Nuts on a Velvet Cushion

OK. There is something creative and kinky about wearing hardware as a fashion statement. The Today Show this morning (September 9, 2010) had a short segment about women creating jewelry from some of your favorite items in the hardware aisle. My favorite accessory in the “DIY Haute Couture” line was a belt made of out of a pulley and rope. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with giving Home Depot a seat at the fashion runway, but is simple youthful exuberance all that is going on here?

The American Middle Class, bless its plaque filled heart, is being further softened up for what MadTV brilliantly satirized as “Lowered Expectations.” Over the past 20 years, the productivity of the American worker has increased but real wages have declined. Now that the biggest bubble of those last 20 years has burst (in real estate), the economy has hit the skids, at least for those in the bottom 80%. Those at the top have never had it so good. The levees of our economy have collapsed and, except for those who live in the most exclusive neighborhoods, we are all trying to keep our heads above water.

Thus, our friends at NBC are there making life a little more pleasant by demonstrating that as every penny of savings and equity are eaten up, women do not have to go about unadorned. They can galvanize their admirers with items that are themselves galvanized. The hardware store is replete with all kinds of rings, chains, spokes and spools in many sizes and shapes. Minnie Pearl step aside. Your dowdy image is in for some stiff and steely competition.

Doesn’t anyone else find this depressing? I thought diamonds were a girl’s best friend. Turns out that all along those blokes who worked themselves into a lather mortgaging their sweat for that matrimonial rock, could have saved a great deal of trouble. All they needed to do for their true love was trot down to True Value and buy their baubles by the pound.

However, the big surprise comes much later. Get ready all you little tykes. When your grandma loses her last little bit of private health insurance and slips off to those faux pearly gates, your inheritance is going to be one large screw.

The 14th Amendment – Racial and Political from the Start

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Ah, you gotta love the Republicans. The 14th Amendment was passed by the required 2/3 vote by an overwhelmingly Republican Congress in 1866. The Civil War having concluded with the defeat of the South, that defeat put the slavery question to rest and should have also put to rest the relative constitutional position of the states vis-à-vis the federal government. Alas, some bad ideas never die even when they are buried under the bodies of 600,000 slain soldiers.

So, the present Republican leadership in our Congress, playing on racial and ethnic prejudices, wants to reverse the impact of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment as that has been understood for 150 years, this, ostensibly, as a remedy for “furriners” coming to this country and having children who immediately qualify as American citizens. Illegal immigration is certainly a problem with which the federal government needs to deal; however, for the past 30 years administrations both Democrat and Republican have feared the electoral repercussions of offending one or another voting bloc and left the situation to deteriorate. Reagan did attempt some reform and in the process gave amnesty to 6 million people who had entered the country illegally at that time. Amnesty is no longer a viable option because Republicans have recognized that their racist postures over these 30 years have so alienated many groups that the future does not bode well for their electoral prospects as the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. will shift over the next 40 years.

Of course, when the amendment first passed the freed slaves were grateful to Lincoln and his party and that gratitude was expressed in voting patterns well into the 20th century, until the Great Depression and the emergence of the New Deal. Those polarities have reversed. African-Americans have been abandoned by the party of Lincoln, which has bleached itself of every progressive element that it may have ever contained to become the spokesparty for plutocrats, the avaricious and the retrograde. The 14th Amendment was passed to guarantee the civil rights of slaves who had been freed and were subject to imposition of disabilities that would have reduced them once again to a kind of functional slavery. It should not be forgotten that generations of slaves born in the United States were not considered citizens, their lives and labor forfeit to generations of people who believed owning other people was perfectly consistent with the idea that “all men are created equal endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Why is this attempt to undo the spirit of the American ethos such vile hypocrisy? For two basic reasons. First, the vast majority of Americans living today are citizens by virtue of the fact that their immigrant forebears, both legal and illegal, gave birth to children on this soil automatically making those children and their progeny American citizens. That was their dream and apparently the dream is still alive. The argument that terrorists are exploiting one of this country’s virtues is laughable. 10,000 people are killed by guns in this country every year. All Osama needs to do is make large contributions to the NRA, sit back, and watch the fireworks. Second, this attempt on the part of Republicans to rewrite the Constitution for their electoral convenience smells to high heaven because it is consistent with their attempt to disenfranchise certain groups in general. So many African-American men are in prison (11% of all African-American men between the ages of 30-34) that disqualifying felons from voting can be the difference between victory and defeat in many political races in this country. It is not that felons ought to vote. Elections can just as easily be stolen by trolling voter registration lists for felons and then disqualifying many eligible voters in the process. (That exactly this tactic was used in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 is easily documented.) What Republicans are doing in this recent maneuver is an attempt to disqualify voters at a more strategic juncture – the very point of citizenship itself.

