What People Want?

Meanwhile, back at the rancho in Maricopa, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arapaio announced last Wednesday that he’s arming his deputies with 400 military-style assault rifles. From the official press release:

We look far and wide for the best people and best equipment....This Sheriff’s Office has the nation’s largest volunteer armed posse, we are the only law enforcement agency in the nation known to possess a .50-caliber machine gun which can be used in any needed circumstance and soon we’ll have more semi-automatic rifles in patrol cars than about any other law enforcement agency around.

Excuse me? Volunteer armed posse?

What this says is that Sheriff Arapaio is putting rather large weapons into the hands of non-professionals who are going to be sent out to enforce Arizona laws. While I’m sure someone is training these people, are they doing adequate background checks? Is each volunteer going to take his weapon home so he can have it at the ready when called? Are they installing proper gun lockers in where the weapons are going to be kept? Who carries liability?

What we do know is that in 2011, Sheriff Arapaio  staged a raid on a house using a tank and actor Steven Seagal for a reality show. They were supposedly hunting down dangerous people who raised chickens. …or more specifically roosters… for cock fights. Instead, they drove a tank into the LLovera’s house, killing  the family’s puppy and some show chickens. Seagal is supposedly a PETA guy; he was active in the campaign to stop puppy drowning in Taiwan! And now…he’s known as Seagal the Puppy Killer.

They needed a tank for this? And this guy is leading a posse?

You cannot convince me that Sheriff Arapaio, the Arizona poster boy for no gun laws, is a shining example of responsible weaponry. Just like you cannot convince me that Gayle Trotter isn’t smoking extreme quantities of ganja before going on talk shows to tell us moms we need automatic weapons locked and load in our house to protect our babies from roving gangs of marauders who break down our doors. Or how about the NRA’s La Pierre going on the talk shows to sell the idea that there should be no background checks at all?  Paul Krugman said it best on ABC’s THIS WEEK with George Stephanopoulos:

What strikes me is we've actually gotten a glimpse into the mindset, though, of the pro-gun people and we've seen certainly Wayne La Pierre and some of these others. It's bizarre ... They have this vision that we're living in a Mad Max movie and that nothing can be done about it. That America cannot manage unless everybody's prepared to shoot intruders, that the idea that we have police forces that provide public safety is somehow totally impractical, despite the fact that, you know, that is, in fact, the way we live.

President Obama was here in Minnesota on Monday to meet with the cops and others involved in battle to write a national gun law.  The overwhelming sense of the nation is that the laws we have now are inadequate and that at the very least the availability of automatic weaponry must be addressed in a functional, practical manner. Le Pierre’s cockabarley that law abiding citizens don’t want background checks and that the criminals aren’t going to get checks anyway demonstrates an incipient path to a new form of anarchy that is just not where the public is right now. Add to that Gayle Trotter’s idea that there should be a chicken in every pot and a loaded AR-15 in every foyer closet is not much better.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I learned to fire a gun, specifically, a police revolver. I won’t go into the circumstances surrounding that, but I did learn and I was taught how to aim it at a person. I’ve never fired a gun at a person, but I will tell you it is a far different mindset. It is not the same as pointing it at a target or an animal. It’s not like in the movies or the video games. I don’t know if media hardens us against the violence, but I do know it gives us a false impression of what’s like to be facing a gun.  Very few people are trained snipers and the odds of AR-15 mom actually hitting someone even with a spray of bullets won’t happen. Instead, everyone around her will die. And like the kids at Sandy Hook or Columbine or in the theater in Aurora, they will not get up again like actors on a movie set.

So what’s a person to do? The obvious thing is to contact your elected representative and tell them you want a sane and practical set of gun laws enacted. Then, don’t just sit down. The NRA is counting on We, the People, growing bored with this process. We cannot grow bored, we cannot stand down.

In the end, this is ultimately about moral courage.  Do We, the People, have what it takes to take our country back from brink of armament insanity?

The Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Week

Maybe it’s time for the rest of us to join the NRA.

If a few million normal people join, we could change their board. 

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall.....

I have to admit, I'm making progress. I still can't bend the wrist too well, but I can easily turn my hand over. The splint hurts more than the hand, so I must confess I'm typing without it. For the moment, anyway.

So Saturday night, I went out to dinner with my friend Andy. To make a long story rather short, we ended up at Dixie’s on Grand….one of my favorite places. Andy decided I needed a Hendrick's martini. I'm not martini person...but this could change my mind. It was cucumber...and refreshing...and really good. But the really fun event of the night was the girl (like the junior son's age) and her boyfriend on the other side of Andy.

