Today's Post-Midterm Message: Health Inequity Can Kill You

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University of New South Wales Sydney School Of Medicine>

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I feel like I've been leveled by a bulldozer. For the past week, Squawker and I have been flattened by some kind of monster flu bug, that's become one of those grim winter traditions: "Welcome to this, buddy!" At least The Squawker and I have been spared what my sister just endured -- the chronic diarrhea and puking bouts that often accompany with these bugs.

However, though I'm mostly over the sniffling/snorting phase, I'm struggling with back pain, which has migrated from my right side, to the center to my left side. Which is rather terribly inconvenient, as our Brit cousins might say, when one is spending a great deal of time under the covers. Or sitting to do a post, like this one. It is what is, so I'll just have to carry on.

Still, in light of the flurry of interest in my last post ("Today's Midterm Message: Life Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition"), I thought it made sense to follow up with a related topic: health inequity. Put bluntly, where you live can literally determine how long you live. Or how soon you die.

That's the thesis of Dr. David Ansell, of Rush University Medical Center (Chicago, IL), who's spent 30 years studying how racism and social inequity impact life expectancy -- one of the simplest, barest metrics of human existence. I stumbled on his YouTube presentation, and his work, while letting my fingers do the Googling (so to speak).

Ansell's presentation, "How Inequity Kills: Health Systems And Health Inequity" (September 27, Lake Michigan College, Benton Harbor, MI) is linked below in its entirety. I haven't seen it in full yet, but what I have caught is pretty disturbing, as you might imagine. Simply stated, the gaps between rich and poor -- which, one might argue, have grown into canyons, if not outright chass -- are also revealing themselves in who lives, and who dies. A lot of this information is deeply disturbing; as Ansell says at the beginning, "I always tell people, 'Wait till the end to clap. You may not like what I say.'"

The venue where Ansell spoke is a case in point. Life expectancy in Southwest Michigan's Twin Cities -- better-off, white St. Joseph, MI -- is 19 years longer than in its largely African-American, poorer neighbor, Benton Harbor. Put another way, you can bank on living to 86 or 87 in St. Joseph, and its equally lilly white neighbor, Stevensville;. However, if you live in Benton Harbor, 67 is the average life expectancy. Across the board, the gap between rich and poor is 15 years nationwide.

Ansell calls this phenomenon "the death gap," which is driven by access to healthcare, as well as structural racism that's often built into policymaking, particularly at the local level -- where the gaps are most glaring, he asserts. Those phenomenons have led to death gaps between rich and poor of four (Ireland), eight (Great Britain) and 30 years (Michigan). "Now, every developed country has a gap, but no country has a gap like the United States," he says.

<UNSW World Cloud, Revisited:

The Reckoner>

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Of course, such concerns are hardly new. People have bandied them about endlessly since the 1980s, when "trickle down" economics and flat wages became, with rather few resceptions, deeply embedded instruments of public policy. However, all this wealth only seemed to flow largely in one direction, to an inner ring of elite overdogs, who wasted little time finding the best representatives that money could buy.

And they're not shy about the privileged cocoons they inhabit. Far from it, as this ever-so-tasteful anecdote from Business Insider's November 12017 interview with billionaire Sean Parker suggests: 

"So ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords. [Laughter] Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... Give us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like."

Sensitive, isn't he? With more than a whiff of moral bankruptcy to boot. If Satan does exist, and he's up for crafting a special air-conditioned room -- well, I've got a fair idea of his first candidate. Let's leave it at that. You can read the whole nauseating business for yourself below. Enough said there.

Even so, it's interesting that Facebook's first president has a qualm or two about letting his kiddos consume the offerings of a social media conglomerate that hungers 24/7 to exploit their time and attention ("God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains"). 

Guess that makes him a trifle hypocritical, too, so...well, once you finish selling your soul, you may well as tick all the wrong boxes, right? It's like Jays Potato Chips: you can't stop with just one (sellout), right?

Of course, there's a school of thought that suggests we're silly to get so upset. Sean Parker only spouts publicly what people like him intone, mantra-like, behind closed doors, and hey, who cares? He's only a billionaire, so why would anybody believe him, anyway? No harm, no foul. It's all good, right?