See Also: http://www.truth-out.org/connie-schultz-blame-babies62011

Sweden - Socialist Paradise?

I have been in Sweden for a week and a half and am about to depart in the morning. The purpose of this trip was attendance at the International Sociological Association meetings where I gave two papers and otherwise hobnobbed with my fellow wizards. But the experience of Sweden and, in particular, Göteburg, is what I wish to discuss.

Sweden has a bad rap in the United States for being too heavily taxed and the prime suspect in that crime known as “social democracy.” It is true that taxes here are high. Not only taxes, but prices for a middle-class sociology professor like myself are just about astronomical. A Caesar salad at any decent restaurant is going to cost the equivalent of about $20.00 and bottled beer goes for about $7.00. One ride on the tram is almost $3.00, at least 30% more than comparable cities in Germany, for example. One supposes that the high prices are a result of the tax structure. The lovely proprietor of a shop selling Indian goods told me that she had to pay 25% off the top from every transaction she made as tax.

On the other hand, the streets are clean and street crime is a non-issue. What is more the people enjoy a very healthy lifestyle and few are as extremely obese as Americans. Coming in by train from Copenhagen, I faced across from a Swedish professional woman who was quick to praise the many social services that were available to people in the country, especially child care. She had children who were in kindergarten which had a very active program and which could keep children until she got off work. In addition, the children were fed two nutritious meals. A woman came in every day and cooked for the class and prepared homemade bread and rolls. Her child does not eat prepackaged meals filled with preservatives and additives, but homecooking and that in a public facility. She beamed when she told me this and that childcare was a worry with which she did not have to contend. Children in the country receive the equivalent of $200 per month from the state paid to the parents and when they reach age 16, the money is paid to them directly. University education is basically free if a student can qualify.

Politically, Sweden is a neutral country so its politics are unusual. The defense budget of the country would not be nearly as burdensome as is that of the United States. Since crime is so low, there are few people in prison taking that burden off the budget as well. In fact, Sweden incarcerates 75 out of every 100,000 people, while the United States incarcerates approximately 750 out of every 100,000 people, ten times as many proportionately. There is an increasing amount of racial and ethnic diversity since Sweden welcomes immigrants from Africa and many foreign nations making its mix something fairly interesting.

Göteburg is a medium sized city (350,000) on the western coast of Sweden and is the second largest city after Stockholm, the capital. People are friendly and the extensive public transportation system makes getting around very easy. I heartily encourage a visit to this interesting place, but save your pennies because it is not inexpensive, especially for Americans who will find that as time goes on their money may not go as far overseas as it has in the past (nor will it at home). Sweden is an example of a working social democracy which is feeling the same pressures that all nations are contending with during the world-wide economic crisis. Forces in this world are attempting to dismantle every bit of human connectedness and feeling, but if people are aware that this happening, possibly they can take steps to prevent it.

Spilled Ink

It is a metaphor for so much of what is wrong with our society: a deeply embedded structural flaw is hemorrhaging national treasure, but, instead of providing any benefit, it is fouling the landscape. The ongoing calamity, the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the explosion and sinking of the rig Deepwater Horizon, demonstrates every day that the Obama administration is not in control of events and that the American people are not in control of their government. As of this writing, British Petroleum has “slowed the leak” but work continues. Up to this point, the term “leak” does not do justice to the colossal scale of the environmental catastrophe that already has taken place and which may be further exacerbated. Estimates run as high as 70,000 barrels of oil a day gushing out of that mechanical wound. At the higher end of the estimate, it would be an Exxon Valdez sized oil spill every four days. Even moderate figures mean millions of barrels of oil fouling the Gulf.

