1630 The Purity Police

The other day we made the case that the major parties are not equally responsible for the mess  the political system faces.  But there is one area where equality prevails.  The Purity Police.

Conservative or liberal -- pardon. Progressive -- are the American equivalent of the Muslim religious police in the Middle East.

It’s a little more developed in places like Saudi Arabia and what’s left of Syria.  A woman is stoned to death for being raped.  A man is beheaded for shoplifting a bottle of vitamins for his camel.

They don’t execute the heathens and the fallen here.  Yet.  But they do a lot of damage nonetheless.

Trump is impure.  He’s not a “real” conservative.  He doesn’t toe the party line.  A loner. An outlaw.  

The so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives is the 40 member tail wagging the much larger dog. The dog is impure! We must cure him/her/it.

Clinton is impure.  She doesn’t want to break up the big banks, hypertax the rich in one sweeping step. She has a sneaky husband, a closeted Republican who used the Oval Office as a massage parlor.

Even St. Bernard has his Purity Police detractors.  Bernie isn’t socialist enough.  Let’s revive the zombie Occupy Wall St. movement to show him how it’s done. They sure had their impact.  Mostly on extra overtime for those privileged storm troopers of the fascist riot police in every city and town.

Purity!  It’s a good thing as Martha Stewart might say.

But the purity police doesn’t restrict its activities to politics and politicians.  

They’re like the Anti-Sex League in Orwell’s 1984. Orwell wrote fiction.  Maybe prophetic fiction, but fiction nonetheless.  Today we have a prissy posse in every city and town where anyone ever saw a hooker on the stroll. We cover the covers of marginally erotic magazines on newsstands and in supermarkets so we don’t corrupt the young ‘uns or embarrass the fair damsels.

We have the language Purity Police, those who insist that Latinism is the be all and end all of English and who would rather die before ending a sentence with a preposition.

And all this happens under the guise of “rightness,” “propriety” and Values-Values-Values.  

In the change purse of weirdness that the Purity Police dominates, there also are the politically correct.  Don’t get it wrong… we’re not advocating racial slurs and such.  But there are limits.  Or, as a friend put it in an email the other day “people are getting so thin skinned their bodies will fall out.”

What we need today is a civilian complaint review board for the Purity Police.

Shrapnel:

--Two unions are on strike at Verizon. The company has trained ten thousand in-house scabs to do the work of 36 thousand employees.  Think of how this will affect you when you need Verizon’s already glacial and inept customer service.

--The website Common Dreams -- reliability unknown -- reports Hillary Clinton collected $225,000 from Verizon. It also says the company contributed plenty more to the Clinton foundation.  Bernie Sanders supports the CWA/IBEW strike.

Today’s Quote:

“...” -- no one said anything worth repeating here since Wednesday.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1629 Hillary on the Subway -- Almost

Hillary Clinton had trouble using a New York Transit Authority MetroCard the other day.  And Saturday Night Live made a pretty funny story about it.

Clinton is among the least New Yorky professional New Yorkers who come from out of town to land in a self aggrandizing suburb and claim they’re “from” here.

One of three carpetbagging senators in recent state history, Clinton tries to play the native. Both Bobby Kennedy and Jim Buckley knew better. And even the very New Yorky Mike Bloomberg doesn’t try to hide his Massachusetts roots.

So when Clinton has a true NYC experience -- like the MetroCard not working -- it’s good for her and good for the city.

If you haven’t had a card screwup, you haven’t been a part of real life.  Experiments with the card began in 1993.  A few thousand people were lab rats and tested the things.  The verdict?  “You’re crazy if you think this is going to work.”

That’s always a green light to bull straight ahead.  And that’s what the parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did.

Eventually, the virus spread system-wide.  New compatible turnstiles were installed at a cost nipping at a figure close to the gross domestic product of Denmark.  Those same turnstiles were designed to block fare jumpers.  But it only made it easier for them and harder to detect from a cop’s vantage point on a platform.

