I thought I was the crazy one!

There is some debate as to whether narcissists are made or born. Certainly family dynamics can have a profound effect on personality. I am sure there are many personality disorders that are the result of dysfunctional family interaction, abuse, emotional unavailability of a parent, and more. However you want to slice or dice the reasons, narcissistic personality disorder can be very destructive to every member of the family to which the narcissist belongs.

My own family has been split by the narcissistic personality of my youngest brother, who is also gay, asthmatic, and the middle child of five siblings. (I mention his sexual preference only for information and not as a part of the disorder.) After my father died my brother preyed on the most emotionally fragile members of my family, my mother and my eldest brother. My mother supports him emotionally and financially. He had a brief stint as a schoolteacher but has not worked for about 30 years. He blames his inability to get a job on everyone and everything from his racist point of view, his political point of view, and his economic point of view. The world owes him a living and no one recognizes the superlative talents he has because they are inferior beings with lower IQs.

Today my two sisters and I have nothing to do with my mother and two brothers out of pure self-preservation for our selves and for our families. It’s as though two separate families were created from one because of my brother’s narcissism. He seems to hate the fact that my sisters and I stay away because to him it means he has failed to control three family members. This damages his view that he is omnipotent and calls into question his superlative talents. My eldest brother chooses to go along because he is close to my mother and she has made it clear that she supports my younger brother’s narcissistic attitudes and employment choices completely. Keeping a great distance from them is necessary for sanity and survival.

Definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder By Mayo Clinic staff: “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”

The following are some common traits of narcissists presented by the Mayo Clinic staff:
• An inability to listen to others, and a lack of awareness of another person’s deadlines, time frames, or interests.
• An inability to admit wrongdoing, even sometimes when presented with evidence of their ‘wrong’ behavior.
• Coldness or overly practical responses to interpersonal relationships, a sense of distance or matter-of-factness emotionally.
• Can be prone to severe bouts of anger.
• Has the ability to write friends off forever, over one perceived or actual transgression.
• Pride in the accomplishments of children if they have them, often combined with an overly developed desire for control over their directions and activities. An above average interest in social class and importance may be seen.

Narcissistic personalities are amongst the hardest patients for psychiatrists to treat…in short, it stems from an unshakable belief that they can do no wrong.

Most narcissists are men (about 75%). This begs the question, are men who abuse their wives and/or children narcissists, possibly sadistic narcissists? By having a family they have a built-in audience to satisfy their need for admiration even if they coerced or intimidated their families in order to have it. I have met a few female narcissists and their symptoms can be equally damaging to all family members especially sons.

I thought I was the crazy one! I made my escape from the narcissistic web. It took a long time. The threads are tight and deftly woven by the narcissist and his unwitting allies to make you believe you are nuts. Your love of your family is their hook to keep you stuck. When you finally make your escape the battle for your psychological soul isn’t over for the narcissist. They will try to suck you back in. There will be letters, emails, and other correspondence, cajoling, berating, brow beating you, deriding your decision, calling you names and questioning your sanity. Delete the emails, trash the letters, get a restraining order and let others know you don’t want this person in your life. There is no cure for a person with narcissistic personality disorder. You are not crazy!!!

Halloween and me…

I am hypervigilant! Whether my wary and watchful ways are the result of being the child of a child abuser or some other creepy influence, I keep an eye or an ear ever alert for danger whether real or dreamt. I feel that I can keep my family and home safe if I am always ready for whatever uncertainty is occupying my consciousness during the day or my dreams at night. The internet is a perfect companion to my terrors. Google any subject and there will pop up a blog, survey, medical report, or some video that illustrates any of my scariest ideas in ways I haven’t yet imagined. Nothing so far has been helpful or hopeful to allay my sense of imminent peril probably because human nature trends toward the dark side and the bizarre and preys on my psychological vulnerabilities. I wonder how many others are out there like me? How do they bring sanity and reality back into their lives to combat those depressing scenarios they have created? I try to compartmentalize and clean. I dust, scrub, and scrape until I am exhausted. Nothing I do can wash out these fears. If I could harness all this and write a book like “Pet Sematery” by Stephen King, or “Cloverfield” by Drew Goddard or “1984” by George Orwell, I might make enough money to build a fortress to keep me and mine safe. But then the nightmares would come back. This time it would be about losing everything. Halloween is fun for kids but it is a breeding ground of anxiety and panic for me. I will open my door to ghosts, goblins, princesses, pharaohs, spidermen, and more and ooh and aah for the delight of the children. Secretly I will be glad when 9 PM arrives and I can turn out the light and take down the fake tarantula and ghostly sheet. My home will be besieged no longer. I will have to convince myself that there are no serial killers taking advantage of this holiday. Halloween and me, not the best of friends…