The response of the government provides an opportunity to evaluate its priorities and the credulity of the American people. We live with a legitimating legal dispensation that finds it entirely proper to invade foreign nations, bomb villages with mechanical drones sometimes killing dozens of innocent civilians, waterboard foreign nationals without any legal process, incarcerate its own citizens to the point where even a small quantity of illegal drugs can result in twenty year sentences creating the largest prison system in the world, foreclose on hundreds of thousands of homeowners pushing them into the street, deny veterans the medical care they have earned and so desperately need – all this and yet –

Our government is incapable of reflecting the outrage of the populace when a foreign oil company plays fast and loose with American lives and America’s landscape. Now we know what it feels like to live in a banana republic, helpless before the dictates of foreign corporations. Where is a Congress that sweeps into action denouncing these smug, self-satisfied CEOS who care nothing about life, limb or property? Here is a little action plan for Congress. Pass legislation sequestering every bit of profit made by British Petroleum as a fund against which to pay for any clean-up and continue withholding that profit until every penny in damages is recovered. If that had been done in the first week, the hole in that dyke would have been plugged then and there even if the fat-faced Board of Directors had to go deep sea diving to do it themselves. Instead of outrage we get tears. Congressman Melancon of Louisiana got emotional when thinking about the catastrophic damage done to the natural beauty of his home state. Our sympathy is with him but it is not tears of sympathy that are needed now. Nothing will wash that black stain out of the Gulf for quite some time to come. Unfortunately, it is small compared to the stain on America’s honor and intelligence which this episode has so sadly revealed.

Medical Soviet - Part II

A story recently turned up in the Orlando Sentinel that describes a urologist in that area who has posted a sign on his door that attempts to turn away from medical care in that practice anyone who voted for Obama or supports his health care reform. The story goes on to describe the ethical dereliction that this piece of professional arrogance represents. I suggest that if there are any firefighters in that area who disagree with the good doctor they should refrain from putting out any fires at his home. The pathologically anti-social nature of the sign on his door should deter anyone with any sense from putting themselves in the hands of such an ethical monster.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment in this country has been heavily colonized by this kind of sensibility. There is an interesting work by E. Richard Brown entitled Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America which provides an excellent introduction to the impact that both medicine has had on capitalism and vice-versa. (It should be noted that the entire work can be downloaded on the Internet at the site which has been hot-buttoned). There is little doubt that medicine as practiced in this country has been an auxiliary to the Fordist and Taylorist practices that have until recently organized the time, minds, bodies of the great masses of American humanity. In return for their faithful service, physicians have received an almost sacred status and the highest medical salaries in the world, although the impact of medical care on gross measures of health do not bear out any great return from all this expense.

It is high time that Americans freed themselves from mystifications of all kinds, but a good start would be the professional mystifications that abound in almost every area of life. Medical mystifications are some of the most durable, most resistant to being dispelled. This is not difficult to understand because we are all wary of criticizing the very people upon whom we rely for the maintenance of our health and the health of our loved ones. Thus, it becomes doubly important that the individuals who operate within that arena of activity, the medical/health care arena, do so on the most disinterested basis that can be arranged. Those who aspire to practice medicine must bring with them a strong sense of social responsibility as well as a basic humanity that transcends politics or economics. Physicians whose lives are taken up with entirely venal considerations are no better than priests who abuse the worshippers in their charge.

But our civilization has given itself over to the idea that we should recognize self-interest as the only worthy motive of action and competition as the engine providing the organizing principle of human relations. The result of this has been the perversion of human values and the transformation of American society into a version of ultimate cage fighting. Winning is everything and your opponent is an object to be eliminated in the pursuit of your goals. Religion, morality, education and even medicine, all these institutions are insidiously transformed to support this shift in values. In fact, there are some who would replace the book held by the Statue of Liberty that has carved into it “July 4, 1776” with something similar to the sign on the doctor’s door: Stay Out – Survival of the Fittest Rules!

The Medical Soviet - Part 1

Today’s comments do not have so much to do with medicine as they have to do with the various twisted ideas that come out of those witches Sabbaths of stupidity and hypocrisy known as “tea parties.” That tea parties are anything more than a collection of disaffected white racists who bemoan their perceived loss of privilege is a difficult position to defend. However, through the vulgar taunts and the vicious looks comes a number of complaints that have a pedigree pre-dating the Obama presidency and which have held together the right wing consensus through a number of presidential administrations. Some of those complaints emerge from a theory of society and economics. That theory maintains that government action, or any collective action for that matter, which stymies the free working of “the market” is illegitimate and guaranteed not only to fail as economics but also to undermine the sacred values of a democratic state.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to distinguish between one set of regulations and another. To bring medicine back into the conversation, if the principle of open competition were to operate freely in the medical sphere, as I, for one, believe it should at least to a greater degree than it does, state regulation of physicians would be an unacceptable encroachment on freedom of choice. If I want to consult a physician who treats on the basis of the latest nutritional and herbal knowledge, why should I be denied the freedom of doing so? Considering the vast uncertainties upon which medicine is based, it is curious that there are not more disagreements among medical professionals. But medicine as conducted in this country is a series of closely monitored practices based on what is considered to be the best science. Even so, science, if it is science and not dogma, must be an open-ended practice ever laboring toward new paradigms. However, the track record of American medicine has not been one of toleration for alternative views or practices. All one needs to do is consult the history of chiropractic or the oppression suffered by lay midwives. The only way that medicine is able to exert any power is through the monopoly granted it by the state. But if competition effectively sorts between those who succeed and those who fail, why not allow the market to decide who stays in business practicing medicine and who does not?