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But here's the problem with that logic. As Ansell's presentation clear, if we don't undo all those corrosive practices that shorten an average person's life -- whether it's credit checks to get a job, or restricting their living spaces to the neighborhoods, or making insurance conditional, at best -- we'll slide ever further back into the pre-New Deal dark ages. Or, as Ansell observers, "What we tolerate, we promote. So, if you tolerate unsafe conditions, we're promoting unsafe conditions."

You can assign whatever metrics to the problem you wish. One nugget that stands out from the Business Insider article is this one: in 2016, annual healthcare costs reached $10,345 per person. Plugging that back into Ansell's Twin Cities example, that figure chews up about 3 percent and 54 percent, respectively, of a person's average income in St. Joseph ($34,985), and Benton Harbor ($18,962).

Granted, Michigan was one of the few Republican-led states to expand Medicaid to its most vulnerable citizens, though time will tell how many actually keep their coverage, once those long-threatened work requirements kick in. In the end, though, it's fair to say that healthcare issues are often a question of numbers. Review the above statistics, again, if you wish, and watch Ansell's presentation. Then ask yourself: "Who really comes out ahead here?" If that doesn't rally people after the Democrats' midterm successes, nothing will. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry, 

Before Your Medicaid Evaporates):
(Cut 'n' paste in your browser, if needed):

Business Insider

Dr. David Ansell:

How Inequality Kills:

Health Systems & Health Equity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uMCy9j8ubU

Ex-Facebook President 

And Billionaire Sean Parker Reveals...

https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-facebook-president-sean-parker-billionaire-advantage-better-healthcare-2017-11

Lucky Day Forever

Full Closed Captioned Edition in English
"Prole 514 dreams about winning the Great Lottery. The lottery winner is transformed and allowed admission into the elite White society, where everyone is beautiful, young and happy and people spend their carefree lives solely on fun and partying. One day, 514's wish comes true... but was this what he really wanted?" Lucky Day Forever (2011) by Alek Wasilewski www.luckydayforever.com

---The Squawker

The Message

 

The Message

By Grandmaster Flash
& the Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash

It's like a jungle sometimes

It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

Broken glass everywhere

People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care

I can't take the smell, can't take the noise

Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice

Rats in the front room, roaches in the back

Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat

I tried to get away but I couldn't get far

Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

[Chorus]

Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge

I'm trying not to lose my head

It's like a jungle sometimes

It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

Standin' on the front stoop hangin' out the window

Watchin' all the cars go by, roarin' as the breezes blow

Crazy lady, livin' in a bag

Eatin' outta garbage pails, used to be a fag hag

Said she'll dance the tango, skip the light fandango

A Zircon princess seemed to lost her senses

Down at the peep show watchin' all the creeps

So she can tell her stories to the girls back home

She went to the city and got so so seditty

She had to get a pimp, she couldn't make it on her own

[Chorus]

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

My brother's doin' bad, stole my mother's TV

Says she watches too much, it's just not healthy

All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night

Can't even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight

The bill collectors, they ring my phone

And scare my wife when I'm not home

Got a bum education, double-digit inflation

Can't take the train to the job, there's a strike at the station

Neon King Kong standin' on my back

Can't stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac

A mid-range migraine, cancered membrane

Sometimes I think I'm goin' insane

I swear I might hijack a plane!

[Chorus]

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

My son said, Daddy, I don't wanna go to school

Cause the teacher's a jerk, he must think I'm a fool

And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it'd be cheaper

If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper

Or dance to the beat, shuffle my feet

Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps

Cause it's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny

You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey

They pushed that girl in front of the train

Took her to the doctor, sewed her arm on again

Stabbed that man right in his heart

Gave him a transplant for a brand new start

I can't walk through the park cause it's crazy after dark

Keep my hand on my gun cause they got me on the run

I feel like a outlaw, broke my last glass jaw

Hear them say "You want some more?"