My Best Friend…Part 2

My husband and I have had many sleepless nights, stressing, worrying and crying about the surgery and recovery of my best friend Pica our 16-year old Chihuahua. She had a herniated disk at the C3-C4 area in her neck. That’s really high up and in a scary place. (Didn’t Christopher Reeve break his neck in about that same area?) The surgery sounds tricky. They drill a hole in the bone and remove the damaged disk alleviating pressure on the spine. We are supposed to keep her drugged with painkillers and muscle relaxants for about 10 days. She hates the taste of the meds. It’s a battle to get them down her throat. For 4-6 weeks we have to keep her in a small confined area (so she won’t bounce around and mess up the neck repairs), letting her out only to poop and pee. We have constructed a luxurious pen complete with a quilt inside her crate, an alternate pallet for lounging, a dining and drinking area and puppy pads for those emergencies at night. The little fence surrounding this oasis is tall enough to keep her inside and short enough that we can step over it to replace puppy pads or serve her dinner. I have stitched up a homemade sling out of soft denim and purse handles so we can support her when she goes out to do her business. This makes it a little easier on our backs. I call it my Pica Purse. She has trouble squatting to pee and bending her hind legs into the poop position because of the drugs and because she still has the remnants of some nerve damage on her left side. Like a leaky old ship, she lists to the left side a bit. But she manages to complete her elimination and looks forward to the doggie cookie as her reward. Usually she is so tired that she crawls back into her bed and sleeps some more. At times she shakes and pants and I have to assume these are signs that she is in pain. That means administering more pain meds and dealing with an almost comatose Chihuahua, which is not a natural sight. I guess the next few weeks will give us an idea of how much healing is going on. If she can have a good quality of life for whatever time she has left, we will be happy. We are hoping we will have her with us for a few more years.

My Best Friend...

My best friend is very sick. We have been together for over 16 years. I don’t know what is wrong with her but she is going for an evaluation and tests at the Mississippi State University Medical Hospital in Starkville, MS next Monday. She could be there the whole week before we know more about her condition. My best friend’s name is Pica. She came to live with us in 1994. Her personality is always sweet even when I have been cross with her. If you haven’t guessed by now, my best friend is my 10-pound Chihuahua. She hasn’t always been a big girl. When we brought her home to Lawrenceville, GA in November 1994, she probably weighed less than 2 pounds. But the biggest thing about her is her heart. Her tail always wags whenever she sees us even when she is ill. She is distraught when we leave her for more than 3 days. She used to sleep with us and each night at about 9pm she would come into the living room and bark when she thought it was time for all of us to go to bed. After she fell off the set of stairs I made for her (which she had been using for about 6 years to climb up onto our bed), we stopped letting her get up too high on anything. So now I sleep next to her doggie bed in my sleeping bag and sometimes she crawls in with me, her back next to my tummy. Crawling is easier for her since her hind legs and one of her front legs have become weak and occasionally unresponsive causing her to stumble and collapse in a heap. The other night she lost her balance and fell into her water bowl. We have to help her stay upright when she pees and poops. Age catches up with all of us. I am hoping we can make her better so she can live the rest of her days in comfort. I am selfish. I don’t want to lose her. I am not prepared for her to go. I don’t think I will ever be ready. I will never have a best friend like her again.

Walking On Eggshells

I’m not sure what the correct term is for “…carefully evaluating everything you say and do in order not to piss someone off without being able to know beforehand what word or action might be a trigger so you don’t do or say it thereby avoiding the psychotic fallout”. I call it “walking on eggshells”. Kinda sounds like the movie “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts. There are a few people in my life that I avoid completely because they are too scary to be alone with even in a room with windows and doors and a designated escape route. These people believe they can intimidate me into allowing everything to be “their way or the highway” and I had better know which is “their way”. My ex-husband and my brother are good examples. My father (who is deceased) was angry and manipulative and equally scary and he was diagnosed “paranoid”. These people are usually quite volatile. They are just too emotionally unstable and sensitive to live. They take offense at everything. I call some of them Borderlines, Paranoids, or Narcissists. (Politicians call them Tea Baggers.) They are irrational, shortsighted, bigoted, angry, provocative, unreasonable and extremists. Some have “Gone Postal”. Some have flown airplanes into buildings (like the small aircraft pilot in Austin, TX). Some of the narcissists, given enough time, may even become serial killers, stuffing rags in their victims mouths before they strangle them as a way of metaphorically shutting up all who might piss them off or say something they don’t want to hear. These people need to be kept away from the rest of us. I wonder if we could outsource them? There should be a use for their talents. Maybe send them to Afghanistan to see if they can intimidate the Taliban??