Fireman Andy

When the boyfriend went off to find out about the shuttle bus to Crashed Ice, she turned her attention to Andy. This girl-child is hitting on Andy and she is attempting to make me disappear.  She was working so hard at getting him to focus on her that I just had to lean back to watch. It was a total out of body experience. Now, Andy and I are about the same age. We graduated high school the same year...1970, okay? Andy is silver-haired and one very good-looking guy. Wonderfully oblivious to her "charms" (which I thought were sorely lacking) Andy had the befuddled look down pat. He was diligently trying to continue the rather interesting conversation we were having... but it was kinda hard. Finally, thankfully, the boyfriend came back and removed her.  

Laughing about it later, Andy said, “I saw you drop into observer-mode.” He was right. That’s exactly what I did. I aided and abetted this child by leaning back on the bar stool and functionally disappearing from view.

Why would I do something like that? I rail against the invisibility of widows all the time. It’s one aspect of my relatively new status that drives me completely nutty. 

That said, this invisibility stuff isn’t exactly an unusual expectation. Take the GOP for example. They would be happy if all women of intellect just disappeared. Just this past week, Cathrynn Brown, a state representative in New Mexico, a shining light of neo-feminist thought, called us all potential crime scenes. She actually wrote a bill stating anyone who got an abortion after rape or incest was guilty of tampering with a crime scene and could be prosecuted. Excuse me? We can now be objectified as locations?

Chugging along the same track, an op-ed piece in the NY Times (29JAN2013: The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy) discusses the “Kelly Girl” temp worker as not a disappearing phenomenon, but rather as a model thriving today. This stuff is scary. In 1958, a Kelly Girl exec told the NYT:

Instead of seeking to replace “breadwinning” union jobs with low-wage temp work, temp agencies went the culturally safer route: selling temp work for housewives who were (allegedly) only working for pin money. As a Kelly executive told The New York Times in 1958, “The typical Kelly Girl… doesn’t want full-time work, but she’s bored with strictly keeping house. Or maybe she just wants to take a job until she pays for a davenport or a new fur coat.” 

That temp model has become the staple of a whole lotta business today where the worker, even with benefits, is invisible, disposable, and otherwise marginalized. And usually women. The attitude just hasn’t kept up with the slogans and the rhetoric. And the reality hasn't either. Contract workers are not all well paid. Many work with little or no benefits and certainly no safety net. 

On the other hand, maybe being a widow is a bit like being a canary in a coal mine. We are too often invisible to our own communities and painfully aware of the atmosphere that surrounds us. Other women often turn away, as if they could catch what we have. But we’re still here and we refuse to throw ourselves on the funeral pyre. That said, many of us are still not comfortable enough to stand on a chair and yell, “HEY! I’M STILL FUNCTIONAL EVEN IF I DON’T HAVE A SPOUSE.”

I have no words of wisdom, suggestions, or anything else to say about how to fix it. Once upon a time, I was probably one of the guilty ones. What I can do, however, is spend my capital making sure women in general aren’t reduced to invisibility. We have the right to self-determination. We have the right to equal pay for equal work. We have the right to apply for any job for which we are physically, mentally, or intellectually capable of performing. We will not be defined by possession of a uterus. And we will not be shoved aside because we are capable of bearing children.

And little girl at the bar….I will not disappear because I have grey hair and years of experience. You think I’m outré? Guess again, sweetie. You just dream about knowing what I already know.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

When feeling invisible, steal a glance in a mirror.

If you can see yourself, you're still here. 

Back In The Saddle Again

Well, the surgery was a screaming success....especially the part when coming out of anesthesia I kept telling the nurses, "I don't like this. I don't like this one bit," in a deep, ominous tone. What I didn't like was the nerve block in my arm and the dead arm thing was freaking me out. A scant week later, Dr. Tigger pronounced me in great shape, and Scott the Cast Man assured me I would play the violin again...although anyone who ever heard me play the violin back in elementary school knows this is not a desirable thing. I can run scales on the piano and I'm working up to chords, but the hand-spread on The Moonlight Sonata may be a bit off in the future. 