Livin' on a see-saw

[Chorus]

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

A child is born with no state of mind

Blind to the ways of mankind

God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too

Because only God knows what you'll go through

You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate

And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate

The places you play and where you stay

Looks like one great big alleyway

You'll admire all the number-book takers

Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers

Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens

And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh

Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers

Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers

You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool

But then you wind up droppin' outta high school

Now you're unemployed, all non-void

Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd

Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did

Got sent up for a eight-year bid

Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag

Spend the next two years as a undercover fag

Bein' used and abused to serve like hell

Til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell

It was plain to see that your life was lost

You was cold and your body swung back and forth

But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song

Of how you lived so fast and died so young... so

[Chorus]

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under...

--The Squawker

Resilience is Futile

Resilience is Futile: How Well-Mean Non-Profits Perpetuate Poverty

"We all began speaking in her language: protective factors, asset based organizing, personal resilience. We started to absorb this woman’s idea that changing people’s behavior was the solution to their problems, which meant absorbing the idea that people’s behavior was the source of their problems. But I knew at the core of me this was false. The problem had never been that I didn’t know the right number to call. It’s a lack of resources that produces a lack of resilience, not the other way around."

Too many poverty programs claim that "good behavior" will turn people rich. They are wrong. Sadly there are entire programs being written where they claim the poor are poor from something they are doing "wrong" instead of being poor simply because they lack money. --The Squawker

Poverty Level Republicans (You Gotta Love 'Em)

You've probably seen this book making the rounds at one time or another. Originally published in 1937, Hill's purported rags-to-riches instruction manual has entered the inner ring of all-time best-sellers (reportedly racking up some 20 million copies at the time of his death in 1970). Of course, it's a tad light on specifics, though Hill apparently believes that visualization is sufficient to get the heavy lifting done: "You may as well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities unless you work yourself into a white heat of desire for money, and actually believe you will possess it."

It's not a stretch to imagine such disparate characters as the Beach Boys' lead singer, Mike Love, corporate raider T. Boone Pickens and the late "Queen Of Mean", Leona Helmsley, reading such passages aloud to themselves, nodding their approval: "Some day, I'll stand at the top of the pile...and when I do, there won't be any stopping me."

My introduction to Hill's book came as a teenager, after my late father -- who was a contractor -- brought it home from a job one day, shaking his head. When I queried further, it turned out that Dad's latest client had practically pressed the book into his palm, suggesting that he give Hill's ideas a try. What did Dad have to lose? Besides, once he finished reading it, he wouldn't avoid the only logical conclusion...and become a Republican, since they were the cash-endowed ones, right?

However, my dad had no interest in joining The Party Of No, let alone voting for any of their so-called representatives...especially after doing jobs here or there for members of the local GOP hierarchy, who'd often treated him (as he told me) "like just another dumb laborer"...even though he'd largely educated himself after the Second World War ended, primarily by reading just about every book he could get his hands on. Suffice to say, Mr. Hill's masterpiece sat gathering dust on the shelf in our den, and my dad never broached the subject again.

Dear Old Dad's encounter with Napoleon Hill's ideology ("What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve") marked my first encounter with a new phenomenon: The Poverty Level Republican.  The above graphic sums up the distinction cleverly enough, but for those who just tuned in, it's the opposite of the image typically associated with the Elephant Set: those grubby little "One Percenters" that we all keep hearing so much about.  However, I don't hate them for voting Republican, because there's a rational undercurrent behind such choices: they're only looking after their own best interests (such as reducing their individual tax burden to infinitesimal levels...but I digress).

I began seeing more Poverty Level Republicans after starting college. Overall, they tended to occupy the bottom or lower middle class rungs of the American economic ladder, which didn't dim -- not for a second -- their admiration for such up-and-coming conservative spear carriers as our newly-elected fortieth president, Ronald Reagan, or his eager acolytes (including supply-side gurus like Arthur Laffer and Milton Freidman, for example). They boasted a comically exaggerated self-confidence in their own bootstrapping abilities, even if that "some-day-my-ship-will-come-in" moment seemed an awfully long way off (as in, "dig-up-John-Lennon-to-reunite-the-Beatles" or "Finding-Jimmy-Hoffa's-perfectly-mummified-body-in-an-oil-drum-in-Southfield" territory).