What I did on my vacation...

Vacation...lost luggage...found luggage...Spent 5 days in Fairfax, VA with my stepson, his wife, and 2 sons age "almost 3" and "almost 5", in a small apartment (luxurious by DC area standards). We got the king sized bed and my stepson and his wife got the bunk beds with the kids. Went house hunting. His budget adequate for larger place but not close to his office. He will still have a long train ride into work and back. Picnic in the park on 9-11 with half the population of Virginia. Aggressive geese tried to steal my sandwich. "Rude" is standard behavior on all highways there. Everyone waves with their middle finger. Lots of good food: pizza, crab cakes, steak. Rode Southwest Airlines back to MS. 32 passengers. One "great" flight attendant. Originally from Nashville. She told jokes and sang a song. Fun time. Tired.

Deja Vu all over again…

I feel qualified to comment on the current state of the economy. After all, I work, pay taxes, and buy stuff and my birthday is October 29, the day of the “great stock market crash of 1929”.

I have lived through although I don’t remember…
Recession of 1949
Recession of 1953
Recession of 1958

I lived through and remember…
Recession of 1960–61
Recession of 1969–70
1973–75 recession
Early 1980s recession
Early 1990s recession
Early 2000s recession

and I am still living through…
Great Recession of 2007

Looks like we have an economic downturn approximately every ten years. What’s wrong with this picture? Obviously we forget ANY lessons learned and it takes about ten years for us to lose our memories. That’s long enough for a new generation of hot shots on Wall Street and in the banking system (who are too young to remember the last recession) to experiment with “new products” that do the same “old thing”. They make tons-o-money at first like a great Ponzi scheme and then the “house of cards” implodes. As long as the hot shots are increasing the bottom line, old timers who have seen this “circus” before will look the other way. Almost everyone who got hooked on this brand of economic “kool-aid” became adversely affected by these toxic assets created by the “Masters of the Universe”. The phrase “Masters of the Universe” rings like a video game and most of these whiz kids grew up on WII’s. So they are used to taking chances in the virtual world where no one really gets hurt. But they have now brought that attitude into a flesh and blood market where lots of real people’s assets are at real risk. Where are the “masters” now? Who knows? They created the monster so why should they hang around to be devoured by the beast? Their sense of culpability is negligible. Game over. I wonder if they considered that their parents might have made investments in the stock market and that the failure of these financial "games" could bankrupt their retirements? Probably not.

A different view, in English too!

I used to listen to BBC America, thinking that I was getting more of a worldview of the news of the day. Since I don’t speak another language fluently, it seemed logical to me. Now I listen to THE BBC and there is a decidedly different flavor to the questions asked and to reporting of the effect America’s policies have on European and other world countries. Their journalists are much more aggressive when questioning heads of companies or heads of state. NPR (formerly National Public Radio, a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States - according to Wikipedia) interviewers are professional and deferential when interviewing politicians or CEOs for a story. The journalists at NPR have lost much of that in depth, pry it out of them, word it so they have to respond, challenge the bastards attitude they used to have. I have been listening to NPR since the 70s. I noticed a distinct difference in the quality of the broadcasting when the George W. Bush administration was in power. It appeared to me that there was a distinct lack of real reporting that was anything like that which I had heard from the NPR of old or from THE BBC. I always thought that NPR was above any blackmail or political influence. I guess I was wrong. The Bush administration tried to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting every year. In 2005 the congress proposed deep cuts to PBS stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, essentially muzzling any real reporting on the administration or any of its policies by NPR which receives funding from the CPB. That appears to be political blackmail to me. Americans have no idea how much credibility and good will we lost overseas during those 8 years. And yet no one here was reporting the awful truth that the Bush administration was destroying much of what America had stood for in the world. Our policies were viewed through the distorted lens of a politically stifled, underfunded public media. When there were demonstrations in other parts of the world about US policies, especially regarding the war in Iraq, our news services ignored them. People traveling overseas got an earful. I did when I went to Central America. My good friend who lives in Maryland did when she visited several central European countries. It is scary that our freedom of the press could be so restricted by a determined administration. If it could happen once it could happen again. We need to be more vigilant in the US about ALL our freedoms or we will surely lose them. We need to have a news media in this country that is not state run or sponsored, that gives deference to no administration. Give a listen to the media overseas. We may not like what we hear, but knowledge is power and truth is not held hostage.

