What’s happening in West Virginia runs against the tide nationally, and even more, against the pull of its own history. (emphasis mine)I wonder if the author even understands that to side with the union in the Civil War, to refuse to join the confederacy, was to reject the Democrats and side with the Republicans? In other words, West Virginia was birthed out of allegiance to Republican ideals. So instead of claiming that the change is "against the pull of its own history," one could as well contend that it is a reversion to the state's original and most fundamental allegiances. The nightmare of its misplaced loyalties since the New Deal era may be finally over.
West Virginia exists as a state because it broke away from Virginia in 1863 and refused to join the confederacy. From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s era until the 2000 election, it was among the most reliably Democratic states, one of only six that Jimmy Carter carried in 1980, and 10 that Michael S. Dukakis won in 1988.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
You Can't Comment On History If You Don't Know History
In an article on West Virginia's move toward the Republican Party, the author writes:
Friday, October 25, 2013
My Kids Are Not Part Of "Team America"
There's another one of those interminable international education studies out. I can barely bother myself to read the details. U.S. leads or lags or falls in the middle of the pack in this indicator or that blah, blah, blah.
I can't really care. I shouldn't have to care. Fortunately, my family opted out of the public education system, so we're not really affected by Common Core and all of the people who run around in circles waving their arms that "something has to be done" everytime we don't stack up against the South Koreans in educational outcomes. Home schoolers used to be widely persecuted, but we've put a stop to most of that with consistent legal defense and the sheer weight of numbers.
An important point about the U.S. Constitution is that it is anti-utopian. Yes, there's language in the preamble about forming "a more perfect union," but the means chosen to go about that are the opposite of the Utopian instinct.
We're a nation of individuals. We were the first major nation to recognize that the individual is the most important political unit, and maybe the only major nation to actually function on that basis for an extended period of time.
These educational studies are collectivist wet dreams. They identify a problem with us, collectively, and then proceed to the conclusion that it's OK to manipulate, force and coerce us, collectively, to resolve the problem.
But, regardless of how the U.S. stacks up against other nations educationaly, every single child in the U.S. is an individual. They are not competitors in the World Education Cup Games. How we do collectively is completely irrelevant, because each child's education is the responsibility of himself and his parents. Children and families have no obligation to "pitch in" and help the national average. Education may not be a priority for them -- especially others peoples' educations, or comparative results, and our nation used to recognize the right of people to be uninterested.
Just because the U.S. lags tiny, rich Singapore isn't a reason for some person in Washington to think he can start dictating how kids in Lincoln, NE ought to be educated. It's none of his business. The American system is designed that way. There wasn't even a cabinet-level department of education until the Carter administration in 1979, because education, like most other of our day-to-day governmental responsibilities, was recognized to be a local function for most of U.S. history.
So, don't tell me how the South Koreans are doing compared to us and what we need to do about it as a nation. You worry about your kids and I'll worry about mine. Move to South Korea if it's really important for you to be on the "winning" education team. I'm not on your team. There is no team.
I can't really care. I shouldn't have to care. Fortunately, my family opted out of the public education system, so we're not really affected by Common Core and all of the people who run around in circles waving their arms that "something has to be done" everytime we don't stack up against the South Koreans in educational outcomes. Home schoolers used to be widely persecuted, but we've put a stop to most of that with consistent legal defense and the sheer weight of numbers.
An important point about the U.S. Constitution is that it is anti-utopian. Yes, there's language in the preamble about forming "a more perfect union," but the means chosen to go about that are the opposite of the Utopian instinct.
We're a nation of individuals. We were the first major nation to recognize that the individual is the most important political unit, and maybe the only major nation to actually function on that basis for an extended period of time.
These educational studies are collectivist wet dreams. They identify a problem with us, collectively, and then proceed to the conclusion that it's OK to manipulate, force and coerce us, collectively, to resolve the problem.
But, regardless of how the U.S. stacks up against other nations educationaly, every single child in the U.S. is an individual. They are not competitors in the World Education Cup Games. How we do collectively is completely irrelevant, because each child's education is the responsibility of himself and his parents. Children and families have no obligation to "pitch in" and help the national average. Education may not be a priority for them -- especially others peoples' educations, or comparative results, and our nation used to recognize the right of people to be uninterested.