However, you never heard any resentment voiced towards a political system that had only just begun its hellbent descent toward record levels of inequality. Hell, they wanted to become rich -- or, at least, well to do -- so why vote for anyone trying to interfere with the emerging Trickle-Down way of doing business? At the same time, the Poverty Level Republicans I met couldn't wait for the day that Reagan would finally push those mooching welfare queens right off the couch, and into the cold, where they so rightfully belonged.

If that meant putting off social equity a little bit longer, so be it. If that meant having to brown bag it a couple more times per week, so be it. If that meant stitching together two, three or even four part-time jobs to cobble enough money for tuition, housing or meal plan rates that were already approaching stratospheric levels, so be it. If that meant putting off major life decisions like getting married, or buying a house, to pay back those student loans -- which were also ratcheting into outer space -- so be it.

Whatever personal difficulties lay ahead, Poverty Level Republicans just confidently asserted that their personal boom time lay just around the corner (even if they didn't know which corner)...or President Reagan would give one of those folksy, but blistering fireside chats on TV, and whip those pinheads in Congress back into line...then everything would work out somehow, in its own surreal American way. You had to love optimism like that, even if no empirical evidence suggested the remotest chance of the above-mentioned scenario happening.

One of the tragic ironies of Barack Obama's presidency, it appears, is that some of his most ardent haters are the "99 Percenters" that he's trying to save -- even if it's from themselves. A recent Yahoo News story that Your Humble Narrator came across puts the whole situation nicely in perspective, focusing on why those "red state" Kentuckians can't bring themselves to support Obama.

I won't belabor the contents but what's funny (and sad) is the deepest hatred coming from the people with the least money -- and the most to lose. As one Kentucky resident (Eric Miller) observes, "If there weren't government programs, it would be a ghost town." Yet, in the same breath, he states: "The Republicans, they are the ones that know...raised up like we have, you know. Know what it's like, what we need, what shouldn't been taken away."

Such comments are downright surreal, especially when you consider the Republican-dominated House of Representatives' attempt last year to cram steep food stamp cuts down the throats of gents like Mr. Miller, who gets by on $380 per month.  Congress's recent decision to let additional unemployment extensions expire -- "not with a bang, but a whimper," as T.S. Eliot would say -- is another indicator of how the political class feels about the pesky 99 Percenters they claim to represent so ardently.

At best, they view them as a nuisance to fool into re-electing them; at worst, they harbor a deep-seated hatred and hostility toward the Eric Millers of the world. After all, various members of the Elephant Set have openly boasted of "starving the beast" as a strategy -- the theory being, if you continue gutting social programs past the point of no return, the poor will eventually shrivel up and blow away, just like all those tumbleweeds you've seen lately at dead malls across America. 

So why do the Eric Millers of the world, then, vote for the people who seemingly stay up around the clock, thinking of new ways to keep down?  Various explanations have been trotted out to try and account for the Poverty Level Republican phenomenon, which you can read below, too. Speaking from experience, however, I personally see little or no point in trying to explain bullshit for bullshit's sake. In my time, I've seen a more mundane phenomenon at work.  

People display a remarkable knack for doublethink.  They rail against "welfare moochers," even they collect food stamps and cash assistance themselves. They vote against ballot proposals and millages -- even renewals, which are considered no-brainer propositions in municipal circles -- yet are the first to scream for the services that have long evaporated  They fight like a wounded bear cub for whatever government benefits they collect, even as they pay lip service to that moth-eaten cliche that's all too frequently trotted out during the latest national debate ("America must learn to live within its means").

Contrary to what some of my left-of-center friends think, I don't believe these inconsistent attitudes reflect a desire to get rich quick anymore -- hell, with so many people broke and leveraged to the hilt, the New American Dream is simply getting out of debt.  The simpler explanation comes down to a quote attributed to Mark Twain, though I haven't managed to track down its source: "Few political systems are as ingenious as getting people to vote against their own best interests as this one."  

