Tag Archives: America

The County Clerk Who Cried Religion

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That Kentucky county clerk is back on the streets, as long as she promises not to interfere with the clerk’s office issuing marriage licenses to gay people. My reaction to her situation is that anybody who strongly objects to their job requirements for personal reasons should look for another job. Same-sex couples now have the legal right to get married. Nobody has the legal right to stop them. It’s as simple as that, regardless of any objections the county clerk might have, including objections based on her particular interpretation of a book she considers sacred.

In a lighter vein, someone named Jim expressed himself on Facebook (the link is no longer universally available). You might lift your voice in song if you know the tune: 

I am the very model of a modern fundamentalist
I’m not merely judgmental, I’m the absolute judgmentalest!
I always follow scripture and I act on God’s authority
But marital longevity was never my priority.

I married first one husband, then two others, then another one
Because I think one man is pretty much like any other one.
I’ve never been too troubled by the dubious legalities
Of sex outside of marriage or of other trivialities.

But when it comes to icky stuff like homosexuality
I’m always very strident with my Puritan morality.
In short in matters biblical and spiritual and Calvinist,
I am the very model of a modern fundamentalist!

In questions of behavior I fall back on my Old Testament
(Though saying no to shrimp is way too much of an impediment).
I pick and choose the verses that support my little weltanschauung
And pledge never to change my mind from now til götterdämmerung.

I’ll ride this hobby horse until I’m richer than a sybarite,
There’ll always be good money in denouncing godless sodomites.
I’ll put my name as author on some books that I can barely read
And get a show on cable to inform the world what God decreed.

My husbands all agree that I know more about what marriage is
Than five Supreme Court justices whose law my faith disparages.
In short in matters biblical and spiritual and Calvinist,
I am the very model of a modern fundamentalist!

In fact, when I see what is meant by constitutionality
When I can do my job with requisite impartiality,
When I can join in marriage two young men who might be thespians,
Or issue nuptial licenses to enterprising lesbians,

When I can see that love is love no matter what the sexes are
And understand that gays are just like me and my three exes are,
In short, when I have finally got a dose of moral clarity
I’ll find out what is meant by the idea of Christian charity.

Til then I’ll flout the law and draw my wages from the county tax
Which is what God would do if only He was up on all the facts
Til then in matters biblical and spiritual and Calvinist,
I am the very model of a modern fundamentalist!

Cutting the Cord (Thanks to a Hard-Working Man)

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The Verizon website said their technician would get to our house around 9:30 pm to do our installation. The anonymous dispatcher said it would really be around 8:15 (only three hours after the original 5 pm deadline).

So it was a pleasant surprise when the technician called at 6:30 to say he’d be at our house in fifteen minutes. He arrived as promised and quickly got to work.

Four hours later, he was done. Among other things, he’d had to string 350 feet of cable from our basement to a telephone pole two blocks away, working in the dark on a hot, humid night. It was an impressive performance.

When we thanked him and said good-night, we assumed he’d be dropping off his van at some Verizon garage and then get home by midnight or so. No, he’d actually be driving to Newark to do some work for another customer. He explained that Verizon is forcing their previously-unionized technicians to work 60 hours a week.

We didn’t ask what time he started work yesterday. But on a good day, if all goes well, he puts in 12 hours. That’s not 12 hours in an air-conditioned or heated office. That’s 12 hours of driving around, in good and bad weather, carrying equipment, going up and down stairs, climbing on roofs, drilling holes, stringing cable, attaching electronic gizmos to inside and outside walls, while also dealing with people like us. Sometimes in the dark. 

Do you think it would be a good idea for Verizon to hire and train more technicians, so their employees wouldn’t have to work 12 hours a day (or more), five days a week? We all know the corporate business model is to get as much work as possible out of workers while providing as little compensation as possible, but there are lots of Americans who could use a decent job. It would be good for the country and even good for the corporations if they’d spread some of the wealth around.

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Continues)

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A couple days ago, I went to the Comcast website to ask about eliminating our cable television service (the two online chats that resulted are recorded in an earlier post).

The two “analysts” with whom I chatted, Kaye and Marites, said the same thing: If I wanted to save money by canceling cable TV while keeping our phone and internet service (as part of a so-called “Double Play” package), I’d simply need to get in touch with some other Comcast employee:

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Having gathered my strength for almost 48 hours, I called 888-739-1379 today.

As the pessimistic (i.e. realistic) part of my mind expected, it wasn’t quite as easy as Kaye or Marites promised. In fact, Matthew explained that it would not be possible to get a “Double Play” discount by speaking to him or anyone else on the phone.

According to Matthew, my only option would be to visit the Comcast website, because, in his words (and the words of Marites too!): “they have more options for promotions”. Unfortunately, the best Matthew could do was offer me the “standard” arrangement for phone and Internet service. That would reduce my basic bill by – to quote from that earlier chat with Kaye – hardly anything at all:

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It never occurred to me before that one of the benefits of a huge monopolistic corporation providing support to its customers by phone and also by website is that (1) employees who answer the phone can tell customers to use the website and (2) employees who chat on the website can tell customers to use the phone.