Just because the U.S. lags tiny, rich Singapore isn't a reason for some person in Washington to think he can start dictating how kids in Lincoln, NE ought to be educated. It's none of his business. The American system is designed that way. There wasn't even a cabinet-level department of education until the Carter administration in 1979, because education, like most other of our day-to-day governmental responsibilities, was recognized to be a local function for most of U.S. history.
So, don't tell me how the South Koreans are doing compared to us and what we need to do about it as a nation. You worry about your kids and I'll worry about mine. Move to South Korea if it's really important for you to be on the "winning" education team. I'm not on your team. There is no team.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Obama's Lies Come To My Employer
I know it's been made clear through thousands of examples that Obama was lying when he said "If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance."
I just thought I'd add my own experience with my employer. Thousands of people from my company will not be able to keep the insurance they like:
Someone who works for my company submitted this comment on our health care blog:
The company replied:
I just thought I'd add my own experience with my employer. Thousands of people from my company will not be able to keep the insurance they like:
Someone who works for my company submitted this comment on our health care blog:
Submitted by XXXXXXX. on Mon, 10/21/2013 - 14:23
Preparing for the Affordable Care Act does not make sense to me for dropping the 90/10 plan. What is the real reason?
The company replied:
Submitted by (Corporate Response) on Tue, 10/22/2013 - 08:54In other words, under the affordable care act, the government doesn't want your insurance to be too good. Tough luck suckers.
Thank you for your comment.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be taxing companies that provide high-cost plans. This tax, referred to as the “Cadillac tax,” is a 40% excise tax on the value of group health benefits that exceeds a threshold amount. The 90/10 Plan meets the definition of a high-cost plan per the ACA and a strategic decision was made to discontinue the plan in 2014 to avoid the tax as well as to continue providing affordable medical plan options to associates over the long-term.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
The Photo That Lost Every War Since?
Fox has a fascinating article:
Behind the picture: 'Three Dead Americans,' Buna Beach, 1943
The teaser to the article from other pages is "The photo that won World War II," but I think the editor who wrote that teaser got it all wrong. It's quite possible that this photo, the first of its kind, the herald of a new era of visceral visual journalism, was the photo that caused the U.S. to stall in every war since:
Could World War II's U.S. war effort have survived live broadcasts of Normandy and Iwo Jima to name just two of many? I kind of doubt it.
I'd ask, on the other hand, could the Holocaust occurred as well, with so much modern, instant media? But, sadly, we've already proven that "yes," modern age holocausts can occur in the Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and many other places.
It's kind of troubling to think that the information age hasn't crippled the monsters at all, just the will of the people who would fight the monsters.
Behind the picture: 'Three Dead Americans,' Buna Beach, 1943
The teaser to the article from other pages is "The photo that won World War II," but I think the editor who wrote that teaser got it all wrong. It's quite possible that this photo, the first of its kind, the herald of a new era of visceral visual journalism, was the photo that caused the U.S. to stall in every war since:
What is ultimately so notable about Strock’s picture — beyond its sheer technical excellence, and its quiet power — is that when it was published in LIFE magazine in September 1943, it was the first time that any photograph depicting dead American troops had appeared in any American publication during World War II.
...
Once citizens started seeing these sorts of photos, videos and 'gritty' journalism, sure, maybe they weren't "complacent" but what they became, in later wars, was something entirely difference than "supportive." Was that the purpose all along? It's grown worse with every war, so that now, through images, wars like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars become intolerable to the public even though the list of U.S. dead and wounded over the entire course of the war is less than numerous single battles of the World War II era.
For months after Strock made his now-iconic picture, LIFE’s editors pushed the American government’s military censors to allow the magazine to publish that one photograph. The concern, among some at LIFE and certainly many in the government, was that Americans were growing complacent about a war that was far from over and in which an Allied victory was far from certain.
Could World War II's U.S. war effort have survived live broadcasts of Normandy and Iwo Jima to name just two of many? I kind of doubt it.
I'd ask, on the other hand, could the Holocaust occurred as well, with so much modern, instant media? But, sadly, we've already proven that "yes," modern age holocausts can occur in the Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and many other places.