Chimeras & Bionics: what does being human mean?

A new movie and a new book are triggering new discussions about human hybrids (chimeras). The movie is “Splice” (IMDB synopsis…two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism) and the new book is “Lucy” by Laurence Gonzales, “…a novel about a half human, half bonobo, the result of a breeding experiment deep in the Congo jungle”. I would like to add another dimension to the discussions, the use of manufactured body parts or bionics in humans. Skipping all the “mad scientist” stuff, what are the most important questions that should be considered when contemplating re-engineering the human body with either animal parts or mechanical parts? We are technologically within reach of creating a human-animal hybrid and mechanical body parts have been used to replace  and sometimes to enhance missing or damaged limbs and internal organs since the 1960s. There are several states (Ohio, Arizona, Louisiana) that consider the hybrid technology so close that they have enacted laws to regulate or ban any research  into human-animal hybrids. Canada has banned all chimera research. I haven’t heard any negative comments about mechanical body parts or how much of the body we are allowed to replace with manufactured parts.

Consider what it means to be human. How should being human be defined? An example of classifying races in the US during the early years of our country we defined any person who had one parent who was black as being classified black. It would stand to reason that if one parent was white and one was black, the person was half black and half white. But during those early years, any black parentage automatically placed the person in the black racial group. Today we have added bi-racial as a group (at least on census forms). Some progress there. So if we create a human-animal hybrid, are they classified as human or animal? There is a lot riding on this classification. Civil rights and liberties, human rights, legal rights. If the creature is designated an animal, it could be used in experiments, as food, as body parts, as unpaid labor (like a horse), as a pet, etc. It might have few rights maybe similar to those given to dogs and cats now. How much of a human would it have to be to be classified a human? If 50% white and 50% black could be classified only as black up until the end of the 20^th century, would 50%  human, 50% bonobo carry an automatic classification of animal?

What constitutes a chimera? If I have a pigs heart valve surgically implanted into my heart, does that make me a human-animal hybrid? Would I be stripped of my human rights because my body is comprised of human and animal DNA?

If we can create or retrofit a human body with enough mechanical parts would we now have a bionic human? Same dilemma applies as to what constitutes being half human and half machine. If the human brain can be fitted with electrodes and the human heart with a pig’s heart valve, what species have we created and how should our laws apply to this person?

I have a mesh prothesis held in place with staples that was implanted to repair my hernia after my appendectomy. Does this mean that I am now bionic? If I develop a faulty heart valve and it is replaced with a pig’s heart valve, would I become a human-animal hybrid? Where is all this technology going?

We will have some significant challenges defining who is human in the 21^st century. I wonder if we will treat better any new species (with human DNA) that we might create? We will need to decide in this century because the technology is here. Our next Civil War may be between the human species and a half-human/bionic species.

Social Security can be a Catch 22

Every citizen who works pays into Social Security and Medicare. I pay my share to fund my mother’s SS pension and healthcare. (She doesn’t get as much SS as she should because she is a Notch Baby.  See explanation at end.*) My son pays to fund my SS pension. His children will pay to fund his SS pension and so it goes. This is how the system is supposed to work.

The Federal Government raids the Social Security Trust Fund on a regular basis to build highways, for infrastructure improvement projects, to provide money for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to fund bailouts for irresponsible financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Citi Bank, to shore up other deficits and more. What is left is a stack of IOU’s with which to pay retirees both current and future. The retirement age was already increased in 1983 to offset a projected SS deficit and yet there still is enough money in the fund for the Feds to continue to borrow. Will SS be able to collect those IOU’s when it runs out of money? I guess we will know in less than 20 years how that scenario plays out.

Consider the personal ramifications of a government cut in Social Security benefits by either reducing the amount paid to retirees by 25% or by increasing the retirement age at which SS benefits are paid (currently the suggestion for increased retirement age is 70). Senior citizens will be working longer. Young and old will be in competition for jobs and services. Sons and daughters will now have to subsidize their parent’s retirement if their mom or dad no longer can work because of health issues or because of lack of employment opportunities. (In today’s economic environment children can turn to their parents for support and with the new health bill can stay on their parent’s insurance plans till age 27.) What happens when parents no longer have health care or employment? That’s where Medicare and SS are supposed to fill in the gaps. If SS and Medicare are cut, parents will have to turn to their children for support. The roles will have reversed. This now becomes a de facto tax increase on workers who will be supplementing their parent's incomes.

