The Power of the People

I heard an interesting statement yesterday: The retail world has programmed us, trained us, to shop sales. We’re always hunting for the lowest price.

This is very thought-provoking, and I wonder if I agree. This is laying the blame for our current situation (the addiction to Wal-Mart and thus its ridiculous power to make or break producers as well as the addiction to All Things made in China and elsewhere that has resulted in continuous product recalls of cars, food, toys, and baby items) at the feet of Retail Business.

What about Economic Theory (resources i.e. money are scarce), Human Nature (yes, greed), and Marketing (the most powerful word in the English language being “Free!”). I don’t think we were “trained” necessarily…we were very willing participants. I do think the Wal-Mart phenomenon made it possible to find crap for less.

So here we are, my fellow Stoopid Americans. Our houses are full to the roofs with enormous amounts of crap. Some of us even make appearances on the tv show “Hoarders” because we’ve lost the use of entire rooms and dwellings. Storing our precious crap has become important. How many of us rent additional storage space, paying every month to hold onto old tv sets, computers, stereos, mattresses, broken LaZBoy recliners. Do we ever stop to weigh the cost of storage against the value of the items?

“Hoarders” isn’t the only show allowing us a glimpse of the cluttered lives of Americans. It seems most of the interior decorating shows involve the removal of crap first. What about the one in which the people carry all their crap to the front yard and make three piles? The grand finale is a yard sale. Yay, more money to buy more crap! Another show artfully combines the crap belonging to newlyweds who refuse to part with their individual crap. Then there’s the fashion make-over shows. First step: discard all the crap currently in the closet.

Have you peeked into the garages of neighbors, on the rare occasion that the door is open? Sometimes there’s a dusty old car, inoperable. There are always plastic bins, stacked, by those people still treading water, struggling to push back the tide and shove it in boxes.

We are literally drowning in all our crap. We can’t even properly use the items, as we can’t find them. Our mental capacities are overwhelmed.

When will we decide “enough”? Have we learned our lesson? How many of us must die driving cheap cars with parts that fail, eating cheap, genetically-modified, factory-processed food that weakens us, makes us stoopider, and inhibits the body’s natural ability to fight infection and disease and regenerate. How many children sacrificed on the altar of Everyday Low Prices? And what about the lost potential of those young Americans, hell, America in general, because of all those individuals who eat Cheetoz instead of an apple, only exercise as the walk from house to car, or are sick and sad, overwhelmed by their lives. No matter, there’s a pill for everything. You don’t have to change the original behavior that caused the problem – take the magic pills. Yes, the ones that cause all the other side effects.

Is this the Greatest Nation on Earth? We have prospered ourselves right into stoopid oblivion. And I don’t think we can blame Business. It was good, old-fashioned Greed. Our consumer behavior driven by greed and faulty decision-making has resulted in “training” Business to find ways to cut costs and quality and deliver the goods at the price we demand. We have forced them to find raw materials in China and assemble them in Mexico. Business does what we tell it to do…and we say it with our money.

I would like to persuade my friends to do two things.

1. Spend some time with your crap this weekend. Analyze why you bought it, what did it mean to you, was it used and enjoyed, what is its role now. If there is no room or purpose for it in your life, donate it. Hold the thoughts and feelings close in your heart to remember the next time you’re at the store considering a purchase. Really question the lust for more instead of better.

2. Eat organic. Ignore the wily marketer’s commercial that high fructose corn syrup is really good for you! Target stores are leading the charge on affordable organic. You don’t have to spend three times as much to shop at specialized health food stores. Send the message that you don’t want to eat crap anymore, by choosing to spend just a little extra to be healthier. (Maybe then the 25 different arrangements of Ho-Hos will disappear to make room for more organic offerings.) Let’s change the current business dynamic. Do you really want to EAT the cheapest crap? We deserve better. Let’s demand it. And for God’s sake, don’t expect the government to make these smart choices for you and force business to do unprofitable things…government involvement leads to more corruption, confusion, wasted resources.