It's kind of troubling to think that the information age hasn't crippled the monsters at all, just the will of the people who would fight the monsters.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Journalism: Investigating Shallowly
This piece in the New York Times, The Myth of the Medical-Device Tax, is a perfect example of a journalist investigating just deeply enough -- having just enough knowledge about a subject -- to get it completely wrong.
The article complains
The reason it doesn't work for hospitals is that, unlike a truly free market business, there's no price pressure from below and almost no consumer choice. In my business, if the customer is going to spend several million dollars on our product, they have to justify the expense -- ROI, return on investment. They know they can't simply jack their prices up to ludicrous levels at the consumer end to cover it.
In the healthcare market, though, this isn't true. It starts right at the bottom. Because of the World War II era tax incentives on employer-provided insurance plans, the vast majority of workers get their health insurance through their employers. This means they have effectively no personal choice over their insurance plans. They don't get to choose how much they pay or what is covered. The premiums themselves are often highly-subsidized as a term of employment and even when not, it's pretty much a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
Then when the consumer seeks actual healthcare, he is either only allowed, or highly-incentivized to go to the healthcare practitioners authorized by his insurance. What other industry does that? If you wreck your car, or your house is damaged in a storm you can go to any mechanic or contractor you want! But you can't protest this by dumping the insurance company that forces you into this, because see step one: employer-subsidized coverage! It all builds on a rotten foundation. No wonder you get a rotten product!
These doctors are forced into a pricing scheme that is heavily-influenced by insurance company and government mandates. Over half of every health care dollar in the U.S., even before Obamacare, is spent by the U.S. government. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. Because Medicare is a mandatory insurance program for the elderly, and old age is when most people spent the vast majority of their healthcare dollars, Medicare rates dictate nearly all healthcare pricing in the nation -- even non-Medicare insurance and healthcare is warped by these pricing mandates. You can't dictate over half the pricing in an industry through government mandate without that being true.
So, the individual uses the insurance he doesn't have a choice in to select from a limited pool of doctors to obtain treatments for which he is prohibited from negotiating on price, and for which the price he does pay is highly subsidized, typically 80-90% paid by insurance. How, exactly, is this free market medicine? Naturally this encourages astounding waste because at nearly every level of the transaction people are dealing with "other peoples' money."
In my business *none* of it is subsidized. Every expenditure has to be justified by what the market will bear. That's the difference.
The article goes on:
Certainly the physician choosing his own equipment at hospital expense is another example of "other peoples' money" in operation, but that sounds to me a like a matter of hospital policy, not a matter for government intervention, and it goes back again to the lack of consumer pressure on prices, not fiscally-irresponsible doctors. The doctors choose the equipment because when they are in surgery wrist deep in a cardiac patient, there's no administrative bureaucrat, no advisory group of doctors on the budget committee, to take the fall if the doctor is saddled with inadequate equipment. It's all on his head, the buck stops there. So do we really want anyone but our doctor dictating what equipment he uses?
As for the personal relationships, I don't think people understand how complicated this equipment is. Most people don't realize that there are often medical equipment company reps. right in the OR with the doctor and the rest of the team, because some of this equipment is so complex it requires a highly-knowledgable rep. to be on hand for advice and assistance. Again, we're not talking about gauze and sutures. This is also true in my industry, although it's not life or death: we spend a lot of time advising and assisting customers with our technology long after the sale. You're not just buying a refrigerator from Home Depot, getting it dropped off and never talking to GE or Home Depot again unless you need warranty repeair. When you buy equipment this high-end, you're also buying the company. Good personal relationships and trust in the vendor are essential! If this guy's in the OR with you helping you operate a million-dollar medical device with a patient's life on the line, it's nice to know he's someone competent, that he wasn't flipping burgers two weeks ago, before he signed on with the company that won the contract by submitting the lowest possible bid!
This article says the author, Topher Spiro, is the vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress. If you go to his bio, he's a lifelong bureaucrat and policy wonk. He's absolutely not the guy you want involved in your life-or-death medical decisions! He demonstrates this in his article by showing that he has no understanding of either the basic economics that underlie this problem, nor the medical necessities involved in the use and sale of expensive medical equipment.
