cut from the same bolt of cloth we have accomplished little in trying to move the ball more to the center of the field. Sadly, as we take our business out the door, someone else is bringing theirs in.

Saddest of all, perhaps, is that the various and sundry financial and insurance conglomerates know of our quandary, know that their is little to be done about it, and continue on their present course of legit racketeering. Our only hope lies in an outsider who can rein in these practices. We know these folks as regulators and they normally represent a government agency. This should give one pause the next time a conversation turns to wanting less government in thinking about the latest effort to deal with a bank or insurance company.

And for those that feel banks and insurance providers are, indeed, conducting business in a responsible manner, I ask that you locate as many as possible when in a major metropolitan area. It shouldn’t be too hard: they’re usually the tallest buildings.

Jobbed

It’s hard to turn on any news program without hearing about jobs. Good jobs, bad jobs, no jobs...take your pick. Everyone has a reason and a cure for the continued high rate of unemployment. The “job” in these discussions is a noun. Let’s spend a few moments talking about the verb: jobbed, as in “being jobbed”.

This term is an informal way of describing the act of cheating or betrayal. Archaically, it refers to turning a public office or a position of trust to private advantage. Hardly positive notes, but who can argue that they are not germane to what is going on around us.

President Obama recently nixed the Keystone pipeline project to the dismay of those tied to interests of the oil industry (Republicans, generally). This project, they argue, would produce many jobs that desperate Americans need. And look at the additional jobs the pipeline could provide farther down the road: HazMat personnel, environmental engineers, and countless others to be tasked with cleaning up an inevitable spill.

Washington state’s Hanford Site was created to produce plutonium for the first atomic bomb. Seven decades later, the cleanup continues with little hope of ever restoring the environment to an acceptable condition (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/story/2012-01-25/hanford-nuclear-plutonium-cleanup/52622796/1). Talk about a jobs creator!

California’s Governor Jerry Brown, on the other hand, is being demonized by some (Republicans) for continuing to press for a high speed rail project. This is a jobs creator, isn’t it? Why is there little bipartisan support? No, it’s not about jobs. It’s about being jobbed.

Wichita, KS knows first hand as they fought for Boeing’s USAF tanker project while the company assured the city leaders that such a contract would ensure Boeing’s continued presence in their city. Well, Boeing got the contract, but now it seems as though “unforeseen events” have forced the company to soon shutter the Wichita plants. This is jobbed with a capital “J”, wouldn’t you say? Many employee groups have taken cuts in pay and benefits as their employers promise to avoid bankruptcy only to find that the filing follows shortly thereafter.

We’re all being jobbed by someone, at sometime, for some ulterior motive. The politicians (left and right) seek to warn us that voting for any third party candidate is a wasted vote when, in fact, it only threatens their oligarchy. Corporations sit on large sums of capital and state they will hire only when consumer confidence returns. The problem is that the confidence will rise only after jobs are more plentiful. CEO’s know full well that many of the jobs lost over the past several years are not coming back, but they find it hard to state the obvious.

Banks find it more profitable to loan their money to the federal government rather than entrepreneurs and others seeking to grow (or start) their businesses. And with the Fed promising to keep rates low for the next couple of years, financial institutions see lending to anyone but Uncle Sam as fiscally unsound.

We don’t have a jobs shortage, but rather an expertise shortage as technology renders many positions passé and new positions unfilled due to lack of qualified applicants. Education isn’t stressed, though. Just jobs and who can create them as if they were lying in the bottom of a black top-hat alongside the white rabbit.

Until we realize the path to lower unemployment lies primarily in retraining and retooling for 21st century opportunities, we will continue to fall prey to the jobs mantra espoused by those looking to maintain their status quo while limiting the advancement of those they profess to represent. They’re jobbing us, in other words.

The jobless rate hovers near 9% while the jobbed rate is closer to 100%. The former is tied to our economy while the latter can be traced to the various and sundry leaders, corporate and political, that choose personal gain over a higher ideal. We’ll all be in a better place when both numbers come down.  

War is Heck

Normally, I am not prone to write about the hottest topic of any given week because much has already been addressed. But this week’s story of GI’s urinating on enemy corpses has caused me to make an exception. Yes, I’m retired Air Force and no, I did not participate in any hostile theaters (in after Nam and out before Gulf War 1). Nevertheless, as a reasonably intelligent observer, I feel qualified to render an opinion.

Have you seen “Platoon” or “Apocalypse Now”? Granted, they are Hollywood interpretations of war, but the brutality depicted is representative of the duty involved. War isn’t hell, I’d say. It’s worse. In the wars from Viet Nam through today,  young soldiers have been asked to successfully combat a force comprised of men, women, and children. These enemy combatants wear no identifiable uniform so they cannot easily be separated from more normal, non-threatening civilians.