And if Social Security is phased out, what will the Feds do when they need to fund another war or bank bailout? Where will they get a ready supply of money that is continually funded by the American people who believe that their contract with the Social Security Administration and the money collected from their paychecks each month will provide some economic security when they retire? IRAs are not safe investments because they depend on Wall Street. If we are to save for our own retirement, where and how do we do it? Employers no longer can afford to give retirement benefits as evidenced by large companies like GM, Chrysler and Ford. GMs biggest expense was funding retirement and health care. 

I planned for my retirement and SS had to be part of that plan. I am not wealthy and my health is good even though I have had breast cancer. By the time the government put IRAs within reach of ordinary workers, I was in my 40s with limited time to save. Then the market downturn of 1999-2001 stripped my account by 50%. With even less time to save, I then put money into a home and sold that home at the top of the recent real estate balloon market so that I could invest in a more affordable place to live out my remaining years. Then came the 2008 economic crisis in real estate and banking and the bottom fell out of the real estate market. I believed I was being prudent when I bought a slightly distressed home which I remodeled. I have not lost any of the money I originally paid for it but I will have to wait a long time for its value to rise to recoup my remodeling expenses. I have 2 more years till retirement and I know I will have to work beyond that to be able to keep my current standard of living and to be able to continue to save for the day when I can finally retire. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of AARP (http://www.aarp.org/), formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, and I donate whenever I can to this organization to lobby the federal government to protect my retirement interests. There are currently about 40 million AARP members, a formidable group.

Life expectancy is increasing and our children who are in their prime earning years now will face these same issues when they retire. No one escapes growing old unless they die young. Not everyone can be wealthy or continually healthy. Unless we want to face a “Brave New World” with “Soylent Green” as a food source we need to fix SS now or face certain shortages and elder poverty in the future. The government can help by making the interest accrued on personal savings tax-free and provide other incentives for investing in our individual futures to ensure we will be able to support ourselves well into old age. Universal health care is a start. I am glad my mother, who is 88 years old, has an income from SS and a small annuity my father set up for her when he served in the USAF. If she didn’t have that income, I know it would adversely impact my siblings and me. We are in our 50s and 60s now and planning for our own economic futures.

*Notch Babies  (About.com: US Government Info)

“Far less familiar to most Americans, are a smaller group of people who are now and have been suffering the short comings of changes to the Social Security system for the last 23 years. These are the Notch Babies – persons drawing Social Security born after 1917 but before 1922. The Notch Babies' problem is that since 1977, they have been drawing significantly less in Social Security benefits than persons born either before or after them.  

 

The plight of the Notch Babies started to develop in 1972 when Congress changed the Social Security system to adjust annual benefit increases according to the cost of living. Over the next five years, the cost of living, to say the least, skyrocketed. By 1977, Congress could see that, unless some drastic action was taken, the Social Security Program would be a dead duck by 1981, if not sooner.

As part of their 1977 changes to save Social Security, Congress "grandfathered," or retained the old benefit calculation formulas for persons born between 1911 and 1916, while actually reducing them for persons born after 1917 and before 1922. Thus, the Notch Babies were born and, to this day, they continue to receive an average of 20 percent less in Social Security than persons born in 1917 or 1922.”

Drill and Spill

So, it’s been several weeks since the BP oil rig blowout and subsequent disastrous oil leak. I live in one of the Gulf Coast States. We got hit with Katrina and Rita. Now this. I live midstate where the oil won’t exactly be in my backyard. I thought that this disaster would finally get the people of my state to agree that there should be stringent regulation on large corporations that not only have a blatant disregard for the environment but for our economy and our lives. Oil companies, coal companies, food processors, electric companies, Wall Street, tobacco companies, etc. They still think that protecting “endangered Big Business” is the only way to go. They argue that companies are regulated too much. They forget that society must have rules or it will not be sustainable. Corporate greed will kill democracy and can do so only with the help and complicity of its citizens. What kind of mindset wants to protect the very entity that is harming the air we breathe and the food we eat? Is it the Stockholm Syndrome? Is it stupidity? I have no clue. Warnings about the possibility of this oil drilling disaster and nuclear plant meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have been around for over 40 years. The warnings are now fact. So many of our citizens have been acting like children, putting their hands over their ears and singing so that they won’t have to hear the bad stuff. We may go the way of the dinosaurs and that might not be a bad thing. The dinosaurs weren’t responsible for their extinction but we WILL be responsible for ours.

