Where's your money going in 2010?

Chicken Soup for the Worker's Soul

My TV is going to die soon. It will break and I will have to go shopping for another. I know this not because it is making any sort of sound or tuning in and out. It's not too old. It's inevitable malfunction has nothing to do with the recent digital conversion. No. My TV will break because I am certain that as the health care debate continues I will throw something through the screen. I'm not allowing myself to eat in the living room anymore. I can't risk a plate going into the face of Lou Dobbs or a glass launching through the table of "Harry and Louise." Health care will kill my TV.

My rage comes not only from a place within me but from my mail, sitting on my desk. It's based in reality. It saddens me that there is even debate at this time and it saddens me that the debate is simply another tool being used to confuse the middle class. Here are a few questions I have for people watching ads against a public health care option.

Can you choose your own doctor now? I can't. I have fairly good health insurance, by any standards. It's affordable. My co-pays are small but I cannot see a doctor of my choosing. That decision is made for me. If I want to see my doctor I have to be very specific when I make the appointment. If I am scheduled to see him for the flu and we discuss my knee the appointment is not covered by my "fairly good insurance". I have to call my insurance company before I go to the emergency room to make sure my visit will be covered. I have to make sure that if I have an emergency it's near the hospital my insurance has designated as my Primary Care Facility... otherwise... whoops! No payment! This is all from someone who has "fairly good insurance".

What about the people with no insurance? I talk to others about insurance and the story is not the same. I know two people, in their sixties, who are without health insurance. Both of them are unemployed. This isn't because they have no skills. One is a union electrician! They tried to survive on COBRA but after nearly losing their home they simply couldn't afford their health insurance. When there is no money there is simply NO MONEY. Now they are terrified of being sick. Everyday is a stressful reminder that they simply can't afford to live.

Government will make health decisions for you? Who makes your health care decisions now? I dare anyone with health insurance... bad, good, excellent... any health insurance, to go get a cat scan. Women, go get a mammogram. Men, go for a colonoscopy. It won't be covered. I guarantee it. No one with private health insurance makes their own health care decisions. Dot your I's. Cross your T's. It won't happen. Sure, most of that mammogram or colonoscopy will be covered if you're of a certain age, if it's a certain time of year, if you go to a certain facility or if the moon is in line with Jupiter. Sure, there's a chance it will be covered but it's not by your choice. Keep in mind the individual working in that tall black building downtown somewhere has every incentive to find a loophole on your form. They have every incentive to deny your claim.

Who would you rather make health care decisions? Health insurance, public or private, only works as a collective. We all pay in so some of us can take out every now and then. That's how it works. Because of this we must concede that somewhere down the line someone is going to have to make a decision on the insured's behalf. It is inevitable with so much money and so many different cases involved. That being acknowledged I think we need to ask ourselves this very important question: Would you rather have officials, elected by the people, help to make decisions for the people or would you rather a CEO (who stands only to profit) make decisions for the people.

I prefer the elected officials. If they make bad decisions let's just get them out of office. There's a lot of talk about the inefficacy of government. We forget that we are the government! We hold sovereignty. Each time that we believe or fall prey to these ads suggesting that government does not work we hand another piece of our country over to corporate America. Only... be careful. Corporate America is not really even corporate "America" anymore. It's corporate-China. It's corporate Mexico. It's corporate Bangladesh. These companies that apparently care so much for our health care system and care so much about out autonomy as patients don't care enough about us to keep our jobs here or to even keep their money here. They are here to funnel it out, into international investments and cheap labor. They are not advocating for your rights as a worker.

This brings me to the popular book series, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Anyone who has ever walked past or into the inspirational or self-help section of a bookstore knows about these heartwarming little books. The books are compilations of stories and anecdotes relating to a certain profession or perhaps a certain stage in life. I've seen Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Teenager's Soul, and many others. The stories in these books are always feel-good. The title describes them perfectly. One reads them and feels warm and comfortable. They are full of light-hearted, feel-better tales, kind of like a warm bowl of homemade chicken soup.

I suggest that corporate America is putting out a gift book of their own: Chicken Soup for the Worker's Soul. It's warm. It's caring. It's delightfully full of crap. It's wrapped up in a patriotic book jacket and flying off the shelves. They want us to believe this is non-fiction. They want workers to believe that we're all the same, on the same side- wall street and main street, those who shower before work and those who shower after work. The tales they fill this book with are outlandish and exceptional stories of women who could not get medical treatment in Canada, people in Sweden who are forced to travel for flu vaccines and elderly people being denied treatment because of their age. It's a perversion of comfort to be sure. The anecdotes are scare tactics but Americans are buying it up. It's a best-seller, marketed as inspiration.