Let the free market work to address this problem. I see all sorts of signs that it already is beginning. Business is feeling the hit in sales and responding. McDonald’s serves oatmeal now. Yes, really. Longtime cereal manufacturers are creating new lines under new DBA’s. (Kellogg is really behind Kashi, and no, it’s not organic.) My milk carton now says: “Our farmers pledge NOT to use artificial growth hormones.” Thank you. I think I’ll show my appreciation by buying you. You farmers will succeed; the others will go out of business.

All the brilliant ideas we will have in the future, all the discoveries, humanitarian and business successes, the defeat of evils, the solving of problems – all this begins with what we choose to eat and feed our children right now. Us. Not the government idiots and shysters.

Words of Wisdom

Occasionally I get invited to small, private gatherings featuring a speaker. A few days ago I had the rare privilege of meeting and hearing an 88-year-old WWII POW, who survived 14 months in a Nazi prison camp.

His story began with the description of his plane and his job on that bomber as the flight engineer and top turret gunner. He jumped from 25,000 feet, flak in his knee, face charred black beyond recognition. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and has no memory of pulling the parachute cord. The Germans below were waiting for him, and he remembers a hospital and something that felt like molasses put on his face.

He rambled, skipped ahead, doubled back in his tale. At one time he was on a boat, down in a hold, a bucket lowered with water. He saw a man jump overboard and used for target practice.

The first camp was too close to Russian guns. They were loaded into 40-by-8 boxcars (called this because capacity was either 40 men or 8 horses), 60 men deep.

They all knew they faced a firing squad, sooner or later.

Red Cross parcels provided food for the guards first, since the German army couldn’t feed them. This man learned one could go a whole day on a 1-inch piece of chocolate from the care package. Most of the time, he was fed cabbage soup.

Stalag #4 was his home, and he learned quickly to not engage in conversation or draw the notice of the guards. He was often cracked in the back by a rifle butt.

He did have an empathetic story to share about one guard, who had two sons. One fought for Germany; the other for his new homeland, America. When he received word that the German soldier-son had died, he felt great relief. Because it was not to be by the hands of his brother. Small mercies.

He helped to cover for another man who chose to escape, for a tense 48 hours. Just like an episode of “Hogan’s Heroes,” but without the laugh track.

The word came – they were to be released to Patton. Yes, The Patton, who would race the Russians across Germany to claim victory as ours. Hitler knew he would have to give up his prisoners and ordered a forced march of 800 kilometers. He wanted no man left alive to relinquish.

The Army airman described how they were handcuffed in pairs, right hand to left hand. Emotion gripped his features as he relayed how his partner wanted to lay down and die. He threatened to twist the other man’s arm off at the shoulder, if he didn’t keep the gap closed in front of him. Another man did drop, and a Hitler Youth ran his bayonet through his temple.

They slept paired up for warmth, with one blanket, in the same subzero conditions as the infamous Battle of the Bulge, occurring nearby.

And somehow he survived. This is the price one single man paid to save the world. It’s overwhelming, isn’t it.

Yes, he lived, returned, married, had children. His daughter is a nurse. A great-granddaughter sat on his lap to pose for pictures at the end of his talk. He loved and was loved. From the second he jumped from his B-24, he has lived an existence close to God. He felt His hand many times.

The spirit remains strong in his feeble body; he is determined to spread his message as long as he can. That war must never happen here, on American soil. We must do whatever is necessary elsewhere to keep it from here.

This very decent man, a member of the dwindling Greatest Generation, also softly cautioned, “I know we are drifting further and further from God. And we’re gonna have some tall questions to answer.”

Timeless

I meant to write a lot for Black History Month, sharing the accomplishments and heritage of my fellow Americans who happen to be black. I really enjoy making the effort to celebrate holidays, recognizing that certain days are different than other days so that all the days of life don’t just run together.