That's as good an explanation as I've heard for the current administration's struggles. When Obama came to Capitol Hill in 2008, he hoped, prayed and stated that -- somehow, somewhere, doggone it -- people would line up behind him, whether they agreed with him or not, for the sake of the nation. It's the kind of kabuki theater that causes seasoned political journalists to piss their pants with laughter, but apparently, our Commander In Chief really believed that scenario would happen.

Alas, such dew-eyed dreamin' and doe-eyed optimism collided head-on with The Party Of No...and their accomplices, the Poverty Level Republicans. Meanwhile, the collateral damage continues, with everyone else paying the price. In short, it's business as usual. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (And Get Depressed By):
AppalledByLePage.com: Against Their Own Interest: Why The Rural Poor Vote Republican
http://www.appalledbylepage.com/2012/10/18/against-their-own-interest/

DemocraticUnderground.com: Poor Kentucky Has No Stomach For Obama
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024955559
[Note: This is only a partial recap, since the link apparently doesn't exist anymore -- and I don't want the Copyright Cops chasing me down if I post it all here.  Anyway, the resulting discussion should give you a good feel for the actual content.]

The New York Times Opinion Pages: Moochers Against Welfare
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/opinion/krugman-moochers-against-welfare.html

Walls Come Tumbling Down: Smash The Hamster Wheel (And Stop Running So Hard In Place)

While talking with my sister last night, we found ourselves ruminating -- invariably, inevitably, involuntarily -- on why the State Of The Nation has slid so far down the proverbial hamster wheel that's left so many of us running, running and running in place...yet falling further behind. 

"When we were growing up," she said, "I remember how far you could stretch a dollar during the '70s. You could work a regular job, pay the rent and actually have something left over..." She paused for reflection.  "But not anymore."

"Well, I remember that era, too," I responded. "Back then, you didn't have the 'double wage earner' syndrome that's so prevalent now..."

"And that's before we get to the rents," said my sister, who lives in a major Midwestern city.  "You can't get anything decent under $700 a month anymore, at least not around here."

"Same story in this small burg," I said.  "I'm still shocked at the dumps that carried a $500 or $600 a month price tag...the kind of places where they should pay you to live, not the other way around."  

(Reckoner's Note: In particular, Dear Reader, I'm thinking of the rundown two-story house with the peeling blue paint and the bathroom mirror that bire a message in bright red lipstick: "I will kill you."  But I digress.)

"So what happened? I'm wondering what it's going to take..." 

"Probably another March on Washington," I responded.  "Remember all those retrospective  stories they did last year, on the '50th anniversary?" How many people showed up that day, a quarter of a million?"

"Something like that," my sister responded.  "I've seen that picture where they're all gathered..."

"We need something like that now," I said.  "Several marches on Washington, in fact -- so we get back to that late '60s, early '70s era, when people still demanded things from their leaders."

"Never gonna happen, at least not soon," my sister sighed.  "Things get taken away, and people just make do."

That's when I started thinking...

...about a news story I'd spotted on The Huffington Post, which originally triggered this broadside -- but wound up revising, in light of the above conversation.

The story focused on United Parcel Service's decision to fire 250 workers for staging a 90-minute protest in Queens, NY last February, after a 24-year employee -- and union activist -- butted heads with management over how many hours that senior employees could work.

The company fired the veteran (Jairo Reyes) on Valentine's Day, triggering the walkout  on February 26. Twenty workers were fired forthwith -- presumably, those that UPS fingered as the major instigators -- while an additional 230 will get the boot once their replacements are trained.

Let's hope that nobody among the soon-to-depart ranks lifts a finger to train anybody -- as I did, when I suspected an ex-boss of bringing in a chirpier-but-cheaper secretary to replace me. For UPS, of course, it's business as it's done in the good old USA.  As a company spokesperson informed the Huffington Post: 

"We simply cannot allow employee misconduct that jeopardizes our ability to reliably serve our customers and maintain order in our delivery operations.  For this reason, the company is releasing employees involved in the work stoppage."