Crisis Overload

Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to eclipse Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, terrorist car bomb found in NYC just before it explodes, second week of tornadoes and flooding in OK, MS, AR, TN, AL, Arizona passes onerous illegal immigration law which may be unconstitutional and is definitely inhuman, jobless economic recovery from worst recession since the Great Depression announced, Toyota (the benchmark of auto excellence) in the hot seat for not responding to deadly unwanted acceleration defects, dormant volcano in Iceland erupts and stops air traffic in Europe for a week stranding thousands, and all this has happened within the last few months. My parents used to say “what is this world coming to?” I think they would be overwhelmed at “this world” today. I am overwhelmed! I don’t think I would be surprised if Aliens landed in the US. Actually, Aliens might be the coalescing diversion the world needs to stop a lot of our political, corporate, and religious stupidity from causing any more man made catastrophic events. When I was a kid I didn’t pay much attention to all the crap happening in the world. My world was centered around toys, books, friends, playing, and going to school. Duck and cover was as close as I came to the dangers of the time. (Duck and cover is what we were taught to do in case of an atomic or, by then, a nuclear bomb attack while I was living and going to school in Japan in the late 1950s.) The specter of annihilation from a Russian attack was real but after awhile we all just got used to it and enjoyed the break from our studies whenever the school executed a “Duck and Cover” drill. In 1964, when I was a senior in high school, a black comedy movie summed up the fear of the times…”Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Just trying to keep up with all the crises going on today makes my head hurt. I think I will read a book and turn off the TV and my computer, and play with my puppy, to take a rest from “CRISIS OVERLOAD’ for the day.

You’re only young once!

Protest health care reform if you want to. You have that right. Remember, there were violent and vehement protests against Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security when they were passed. Ask those people who use any of these “social programs” now if they think we should repeal them. During the recent debates over health care reform, many of the protesters carried signs protesting against reform calling it “socialized medicine” and were saying in front of the media “…but don’t touch my Medicare”. Medicare IS a social program, partially paid for by its recipients and very affordable. It has become a part of our social fabric and accepted by almost everyone as a “citizen contract” with our government. We pay a portion of our income into Medicare as we do into Social Security. As people age, they have to consider this contract as part of their total retirement package because we cannot work forever and have our employer pay for our health care benefits, or be able to afford the ever increasing health insurance premiums for the coverage we need after we retire. So if you are young and healthy and resent having to pay your fair share for health care now to help you and your parents and your grandparents and many other people who cannot afford basic health care, how will you feel in the future when your children resent having to pay for health insurance that benefits you? "The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." -Hubert H. Humphrey, November 4, 1977. You’re only young once. Pay it forward.

Health Care Part I – DONE!

A real squeaker with lots of weird maneuverings, but it passed!!!

Oddly enough, I have heard nothing about the historic passage of the ‘‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’’ from my co-workers today. Either they are stunned that it passed or (dare I hope) they are thinking about how this bill may positively affect them. They are southerners and conservatives so they are probably just stunned.

I have downloaded all 2,409 pages in pdf form, and scanned the document for those items that Conservatives said were going to hurt seniors like “Death Panels” a la Sara Palin. I am a senior. I found nothing that would hurt me. I did find this…

‘‘(ii) The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria. 

I am a left leaning independent and I’m not happy with this bill as it stands! It doesn’t go far enough. I can only hope a reasonable congress will tweak and refine to make this legislation better and better for ALL US Citizens. I want my son and my grandchildren to feel the freedom that comes with knowing that they can get medical care if they need it and that they won’t go bankrupt because they got sick. They can have the freedom to be self-employed and still have affordable health care coverage. Now no one can turn them down for a pre-existing condition. I can breathe easier now because being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition.

I will stay tuned…

Massasage? Massa Confusion? Massa Corrupion? Massa Power?

What is in the water in DC? Seemingly “normal” people get elected, then go to Washington DC and become “abnormal”? I guess between the lobbyists, news media, and free meals from local restaurants, our representatives can get an inflated sense of self and an immodest sense of entitlement. Like Leona Helmsley, the "Queen of Mean", they probably refer to their constituents who voted them into office as “the little people”, forgetting that we can also vote them out in the next election. (What Leona reportedly said was, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes...,". Leona was sentenced to 18 months in prison for mail fraud and tax evasion.)

