Here’s a helpful guide for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts updated for black Americans.
Category Archives: Life
A Month of Unwritten Posts Condensed Into One
It’s not as if there’s a shortage of reading material on the Internet. Nevertheless, since I haven’t done my part lately:
You might hear of a new Quinnipiac University poll, according to which Fox News is the most trusted network news in America. The poll found that 29% of American voters trust the news on Fox more than any other network. However, the poll also found that 57% of American voters trust either CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC or MSNBC more than Fox. In other words, 29% of us trust the right-wing propaganda “news” delivered by Rupert Murdoch, and twice as many of us trust the other kind, the “mainstream media” news that Rupert doesn’t own. So it’s bad enough, but not as bad as it sounds.
Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center poll found that 53% of Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act, even though the ACA has resulted in more people getting health insurance than the Obama administration predicted, while contributing to slower growth in overall healthcare spending. A Bloomberg article helps explain this discrepancy. First, many people think they can do without the comprehensive health insurance the law mandates and resent paying for services they’ll never need (like maternity care) or don’t think they’ll ever need (like rehabilitation). Second, more than half of the big companies in America have told their employees that the ACA is forcing them to pay even more for health insurance.
The Bloomberg article says that the coverage mandates aren’t making health insurance more expensive. The mandates are merely “pooling the cost of that coverage across more people”, which is why fewer people are having trouble paying for healthcare. Furthermore, employers are blaming an ACA provision (the so-called “Cadillac” tax) for immediate cuts in benefits and higher insurance payments, even though it’s unlikely that these employers will ever be subject to that provision.
But does it matter what the facts are? According to a very interesting article by Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston College, America’s right-wing doesn’t accept the importance of empirical evidence or rational argument. She traces this amazing attitude back to William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1950s book God and Man at Yale. Richardson says that:
Buckley rejected the principles that had enabled social progress for centuries and laid out a mind-boggling premise: The Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Western Civilization, was wrong.
Rational argument supported by facts did not lead to sound societal decisions, Buckley claimed; it led people astray. Christianity and an economy based on untrammeled individualism were truths that should not be questioned. Impartial debate based in empirical facts was dangerous because it led people toward secularism and collectivism—both bad by definition, according to Buckley. Instead of engaging in rational argument, Buckley insisted, thinkers must stand firm on what he called a new “value orthodoxy” that indoctrinated people to understand that Christianity and economic individualism were absolute truths.
If we accept the premise that Christianity and economic individualism (the idolatry of the “free market”) are absolute truths, it makes sense to reject any contradictory ideas, however well-founded those ideas are given the empirical evidence.
For example, the governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, inherited a $6 billion deficit from his predecessor, a self-styled “fiscal conservative” who wouldn’t raise taxes. Dayton convinced the legislature to raise taxes on the rich and increase the minimum wage. Republicans predicted, as always, that businesses would leave the state and unemployment would rise. What actually happened was that the deficit turned into a surplus, unemployment went down and Minnesota now has one of the best economies of any state. Forbes Magazine (a bastion of capitalism) recently ranked Minnesota as having the 7th best “economic climate” and the 2nd best “quality of life” in the nation.
But if you believe that higher taxes on the rich and a higher minimum wage are absolutely wrong, since they conflict with your “understanding” of morality and economics, it’s understandable that you’ll reject the evidence. Nothing that conflicts with absolute truth can possibly be true.
To end on a positive note, however, consider that Larry Summers, a leading economist and Wall Street-friendly Democrat, is now arguing for a relatively progressive set of policies. According to an encouraging article by Thomas Edsall of the New York Times, Summers has concluded that “free market capitalism, as now structured, is producing major distortions”:
In order to stem the disproportionate share of income flowing to corporate managers and owners of capital, and to address the declining share going to workers, the report calls for tax and regulatory policies to encourage employee ownership, the strengthening of collective bargaining rights, regulations requiring corporations to provide fringe benefits to employees working for subcontractors, a substantial increase in the minimum wage, sharper overtime pay enforcement, and a huge increase in infrastructure appropriations – for roads, bridges, ports, schools – to spur job creation and tighten the labor market…. Summers also calls for significant increases in the progressivity of the United States tax system.
Summers has advised both President Obama and Hillary Clinton on economic matters, so it’s a positive sign that he now advocates more worker-friendly policies.
Finally, with our harsh winter finally winding down, I want to express my sincere appreciation for everyone who has to work outside or travel to their jobs during terrible winter weather. Many such people aren’t able to take a day off or “work at home”, because you can’t drive a snowplow or staff your boss’s restaurant from your living room. I also want to express my profound appreciation for whoever devised the snow shovel with a bent handle. I’ve used one for years and there’s nothing better for shoveling snow while avoiding back pain!
Is It Bad Enough Yet? Yes, It Is
“Is It Bad Enough Yet?” That’s a wonderful title for an article by Mark Bittman about where we are today:
The police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe “safety net.” An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration.
You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse….
The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent…
Everything affects everything. It’s all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse….
When underpaid workers begin their strikes by saying “I can’t breathe,” or by holding their hands over their heads and chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot,” they’re recognizing that their struggle is the same as that of African-Americans demanding dignity, respect and indeed safety on their own streets….
Increasingly, it seems, there’s an appetite and even unity to take on the billionaire class. Let’s recognize that if we are seeing positive change now, it’s in part because elected officials respond to pressure, and let’s remember that that pressure must be maintained no matter who is in office. Even if Bernie Sanders were to become president, the need for pressure would continue.
“True citizenship,” says [Saru Jayaraman of U.C. Berkeley]— echoing Jefferson — “is people continually protesting.” Precisely.
