A small step for a more polite society

I had occasion to got to Kohls department store today, to pick up some dress shirts for work.  I am mentioning the store not because they are unique to this practice, only because it just happened there.  I know Target does it too.

There were three registers open and six to eight people in each line.  The lines were not moving quickly.  Then the cashier rung up the woman about four customers in front of me.  A big notice on the display at the check stand told the woman that she could receive an additional twenty percent off if she applied for a Kohls credit card.  The cashier reinforced that idea with her own pitch.  The woman said yes.

For the next ten minutes, that line did not move.  I moved to another line, and was finished with my purchases while that woman (and of course the people behind her) was still waiting for approval of her card.  When my cashier told me I could receive an additional twenty percent off if I applied for a Kohls credit card this was my reply.

"I cannot imagine being so rude as to make the people behind me wait in line while I apply for a credit card, and I find it offensive that you as a store would encourage such rude, antisocial behavior."

So next time you are offered a discount if you will inconvenience the people waiting behind you, tell them the same thing.  If enough people say that, perhaps the customer behind you will think twice before being so rude, and maybe, just maybe, the stores will find a less offensive way of drumming up credit card business.

It has always been here

As was true in Europe, there has always been class warfare in the United States.  The difference is that in this country it has been, for the most part, a one-sided fight.  The middle and lower classes have always been pitted against each other, made to fight over the same scraps.  It is another variation of the game of 'blame the victim'.

When Malcolm X suggested that blacks should respond to violence against them by having guns to defend themselves, that was called advocating violence.  When someone points out that the disparity between the ultra rich and everyone else in society is the largest it has ever been, they are 'instigating class warfare'.

Think about it this way.  When was the middle class was growing, when people were moving out of poverty into the middle class?  What is different about then, than now?

• The income tax rates were higher, particularly for the most wealthy
• Inheritance taxes were higher, which, despite the rhetoric, had little impact on the lives of ordinary Americans.  The tax has never applied to the passing of an estate between a husband and wife, and the amount excluded from taxation for everyone else in 2001 (the earliest date I found in a very brief internet search) was $675,000.
• There were real limits on how many media outlets in the same market a single company could own, so that a real diversity of voices existed.  One or two companies did not control all you see and hear.
• Your tax dollars were not subsidizing the shipment of your job overseas.

Was life worse for you then?  Were your kids likely to find decent jobs when they graduated from college?  Could you actually afford to send them to college without having to bankrupt yourself or make your child hang debt to last the rest of their life around their neck?

Yes, there is class warfare going on..  And we are losing.

Checking my kid's homework is too hard, let's blame the teacher

You read all about declining graduation high school rates and how hard it is get rid of bad teachers.  Couple that with complaints about them being over paid, and having bloated benefit packages.  And while you're at it, you can blame them for not doing a good job of instilling your kids with good values, a strong work ethic. Wait a minute, that was your job.  Oh, whatever.

Getting kids to graduate is not the teacher's job, it is your job.  It is the teacher's job to give them the information, and the work they need to make sure they learn it.  It is your job as a parent to make sure they do the work.

And on the subject of compensation, who can name another job requiring that much education, and that many hours of work that pays so little?  You do realize that preparing lesson plans, grading Junior's papers, and a lot of times going out and buying classroom materials with your own money is all time spent outside of the classroom?

So if you want to make sure your child is one of those statistics that cannot finish high school, let alone go to college, here is my prescription.

• Don't check their homework to see if it is right, or if they even did it.
• Make it clear, in the example that you set for them, that their goal in life should be to do as little as possible.  They should not find any honor or self satisfaction in doing something well, it is just about getting by with as little effort as possible.
• Remind them that their teachers are lazy, overpaid incompetents, and they should not pay any attention to them.
• Make sure they know how bad you think their school is.  Give them an excuse to fail..It is not their fault, and it certainly isn't yours.
• And finally, don't read.  Spend your free time camped in front of the TV, the remote firmly in your hand.  If you read you may be exposed to ideas.  That might make you think, and we all know thinking is dangerous.

An after you have carefully followed that recipe, blame the lazy, overpaid, incompetent teacher for your child's failure to finish high school.

Putting a name to a story

I work in an area of the city where there are a lot of homeless people, and a lot of people living on the edges.  Over the past few months, I have slowly become acquainted with one of them.