The entire article boils down to "Blah, blah, blah, greedy corporations! Blah, blah, blah, enormous profits!" It's a screed fit for a sophomore political activist, not someone seriously interested in improving the nation's healthcare.
His entire approach is a top-down "solution" that says "Medicare should force" this and legislation would "require" that, when top-down legislation and price fixing are what got us into this mess. It's no accident that the most highly-regulated markets in the nation are also the ones where supply and demand function least effectively. But, when you are a statist, the answer to failure of statist schemes is always "more statism!"
The article complains
The medical-device industry faces virtually no price competition. Because of confidentiality agreements that manufacturers require hospitals to sign, the prices of the devices are cloaked in secrecy.This is ridiculous. I work in a very similar industry, selling very expensive equipment. Our prices, too, are cloaked in secrecy, and there is tremendous protectiveness about our prices and technology. But confidentiality agreements don't prevent our customer from shopping around, they just prevent them from sharing our information with our competitors and outside sources. The idea that a confidentiality agreement prevents price competition is ludicrous. It could only come from someone who has no experience with high-end niche-market products.
The reason it doesn't work for hospitals is that, unlike a truly free market business, there's no price pressure from below and almost no consumer choice. In my business, if the customer is going to spend several million dollars on our product, they have to justify the expense -- ROI, return on investment. They know they can't simply jack their prices up to ludicrous levels at the consumer end to cover it.
In the healthcare market, though, this isn't true. It starts right at the bottom. Because of the World War II era tax incentives on employer-provided insurance plans, the vast majority of workers get their health insurance through their employers. This means they have effectively no personal choice over their insurance plans. They don't get to choose how much they pay or what is covered. The premiums themselves are often highly-subsidized as a term of employment and even when not, it's pretty much a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
Then when the consumer seeks actual healthcare, he is either only allowed, or highly-incentivized to go to the healthcare practitioners authorized by his insurance. What other industry does that? If you wreck your car, or your house is damaged in a storm you can go to any mechanic or contractor you want! But you can't protest this by dumping the insurance company that forces you into this, because see step one: employer-subsidized coverage! It all builds on a rotten foundation. No wonder you get a rotten product!
These doctors are forced into a pricing scheme that is heavily-influenced by insurance company and government mandates. Over half of every health care dollar in the U.S., even before Obamacare, is spent by the U.S. government. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. Because Medicare is a mandatory insurance program for the elderly, and old age is when most people spent the vast majority of their healthcare dollars, Medicare rates dictate nearly all healthcare pricing in the nation -- even non-Medicare insurance and healthcare is warped by these pricing mandates. You can't dictate over half the pricing in an industry through government mandate without that being true.
So, the individual uses the insurance he doesn't have a choice in to select from a limited pool of doctors to obtain treatments for which he is prohibited from negotiating on price, and for which the price he does pay is highly subsidized, typically 80-90% paid by insurance. How, exactly, is this free market medicine? Naturally this encourages astounding waste because at nearly every level of the transaction people are dealing with "other peoples' money."
In my business *none* of it is subsidized. Every expenditure has to be justified by what the market will bear. That's the difference.
The article goes on:
Even worse, manufacturers often maintain personal relationships (sometimes involving financial payments like consulting fees) with physicians who choose the medical devices that their hospitals purchase, creating a conflict of interest. Physicians often don’t even know the costs of the devices, and individual physicians often choose devices on their own, which weakens a hospital’s ability to bargain for volume discounts.OK, the stuff that's really expensive is hardly fodder for "volume discounts" -- the medical equipment we're talking about here isn't exactly gauze and sutures. It's high-tech fiber optic cameras and highly specialized equipment that may only be used for a single type of surgery. The hospital doesn't buy the expensive pieces in "volume," it may have only one or a few of them.
Certainly the physician choosing his own equipment at hospital expense is another example of "other peoples' money" in operation, but that sounds to me a like a matter of hospital policy, not a matter for government intervention, and it goes back again to the lack of consumer pressure on prices, not fiscally-irresponsible doctors. The doctors choose the equipment because when they are in surgery wrist deep in a cardiac patient, there's no administrative bureaucrat, no advisory group of doctors on the budget committee, to take the fall if the doctor is saddled with inadequate equipment. It's all on his head, the buck stops there. So do we really want anyone but our doctor dictating what equipment he uses?