First things first: hats off, kudos, hugs from the tundra, and other assorted accolades go to the reader who took up the challenge to write the blog that I should've written last week. Luke posted a three part comment delineating how gun control should go down in a sentient nation. I happen to know Luke - he is the son of a friend - but he is no kid. He has his bona fides in law and he grew up in a frontier state so he knows guns. Let's just say if he decides to run for president, I will be at the head of the line for a lawn sign and a volunteer shift. If you've not read the comments...go back a week; it's worth the read.

And while we're on the subject of gun control, Minnesota is once again leading the nutball parade. We got ourselves a rogue sheriff up in Pine County. Sheriff Robin Cole has announced that if he thinks the new gun regulations and laws are too restrictive, he will not enforce them. In a letter, New King Cole opined that state trumps federal  when it comes to curbing gun rights:

The Federal Government has a constitutional role in the governance of our republic but the United States of America is a democratic republic of individual sovereign states. Each state has the absolute right to establish laws, within the confines of the constitution which is the supreme law of this republic, to regulate behavior.

As Sheriff, I swore an oath to follow the Constitution of the United States and to enforce the laws of the State of Minnesota. I believe current state law is sufficient to protect the public safety while providing individuals the right to keep and bear arms.

©2009-Steven G. Artley - Artley Toons Online

State law is sufficient? This guy must be very young not to have ever heard of Jim Crow and civil wrongs. Some states they thought they could bypass the Federal government and ignore desegregation orders. Excuse me for being naïve, but seems to me the courts and Congress get to trump states on guns. Now, if he decides to disregard the marching orders from Washington, perhaps we could request he post signs at all entries into Pine County: 

LOCKED AND LOADED ~ ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.  

Now, on to new business.

More than enough is being written about President Obama's second inaugural address which I missed live but listened to in replay. I thought it was a terrific speech. I particularly like how he used "We, the People,"  not just "we". It was inclusive. And I mean ALL inclusive.

I would draw everyone's attention to one section of the President's speech:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

Most people will recognize Seneca Falls as the birthplace of the suffragette movement and  by extension, feminism in the United States, and Selma as the place where the March to Montgomery started, a seminal event in the Civil Rights movement, but you might not recognize the name Stonewall as the birthplace of the Gay Rights movement. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was raided by the cops on June 28^th, 1969 and riots ensued. The gay community came together for the first time and organizations were formed to combat sexual orientation discrimination. A year later, on June 28^th, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. By mentioning Stonewall by name, he has raised the consciousness of America. 

GLBT civil rights came outta the last closet today, right there on the steps of the Capitol. 

It’s about time.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Unhappy with the behavior of your congressional representatives?

Do let them know you're planning on firing them at the next election. 

And then tell two friends....and they'll tell two friends....and they'll tell two friends....

and you'll all work together to get someone who actually wants the job.

Busted wrist.

No blog today…or at least not much of one. Had surgery on my wrist on Friday and I’m just not up to a lot of typing yet. 

I will tell you I still like Dr. Tigger, but Scott the CastMan has stolen my heart. A sweeter guy doesn't exist in the medical world and if he weren't young enough to be my kid...or if I weren't old enough to be his mom....I would be a lost cause. He gave me glam band for my arm. It sparkles. It looks like I'm supposed to have a life. He's so optimistic! You gotta love that!

For those of you who know me and have expressed concern, I am taking the rest of the week off.  I have come to realize that 60 is not the new 40 when it comes to bone knitting and bouncing back. Big thanks go to Cousin Laurie, Handy Andler, my local kiddies, and my friends Elaine and Leslie for pitching in to help...and making me feel less awful about this whole thing. Even my father-in-law has taken up the cause acting as my scissor hand and potato slicer...he's blind....so I place the blade and he does the hard stuff.

Gee, I wonder if the NY Times has noticed one regular commenter has fallen by the wayside. Hmmmm. 

Please feel free to leave you own blog entries in the comment section. I could use some good reading. I am definitely not used to all this inactivity!

I promise to use my adventures in health care for my pithy comeback.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Don't FOOSH.....fall on outstretched hand. Seriously dumb.

CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS ~ The Great Oxymoron

Well, typing is tougher than I’d like it to be. I’m not even commenting in the NY Times too often, so let’s make this short, sweet, and to the point.

There are no ethics in Congress.

Oh, you think that’s a little harsh? Ha. Read the pork attached to both the “fiscal cliff” and the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Even if you don’t keep kosher, it’ll make you barf.  Matt Stoller, on NAKED CAPITALISM, lists 8 items worth repeating here:

1) Help out NASCAR - Sec 312 extends the “seven year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complex property”, which is to say it allows anyone who builds a racetrack and associated facilities to get tax breaks on it. This one was projected to cost $43 million over two years.