The MetroCard has a mind of its own.  It likes to demagnetize for no obvious reason and there’s no appeal to a higher court when the thing tells you “Swipe Again.”

That there’s a built in “swipe again” warning tells you this is no mystery to the masters of the subway universe.  What to do?

The first line of battle is to re-swipe slowly.  Maybe you went too fast.  The next is to swipe quickly. Maybe you went too slow.  Then there’s kind of wiping the card against your shirt or coat.  Maybe some debris you can’t see is stopping you.

If none of those work, the most common next step is backing out of the turnstile and trying another.  If that doesn’t work, you go to the card reader attached to the front of the “token booth.” And when that says “swipe again,” you appeal to the live body -- if there still is one -- sitting behind the bulletproof glass.

Those clerks are getting scarce.  After all, why employ people when you have that splendid automated system?  If there is someone sitting there, they will do one of two things, accept your card and try to read it with their own swiper or put the card number into a computer to make sure you have enough money in the till to pay the fare.  If you don’t you can add more. If you do, “there’s nothing I can do.”

So while there’s plenty for which you can fault Hillary Clinton, MetroCard disability is not one of them.

Shrapnel:

--Know how to tell that a transplant is not a native New Yorker?  It’s when they claim to “understand” the place.  No one who really comes from there would make an imbecilic claim like that.

Quote of the Day:

“We never heard of you either.” -- Ad slogan for Harmonic Design of Hawaii, a little known but well regarded maker of electric guitar pickups.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© 2016

1628 The Doctor is In

We expect our doctors to be know it alls.  And then we resent them when they are.

“Waddaya mean cut down on red meat and the wine that goes with it so well?”

“Lose 20 pounds? Waddaya talking about?”

“I lose my appointment when I’m 20 minutes late, but you can be late by an hour and I have to sit here and take it?”

All of which brings us to one of the unsung anti-heroes of today’s health care crisis:  the people who run the offices.

Gone are the days when you’d go see Dr. Knowitall in his home office when you were sick. Or maybe every few years for your “annual” physical.

Once there, you knew time stood still.  That’s because kindly old doc would spend enough time with her patients to make sure she had all bases covered and that you as a patient were clear on what was wrong and what to do next.

The home-based doctor isn’t completely extinct, but close.  We all go to Big Medical Offices where rows of people who do little to nothing but sit and shuffle papers in advance of putting them into a computer which is running on Windows XP, the one Microsoft no longer “supports,” which means no more security checks.

In the unusual event that they notice you standing at the “Stand here to guard privacy” sign and “check you in”  You still have that forever wait.

Progress!

“Dr. Knowitall was called away to an emergency (on the golf course.) Are you willing to be seen by a nurse practitioner?”

Sure.  They aren’t knowitalls.  Just healers.  

“Okay, one will be free in just a few minutes. Please have a seat.”

One thing that hasn’t changed from the days of the doc at home offices:  The magazines are still dog- eared and out of date.  But if you want to catch up on Coronet or Colliers, it’s all there for you.

Where do they get these antiques anyway?

Forty minutes later, you get to see Nurse Bob.  Nurse Bob is young enough to be your kid.  But he knows almost as much as Dr. Knowitall and is willing to spend more time listening to you.

One thing Nurse Bob and Dr. Knowitall have in common: confusing and idiotic reams of electronic “paperwork.”  The more computerized it is, the more confused it becomes.  

When they used note pads and index cards, it was easy to lose a record.  But eventually, it turned up. The paper or card was somewhere in the office.

Now, when a record is lost, the file is “somewhere in the cloud,” which keeps records in fragments that it puts together when it can find them all.  A moderately successful medical practice can have more than 20-million fragmented case records.

Doctors and nurse practitioners have enormous patient loads.  They may remember your face and some of the details of your case without the aid of those electronic records.  But the devil is in the details.

And the office staff is no help if those records are missing or incomplete.