As for the personal relationships, I don't think people understand how complicated this equipment is. Most people don't realize that there are often medical equipment company reps. right in the OR with the doctor and the rest of the team, because some of this equipment is so complex it requires a highly-knowledgable rep. to be on hand for advice and assistance. Again, we're not talking about gauze and sutures. This is also true in my industry, although it's not life or death: we spend a lot of time advising and assisting customers with our technology long after the sale. You're not just buying a refrigerator from Home Depot, getting it dropped off and never talking to GE or Home Depot again unless you need warranty repeair. When you buy equipment this high-end, you're also buying the company. Good personal relationships and trust in the vendor are essential! If this guy's in the OR with you helping you operate a million-dollar medical device with a patient's life on the line, it's nice to know he's someone competent, that he wasn't flipping burgers two weeks ago, before he signed on with the company that won the contract by submitting the lowest possible bid!
This article says the author, Topher Spiro, is the vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress. If you go to his bio, he's a lifelong bureaucrat and policy wonk. He's absolutely not the guy you want involved in your life-or-death medical decisions! He demonstrates this in his article by showing that he has no understanding of either the basic economics that underlie this problem, nor the medical necessities involved in the use and sale of expensive medical equipment.
The entire article boils down to "Blah, blah, blah, greedy corporations! Blah, blah, blah, enormous profits!" It's a screed fit for a sophomore political activist, not someone seriously interested in improving the nation's healthcare.
His entire approach is a top-down "solution" that says "Medicare should force" this and legislation would "require" that, when top-down legislation and price fixing are what got us into this mess. It's no accident that the most highly-regulated markets in the nation are also the ones where supply and demand function least effectively. But, when you are a statist, the answer to failure of statist schemes is always "more statism!"
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Shutdown Over. Debt Ceiling Hiked
It's over, for now: Obama signs bill to end partial shutdown, hike debt ceiling
Crisis averted! The U.S. is free to go deeper in debt! Glad that ended well. Wait....
Crisis averted! The U.S. is free to go deeper in debt! Glad that ended well. Wait....
And Yet, I'm Not The One Worried That Fictional Monsters Are A Threat To Society
Dr. Manny: America's obsession with 'The Walking Dead' is hurting our society
Who's obsessed with zombies? The people enjoying fictional movies, TV shows and video games, or the guy claiming in an allegedly serious column that zombie obsession threatens our society?
Who's obsessed with zombies? The people enjoying fictional movies, TV shows and video games, or the guy claiming in an allegedly serious column that zombie obsession threatens our society?
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Indians Are Jerks (Slavery Update)
That pretty well sums up what I learned about Indians in this story about the wife of one of the New Delhi rapists. When you consider that India is one of the formerly third-world nations that most effectively capitalized on its British colonial heritage and modernized, it's shocking to then realize that the type of casual cruelty with which this woman's neighbors and family treat her is really the norm in non-Anglo societies. We hear similar stories out of Muslim, Asian and African nations all the time.
The teachings of Jesus have echoed down through the ages here and taken root even among the atheist segments of our society. We are viscerally horrified that a family would let their own daughter starve, that they treat their women as second class citizens. I know seemingly kind, humane Indians in the U.S. It seems that they are that way only to the extent that they have renounced Indian ways.
Update: What was that I was saying about Indians being jerks? In the news today, Revealed: India is home to nearly half of world's 30 million modern day slaves, and the story pretty well upholds my thesis that non-Anglo cultures, in general, suck. Other big offenders: China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Haiti, Nepal.
For comparison purposes, the slave population of the U.S. in 1860, just before our civil war, was just under 4 million. But India has approximately 15 million enslaved people today.
The report itself is supposed to be at http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/ but I get an "Error establishing a database connection" when trying to access the site. Brought to you by the team that created http://www.healthcare.gov, no doubt.
By the way, I'm inherently skeptical of almost all the numbers from these types of organizations. I noted in the original news article that it mentioned that all the countries with the lowest rates of slavery were European, except for New Zealand, so that got me wondering what sort of slavery population we have in the U.S.