She is older than me, a while ago she mentioned that she is 74.  I see her outside the building where I work most days.  She is standing there with a paper cup soliciting spare change from the people waiting for the bus.  I try to always have a dollar to give her when I see her.

Unlike many of the people I see begging in the neighborhood, I never see her smoking or drinking, and she never appears intoxicated.  She is never carrying a load of possessions, so I suspect that she probably at least has a roof over her head.  There are an abundance of residential hotels in the neighborhood, so perhaps whatever social security she receives covers all or part of that.

When I arrived at my building last Thursday, she was already there.  It was before 7 o'clock in the morning.  I don't recall her ever being there so early before. When I saw her I stopped a moment, and got out my wallet, pulled out a dollar bill.  Then I walked up to her and handed her the dollar as I prepared to enter my building.

Reaching inside of her coat, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.  She wished me Merry Christmas and I think I thanked her, I don't remember exactly what I said.  I put the envelope into an inside pocket of my overcoat.

When I got to my desk, I pulled out the envelope.  It was a little crumpled, closed with a piece of tape.  Inside was a Christmas card.  The only thing she had written inside was to sign her name.  It was Barbara.

Maybe her name is not Barbara, and she found the card already signed.  I don't know.  But I am am pretty sure that it was me she was waiting for to give the card to,

What kind of a world have we made, where just giving someone a dollar three or four times a week is so important to them?  And what sort of a monster really believes that we should be solving our financial woes by cutting social security, and throwing more people out onto the street?

The Devil's greatest trick

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist.

This was from a short story by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. And it was never more true than today, although not quite the way he meant it in that story.

In 1985, Rupert Murdoch became a US Citizen. He was not an immigrant in the traditional sense, coming to the United States to forge a new life for himself. There was no loyalty or patriotism involved.  This was a business decision, as US law dictated that only citizens could own television stations.

Back in 1996, Rupert Murdoch offered cable operators $11 per subscriber, to place his soon to be launched Fox News Network onto basic cable. He understood that getting his station on basic cable gave him a wider audience. Over the course of time he has also entered into contracts with hotels, trucks stops, etc, paying to have Fox News on the TV's playing behind the counter, in lobbies, wherever there was a captive audience.

So it should come as no surprise when the emails revealed that news reporters have been directed to slant the news, regardless of the facts. It does put a lie to his 'fair and balanced' slogan, and shows that the network is what many have been saying for years. It is not a news network, but a propaganda machine. Opinion, or in the case of climate change, outright lies, have become a substitute for information and news.

So the devil is revealed  for what he really is.  Fox News exists for the sole purpose of molding America into Rupert Murdoch's idea of what America should be. And no, it is not conservatism he espouses. It is feudalism.

How many times should you pay for the same thing?

Access to the Internet is not free.  Yeah, you can go to an Internet cafe or Peet's Coffee and get free WiFi, but that does not mean it is free.  That just means somebody else is paying for it.  So this is the part I never hear people talking about when they argue for Net Neutrality.

Look at the latest uproar with Comcast extorting money from Level 3 to continue carrying the Netflix streaming videos.  What does not get mentioned?  Comcast customers are already paying Comcast, to get those streaming videos!

So, do you want to pay your Internet service provider to decide what content they will deliver?  Or do you expect that having paid them, they will deliver that content to you, at the speed that you have contracted for?

So do something about it.  You could start here by telling the FCC that you believe in Net Neutrality.

Blood on who's hands?

I keep hearing that Wikileaks has 'blood on their hands'.  So let me get this straight. 

Dick Cheney outs one of our CIA agents, essentially passing a death sentence on any of the contacts she had been working with. Bush and company lie us into a war that costs Irag the lives of about a hundred thousand civilians, as well as costing the US the lives of a couple thousand soldiers, strengthens our biggest rival in the region (Iran), drives thousands of Muslims into the hands of the jihadist radicals, oh and bankrupts our country in the process, and it is Wikileaks that has blood on it's hands?

Access to information is what allows us to to see past the propaganda.  That is the job of news organizations around the world.  If a news organization is not pissing off governments and politicians, then it has become a just another propaganda machine itself.

Wikileaks is a news organization.  They did what they are supposed to do, which is publish the truth.  And the only people that are bothered by the truth being published, are those who count on lies to convince people to follow them.