2) A hundred million or so for Railroads - Sec. 306 provides tax credits to certain railroads for maintaining their tracks. It’s unclear why private businesses should be compensated for their costs of doing business. This is worth roughly $165 million a year.

3) Disney’s Gotta Eat - Sec. 317 is “Extension of special expensing rules for certain film and television productions”. It’s a relatively straightforward subsidy to Hollywood studios, and according to the Joint Tax Committee, was projected to cost $150m for 2010 and 2011.

4) Help a brother mining company out – Sec. 307 and Sec. 316 offer tax incentives for miners to buy safety equipment and train their employees on mine safety. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to bribe mining companies to not kill their workers.

5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends “tax exempt financing for  York Liberty Zone,” which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg, “little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.” Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds.

6) $9B Off-shore financing loophole for banks – Sec. 322 is an “Extension of the Active Financing Exception to Subpart F.” Very few tax loopholes have a trade association, but this one does. This strangely worded provision basically allows American corporations such as banks and manufactures to engage in certain lending practices and not pay taxes on income earned from it. According to this Washington Post piece, supporters of the bill include GE, Caterpillar, and JP Morgan. Steve Elmendorf, super-lobbyist, has been paid $80,000 in 2012 alone to lobby on the “Active Financing Working Group.”

7) Tax credits for foreign subsidiaries –  Sec. 323 is an extension of the “Look-through treatment of payments between related CFCs under foreign personal holding company income rules.” This gibberish sounding provision cost $1.5 billion from 2010 and 2011, and the US Chamber loves it. It’s a provision that allows US multinationals to not pay taxes on income earned by companies they own abroad.

8) Bonus Depreciation, R&D Tax Credit – These are well-known corporate boondoggles. The research tax credit was projected to cost $8B for 2010 and 2011, and the depreciation provisions were projected to cost about $110B for those two years, with some of that made up in later years.

# 6 just about pushed me over the edge. That’s the addendum that rewards companies sending jobs overseas with tax breaks. Really? We’re supposed to not notice?

The pork in this bill pretty much wipes out increased revenue with increased spending. The Sandy bill had $200 million for an unrelated Amtrak project as well as unrelated HUD projects. These may be necessary projects but attaching them to the relief bill makes them as appealing as 5-day old unrefrigerated dead fish.

Both the fiscal cliff bill and the Sandy bill should’ve  been passed naked, unadorned, as a testament to the willingness of Congress to put the needs of the nation ahead of its fundraising pocketbook. It just all looks bad.

There is no reason on the planet for any one of us to trust Congress to do the right thing…not even in an emergency. They have proven themselves unequal to the job of running our country. Fire them all and start over.

The Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Week

Don’t break your wrist. Trust me on this one.

Welcome 2013

When we last left our intrepid blogger, she was certain that this was a sprain and nothing to be too concerned about. Ah, not so, grasshoppers. The crack radiologist who supposedly read the x-ray on Monday lived up to the description. He missed the big honkin' crack that ran right into the joint AND the bone chip spur thingee next to it. Makes me wonder if the anyone even looked at the damn thing on Monday.

I got the call early Wednesday morning that someone had actually looked at the x-ray and thought it might be  good thing if I came back. Not so fast, little grasshoppers. There was no room at the intake on Wednesday and I had to wait until Thursday before I could see an orthopedist. All this on private insurance, too. 

Thursday, Cousin Laurie came over, announced she was going to iron my hair before I set one foot out the door, then took me to the orthopedist ...who was running a bit behind. When Dr. Tigger finally bounded into the room with the new set of x-rays they'd just taken, I took one look at them and said, "Uh oh," and he said, "Nice fracture you have there."  For G-d's sake, even I saw the big, honkin' crack. How did they miss it on Monday? I'm not really sure I want to know.


So, now, I am the bearer of lovely purple cast. I go back in two weeks for yet another set of x-rays and if everything is knitting nicely, I'm outta the woods; if not, Tigger will put  plate in to shore it up. This is the 4th time I've fractured this wrist, but I have perfect faith in my ability to knit bones better than I knit sweaters. At least, I've been far more successful at the former.

When I'm not rocking back and forth in a corner feeling sorry for myself, I've been following the fiscal cliff debacle with more disgust...almost as much disgust as I feel for the gun nuts who want to arm our schools. Columbine, by the way, had an armed guard and we saw how well that worked.