Don't you love those corporate Orwellian euphemisms?  Sounds like everybody's going on an all-expenses-paid vacation to Maui...or getting an extra hour for lunch -- so they can play ping pong on the company dime.  "Why, we didn't fire them, Your Honor, nor terminate them, nor involuntarily separate them from the payroll..no, Your Lordship, cross your heart -- we just released them." 

At any rate, as the union noted, this action comes from a company that rakes millions of dollars in contracts from the Big Apple -- remember, boys and girls, they want socialism for themselves, just not for the groundlings -- not to mention preferential treatment on parking fines for their trucks.

Of course, such preferential treatment doesn't translate onto the shop floor, as these choice nuggets from indeed.com might suggest:

Nugget #1: "UPS is one of the worst possible places to work - ever. You always hear about the great benefits - that's because they are the only thing that is great. It is a MICRO-MANAGED company and nothing you do is ever, EVER good enough. You are treated like a number and they have no care for you as an employee whatsoever. NUMBERS, NUMBERS, NUMBERS - to hear them tell it, it's never enough - despite what the earnings and financial reports say."

Nugget #2: "Can you explain why UPS advertises jobs nonstop every day and apparently interviews/pre-interviews hundreds of people. They advertise non-stop for a center that only has 40 unloading and 40 loading doors, with just one person to a door...Why does UPS not tell people that they will unloading at a rate of 1200 packages an hour and loading at a rate of 500 per hour BEFORE they get the 'tour'."

Nugget #3: "I worked there for 5 months back in 2003-04. If you don't mind being yelled at constantly, DESPITE the fact you are working at a very high pace, then UPS is for you.

"$8.50 is the same rate they have paid for years (for unloading trucks and sorting letters and small parcels in small sort). $9.50 is for the poor schleps who load the trucks, the pressure is worse for them.

"My best memory is the 'Holiday Treat' they gave us at Breaktime. You had 10 minutes to enjoy a plate of beans and weenies...then the buzzer rang and the managers yelled at everyone to get back to work. Charming place.

"They talk about earning senority (5-6 years) and you can become a delivery driver. Look at the drivers when they arrive in the morning and you see tired, ragged drivers....resigned to their fate. UPS works them hard too."

As the cliche goes, this would seem funny if the big picture weren't so sad.  And that's when I started thinking again.

You don't have to take this crap 

You don't have to sit back and relax 
You can actually try changing it

I know we've always been taught to rely
Upon those in authority --
But you never know until you try
How things just might be --
If we came together so strongly
"Walls Come Tumbling Down" (The Style Council)

Released in 1985, this uptempo soul-pop song exemplifies an early peak of The Style Council, Paul Weller's fab post-Jam combo -- charting at #6 UK, #19 Australia, and #15 New Zeland, respectively. The song is often seen as the peak of Weller's "political" period that made itself felt on the Style Council's second UK album, Our Favourite Shop.

For further examples, see "Come To Milton Keynes," and "The Lodgers (or She Was Only A Shopekeeper's Daughter)" (one of numerous jibes at then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- who made such a perversely inspiring muse). As Weller himself has remarked: "I had a total belief in The Style Council. I was obsessed in the early years. I lived and breathed it all. I meant every word, and felt every action. Our Favourite Shop was its culmination." Indeed it was.

With so much fatalism and passivity hanging in the air, this song comes across as a glorious reminder of what I often call "The Power Of Possibility."  When I hear it now, my memories focus on the East German regime's collapse in November 1989 -- how quickly it evaporated, once the street protests in Dresden and Leipzig gathered momentum, once people stopped believing in its ironclad authority over their lives. Would the same thing happen today on this side of the pond, I wonder?

Nobody, of course, can lay any bets. However, it's important to remember that history is peppered with countless situations like those of East Germany...or Poland (imagine if Lech Walesa had gone back to lunch that day -- they'd still have a steady diet of state-sponsored rock 'n' roll being shoved down their collective throats!)...or Egypt, with the Muburak machine seemingly poised to roll on forever and a day, just as surely as the sun came up...or the US during the '60s, when civil rights legislation finally became reality. 