I did not write as much as I would have liked, though. No matter. I don’t need a special month designated to honor individuals and retell great stories. I can do it all year-round, whenever I feel like it.

Black History Moment

Langston Hughes was not into “black power”; his thing was “black is beautiful.” He didn’t slam doors closed, but opened them… and windows and eyes and minds…

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

- From the Hughes poem “My People”

Roses and Thorns

I’ve had so many intensely bad experiences with the teachers of my sons, that I want to paint them all with the same brush. And, of course, that is not fair. I forced myself to remember clearly the last 15 years and give this just treatment.

Cooter refused to learn to read in 1st grade, too busy! His middle-aged teacher pounded the phonics into him every day until…he came back from Christmas break and in two weeks leaped to 3rd-grade level reading. He wanted to read the Texas Field Guide to Snakes. He refused to learn how to count 1-100 until…she asked him to paint a snake with 100 scales going all around her classroom. That boy has always had his own agenda. I suspect everyone is like that. But how can a teacher find every kid’s unique personal motivation. The setting: Very expensive private school, Houston, TX.

Kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd, 5th grade: He had a lot of young white female teachers who were so inflexible, stressed, and petty-minded that it’s a shame they were allowed to work with children. Setting: public.

4th Grade: You will be a math success in Janice West’s class, there is no other option. She said, “He makes me laugh every day, and that is very special.” The next year, she became a vice principal at a different public elementary. I heard this very smart, energetic young black woman died tragically shortly after. Her words live on.

He attended a religious private school in 6th grade. That teacher came up with the idea of using a kitchen timer on him, to keep him focused intensely til finishing the worksheets. The racing pace kept him in it. He loved caring for the many animals in her room.

Public junior high was one of the worst periods of his life. Both boys attended this school at different times. Both were lucky to have certain teachers. Mrs. Cox is one of those awesome English teachers with mind-blowing lesson plans. Students watched “Remember the Titans” to discuss racism. Cooter was given a picture of a Jewish boy from the Holocaust and told to create a history for him. Then she revealed where those depicted real people are today. He tells me now he learned more about difficult clauses from her than anyone else.

He had a male geography teacher, teaching for 40 years, who was psycho, mean, unrelenting. He conducted all sorts of crazy social experiments that infuriated me at the time. An entire row was awarded the same grade earned by that week’s “row leader.” This man doled out shame on a daily basis. The wrong colored pencils? You were doomed. He once counted every one of Farnsworth’s correct answers wrong due to punctuation issues or what he felt were erasure messes. He taught everything but geography, and both of my boys loved him. The oldest visits him when he’s in town. This man refused to do what the establishment told him, and I think it made him a little crazy. In his own cranky way, maybe he was teaching why socialism sucks. I’ll tell you what, his students GOT it.

High school: Cooter had another great English teacher. The first day she had students write a poem about their own hands. Another lesson involved analyzing the impact of tv on presidential campaigns. A history teacher’s assignment at the end of the year involved hosting a dinner and inviting historical figures. What to serve, where to seat them, what conversations are they having? A biology teacher inspired him to create an artistic metaphor for a human cell – it still hangs on my wall. A science teacher asked him to bring his guitar and amp to demonstrate how hearing works with his devices.

We come to a teacher he has now who totally understands how his brain works. She devised an entire Creative Writing program for him. He writes stories based on classified ads, weaves random assigned objects and letters together into stories, explains a meal preparation, uses starters like “Officer McCarthy finds a dead body,” “The nation is controlled by…” and “My body…”

Consider all the types of thinking he is pushing through: organizing, following rules, stretching rules, keeping one eye on details and the other on direction, exploring emotions, juggling, storing, finding his own perfection.

Cooter will never be an engineer. I wish the government would understand this and quit forcing their “space race” mindset on everybody. Hermie does not want to build toys, and then he and Rudolph ran away. One size does not fit all.

Farnsworth’s speech and debate coach also deserves mention. I remember a black male student rapping his way to national forensic points and college scholarships. Two young Muslim female students of Middle Eastern descent wrote and performed a brilliant humorous skit focused on common stereotypes held about them.