Of course, to a degree I am playing the devil’s advocate. I suppose even hounds of the tea party breed would bark loudly and lustily if it was suggested that the state cease licensing and regulating the practice of medicine. But why? Well, I suppose it might be argued that some things are so well settled that it only stands to reason that the state has an obvious basis for intervening. The fact that this last insight should be applied to medicine and should not be applied to the provision of medicine would seem to me to be a failure of imagination. Reasonable people can come together and through their consensus determine that some things will not be subject to the whim of fate. “The market” in reality is only another way of saying “fate” or “chance.” At the risk of offending some religious believers, an analogy could be made between this fear of regulation and the refusal of some individuals to accept medical treatment on the basis that it upsets “God’s plan.” Medical treatment may not work and some social regulation may be misconceived and fail to produce its purpose. Neither of those two possibilities should mean that we avoid taking the most advantageous action when the opportunity arises. If the tea parties were operating out of a sense of wisdom and not vitriol, their medicine would be a lot easier to swallow.

Good to the Last Drop!

Hooray! As per a new study out in the last few days, not only has coffee been rehabilitated heart-wise, it is now touted as being heart protective. The new study (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente) suggests that dangerous heart arrhythmias are found to occur less often in people who are the heavier coffee drinkers. Of course, media reports of the study do not tell you which kind of coffee to drink, what time of the day to drink it or whether or not it operates the same way if you are taking it with Beta Blockers or whipped cream. Long ago my cynicism reached its now epic proportions concerning medical pronouncements when it became obvious from the conflicting studies that appeared on a regular basis in the media that all one needed to do was wait. You like to indulge in fried pig’s livers but were told that this is a death sentence for your circulatory system? Wait a few days and a new study may appear that will not only clear those livers of all harm but will exalt them to such a height they will be given their own float in the Rose Parade.

Don’t get me wrong. I love coffee, especially the kind that comes mit schlag in the wonderful cafes scattered so conveniently about the city of Vienna. When it was partially vilified by earlier studies, I continued to drink it. Now that coffee has been fussed over yet again by the medical establishment, my love for it has not increased. I drank it before, drink it now and will continue to drink it. Why? Because it tastes good (to me), has not caused any fatal complications as of yet and has a sophisticated complex of flavors and sensations that are appealing. That appeal is ancient and when coffee finally made its way into European salons it took off like a shot. There seems to be little or no evidence that its allure is fading anytime soon. Of course, everything needs to be approached sensibly, but that seems beyond the ken of our modern sawbones. Now that this study has given a green light to coffee drinking, I expect that Americans will put the pedal to the metal and start guzzling coffee like Ponce de Leon at the Fountain of Youth.

But isn’t this exactly the problem with the way that medicine is practiced? Physicians prescribe literally billions of drugs per year to Americans (see Greg Critser) but can only tell in the most general fashion who will suffer serious or even fatal side effects. Everything is a matter of percentage risk. Of course, herbs, teas, natural foods are off limits for most physicians to discuss with their patients because they cannot find “studies” which provide the probabilities of risk. Now that coffee has been the subject of a study and the numbers are in, their confidence swells like Tarzan’s pecs. What about the old studies? What all this is about is a professional narrative that medicine, especially American medicine, would like to have believed. That narrative is simple – we knew nothing before modern medicine came on the scene and we all owe our lives (and most of our fortunes) to the good doctors for the great benefits they have brought us. They have brought us great benefits indeed, but those need to be kept in perspective. Drugs which are enthusiastically marketed at one moment, become a deadly menace the next. Medical errors cost tens of thousands of lives a year. One cannot fault the medical profession entirely. It is really the American public that needs a good hiding for forgetting the simple lessons of their great-grandparents. With medicine, less is more.