And as a paean to their hard road to that MD or DO, drop the resentment and at least pretend to accept the advice.

But still, we long for the day that the first question out of the mouth of the reception clerk no longer is “who’s your insurer?”

Shrapnel:

--The smarmy pompous fool Denny Hastert has been outed at last by prosecutors who’ve disclosed the allegations against him, kiddy sex abuse and making hush money payoffs in the multi millions.  Hastert was the holier than thou former Speaker of the House who led the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings after rising from common school teacher to land dealer and inside trader. Maybe he and Jerry Sandusky can become pen pals instead of just long distance soul brothers.

--Victoria’s Secret announces 200 job cuts in New York and Columbus.  It says that’s so it can focus more closely on “growth areas.”  No word on a possible partnership with Jenny Craig.

Today’s Quote: “Pastrami, no question.” -- Democratic Party presidential contender Bernard Sanders (I-VT) to Matt Lauer’s question about what was at the top of his lunch menu while campaigning in New York.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1627 The Gig Economy

That’s when you don’t have a “real” job and you have to work a bunch of places to make ends meet which they often don’t these days.

Musicians “gig.”  So do actors, radio and TV people, writers and sometimes clergy.  They have professions that don’t regularly employ regular employees.

So a hearty welcome to the world of show business to some distinctly non- show biz types.  Drivers, kitchen workers, hairdressers, and contractors of all ages.

There are some benefits to this kind of life:  you get to set your own schedule.  You usually can get portable health insurance.  You can deduct new things on your income tax returns.  And you can just say no to oppressive bosses.

But there are drawbacks.  For example, you may have to pay your rent in installments.  And you can’t always eat every day.  But we’re too fat as a population anyway.  And cat food doesn’t taste all that bad if you add a little vegetable… like Ketchup.  (Who was it said that?  Some President or other.)

Minimum wages vary among states.  And in New York and California, governments are trying to raise theirs to $15 an hour.  Business is screaming.  But business is always screaming.

Some smart operators have long used the gig economy as a weapon against workers.  A “full time” employee is usually defined as someone who works 40 or more hours in a week.  At that level, employers have to offer benefits.  Benefits are expensive, especially when you have to make that yacht payment every month.

Enter the 39 hour week.

And enter the contractors.  A contractor works for himself, but at or for an established business. A large and important retailer recently made a big deal out of raising its starting wage.  Good, right?  

Well, yes.  But why are they now looking to hire contractors who aren’t paid the new rate.  Having it both ways.

The gig economy.  Work at Wondermart 20 hours a week.  Work at Wondermart’s competitor down the street for 10 or 15.  Presto.  You’re a full time employee.  Well, sort of.  If you’re called in often enough at each place, your time is filled.

Someone please pass the ketchup?

Shrapnel:

--What was Crazy Cruz thinking, trying to speak at a high school in the Bronx after that little dig about “New York values?” Turns out the administration in a rare burst of responsiveness thought about a letter from students promising a civil disobedience walkout. They un-invited him.

--Cruz should spend his New York time where his voters are.  Anyone figure out where that might be, drop us a line, please. One each of Joe McCarthy and Wally Balloo are enough, and we’ve had those.

--And at last we bid final farewell to the third worst program in television history, American Idol which closed out season 15 last night by crowning another screeching unmusical white boy, Trent Harmon as its last winner.  A pre recorded President Obama opened the program by congratulating Idol for the wonderful job it has done elevating the art of screaming in tongues while playing a guitar badly to the level of national treasure.  But he also said the show got today’s teens and their older millennials used to voting, good for the future.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1626 Return of the Stars and Bars

The South won the civil war.  And it now runs the country with the advice and consent of its occupied territories in the west and southwest and pockets of other traitors elsewhere.  Maybe it’s time for the remaining sane states to form a new country.

North Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia are re-segregating the public bathrooms.  They’re narrowing the definition of marriage to suit a particular theology. They view separation of church and state by putting church above state. That’s not the kind of separation we should be talking about.