It really is an elegant solution to the Customer Service Problem.

Next stop: Investigate getting phone service from one of the smaller companies that do that these days, as preparation for finally cutting the cable television cord. 

By the way, I know I should tell Comcast I want to cancel everything in order to get a better deal, but I’d prefer to end our relationship completely (even though Verizon isn’t a wonderful alternative). And I know that when the time comes for us to go our separate ways, I need to tell them I’m moving to Iceland. Or that I’m dead. According to this interesting article, Comcast doesn’t have answers for situations like that:

Save Attempt is Not Applicable in the Following Scenarios:
1) Customer is moving in with an existing Comcast customer (CAE [i.e. Comcast Retention Specialist] must verify Comcast services active at new address)
2) Customer is moving to a non-Comcast area (CAE must verify by looking up zip code)
3) Account holder is deceased / incapacitated
4) Temporary / seasonal disconnect and Seasonal Suspend Plan is not available in their area
5) Natural disaster
6) Customer doesn’t know what address they’re moving to.

Bernie, Hillary, Emails, Decisions, Decisions

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New Jersey will hold its Presidential primary election nine months and fifteen days from now. By that time, we will almost certainly know who the Democratic nominee and the next President of the United States will be (she used to be Secretary of State). June of 2016 might sound like a long way off, but we in New Jersey, along with our friends in California and a few other states, always wait for everyone else to hold their primary elections first.

Aside from the fact that we’re naturally considerate (“Please, I insist.” “No, no, after you.”), this means we don’t have to spend much time deciding which Democrat or Republican should be President. Unlike Iowa, Vermont and South Carolina, we have more important things to do.

Anyway, if I had the opportunity to vote sooner than next June, like maybe tomorrow, I’m not sure who I’d choose. From a policy perspective, I’d go with Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist Senator from Vermont. Voting for Sanders would make me feel good. I even think he could beat a Republican in the general election, because most Americans, whether they realize it or not, agree with his positions. (See “How Mainstream Is Bernie Sanders?” and “Why Surprising Numbers of Republicans Have Been Voting for Sanders in Vermont”).

Despite the popular appeal of Sanders’s positions, however, Clinton might do better in a general election. It would be harder for the Republicans to falsely portray her as a wild-eyed radical. And despite some of her hawkish views on foreign policy and military spending, Hillary Clinton might end up being a very progressive President. She seems more aware of our country’s increasing inequality and more likely to do something about it than she used to be. Further, she might be able to get more done than Sanders, since the politicians, bureaucrats and plutocrats she’d have to work with would be more likely to consider her “one of them”. 

(Every time I imagine President Sanders taking office, I’m reminded of A Very British Coup, in which the election of a proud Labor Party socialist as Prime Minister leads to army helicopters descending on Downing Street and Parliament. See also Seven Days in May. All fiction, of course.) 

But since I’m a proud resident of New Jersey, I don’t have to make a decision about this any time soon. Meanwhile, our national nightmare (i.e. our Presidential campaign) will continue.

That brings me to a perceptive article by Heather Digby Parton called “Anatomy of a Hillary Clinton Pseudo-Scandal”. She writes:

… the press can pass judgement about anything once it’s “out there” regardless of whether or not what’s “out there” is true. This allows them to skip doing boring rebuttals of the facts at hand and instead hold forth at length about how it bears on the subject’s “judgement” and the “appearance” of wrongdoing without ever proving that what they did was wrong.

You see, if the person being discussed were “competent,” it wouldn’t be “out there” in the first place, so even if it is based upon entirely specious speculation, it’s his or her own fault for inspiring people to speculate so speciously. It all goes back to their “character”… 

And even if the charges are patently false, they are always far too complicated to rebut in detail; and, anyway, the other side says something different, so who’s really to say what’s true and what isn’t?  [Note: that’s what Paul Krugman calls “Shape of Earth: Views Differ” journalism.]

It’s still the responsibility of the target of those charges because he or she shouldn’t have allowed him or herself to be in a position where someone could make false charges in the first place.

From this perspective, it’s irrelevant whether any of those famous emails were classified at the time (apparently they weren’t, besides which lots of stuff the government classifies shouldn’t be). It’s also irrelevant whether it was forbidden to use a private computer then (apparently it wasn’t). 

I agree about the irrelevance in one sense. It’s irrelevant as to whether Clinton or Sanders or some other Democrat should be our next President.

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Begins)

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I didn’t think it would be possible via an online chat to give Comcast less money, but decided to start there anyway.

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Twenty minutes and one reconnect later:

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com 5com 6Well, I didn’t expect anything else. But sometimes it’s good to get confirmation.

In fact, I’m very familiar with everything you can do at this site: http://customer.comcast.com. For one thing, you can add services but you can’t cancel them….