The March on Washington had something to do with that outcome -- "civil rights didn't come," as I often pointedly tell people, "because the politicians thought it such a dandy idea, or felt so sorry for the downtrodden." And that brings me back to where this post started.

Are you gonna realize 

The class war's real and not mythologized 

And like Jericho - You see walls can come tumbling down!

The surest way to avoid changing any situation is to repeat -- over and over again, like some twisted version of the Rosary -- that it's not possible. That the odds are too long. That the idea itself is too bizarre for mass consumption. That you're a fool to even imagine different outcomes for yourself, your friends or the ones you love, until someone upstairs finally consents to the idea. Of course, no such approval is ever forthcoming, right?

That's because the bad guys want to keep us all jawboning forever -- keep the conversation going round and round in circles, while the quality of life continually declines for the majority of American...and any further notions of progress gurgle down the drain.  You're expected to wait your turn..and settle...and wait some more...and get older...and wait longer still...and avoid bringing up the awkward questions that might finally push the conversation in a better direction. You get the idea.

As far as I'm concerned, however, the chief value of songs like "Walls Come Tumbling Down" is their potential to jar us awake, rouse us to action, and push us into a different gear than we've been accustomed to riding.  The Style Council's output -- and, for that matter, Weller's lyric writing of this era -- is often dismissed as heavy-handed, overbearing, preachy, strident.

Possibly. Perhaps. However, there are moments in life when it's time to take off the gloves, and say what needs saying, period. Only then, it seems, will the silent majority of people feel brave enough to stand up for what's right, and raise hell accordingly.  

As Wikipedia's entry on Our Favourite Shop notes: "All of this pessimism is countered with an overarching sense of hope and delight that alternatives do actually exist—if only they can be seen."  I couldn't have put it better myself.  --The Reckoner

Links To Go:
Business Insider: 
Here's The Story Behind The Strike That Got 250 UPS Workers Fired:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ups-fired-250-workers-2014-4

Fight Back! News: 
New York UPS Workers Strike To Protest Unjust Firing
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2014/2/26/new-york-ups-workers-strike-protest-unjust-firing

The Huffington Post:
UPS Fires Hundreds Of Workers Who Defended Fired Colleague
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/ups-queens-firing_n_5078776.html

Throwaway People

Throwaway People

We have too many in this society.

What does one do in a society where you are told YOU DO NOT BELONG and ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE A LIVING for the most minute of differences? I faced this when I got sick, said illness denied me high paid enough, sustainable employment which made the health problems worse. I have seen so many talented people set aside via the bean counters. It's a travesty. Right now we have a growing underclass of all kinds where they know they do not belong.

Sure, I am disabled myself, but I am thinking of past days, where one wanted a community to have some loyalty and you were willing to give the same loyalty back. Where has that gone? If you are a little different, too smart, too slow, too old, too young, not conformist enough, not thin enough, not mainstream enough, today they don't seem to want you. I suppose some of us become experts at finding outside niches but I wonder at a society where it seems that out there only a growing number of people are being deemed "acceptable" for employment. Sure, they will make the "everyone needs education" claims, but we have the most educated society ever, no what is happening is a new class structure where only those who are already well heeled, connected and have the right looks and attitudes need apply. The "owning class" [see below] is tossing the rest out the door.

Both I and the Reckoner have pondered the reality of how many soul-less minions behind desks have determined our reality with the very economic foundations of our lives determined based upon their whims.

The other day I saw this quote:

"The problem is not work. Work is FUN when you do it for yourself. Work can be rewarding and you feel proud of your accomplishment. Nothing feels better than taking a well deserved bath after a day of hard work and then eating a comforting supper.

No, the problem is employment and job hunting. There is no dignity for the worker and job seeker in the process. Work has been hijacked by the owning class and has been rebranded as “employment”. They are not job creators, they are work usurpators.

If the capitalists, the owners and the rulers were not in the way, anybody could immediately pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The fact that you need to be hired before you can do any kind of productive work is the problem that must be ended. Nobody should have to sell himself or herself before he or she can contribute to society."  