The organization that produced the report is http://www.walkfree.org/ and they call out the Florida tomato industry as "ground zero" for U.S. slavery. Whoa, I thought. Must be pretty bad, huh? And a quick google of "slavery florida tomato farms" would certainly lead you to think so. But the more you drill down, the more the narrative falls apart.
Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of VT was apparently very concerned with the situation (Florida is a county in Vermont, right?), and his site has the most informative article I've found so far: Sixth Immokalee slavery case suspect arrested, from January 18, 2008. How many slaves did this indictment involve? Twelve. But that was 2008. Walk Free is calling Florida "ground zero" for slavery now. Must still be a lot of unprosecuted slavery there, right? Um, no, not so much. Also interesting to note that all the indicted people are Hispanic.
Watch this video starring Lupe Gonzales, organizer of the CIW, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and a Guatemalan illegal immigrant (The illegal part is never explicitly mentioned, but it's implicit in the entire situation. If these were legal workers, they would have had numerous legal protections against exploitation). Try to bear with the sad violin music:
The documentary goes on to show that what's going on now is basically a workers movement for illegal immigrant rights and working conditions. This explains why Sanders was so interested.
While being tortured with sad violins, I continue to watch the video. Picking tomatoes in the hot Florida sun is very hard work. I think I would have guessed that on my own. Man, the work sucks, the pay is low, her trailer is crowded. Maybe she should go back to Guatemala? No, not so much:
It does make one pause and wonder if the slavery narrative is as trumped-up everywhere as they are in the U.S., but I'll leave that as an exercise for someone else who wants to fact-check liberal do-gooder organizations. Because Indians are jerks, I kinda believe they're guilty as charged.
Update 2: I was finally able to download the report. The methodology seems OK. I think that at the fringes some of their numbers are probably a little inflated, but they're probably in the ballpark in relative and general terms. Conclusion: Non-Anglo countries suck.
The teachings of Jesus have echoed down through the ages here and taken root even among the atheist segments of our society. We are viscerally horrified that a family would let their own daughter starve, that they treat their women as second class citizens. I know seemingly kind, humane Indians in the U.S. It seems that they are that way only to the extent that they have renounced Indian ways.
Update: What was that I was saying about Indians being jerks? In the news today, Revealed: India is home to nearly half of world's 30 million modern day slaves, and the story pretty well upholds my thesis that non-Anglo cultures, in general, suck. Other big offenders: China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Haiti, Nepal.
For comparison purposes, the slave population of the U.S. in 1860, just before our civil war, was just under 4 million. But India has approximately 15 million enslaved people today.
The report itself is supposed to be at http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/ but I get an "Error establishing a database connection" when trying to access the site. Brought to you by the team that created http://www.healthcare.gov, no doubt.
By the way, I'm inherently skeptical of almost all the numbers from these types of organizations. I noted in the original news article that it mentioned that all the countries with the lowest rates of slavery were European, except for New Zealand, so that got me wondering what sort of slavery population we have in the U.S.
The organization that produced the report is http://www.walkfree.org/ and they call out the Florida tomato industry as "ground zero" for U.S. slavery. Whoa, I thought. Must be pretty bad, huh? And a quick google of "slavery florida tomato farms" would certainly lead you to think so. But the more you drill down, the more the narrative falls apart.
Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of VT was apparently very concerned with the situation (Florida is a county in Vermont, right?), and his site has the most informative article I've found so far: Sixth Immokalee slavery case suspect arrested, from January 18, 2008. How many slaves did this indictment involve? Twelve. But that was 2008. Walk Free is calling Florida "ground zero" for slavery now. Must still be a lot of unprosecuted slavery there, right? Um, no, not so much. Also interesting to note that all the indicted people are Hispanic.
Watch this video starring Lupe Gonzales, organizer of the CIW, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and a Guatemalan illegal immigrant (The illegal part is never explicitly mentioned, but it's implicit in the entire situation. If these were legal workers, they would have had numerous legal protections against exploitation). Try to bear with the sad violin music:
Interviewer: Are there cases of slavery now? Or no?So, the U.S.'s "gound zero" for slavery in 2013 has no slaves. Right.
Gonzales: (translated from Spanish) Right now, no. But the most recent one is still in court. Because now here everybody knows about the coalition.
