Why am I writing this story again?

This is the third Christmas in a row that I have written about Barbara, the woman who stands outside the building where I work begging for money.  The first two times were Second and First.

She is thinner now, if that is possible, than the first time I wrote about her.  I have seen her with cuts and bruises, and broken bones.  She has disappeared for days at a time, only to return with stories of being in the hospital.  Sometimes it has been due to illness, and others due to the fragility of aging bones.  But still she clings to existence, such as it is.

She is the face of our steadily declining commitment to the least of us in our society.  She is also the future, if the right wing has their way.  She is no longer any use, so they have no qualms about tossing her onto the scrap heap.  When you and I are no longer of use to them, that is the future they envision for us too.  Of course they would rather we had the decency to just fucking die when we are no longer useful to them.

I know, you think I am exaggerating.  Then how do you explain that, when there are men and women like Barbara, just hanging on by a thread, and they want to cut every service that Barbara and people like her depend upon to survive, while at the same time giving tax breaks to those who want for nothing?

They would tell you (if they had the courage to speak their minds openly) that there is a natural order to things, and that you exist to serve your betters.  It is essentially the same line that you have heard in all class based societies.  If you stand up for yourself?  Then you are instigating class warfare.

It is much like the line used against black Americans during the civil rights movement.  They were expected to stand idly by while they were brutalized, lynched.  But should they stand up and resist, fight back, then they were instigating violence.

Now two years after I first wrote about her, Barbara is still barely surviving on whatever kind of pension she receives and what she gets begging on the streets.  She gave me a Christmas card again this year, thanking me for the help I give her.   I know she has others, like me, who help her out with a few dollars when they see her.  But still, that isn't enough, not even close.

Unless we change, she is not only the present, but the future.

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Primary the bastards

Social Security uses the CPI-W (Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers) to determine the cost of living increases.  While this is applicable to the population at large, it understates the fact that the older you are, the more you consume medical services.  As the fastest growing portion of that cost of living, this tends to understate the actual increase that retirees face in their cost of living.

This of course leads to the common problem among those social security recipients with the least supplemental income.  That is the question, do I buy food, medicine, or heat this month?  Which of these can I do without?

Now comes a proposal to use a different index for social security index,  the 'chained-cpi'.  This tends to understate the actual increase in costs even more.  It does not kill social security, it just makes it slowly wither away until it becomes so insignificant that nobody will object when it finally dies.

But the big lie is that this has anything at all to do with deficit reduction.  Social Security has not caused one penny of our current deficit.  And at the current rate of growth, it will be 20 years before it does become an issue.  And that 20 years could become 'the foreseeable future' if they would only eliminate the cap on wages subject to Social Security.

Now you would expect that the right would lie to you about why social security should be squeezed out of existence.  But when the same people who swore to defend it start talking this way, then there is only one alternative.  Primary them.

Every representative who calls themselves a Democrat that votes in favor of this lie should face a primary challenge from the left when they next come up for election.  And every Democratic voter should let their representative know that is the price they will pay for betrayal.

Every one of them campaigned on "Social Security is off the table".  Now the president has crumpled like a cheap suit, and many in the party are starting to waffle on their commitment.  Either they were lying to us all along, or they really are that stupid.  But if only I could get Obama into a poker game then I'd be set, and wouldn't need the Social Security.

Politicians of all stripes rely on your short memory.  Don't let this one slip by.  If they will screw you this way, there are no limits to what they will do to you.

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They will say: If only there were some way he could have gotten help

The events in Newton Connecticut are of course only the latest in a series of insane attacks by an unbalanced men with guns.  When someone speaks of gun control we are told not to politicize this tragedy, as though a preemptive attack on ways to minimize future mass murders was not politicizing it already.

And you hear another refrain, this one coming from both the left and the right.  If only he could have gotten treatment, if he could have been helped, perhaps it would never have come to this.  It is especially hypocritical when it comes from the right wing.

Because if there was a program, say, mental health screening as routinely as children are vaccinated, and treatment for those that needed it.  If we had all that in place. the right wing would be anxiously dismantling it as quickly as they could.

Mental health screening?  Social engineering they would call it.  A treatment program?  Well that would be an entitlement that needs to be done away with.  Why do I think that?  Because we used to have a lot of that in this country.

California had a state hospital system.  Schools had psychologists.  But in the right wing point of view, all that stuff is unnecessary coddling.

Of course they will have excuses, we can't afford it, it is not the job of the government, but of course it is exactly why we have a government.  Because collectively we can do things that we cannot do individually.

So, to the Karl Roves of the world, you own this one.  This is what you get when you combine unregulated gun access with no real mental health policy.  Not that he cares, but you should.

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When did obstucting the flow of traffic become the goal rather than a biproduct?

I had occasion to drive up Van Ness Avenue at around 10 in the morning on a work day. Mapquest said it was a 9 minute drive.  While I anticipated traffic, so I knew it was unlikely to be so short, I did not expect it to be quite so bad.

Accidents happen, MUNI buses break down, construction equipment blocks lanes.  All of those things are everyday occurrences.  I am not sure what happened on this day, I could see no reason for the closure, but a single block, in one direction, was closed off.

There was a parking control officer with his little car (what do they call those things anyway?) blocking the far side of the intersection.  So far, so good.  You have three lanes of traffic that needed to turn right into two lanes.  You have cross traffic.  You have a traffic light.  And what was the parking control officer doing?  Nothing!

He is there, why the hell isn't he directing traffic, trying to mitigate the mess he has created.  The only time he moved was when he went over to joke with the MUNI driver who had run a red light to block the intersection for a full three cycles of the traffic lights.

If this were a unique situation, I would say this was just one idiot.   But in my day to day commute in and out of the city I have seen this over and over.  Police and parking control officers on scene, standing around watching the situation get worse and worse, when the simple act of directing traffic would have made an enormous difference in the flow of traffic.  Could they have made traffic flow normally?  Probably not, but they could have eliminated the gridlock.

Years ago, I lived in Anchorage, Alaska.  Power outages, while not widespread, were a reasonably common occurrence for traffic lights.  And almost without fail, someone would pull their car over to the curb, get out a flashlight, and stand in the middle of the intersection directing traffic while the traffic light was out of commission.  I saw that again and again.

In San Francisco, however, it is an exception for even those paid to control traffic on the city streets to get out there and lend a hand.  Now if they are off attending to other duties, I can understand that the inconvenience of a few thousand drivers may not be the highest priority.  But if you are already there. and just standing around, how about showing a little pride?