One thing I ponder is how much human potential is being thrown out the door, as these employers tell endless lines of people they are not a good fit. Some may contribute via writing or volunteer work and unpaid activities, but how many are being denied decent livings out there, because of the blockades put in their way? When did human beings become mere commodities?


I find the whole hiring process to be more about weeding people out rather then finding the "best"or allowing people to contribute. The other day I was talking about this with a friend when people lived in communities lifelong and when there were family and other long-term ties; things were far different, in terms of business decisions. One's community was taken into account, the extreme "free market" types will never discuss how those farmers they praised for so much self-reliance, worked together to raise barns and more. People worked together, and I am not talking about the controls of Communism but SPONTANEOUS relationships and interactions, ones formed by God's creation not directed from above....

I tend to think people were seen even differently. It wasn't all about fitting in and SELLING yourself to those who may NOT BUY. It was about being alive and being part of a community.--The Squawker

Capitalism & Psychopathic Behavior: Do They All Know Something That We Don't?

We may detest them, question their morality and pine for the era when Republican presidents like Nixon were (gasp, shock, horror!) "scared" of the Democrats...but th tope 1 Percent aren't going down without a fight.

We're often reminded to thank the 1 Percent for keeping their moneybins humming...because it'll all trickle down to the bottom, eventually...the key word being, "eventually." This is the line pushed by uber-capitalists like Mitt Romney: "Gol-dern it, if everybody would just get the heck out of my way, I could roll up my sleeves, and create a fountain of jobs to keep everybody happy." 

Of course, the vast majority of workers -- whose wages, remember, have been kept artificially flat for nearly 30 years now -- might beg to differ, having little to show for their efforts at the box office.

But that doesn't stop these guys from laying on the chutzpah with a mason man's trowel -- as we'll see this month, when one of Romney's former Bain Capital  colleagues, Edward Conard, publishes his book, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About The Economy Is Wrong. The publisher, appropriately enough, is named (wait for it) Portfolio.

Conard's basic thesis is that America's record levels of income inequality are actually good for all of us, because it shows that the system is working, and if only those pesky social do-gooders stepped aside, the 1 Percent could get on with the job of showering their benevolent god works on the rest of us.

In fact, Conard goes so far as to argue  that “the wealth concentrated at the top should be twice as large.”  With fabulous understatement, the New York Times notes: "This could be the most hated book of the year."  Ya think?  Maybe we can file this little tome under, "Man bites dog," and call it a day...

...or maybe not.  In another article published on May 10, the New York Times quoted a survey that claimed 10 percent of all those working on Wall Street are "clinical psychopaths" who show little empathy or interest towards others, and are prone to“unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.”  By contrast, the newspaper noted, the actual proprtion of psychopaths nationwide is closer to (wait for it again) 1 percent.

Unfortunately, the Times doesn't cite the source -- but it's easy to draw similar conclusions from the nation'sbusiness pages. This is the white collar police blotter, where no practice is off-limits -- from accounting fraud, to bid rigging, overbilling, perjury and tax evasion -- the list goes on and on.

The Reckoner gently suggests that these things happen because capitalism's driving impulses (make money, reward shareholders) are incompatible with any humanitarian impulse that might be attributed to the 1 Percent. As the Times's article notes,  "These aren’t anomalies; this is how the system works: you get away with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught."

We received many, many warnings of how these tendencies might play out, if left unchecked -- as Bret Easton Ellis noted in his novel, American Psycho (1991), whose degenerate central character, yuppie investment banker Patrick Bateman, gleefully cannibalizes, murders, rapes and tortures his way across the midtown Manhattan playground that he inhabits. He shows no remorse for his actions, nor does he feelit necessary to explain them.

Many of Ellis's larger points got lost in the resulting protests, but as of 2012, Patrick Bateman shows no signs of departing the landscape...as proven by American Psycho's staging as a musical, in London...and the announcement of a June 2012 U.S. production, The American Play, which is also based on the book.

As all these various anecdotes of capitalism = psycohpathy suggest, it's tempting to ask, "Do they all know something that we don't? Too much for comfort, perhaps. The mind boggles. --The Reckoner