There was an interesting piece in the New York Times this morning, Let's Give Up on the Constitution, by Louis Michael Seidman, calling for the cessation of devotion to that document "with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions."  He goes on to say,

The two main rival interpretive methods, “originalism” (divining the framers’ intent) and “living constitutionalism” (reinterpreting the text in light of modern demands), cannot be reconciled. Some decisions have been grounded in one school of thought, and some in the other. Whichever your philosophy, many of the results — by definition — must be wrong. 

Sounds a lot like orthodox Judaism v. reform….and while my visceral reaction was a resounding, “No way!” I have to tell you, the column stopped me dead in my tracks. Is my thinking too limited by my belief that the fundamentals of the Constitution are correct and should be used as a litmus test for the formation and passage of laws in this country? Can one dispense with parts of the constitution and rely on Congress to adjudicate in the best interest of the population?

As archaic and flawed as the Constitution is, and it is both, the last four years have demonstrated the answer is clearly, no, they cannot be trusted. Congress has amply proven the priorities of individual members are more fundamentally dictated by individual pocketbooks and the needs of the nation be damned. It would seem that the Constitution provides restraint where the passions of a divided Congress run amok. Is it not better to have to pass throught the hoops before an ill-conceived amendment is passed...like Prohibition...than to allow Congress full control over the passage of law?  As cumbersome as the process is, I prefer the system of checks and balances weighed against the aged and often obstuse piece of parchment we call the Constitution. I don't trust Congress enough to take away that yardstick.

On the other hand...and isn't there always another hand....the inflexibility of that piece of parchment gives rise to the ongoing brain freeze with the second amendment. The inability of Congress to entertain rational thought on the topic of assault weapons makes one long for a president decisive enought to just construct a bill and ram it through...yet....it could and most certainly would work both ways.

So for my New Year's resolution, I am resolving not only to lose a zillion pounds and run a marathon (not) I am promising you, gentle readers, that I am going deepen my understanding of Constitutionality. Hell's bells! If I 'm going to constantly harp about the thing, the least I can do is to get more ducks for my row!

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, prosperous, and wonderfully adventurous New Year!

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Don't believe everything Congress tells you...

2013 will continue to grow the economy. I have spoken.

 

No Intro Today.....

No intro today...

Some of you might remember that's the traditional intro to lazy, but alas, that's not quite the case today. I was minding my own business this morning, rolling the trash down to the curb, when my feet departed the ground, ending with me doing an upside down a turtle with the trash bucket on top of me. Luckily nothing came out...of the bucket, but not so lucky I used my right hand to break the fall. 

So here I sit in a Starbucks in Woodbury, waiting for the appointed hour to see the doctor with a very patient Handy Andler [that's me!] typing. Personally, I think Handy's being here is some kind of karmic reward. BIG GIANT karmic reward.

----Hold everything-----I just got a call from urgent care that they can x ray my wrist right now instead of waiting the two and a half hours. We're on  our way back.

***************************************

Well, the good news is seems not to be broken but it is Christmas eve and the radiologist probably won't give it his final seal of approval until Wednesday. In the meanwhile, I am to baby this thing [Simultaneous translation: she obviously can't cook or do dishes or do housework or anything more strenuous that stirring soup.] So off to Walgreen's for a wrist brace. Would that someone had prescribed something for the screaming pain, but alas......

*****************************

Okay, it's not broken so it's a little blog being slowly pecked out at the keyboard. This is significantly painful. Almost as painful as the blog entry I started last night. 

The Indomitable PK

Losing Pat Kaplan to cancer last week is a blow to our entire extended community. PK was a force to be reckoned with when it came to making magic happen. There are institutions in the town that would not be there without PK's dogged fundraising and over-sized determination that they should survive....including me. PK's mom died the night before Steve and we spent that year of Kaddish sitting next to each other at morning minyan...often to the rabbi's dismay....but much to my relief. Our personal history may have been checkered with our arguments, but somehow we managed to remain friends...supportive friends.I will miss her late night emails when neither of us could sleep. (I confess it would be interesting to be in the room when she stands before the Throne....and before G-d can say a thing, she demands, "What exactly were You thinking?") Pat's memory will most assuredly be a blessing to her family, her friends, and to all whose lives she touched. I will miss her. 

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Make sure you have someone on autodial for emergencies. 

You wanna be able to press a number and yell HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and know someone will yell back, "OK!"