Regardless, it falls upon the soldier’s shoulders to quickly identify and neutralize any threat. This would be hard enough when fighting an organized, uniformed opponent. How can one succeed in today’s arena and emerge unscathed? It is no coincidence that more and more returning troops suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

But can’t these same soldiers suffer from PTSD at the end of a fire fight? Or after seeing friends and comrades dismembered or killed by roadside bombs and the like? Is it too far a leap of faith to believe that some internal trigger is pulled shortly after the shooting stops and the animal we needed them to be a few minutes ago lives on for a few more?

It is now common practice to embed reporters with troops in the hope of bringing the true nature of war into every living room. But, as Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” stated: “You can’t handle the truth!” And neither can we if we are to single out similar good men for falling prey to the hellish nature of war.

Do you believe that atrocities occurred in the Civil War? Or WW I or II? How about Korea? I do. They weren’t covered as they are now and politicians and generals are quick to condemn such acts and their perpetrators as anomalies when, deep in their hearts, they know that the monsters they created are simply victims of that training.

War is a 24/7 monster. It never sleeps and, due to its very nature, is an atrocity as soldiers are expected to kill other folks with whom they have no quarrel in the name of national security or national pride or for a safer world. Are there just wars? I think so, but that doesn’t make them any more civilized or immune from acts of seemingly atrocious behavior.

Instances that apparently run counter to the high standards of our armed forces should be acknowledged and dealt with. Perhaps those involved should be removed from the battle field or even removed from the service. Their fate, however, is best left to peers within the military who are intimately familiar with the emotional toll of combat. For society-at-large to condemn their behavior while politicians demand court-martial and incarceration, though, shows nothing more than a hypocritical, feigned innocence on the part of those that know better. And that is the greatest atrocity of all.

The Three R's (Updated)

In the beginning, there were rules (the first R). And they were good. But then people decided that the rules were not for them. This led to regulations (the second R). Regulations were enacted by legislators at various levels and were nothing more than a formalized codification of the rules that included consequences for violation. We know them as laws, or statutes, if you prefer.

With the advent of regulations we witnessed the introduction of regulators. No, they’re not the third R. Rather, they are an adjunct to the regulations for without those to enforce existing laws they becomes meaningless.

And finally, there is us, you and I, and our reliance on the regulators to enforce the regulations that were enacted to keep us orderly and safe. Yes, reliance is the third R and perhaps the most important.

Let’s look at a specific example: traffic. In the days when walking and horses were primary means of transportation traffic was pretty much controlled through “rules of the road”. Keep to the right, pass on the left, and so forth. It is hard to imagine anyone walking directly into someone else nor a horse to collide with another equine simply because a rule wasn’t followed 

Cars, however, turned out to be an entirely different animal. They had no sense of self-preservation and would careen blindly into other objects if their drivers set them in that direction. All of a sudden, rules weren’t sufficient to maintain an orderly flow. And that’s when traffic laws came onto the scene in the hopes of mandating a greater civility and predictability when going from A to B. And fines for those that continued to believe that the rules (laws) were meant for someone else.

The regulators in this case are the police or Sheriffs or Highway Patrol that “regulate” the enforcement of the traffic laws. And we have come to rely on these officers to do just that and for good reason. That being the fact that we can safely assume our daily driving will nor be met with collisions and other highly undesirable outcomes at the hands of our fellow motor vehicle operators.

Lately, though, we are being led to believe that industries can regulate themselves thus relieving the government from all of those messy inspection processes. This will save us  tax money while ensuring a continued safe environment in which to exist. And who doesn’t want a smaller government?

One need look no further than the Wall Street debacle to question this self-regulation hypothesis. Or how about e-coli and salmonella alerts? Or the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Financial, food supply, or fuel...take your pick. All are examples of this new “self examination” mantra that promises much, but apparently delivers little. As such, how can we rely on any level of acceptable risk when the regulators are taken out of the equation?

A simple answer: we can’t. So when you hear any politico endorsing such streamlining of government, where regulations are disguised as red-tape that we’re all better off without, think long and hard before signing on to such a plan. There’s a good reason for these independent examiners. It would be nice to be able to rely on every corporation or industry or executive to do what’s best for society regardless of profits. Unfortunately, we have a bit of evolving to do before we attain that level. And, in the meantime, it’s up to our regulators, inspectors, and other monitors to ensure that what should be happening is, indeed, happening. Think of us as the chickens. Now who do you want to guard the henhouse?