Mixed in with this “wonderful” is a whole lot of bad: coaches who are blatantly partial, Cooter’s English teacher fired last semester (yes, fired) for sexting nude photos of herself to a male student she was having sex with.

I have to share one “bad teacher” story about the infamous APUSH teacher (AP US History). My oldest was awarded 20s and 30s all year on weekly essays, with no explanation of why such low marks. His students passed their state-required End-of-Instruction exams for this subject a week before the final, so boycotted the final…except for Farnsworth. The teacher was furious. The final consisted of one question: what color are the teacher’s shoes. Farnsworth got it right and earned enough points to bring his F to a D, thus passing the class and getting to graduate, so he could go on to college where 21 hours of advanced standing credit (earned in AP exams) awaited him (6 of them in US History).

I know of another student, a female cheerleader he hated, who got zeros for all the assignments she missed while in the hospital with mono. She didn’t get them in within the two days.

I’ve noticed the worse teachers we’ve experienced teach math. That’s weird, isn’t it, considering the enormous extra-special emphasis on this area by the government. The math teachers for a particular grade “team teach,” all of them teaching the same thing at the same time from the same materials, to stay on careful schedule for the government-required tests. No flexibility, no individual attention. If the child didn’t get it, roll over him. The problem is many aren’t getting it, and they’re left on the road side. Algebra teachers are frustrated trying to teach kids who haven’t mastered computation. Give ‘em calculators, move on, they’re told.

It’s clear to me: the more government involvement, the more messed up it is.

I’m so glad it’s almost over for me. I remember how the “AR” program almost succeeded in making my youngest child never read for pleasure again, the annual Parent Science Projects, the ridiculous amounts of homework that cripple family home life, the arbitrary grading and crushing hateful written comments, teachers who admit they hate boys, all the stomach aches and tears when they didn’t want to go to school.

Reporting truthfully from the front lines of education,
The Stoopid American Mom

A Good Life

We are a lot alike actually. We all want the same thing – a good life. But the D’s and R’s just have very different ideas about how to make that vision come true.

We all want to be safe from foreign enemies, thus a strong military. Sometimes our elected decision-makers gauge threats incorrectly, erring on both sides. I think we’re getting better at it.

We all want an incredible public education system available for children to become whatever they desire, and be able to contribute to society. This isn’t working so well right now – we totally agree. Will throwing more money and regulation at it fix it? I think we’ve tried that.

We all want jobs, food, shelter. The economy makes that happen. And the individual, if the economy is healthy. Interestingly enough, some believe deficit-spending under Kennedy led to a period of prosperity late 1960s. Others point to different factors as the cause. Some believe the government should give individuals jobs, food, shelter. Others believe the government should stay out of it, and let the economy naturally operate, and individuals get what they earn. Those are extreme positions, and reality is a crazy mixture, a constant tug-of-war between government involvement and natural economic responses.

I do support governmental involvement in economic development in certain areas. I’m okay with the idea of collecting the society’s taxes and using it in ways to boost certain businesses that represent progress and improved quality of life for the society (alternate energy sources, infrastructure, severe weather detection).

This see-sawing between the extreme positions results in times when D’s are in control, then R’s. Now it’s time for the R’s to come back in power and strengthen business. We’re out of balance. Government spending is too large and can’t be supported by weakened Business, unemployment is high. When you tie the hands of Business, you just eliminated the tax revenue for another social program. We’re so out of balance that the government is spending a lot more than what it’s collecting in taxes and still can’t pay for the social programs it’s promised. It’s time to say no, and figure out how to help Business get off the ropes.