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” - Sir John Dalberg-Acton, April 1887. This statement prompts the question, do we give our representatives too much power over our lives? They now have the power to legislate life and death decisions on our behalf. They declare war, collect taxes, make laws controlling our reproduction, mandate our educational standards, and much more. We have allowed our representatives to decide what is in our best interests without setting limitations on the influence of lobbying groups on their decisions. They have been removed from the everyday drudge of working in the civilian arena so they no longer have a grasp on what “we the people” need or want. They communicate with us by taking polls. Their interpretation of the results of those polls is questionable. We have provided them with a deluxe health care plan so they aren’t really in touch with the lack of affordability of health care for the rest of us. Eric Massa is just a reminder of the unstable nature of our government. He is a symptom. He is not the only one. When we don’t pay attention to symptoms, we can miss a diagnosis of the disease, and without diagnosis and treatment, it WILL get worse.

Ever want to crawl into a cave and shut out the world?

Today is one of those days I just want to crawl into a cave and pull a hibernating bear in after me. Ever get the feeling that someone is angry, annoyed, or otherwise teed off with you? It could be anyone or everyone in general. That’s how I feel today. Yesterday I was riding high. All was well in my corner of the orb. Then today, whamo, and the good feeling was gone. I wonder if it is hormonal? Probably not, since I am well past that phase of life. Could it be part of the phases of the Moon?  Currently the moon is waxing crescent, 6% of full (whatever that means). Maybe the tectonic plates are moving and creating a charge that has seeped into my brain. Usually when I get into one of these moods, I buy something for myself that I don’t need. I’m thinking, hmmmmmmm, new cell phone, new netbook with a built-in webcam, or a new mp3 player. Could there be a conspiracy among the sellers of computers and cell phones to put me into this mood with microwaves or other sinister “waves” so I will buy something electronic? Whew! There are so many possible causes, so many… I really think I’m just having my own personal “pity party”. There are lots of things that could drag me into the zone. There is nothing that monumentally catastrophic in my life to keep me stuck in a funk. My mom used to chant, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going out and eat worms.” That sums up my emotional state today.

Lunchtime:

I went to the Verizon Store to check out cell phones. Survived the trip without an upgrade to a new touch phone with internet. Went to Best Buys to look at the netbooks. Resisted their sales approach. Also checked out the iPods while I was there. My old mp3 player is still doing it for me, so I skirted that siren too. Guess this gloom will just have to wear off. It would help if it quit raining and snowing and we got some real sunshine for about a week. Climate change sucks!

Letter to my local newspaper

I support President Obama's initiatives,

There has been enough stonewalling, and inaction from both the left and the right. I do not pay my taxes to have what amounts to "children fighting in the schoolyard" by our US Congress. Grow up. Stop playing with OUR lives and DO SOMETHING! We are sick and tired of the games!

I work for a small business. Get something done to help my employer and you will be helping me!

Get something done to create jobs and you will be helping my son.

Get something done to fix this economy so we can return to fiscal stability, and you will be helping my grandchildren.

You have the fate of three generations in your hands. DO SOMETHING NOW!!!!!!

Jefferson distorted…

It appears that politicians like to quote Thomas Jefferson, who is touted as the father of (American) democracy, to give credence or clout to their positions. The problem is that they don’t quote him properly. They alter his quotes to fit their immediate political and policy needs. Recently in the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the Governor quoted Mr. Jefferson (the second governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia) as saying, “A wise and frugal government which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry .... and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” The quote was not really a complete quote. Nor was it identified by Gov. McDonnell as a paraphrase of the original words of Thomas Jefferson. Mr McDonnell simply rearranged Mr. Jefferson’s words to fit his political agenda. The actual quote by Jefferson follows:

March 4, 1801: Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

I also wonder if the conservatives on the Supreme Court have read Thomas Jefferson’s quote about corporations? Or have they rearranged his words, in their minds, to nullify the disdain to which Thomas Jefferson held “monied corporations”?

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” – Thomas Jefferson

I leave you to your own conclusions.

CORPORATOCRACY (the new American political system)

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Fourteenth Amendment: 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.

Abraham Lincoln would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that part of his Gettysburg Address…”government of the people, by the people, for the people”…was changed today to mean…”government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations”.

Maybe we need a definition of the word cit·i·zen.
* A person owing loyalty to and entitled by birth or naturalization to the protection of a state or nation.
* A resident of a city or town, especially one entitled to vote and enjoy other privileges there.
* A civilian.

Did I miss it? When did a corporation/business become a person/citizen? When were businesses declared persons/citizens? The latest ruling by our Supreme Court has opened the floodgates. The next ten years will see a paradigm shift in the way our courts and our congress do “business”. Consider “eminent domain”. George W. Bush issued the following.