The documentary goes on to show that what's going on now is basically a workers movement for illegal immigrant rights and working conditions. This explains why Sanders was so interested.
While being tortured with sad violins, I continue to watch the video. Picking tomatoes in the hot Florida sun is very hard work. I think I would have guessed that on my own. Man, the work sucks, the pay is low, her trailer is crowded. Maybe she should go back to Guatemala? No, not so much:
Interviewer: Why did you come to Imokalee?So, that's ground zero for slavery in the U.S. -- migrant farm workers making more money and living in better condtions than they would in their home countries. Maybe the folks at Walk Free should be spending their time in Guatemala or Mexico -- the countries these migrant workers are abandoning -- if they want to really do something about the plight of poor people in bad conditions.
Gonzales: I didn't know I would be picking tomatoes. I came to Florida, arrived in Immokalee ... and there was a lot of work, but I never expected the work to be this difficult ... to earn a "misery." This is where I live (Me: shots of pretty standard mobile home that is very common in Florida and in my area). It is very hard to live in Immokalee. This is supposed to be the "living room."
Interviewer: And how many people [live here]?
Gonzales: Nine people. (Me: Previously she said she earned anywhere from $20 to $50 per day. Let's take the low end, $20. If all nine are farm workers, working five days per week, then they're bringing $900/week into that trailer. Plenty to pay any imaginable rural Florida rent with plenty left over for food.)
Interviewer: Why did you leave Guatemala?
Gonzales: Because there's a lot of poverty in Guatemala. (Me: I shouldn't have to spell it out, but poverty in Guatemala is something considerably worse than nine people in a modern single-wide with clean running water, functioning utilities, and plenty of food to eat. Oh, yes, I should mention that Ms. Gonzales could stand to miss a few meals. She's obese.). You don't earn enough money to raise a family. I was looking for other job opportunities. Sometimes, you never know where you'll end up. Maybe somewhere worse. (Me: Really? You're worse off? Please go back to Guatemala.) At times, I ask myself "Why did I come if the job is worse here?" Because the pay is better. (Me: Yes, I thought so.) So I can send money to my family. (Me: She's not just earning enough to live on, she's earning enough to send some back home!) ... so my children can study ... so they have better opportunities to grow, to excel in life. (Me: Wow, sounds like you came to the land of opportunity! Yet, somehow, you're still here filming a video complaining about how hard you have it.) That is why we sometimes try to find other job sources. It's a big sacrifice, because I have a daughter in Guatemala. If I knew that life here would be harder ... perhaps I would have stayed in Guatemala (Me: Didn't we just get finished with: better pay? Nobody's stopping you from going back, honey.) But now that I'm here ... I need to push forward.
It does make one pause and wonder if the slavery narrative is as trumped-up everywhere as they are in the U.S., but I'll leave that as an exercise for someone else who wants to fact-check liberal do-gooder organizations. Because Indians are jerks, I kinda believe they're guilty as charged.
Update 2: I was finally able to download the report. The methodology seems OK. I think that at the fringes some of their numbers are probably a little inflated, but they're probably in the ballpark in relative and general terms. Conclusion: Non-Anglo countries suck.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Role Models
PuffHo recently ran an article, Just Say No to Slutoween.
I'm not going to delve directly into the article content, because pretty much everyone I know is appalled by over-sexualized girls' Halloween costumes, and this article isn't controversial among the halfway civilized and affluent segments of society.
I'm going to come at it sideways. I note that the role model the author presents as an alternative to Disney princesses and sexy police girls is Tina Fey.
I submit that if you can't immediately come up with several thousand better females to emulate than this brittle, modestly funny comedienne who made a big part of her name being neck-deep in the savaging of Sarah Palin, you may have found your problem right there.
Basically, if Tina Fey is your ideal of what a woman should be like, your worldview, your culture, your morality and your comprehension of the potential richness of human virtue and worth are so shallow that it's really no wonder that you have to worry about your 8-year-old dressing up like a hooker on Halloween.
If the gamut of your potential life models runs from Tina Fey to Sexy Nurse ... you have nothing to model your life on.
I'm not going to delve directly into the article content, because pretty much everyone I know is appalled by over-sexualized girls' Halloween costumes, and this article isn't controversial among the halfway civilized and affluent segments of society.