Chicken Soup for the Worker's Soul. It's a nice idea but sew it on a pillow or put it in a greeting card and leave us to do the work that so desperately needs to be done. Meanwhile, I will walk away from TV and try to stick to something a little less inspirational, a little less warm and comforting... the newspaper.



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Obama talks about Healthcare: The time to act is now

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So men really are jerks? Study shows men really do view women as objects – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks

I found this today. It's from late Feb 09 but I thought it to be relevant to Obama's whole ridiculous leering scandal.
So men really are jerks? Study shows men really do view women as objects – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks

Jan Schakowsky... Worth Watching

I'm a fan of Representative Jan Schakowsky. She stood up in front of congress and pleaded with them not to pass the first bail-out bill. Now she is standing up to the CIA, and her's is a voice that will relent simply because of a lack of media blitz.

This is the link to her latest press release.

Jan Schakowsky

Boys will be boys?

Talk about a photographic "gotcha"! The look on Sarkozy's face is my personal favorite.

An Exceptional Editorial

The following is an excerpt from a piece by author Tim Wise, the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005) and "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama." The author was kind of enough to allow me to link to it. He can be reached at:timjwise@mac.com.

The full piece can be found at Counterpunch.

Of Fireworks and False Memories

I have this fantasy, the indulgence of which I resist, due in part to the impracticality of it, but also, and mostly out of a general distaste for inviting potential violence upon my person. It only comes to mind once a year really, on this day in fact, as cities and towns across the United States gear up for their respective July 4th celebrations, replete with fireworks, hot dogs, and lots of red, white and blue banners, flags and wardrobe accessories ubiquitously assaulting the visual landscape from sea to shining sea.

In the fantasy, it's incredibly hot out, even as the daytime sun recedes, giving way to the darkening skies that will soon serve as the canvas for a colorful explosion of incendiary art: the end product of two unstoppable forces--American self-love, and Chinese manufacturing--brought together in an audacious display of grandiosity, not unlike, say, Siegfried and Roy, or at least Peaches and Herb.

As Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" blares from the back of a sound system loaded onto a truck, and the yearly Independence Day parade begins, I bide my time. Then, just as the first procession of Boy Scouts passes by, I turn to the man standing next to me, the one with the big "God Bless the USA" button on his hat, and say:

"Why can't you just get over it? I mean, why do you people insist on living in the past? That whole 'breaking away from the British thing' was like more than 200 years ago for God's sakes. Isn't it time to move on?"

In the fantasy, the man's head explodes, bloodless but powerfully and very, very final, at which point I move on to the next reveler, knowing that I only have so much time in which to put an end to this special brand of sanctimony by thought-murdering the assembled. After all, once the big sky-booms begin, no one will be able to hear me.

Goodbye To You... Michael Jackson and Growing Up Eighties Style

Since June 25th I have been mulling over my thoughts on the death of Michael Jackson. Only a few things have come to mind; like the fact that his early death may now afford him fame rather than the fate of infamy he was seemingly moving toward, or how his music really was ground-breaking but perhaps not purposely so, or just that the Thriller album was so freaking awesome. As I thought about this unquestionably talented man and the tumultuous life he led I realized that I could not possibly write about Michael Jackson or anyone else I may have enjoyed as a child, or even as a teenager, without writing about my sisters. To me, these girls were everything; the embodiment of 80's pop culture and the reason Michael Jackson's death is able to mean anything to me, other than just the ending to another tragic celebrity biography.

My older sisters were the coolest, my sister April, especially. She tight-rolled her jeans. She wore gigantic t-shirts and sweaters and paired them with even bigger belts. She permed her hair. She wore two or three pairs of socks at a time and always had the coolest, poofiest, craziest looking dresses. She was it. She was the eighties. Most of all, my sister was happy to be a typical eighties girl. She was always herself, or at least that's how it seemed to me, her younger sister. She proudly donned that awesome denim jacket, that giant Swatch watch and Wang-Chunged her way through high school.

Fashion aside, she was so much more than trends. To this day, I honestly believe that my sister April can speak with the most authority and knowledge on any eighties band or musician I can mention. She knows where they were born, who they married, what bands they were in and, of course, she can sing all of their songs. She had all the newest records and, later, all the newest tapes. I remember being an obnoxious little sister, idolizing her and yet terrorizing her at the same time by running off with the True Blue album by Madonna because I thought the song La Isla Bonita was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. To this day, I still have her Duran Duran and Go Go's tapes. The Blondie tape may have belonged to another sister, but it's mine now also. (Until they read this... after which I'm sure there will be reckoning.)