Business itself is not evil. Profit is not evil. Business is what naturally happens when one real live human being helps another real live human being solve a problem. “I’ll give you a coin if you’ll help me haul my fruit to market.” “I can pay you after I sell my fruit to the people who have a problem, they need to eat.” Is this evil? We want our fruit vendor to do very, very well so he can grow more fruit, hire more help, feed more people, even give his remains to the poor at the end of the day. I want him to MAXIMIZE his profit – he is the key to a good life for many of his fellow man. Profit is a great thing…a company stays in business, people get to keep their jobs, more taxes are paid to the government by the business and the employees.

Is he a good, fair man? If he stays in business a long time, he probably is. Most people are a mix of good and bad, externally and internally motivated, simply acting on obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain in the moment.

You can see many “evil” business owners and many “good” ones around us today. Many billionaire businessmen are forming a coalition to do good works with their fortunes. Others prey on their fellow man until their industry collapses, and they are revealed.

Good, evil, mixture – they’re everywhere, and the fact is we need them and their businesses to be the engine that runs America. More than ever, right now.

So, just because an R says no to government spending does not mean he doesn’t want a good life for all. He/she wants everyone to have the life they deserve, and he is trying to get us there according to his beliefs. That means letting business happen…and get the money flowing.

Big Brother in Little Dixie

Well, it’s worse than I thought. The Oklahoma legislature is not relying on the DMV to someday provide a database to catch uninsured motorists…they’re accepting proposals from 3rd-party vendors to create this system.

They plan to install 20 cameras around town to read your bar-coded car tag as you drive by. The car tag record will provide your personal and auto information to compare against a database containing records from all auto insurance companies. If you’re not in there, the 3rd-pary vendor will mail a ticket to your house and try to collect. The vendor will then split the collected money with the state.

A similar system in current use in the UK has been a disaster in errors, one mistake resulting in a death.

Even the vendors vying for the contract are expressing concern about the potential lawsuits and public backlash due to errors.

"If the query response is returned with a disclaimer regarding accuracy, and a citation is generated based on inaccurate data, that will ensure negative press and possibly litigation, none of which will help generate revenue and so, projections must be reduced," a vendor stated in an April 27 amendment. "The vendor and DPS will be accused of 'trolling'... not really knowing status but hoping that enough vehicle owners will actually be driving uninsured vehicles to make the system profitable. This is certain to create a vast number of failed citations, a very high level of bad press, public resistance and reduced revenues... If a name and address is sent in a broadcast email to many insurers, that would be in clear violation of both state and federal DPPA laws, inviting challenge in the courts and also greatly reduce the ability to provide revenues to the state; that too means that current projections would have to be reduced; this is a serious problem with the current system."

And check out this pompous reply by some stoopid Oklahoma bureaucrat.

[ DPS responded that mass-emails of private information to insurance companies would not violate driver's license privacy laws because the for-profit company would be operating on behalf of DPS. "It is respectfully suggested that the vendor concentrate on providing a system for verification of out of state car tags and spend less effort on concerns about OCIVS, per the RFP," DPS responded. ]

You know, I hate uninsured drivers as much as everyone else, but this isn’t the way to go. Our state government is giving permission to some company to troll among citizens for offenders, access our personal information, and hunt us down for money.

It seems that a better way to get more people to buy car insurance is to help them get a job, by removing obstacles to business. The two are directly linked (see previous post).

Oh, and the state legislature has already budgeted and thus spent the projected “revenues” for the first year of operation. They hope to get the system installed by this summer. This plan was first approved in 2006. They’re going to spend our tax money to pay for this. It will be wasted – I don’t see how this will bring in the revenues projected. Even if they manage to get blood out of a turnip (money from someone who can’t afford insurance), I see the money going back out in legal settlements. One vendor anticipated a 20% error rate. It’s ineffective and intrusive.

We are hurtling toward that sci-fi world in which you walk into Gap, your eyeballs are scanned, and an automated voice starts talking to you about the jeans you bought six months ago. I want my privacy, and I want the stoopid politicians to stop trying to solve every damn “problem” they think they see. They create 10 more problems and throw my money into the wind. Just stop. You’re not smart enough to solve the problem.

More info: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/31/3165.asp