The new economic model

Anyone who is paying any attention know that the recent attacks on Planned Parenthood have nothing to do with abortion and the sanctity of human life.  Abortions are not the main purpose of Planned Parenthood.  The main purpose is women's health and birth control.  But taken in context will all of the other actions of the right, it makes perfect sense.

Let's try to summarize the current Republican agenda.

• Implement laws to make it harder for the poor to vote, as evidenced by a spate of voter suppression laws being passed in Republican controlled states.
• Under the guise of 'torte reform', make it harder for individuals to hold businesses accountable for their actions.
• Attack public education, stripping both primary and secondary education of funding, demonize underpaid teachers, resulting in less educational opportunity for all but the wealthy.
• De-fund organizations that provide birth control, and cancer screenings for women.
• Remove 'restrictive' regulations on business, like child labor laws, or those that protect worker safety, food safety, or the air you breath, the water you drink.
• Strip workers of their rights to collectively bargain.

 But if you think about it, this all makes sense.  In a feudalistic society, the purpose of the peasants are to supply labor and soldiers.  The value of women is to produce children and then hurry up and die so that your workers do not waste time caring for them in their old age.  The more children they produce, the cheaper your labor costs are.  And if you disenfranchise them, both by taking away their vote, and their rights to organize, they will not be able to do anything about it.

And if you have plenty of them, you don't have to worry if too many of them are poisoned on the job or die in the mines.  There are plenty more where they came from.

Of course, you will still need a tiny middle class.  Someone has to be the physicians and the engineers and scientists who take care of the needs of the landed gentry.  But you don't need many of them.  And knowing they could be tossed back into the pile of peasantry at any moment should make them easy to control.

This model has worked for the benefit of the ruling class in one form or another for thousands of years.  You think our little 200+ year experiment is viewed as anything except a fluke by those on the right?  Think again.  You have a front row seat to what has happened to other social experiments of the past, when the old guard decides that enough is enough.

Unless you decide to do something about it.

A small jab at hypocrisy

I am sure it came as no surprise when it was revealed that Teahaddist darling and stimulus critic Michele Bachmann sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thanking him for the use of stimulus money to help support the Minnesota pork industry, and encouraging him to spend more.  After all, who doesn't expect hypocrisy from a politician?

Now it is my understanding, that in many cases, exactly where money will be spent is not in the legislation itself, there is considerable flexibility by the federal agencies that are disbursing the money.  So how about this?

If you as a congressman voted against it, then none of the money goes to your district.  If both of the state's senators voted against it, skip that state.   You want to take credit for bringing home the bacon, then actually help bring it home.  Time to play a little hardball.

When Dell's mistake is your problem

My wife's printer is running low on ink, so I went onto the Dell website to order more. Yeah, their ink is over-priced but it is convenient.  We had checked a couple of local stores, and none of them carried the specific size cartridges (do they make so many different types to discourage after-market ink?) that we needed.

The following week I received this in an email from Dell:

Dear Customer,We're sorry but your order will take longer to fulfill than previously communicated and is now scheduled to be delivered on or before 6/8/2011

Because we did not meet the date previously communicated to you, we need your permission today to continue your order with this new date. If we do not receive your permission, the Federal Trade Commission requires that we cancel your order.
I also received several robo-calls repeating the same message. 

Well my wife has a lot of stuff to print between now and when she is leaving on a trip, so I decided to look around online and see if I could find someone else that would have compatible ink.  I found some and ordered it.  It was cheaper and faster too.

So just to be sure, I went online to Dell, to 'Order Status', and selected the 'Cancel' link.  After all, I had just bought enough ink for the next year, who knows if the printer will even live past that.

Two days later, on the same day my ink arrived from the alternative supplier, an email came from Dell saying they had shipped my order.

Needless to say, I was pissed.  I called them and they started to tell me how I could return it for a full refund.  My response was essentially this.  This is your mistake, not mine, your problem, not mine.  You fix it.  Call FedEx and tell them to cancel the shipment, or don't, but I'm not paying for it.  I called my credit card company, and they had not billed me.  I figured I would be nice and leave a note on the door to tell FedEx that I was refusing the shipment, and that would be the end of the it.

Last night my wife noticed that they had billed us.  She goes online to check the credit cards regularly.  I called the credit card company and told them that this was a fraudulent charge, and I am disputing it.  Their response was "Have you returned the merchandise yet?".  They are essentially siding with Dell, that is is my problem not Dell's.  This is what the FTC Website says about this:

Whether or not the Rule is involved, in any approval or other sale you must obtain the customer’s prior express agreement to receive the merchandise. Otherwise the merchandise may be treated as unordered merchandise. It is unlawful to:

1. Send any merchandise by any means without the express request of the recipient (unless the merchandise is clearly identified as a gift, free sample, or the like); or,
2. Try to obtain payment for or the return of the unordered merchandise.

I run a business.  Sometimes I make a mistake.  But here is the difference.  If it is my mistake, I own it.  My customer will not pay for my mistakes, I will.