See, these things are almost more mine now than they are theirs. The tapes, the records, the white lace gloves meant to look like Madonna's in the lucky star video; these things all belong to me more than anyone five or seven or ten years older than me. For me they have meaning. They are the pieces of things that used to be everything upon which I depended. Like many middle classes then, and I suppose now, my parents often worked three jobs just to make ends meet and to provide all of us with a happy life. They would often come home from one job, change, and then go to the other. My father somehow managed to work 27 hours into a day, rather than the lazy 24. While my parents were there providing for us they did manage to cultivate relationships with us and help shape a work ethic that I'm proud to say all of their children maintain still. However, those few hours after-school was the time I had with my sisters. It was my second education, the one dealing with music, dances, boys, hair, passed notes in class, and all the other important matters of the world.

If these afternoons were time spent in the classroom of life and growing up, then music surely was the chalkboard. MTV was a staple in our house. Back then they actually showed music videos. Whitney Houston was beautiful. Madonna was what we wanted to be. Rick Springfield was our boyfriend. We didn't know George Michael was gay. We just thought he was a good dancer and decided he might make a good boyfriend too! Pat Benatar and Tina Turner empowered us and Cyndi Lauper made us misbehave. My personal favorite was Patti Smyth, of Scandal. She was everything I wasn't and everything I wanted to be. She had dark brown hair and an attitude to match her fiery eyes. To a shy, petite blond from the Midwest, this woman was the heart and soul of independence and strength. "Goodbye to You" is still one of my favorite songs.

Of course, the artist that almost needed his own day in our household was Michael Jackson. Many thoughts and memories have run through my mind regarding him but, mainly, I remember the Thriller album. I can close my eyes and place myself in my sister's bedroom, sitting on the edge of her water-bed, looking at her bright pink record player. I can see the cover of the album now: Michael Jackson, in a white suit with a black shirt. He seemed to look right at you. We had a heart drawn around his face. We were girls, remember, and we never thought records would become collector's items. Plus, it didn't matter. We loved him. We thought everything he did and said was so cool. We thought Billie Jean was the greatest song ever and no one had ever heard anything like the song Thriller.

On a near daily basis I am told by people around me that I am not old enough. I am told that I am not old enough to know about this song or that artist. I am not old enough to know about some world event or topic. I am not old enough. I am a woman nearing thirty and I wonder when I will be old enough, and also how long I will be old enough- before I am then considered too old. The music of the eighties means so much to me because it was my means of bonding with the girls who helped to define my sense of self. For this reason, I think I am exempt from the stringent "know only the music of your generation" rule.

Music of the eighties also has meaning to me because the music of now often seems more like a business. When I see a show or I buy a song (not an album- but a song) I know that I am the consumer. I know that someone is selling me something. I know that I am being used in various marketing research projects and I am certainly part of some typical demographic. Artists are suing fans. Fans are suing artists. Record companies are owned by Pepsi and Pepsi has a record. When I was a little girl idolizing Patty Smyth I just knew that I was a fan. I thought her hair, her clothing and her overall style were extensions of her personality and not merely an attempt to fill a niche.

I feel that even though the eighties are often considered the beginning of everything fake in music; synthesizers, breast enhancements and lip-synchers, they were also some of the most sincere and honest times for music. I thought to myself the other day that maybe what I will miss about Michael Jackson is his sincerity. What I realize now is that I began to miss that a long time ago. I began to miss Michael Jackson decades ago. He forgot his fans. He forgot the girls who sat around after school singing his music.

He's not to blame. Who didn't forget those girls? Now my sisters and I are busy. They have children. We all work. We all have homes. We all have responsibilities. Even when we are able to get together, even when we do start to discuss music; we have all forgotten that unbridled joy and innocence that came with each drop of the record needle. We're older now. We don't sing along.

After the little girls who listened to Madonna and the Prince of Pop dealt with all matters of the living: marriage, babies, health, illness, death; we outgrew the songs about zombies and unattainable women and rival gangs. We no longer had use for Patty Smyth and her bad-ass, independent attitude. Remembering Michael Jackson this week made me realize that I had forgotten him long ago. It was only with his death that I was truly able to appreciate his life, and the profound effect it had on mine.


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Tea Party Movement Loses Steam | The Washington Independent

Tea Party Movement Loses Steam | The Washington Independent

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