And they’re adding to it not by “establishing a state religion” but by ruling which ones are acceptable and which aren’t.

They are deciding how to block eligible voters from voting.

They are presenting people like Cruz and Rubio and Jindal, Huckabee, Fiorina, Carson and Graham as potential presidents.  Oh, here in the Other America, we have out blockheads, too. Trump, that pillar of capitalism? Kasich, the phony, tantrum- throwing, anti woman, anti government “conciliator?”  Governor Doublewide who belongs in the same schoolyard as Trump but hides it better?

Confederate staties in sleeper cells behind enemy lines.

President Obama was right when he railed against the people who hide their insecurities and sometimes their pathologies behind god and guns.  He could have added mountainside meth labs and moonshine, but he stopped too soon.

And you may recall that the industrial revolution didn’t hit the south until big business figured out that segregation was more or less tamed, at least legally, and that union busting was easier there than in what we now call the rust belt.

Those factories that crank out foreign- badged cars, furniture and what’s left of US- made clothing are no strangers to moving when moving is expeditious.  Those big banks in North Carolina could operate out of a shoebox in Delaware where they’re already incorporated.  Maybe moving day has arrived.

Few companies want to be thought of rooted in a place that’s anti woman, anti poor, anti black, anti Muslim, anti Hispanic, anti Jewish and has remaining grace notes of anti Irish and anti Italian?

But don’t be disheartened, y’all. You can always grow cotton.  Build your own wall on the Mexican border. Elect Crazy Cruz -- or even better Joe Arpaio --  president; put back all those Confederate battle flags and monuments to your heroes. They are, as you keep telling us, symbolic of your heritage.

“Oh, but we’re not all like that,” they’ll say.  True. But you’ve ceded control of your governments to those who are.”

“Oh, it’s not just the Republicans,” they’ll say.  Yeah it is.  The Democrats have their problems and their liabilities, too of course.  But at least they’re trying to remain rooted in the current century and the real American values of mutual support, nationhood and compromise along with a physical and moral  infrastructure to support it.

So, let ‘em have it.  Let them have their microgovernment and their “States’ Rights” and their theocracies. Let them abolish medical care and family planning for the poor.  Eventually starvation and disease will set in and thin the herd.

For the Neo Confederates, an entreaty:  Please make your capital Atlanta.  Richmond already stinks up the air without you adding to it.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address hate mail and death threats to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1625 A Tesla for the Masses but it's Nothing New

You have to hand it to Elon Musk, the baby-faced enfant terrible of the auto industry.  

Musk builds an all electric car called the Tesla.  And it’s an automotive work of art.  Gorgeous, solidly built. Sleek, stylish.  Put together with the kind of care that built reputations for Rolls Royce, Rolex, Leica and I.M. Pei.

There’s a little bit of a problem with such quality works of art.  They may cost more than your house or your kids’ college tuition. Now, comes the proletarian edition, the “Model 3.”  Fast. Silent. Relatively long range at about 200 miles between charges.

A rolling work of art at the price of a lowly Cadillac.  Thirty five grand.  A heart stopping beauty.

But wait. There’s more. No. Wait a little longer, there’s less.

It’s a scaled down model that depends on scaled up production.  To move this tin off the lot at $35,000 it’ll require a lot of production. Last year, Tesla sold about 50 thousand units.  Not bad for a startup.  Let’s see what that factory can crank out.  Musk  says half a million cars a year is doable. Will he need that many?  Possibly. Will they continue to meet their quality standards at that volume?  It’s been done.  But not often.

Will there be enough battery chargers in place if this thing takes off?  Iffy.

Do lithium ion batteries explode or catch fire?  Given half a chance, yeah.  Ask Boeing about that one.  And several makers of other battery-run devices. Hoverboards, to name one.

Truth is, you can’t just pop into the neighborhood Walgreen’s and buy replacements for a buck each or pump a gas can full of this kind of juice and walk it back to where you ran out, back there on Route 495 at three in the morning.