Executive Order 13406 of June 23, 2006
Protecting the Property Rights of the American People
Section 1. Policy.
It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.

Now that corporate “citizens” can buy influence and elections, any private property would be in jeopardy by the rule of eminent domain if a business friendly congress and/or president decides to alter or eliminate this executive order.

There are similar scenarios, more than I have time to write about here, where corporate “citizens” will change our country and our political system. Get ready to wear the company logo and chant the company ideology. You will owe your soul to the company store!

The following link offers an interesting viewpoint: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder-charges_b_432633.html

Back to Square One (may not be a bad thing)

Health Care Reform is headed down a back alley of compromises in the name of bi-partisanship. That’s a fool’s errand. The loss of the Democratic Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for about 4 decades could be a blessing in disguise for those of us who think the current iteration of the health care bill is light years from its original intent. The bill coming out of the Senate to be melded with the House version is NOT reform. It is, at its best, a bandaid to cover the uninsured and underinsured. At it’s worst, it is a giveaway to health insurance companies. We have a festering wound that is costing business and individuals in affordability, accessibility and quality health care. The insurance companies stand between me and my doctor today. Their motivation is greed. My company’s health insurance premiums just went up 15% for this next fiscal year. We probably won’t get a raise this year. Last year our premiums rose by 20%. Those increases are unsustainable by business and by individuals. We need the public option to keep insurance premiums from bankrupting us all. Actually, it would make more sense to expand Medicare. Medicare for all! If Congress wants to support business, they could take away one of the most expensive business operating costs, health care premiums. Business could then reinvest that money to grow and expand. Our national economy would grow, jobs would be added, salaries would rise, the deficit would be reduced by the collection of taxes on higher wages. It’s cyclical. We need a Congress with guts to do the right thing or they won’t have to worry about getting elected again in 2012. If the Dems screw this up, they will all wind up like Martha Coakley, defeated by a nude model, and actor who shoplifted record albums as a boy. Oh yeah, he’s a Republican from Massachusetts who wants to help defeat health care reform. Massachusetts already has universal health care thanks to former Republican Governor Mitt Romney. It’s working. Massachusetts voters focused on the economy and jobs issues because they don’t have to worry about their health care. They voted for the candidate who ran a campaign about a lack of fiscal responsibility in Washington DC. It worked! Maybe it’s a good thing. Now we may be forced back to square one to craft a real health care reform bill with at least a public option, I hope.

Pork Links

It’s becoming more difficult for me to get riled up over the ineffectiveness of our US Congress any more. It’s business as usual in the health care debate, which means we will get little or nothing in the way of true reform. It will be interesting to see how this brand of sausage is ground into our body of laws. No bi-partisanship from our lawmakers, just protection for “their constituents”…Big Pharma and Health Insurance companies. Legislators have had their hands in the pockets of big business for over 200 years forming a symbiotic relationship that has been impossible to shame, legislate, or criminalize out of our legislative system. So what to do? No state in the union wants to lose its conduit to millions of dollars in pork, so each Senator or Representative who brings home the bacon at the end of the year is likely to be re-elected. Sometimes these men and women will stumble and reveal some personal flaw, (being unfaithful, untruthful, untrustworthy, unethical, etc.) but we are unwilling to vote them out of office for what we internalize as a lapse in moral judgment because we don’t want to lose the prestigious seat they occupy on the Finance Committee or the National Security Committee, or dilute the influence they have in getting prime projects for local businesses. The “system” works for those lucky enough to be able to manipulate it. It works when our legislator secures for our home state some large grant from the federal government that brings jobs to our unemployed. It works when we are given large amounts of federal money to mitigate a disaster. We thank our legislators for carving out that large slice for us from the federal budget where 49 other states feed at the federal trough. But what do we really get for all the money we pay in taxes to the government? We probably won’t get true healthcare reform. We find out who benefits depending on whether it is an election year or not. When our legislators have to worry about our votes, they are more likely to pass laws that benefit the voters. When they don’t have to worry about winning an election, they pass legislation geared toward business. We are not happy with “the system” but we are so used to the way it works and comfortable with the predictability of its corruption that we have become resigned to enduring its perversity. But “we the people” ARE the government. We have become complicit in “the system”. We are its enablers. We provide the means by which we can screw ourselves. We are the butt of our own joke. We have no reason to complain unless we are willing to change the status quo. Those of us who voted for a Democratic majority in both houses of congress voted for change. I am ready to clean out the pig sty and not just apply another coat of lipstick on this pig.