So warmest congratulations to the fast food workers and Walmart employees demanding a living wage and to the thousands who have marched or stood silently in protest because black lives matter. It’s all connected.
And enough is enough. That’s what Senator Elizabeth Warren said this week. Listen to her talk about Citigroup’s stranglehold on the Federal government and why we need to break up the biggest banks. It’s only 10 minutes and it’s worth watching and sharing.
We can’t directly vote against Walmart or Citigroup, but we can boycott them. Don’t shop at Walmart until they institute a living wage and don’t use a Citigroup credit card or checking account until they’re small enough to fail, because, yes, it is bad enough.Â
Insanity, Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, …
You could make a list: the Declaration of Independence and most of the Bill of Rights; the electric light bulb and the Model T; the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Marshall Plan; Citizen Kane and “Good Vibrations”. The Apollo program. The personal computer and the Internet. Where would bloggers be without those?
We Americans have done some very good things. No doubt we’ll do many more, considering that there are almost 320 million of us now.
Still, the first entry on this blog, back in July 2012, was “Insanity”. I wrote it a few days after the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado (12 dead, 58 wounded). Since then, according to the statistics, my most frequent topics have been “America” and “Republicans”. Insanity has been a continuing theme.
It strikes me now that I might as well stop writing about how screwed up this country is. It’s like beating a dead prisoner.
Too often, we’ve been brutal and greedy, fearful and stupid.Â
And it isn’t that we’ve simply had bad leaders now and then. Many of us have been in favor of slavery and genocide and showing those foreign bastards who’s boss. Today, an amazing number of Americans think racist cops are heroes, torture is justified, global warming is a hoax and the Rapture is coming any day now. For crying out loud, in 2004, a majority of American voters decided to give Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld four more years!
Maybe reading about Ferguson, “I can’t breathe”, the lowest turnout in 72 years, Boehner and McConnell, the CIA, the rapacious rich and the incessant shrinking of the middle class have merely put me in a temporary funk. But it’s hard to deny that there is something seriously wrong with America and many Americans.Â
Rather than filling this blog every day with the latest outrage, I could add a sentence or two to every post: “BTW, America is still screwed up and not getting better. Please vote and, if you call yourself a Christian, try acting like one”.
Or maybe I can focus on things we could do to make things better. In that spirit, here’s what Senator Bernie Sanders called for recently. He wants to make Election Day a national holiday, amend the constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, and institute public funding of political campaigns. But he knows that none of that will happen unless more of us vote:
For those of us who believe in a vibrant democracy with an engaged and well-informed electorate, we have a lot of work ahead. Sadly, in the year 2014, we must still convince the American people about the relevance of government to their lives.
We must convince young people that if they vote in large numbers, we can lower the 20% real unemployment they are experiencing with a major jobs program. We must convince students that if they participate in the political process, we can lower the outrageously high student debt they face. We must convince low-income workers that voting can raise the national minimum wage to a real living wage. We must convince seniors that not only can we prevent cuts to Social Security – we can expand the paltry benefits that so many are forced to live on. We must convince the millions of Americans who are deeply worried about climate change that political participation can transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy – and create millions of jobs.
Throughout American history, people have fought and died to protect our democracy and set an example for other nations. In these very difficult times, we cannot turn our backs on them.
Well, actually, we can. But if we choose not to, how do we go about convincing more people that it’s worth being part of a “well-informed and engaged electorate”, while convincing many of our fellow citizens to give up their benighted political, economic and social beliefs? I really don’t know.
A Neutral Observer Might Detect a Pattern Here
Ijeoma Oluo, a Seattle writer, has been tweeting “Don’t Do That and They Won’t Kill You” advice since yesterday. New York Magazine helpfully provided an annotated list of the fatal encounters she’s described.
Much too often, the apparently dangerous and criminal behavior at issue seems to have been “Being in Public While Black”.
Do many cops really see black Americans as so much more lawless and threatening than the white Americans they meet up with?
Today I saw a link to the video below. It shows how unreliable direct perception can be. It’s called the McGurk Effect in honor of the scientist who discovered it. From Wikipedia:
The effect was discovered by accident when McGurk and his research assistant … asked a technician to dub a video…. while conducting a study on how infants perceive language at different developmental stages. When the video was played back, both researchers heard a third phoneme [a perceptually distinct unit of spoken language] rather than the one spoken or mouthed in the video.
A couple weeks ago, in Cleveland, two cops responded to a 911 call, which can be heard here. The person who called 911 said that someone in the park (“probably a juvenile”) was scaring people with a gun (“probably fake”).Â
It isn’t clear yet what the 911 dispatcher told the two officers to look for, but the black 12-year-old with the authentic-looking pellet gun was shot as soon as they arrived on the scene. From the New York Times:
Tamir Rice was killed by a rookie Cleveland police officer who quit a suburban police force after his supervisors determined two years ago that he suffered a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training and was emotionally unprepared to cope with stresses of the job. The officer, Tim Loehmann, 26, shot the child within two seconds after his patrol car pulled up next to the boy.
The Cleveland police said the child, who had what turned out to be a replica gun that shoots small plastic pellets but looks like a semiautomatic pistol, was told to raise his hands, but instead reached to his waistband for the object. Surveillance video of the killing that was released last week showed, however, that the shooting happened so fast it was hard to know whether the officer issued any real warnings or whether the boy could have understood them if he did.
I wonder what the young cop who had been fired by another police department saw when he and his veteran partner drove into that park. I wonder what the more experienced officer saw. It’s possible, even likely, that they didn’t see the same thing. Whatever each of them saw, however, it’s clear that one of them shouldn’t have arrived in that park with a gun in his hand, ready to use it, given what he apparently perceived.
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
You must be logged in to post a comment.