The VA Doctors

The problem with the Veterans Administration medical system is that they have not hired enough doctors.  They don't pay enough to attract the people they need. The system is inadequately staffed, so at many sites the patients have to wait for months to see someone. How hard is that to understand?

Did some VA bureaucrats fake records and try to cover their rear ends? Apparently, yes. Did General Shinseki fail to solve the problems? Apparently, yes. But the core issue is that our elected political leaders are too cheap to fund the medical staff we need. We put these leaders in office. Rather than get help for wounded veterans, they enact tax cuts for the 1%. How hard is that to understand?

Snowden as Hero

In polls we are asked if Edward Snowden is a traitor or patriot, as if we see the actors in our world as simply good or bad, and some of us do. What if our reaction to Snowden is mixed?  I think he handled things poorly, but I wish him no harm. 

I see Snowden as a young man who wanted to be famous for the rest of his life, and he will be. His book, when he writes one, will be taught in college courses. I imagine a panel of enormous egos debating the issues, moderated by Amy Goodman: Snowden, Nader and Chomsky. It will have to happen soon. Nader and Chomsky are aging out. Snowden will be with us for a long time in the role he wrote for himself as the smartest man in America who ran away.

Affirmative Action and Reparations

Affirmative action was adopted by congress and signed by the President because it had mass appeal. It made life a little more fair for women, gays, Muslims, Jews, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Indian tribes and so on. Reparations is a movement to address the obvious wrongs done to black people, whose recent ancestors were enslaved and who live, much of the time, in a Jim Crow nation today.

Years ago I was walking along some tracks in Buffalo at night and came upon several local Indians sitting around a fire and drinking beer. We got to talking, and they told me how deeply they resented the government help then going to African-Americans--the help should, in their view, be going to the tribes. They'd had a continent stolen from them by the Europeans. Then, in the 1840s our nation took half of Mexico at gunpoint and added it to our western border. American women worked for 300 years without pay or the right to vote. Latino dons who had once owned California were cheated in American courts and died broke. So I suspect that who will pay reparations to whom is a complex matter. I still remember when white men from the city came and took my grandfather's little ranch. They used eminent domain--they wanted the rough land so they could hunt deer on it. 

Social Security and Medicare have survived because there are a lot of poor people and some of them vote. Social programs gain mass support when everyone gets helped. 

Weak Brains

The anti-science guys on the Right have a lot of power--they've sublet the Republican Party for years. That's not because Republican leaders don't understand climate change. It's because the leaders fear their own delusional base. The anti-science guys on the Left don't own a party, but they manage to do harm. According the Mary Callahan of the Press Democrat, Sonoma County (where wingnuts fear vaccinations, fluoridated water, etc.) has a whooping cough rate 14 times the California average. Whooping cough can and does kill infants, but immunization can be thought of as a government plot if your brain lacks enough gluten. 

How To Kill Poor People

Timm Herdt, a columnist for the Ventura County Star, recently explained how we have deliberately killed poor people in California by smothering them with paper. In the past if poor people needed medical help, Medi-Cal, deliberately and murderously,  required them to fill out so many demanding forms that about 30% of  them gave up and walked away. That saved the state a lot of money, and you could blame the victims. They should have learned how to fill in the blanks. But with the rise of Obamacare (the ACA), the situation changed abruptly. People saw a lot of publicity about signing up, and there were volunteers and professionals to help with the paperwork. Instead of driving sick people away, the system attracted them. Suddenly a lot more money from the general tax funds will be needed. We hadn't planned on this, because planning requires foresight. (I suggest we require sick people to fill out a new set of forms with a quill pen clenched in their teeth.) 

The Dullness of George Will

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that if he met somebody who said he did not believe in science, he would not know how to talk to him. Science has a unique place in our belief system. Science has added 30 years to our life span. Science tests its claims. Science is as close to objective as we can get. 

I'm not a scientist, and I can't enter the scientific conversation about climate change. I don't know how to evaluate the math, any more than I can evaluate what I hear on the radio about Ukraine. In real life what people like me do is rely on experts. If nine out of ten scientists agree that the climate is changing, I accept that. They are probably right. But if I am a Republican dullard like George Will, I will deny climate change because I don't know the difference between the top of my head and a warm pizza with extra gluten.

Fudge or Gore?

Those of us who are locals and voting by mail are already casting our ballots in the supervisorial race. We have a choice. The next supervisor will be either Deb Fudge, endorsed by Conservation Action, the Democratic Party, the California Nurses Association, our congress member, our assembly member, the county sheriff, mayors from all over and so on; or it will be some dude named Gore, I believe, endorsed by the wine barons and the 1%. That's why I can't step off my porch without seeing Gore's name on a stick. They can't make enough signs to dent his campaign cash.

During Deb Fudge's years in public office, she helped Windsor bring in balanced budgets for 18 years in a row. Gore, on the other hand, is unknown, is trying to buy the office and couldn't find the Vallejo House with a  GPS. Take your pick.

Ten Hits from the 1950s

Ten Hits From the 1950s

10. Your Cheatin'  Heart by Hank Williams

9. Rock Around the Clock by the Comets

8. Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin

7. Goodnight Irene by the Weavers

6. Peggy Sue by the Crickets

5; Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley

4. Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry

3. Earth Angel by the Penguins

2, Tutti Fruiti by Little Richard

1. Blueberry Hill by Fats Domino

And let's elect Jim Wood to the Assembly, not the unknown corporate fool being pushed by the Press Democrat's editorial board because he will clamp down on working people.  Jim understands science, which will make him unique in Sacramento.