I'm going to come at it sideways. I note that the role model the author presents as an alternative to Disney princesses and sexy police girls is Tina Fey.
I submit that if you can't immediately come up with several thousand better females to emulate than this brittle, modestly funny comedienne who made a big part of her name being neck-deep in the savaging of Sarah Palin, you may have found your problem right there.
Basically, if Tina Fey is your ideal of what a woman should be like, your worldview, your culture, your morality and your comprehension of the potential richness of human virtue and worth are so shallow that it's really no wonder that you have to worry about your 8-year-old dressing up like a hooker on Halloween.
If the gamut of your potential life models runs from Tina Fey to Sexy Nurse ... you have nothing to model your life on.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Shutdown: If They Won't Run It, Other People Will Be Lining Up To Do So
The usa.gov site has been turned into a Democratic propaganda site for ginning up outrage against the shutdown.
Among its bullet points:
"Every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed."
Web sites like nasa.gov and nps.gov have been pettily blocked with "shutdown" intro pages rather than simply letting them run would have cost nothing.
You know, I meant to blog about this years ago, but for some reason never got around to it. My family visited the Grand Canyon a few years back, and one thing I noticed while there was that virtually everything interesting and worthwhile that had been done to enhance the site had been done by private individuals.
The first path down for the mule trains was maintained for years by the Kolb Brothers who also built their famous home and photography studio handing over the edge of the canyon. The Hopi House, Lookout Studio, the El Tovar Hotel -- all the really beautiful facilities -- were built by private railroad money and investors.
The park service was antagonistic to the Kolb brothers for years and since the government eventually forced them out, they really haven't done anything except minor improvements to the trail. The government-built hotels are ugly and dingy, nothing like the gorgeous El Tovar. We didn't realize this and ended up getting booked into a terrible piece of crap government motel that would have made a Motel 6 blush in shame.
Honestly, if the government turned the tourist areas of the Grand Canyon over to a private business to run, it would be a huge improvement.
Among its bullet points:
"Every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed."
Web sites like nasa.gov and nps.gov have been pettily blocked with "shutdown" intro pages rather than simply letting them run would have cost nothing.
You know, I meant to blog about this years ago, but for some reason never got around to it. My family visited the Grand Canyon a few years back, and one thing I noticed while there was that virtually everything interesting and worthwhile that had been done to enhance the site had been done by private individuals.
The first path down for the mule trains was maintained for years by the Kolb Brothers who also built their famous home and photography studio handing over the edge of the canyon. The Hopi House, Lookout Studio, the El Tovar Hotel -- all the really beautiful facilities -- were built by private railroad money and investors.
The park service was antagonistic to the Kolb brothers for years and since the government eventually forced them out, they really haven't done anything except minor improvements to the trail. The government-built hotels are ugly and dingy, nothing like the gorgeous El Tovar. We didn't realize this and ended up getting booked into a terrible piece of crap government motel that would have made a Motel 6 blush in shame.
Honestly, if the government turned the tourist areas of the Grand Canyon over to a private business to run, it would be a huge improvement.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Making Things Work
Hat tip from Ace: Scenes From the Ruling Class
Trent Lott on Ted Cruz: "Cut His Legs Out From Under Him"
Lott said, "They've made their point," Lott huffed. "It's time to say enough and move on." Referring to the die-hard tea partiers in the House Republican caucus, he added, "These new guys don't care about making things work."
This is like being happy that a car being driven toward a cliff at 80 mph is "working."
Those darn guys who stopped the car, they don't care about making things work. We have a car to drive here. All their crazy talk about this so-called cliff, that's at least 200-300 yards off in the distance. No need for this craziness of stopping the car.
Trent Lott on Ted Cruz: "Cut His Legs Out From Under Him"
Lott said, "They've made their point," Lott huffed. "It's time to say enough and move on." Referring to the die-hard tea partiers in the House Republican caucus, he added, "These new guys don't care about making things work."
This is like being happy that a car being driven toward a cliff at 80 mph is "working."
Those darn guys who stopped the car, they don't care about making things work. We have a car to drive here. All their crazy talk about this so-called cliff, that's at least 200-300 yards off in the distance. No need for this craziness of stopping the car.
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