With gas prices relatively low these days, we long-term thinking Americans don’t have as much pent up desire for electrics.  If pre-orders are any indication, this thing will do well.  But remember this, leading edgers, the electric car is nothing new.  Baker made them back in 1899.  Think seven- foot- tall phone booth on wheels.

This thing had a top speed of 75 mph, cost about $900 in the 19-teens, about $22,000 in today’s money. Oh… and the price included seat belts.  There still are some on the road.  The major drawback: safety glass had yet to be invented.  So those big picture windows were a hazard.

And the batteries for this one… you could charge anywhere there was electricity.  The range was about 100 miles.

Shrapnel:

--Among the well known users of Baker and other brands of electric cars were the wives of the presidents of Ford and Packard. Traitors! More recently, Jay Leno bought one and probably paid more than $900 for it.

--Remember this name because you’re going to hear about it a lot: Mossack Fonseca, a Panama- based law firm with branches worldwide.  While American news organizations haven’t yet confirmed it, a huge data leak asserts M-B helped many of the world’s rich and high ranking elected officials hide billions of dollars in tax free or otherwise secret money.  The story is available in Britain’s The Guardian and Germany’s Sueddeutsch Zeitung (in German) .

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1624 Kevin Turner

In 2009, Kevin Turner of Birmingham, Alabama, then 39, realized he had become a pretty bad guitar player which wasn’t always so. Couldn’t hit the notes. Forgot the chords.

In 2016, Turner, now 46, has died.  ALS. Do you know of Turner?  Those of us who aren’t sports fans might not. So here’s a little background.

He was a star running back for the University of Alabama, a pretty lofty position considering the kinds of football teams Alabama usually fields.  Then, it was eight years with the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots of the NFL.

He had a smile and a twinkle in the eyes.  He had that strongman look the girls adore and the fans, male and female scream for in appreciation.

Kevin Turner could not tie his shoes.

ALS will do that.

He left professional football in 1999.  He started a foundation to help his fellow players, so many in physical ruin and mental anguish.  He became the name and face of the suit against the league and when players with head trouble won $765 million in a class action suit and some of the players wanted to appeal in hopes of winning more money, Kevin said “no.”

Kevin: the guys need this money now.  Have you seen our medical bills? We can’t wait any longer.

This brings to mind the disgraceful Roger Goodell, commissioner.  Here’s a guy who takes the “ice bucket challenge” to support ALS research.  Just not when it hits close to home.

Goodell kind of writes off CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. That’s a disease that comes to those who bang their head too hard and too often.  You can’t diagnose it in a living patient, only after death and only if you examine brain tissue.

It’s what killed Frank Gifford.  You can ask the Medical Examiner.  Frank Gifford and at least 24 others.

How many kids on the football fields of the country’s elementary and secondary schools… of the country’s colleges are well on their way to early deaths?  No one will tell you.  Even if they knew, no one would tell you.

You take risks in pretty much any job.  Career cops, firefighters, pilots, rail engineers, truck drivers, soldiers, telephone and utility pole workers, miners and lumberjacks know their risks.  So now do football players and the parents of child football players.

So remember Kevin Turner.  And Frank Gifford and all the others… past, present and future. And think about the repercussions of concussions, especially if you play or your kids do.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Herewith, we repost our favorite movie mini listing, clipped from Newsday in the 1970s when it still was a real newspaper:

The Clam that Ate Pittsburgh

An immense bivalve mollusk goes berserk after drinking the Monongahela River and criminally assaults Three Rivers Stadium before being turned into stone by Mr. Rogers, who has a magic horseradish. Interesting, if you check the calendar. Dubbed. Sonny Tufts, Martin Koslek, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Wild Bill Elliot, Sabu, Mark Damon, Iron Eyes Cody, Zasu Pitts and the entire Pirates bullpen. (2 hrs.) "

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016