The Good Bye Brands

Lots of big news this past week to chew on with my Trader Joe's strawberry breakfast bar. General Motors announced one of their most recognizable brands, Pontiac, was toast. The magic of muscle under the hood combined with sleek design and marketing acumen crumbled away like burnt sides of white dough under the heat of competition and mismanagement at General Motors. It was, for decades, one of the most recognized brands in America. Poof! Rubbed away in a cost savings restructuring to try and save GM.

The fact is Pontiac has been a figment of a brand for a long time. The real innovation John DeLorean brought to this division had disappeared by the mid-1970s. Pontiac became a knock-off of itself, much like General Motors is today.

In my youth I got to see up close and personal what the demise of a brand meant when Chrysler put an an end to DeSoto. It ended the family dealership close to fifty years ago. Mom started teaching, dad got a new job at the local Pontiac dealership and life went on. It's funny but I remember in the early 1970s this same dealership started selling Hondas. Most of the staff joked at how small the cars were (the honda-tonka was the lot's nickname for the new arrival) and that this company would go nowhere in America. The original had a two-cylinder air-cooled engine. Great gas mileage, no creature comforts. This same local dealer has sold only Hondas for more than two decades.

The United States Supreme Court, gets a small makeover in the coming months with the announcement that Supreme Court Justice David Souter will be resigning this June. America's 41st President, George H. W. Bush, nominated David Souter who came to the Supreme Court almost 19 years ago. He was a moderate Republican nominee, and has surely found that the moderate Republican views he still holds are now labeled by current Republican leadership as being nearly socialist in nature. Whatever the reason for the Justice Souter resignation the Supreme Court finds itself swimming backward in time. Last summer the Roberts led court struck down the longstanding Washington D.C. ban on handguns. Gun violence in America still shocks the rest of the world for its size and scope.

Another major issue with a lot of history on the Supreme Court's current argument list is the Voting Rights Act. On the surface the use of the law to ensure voting rights are maintained does seem to indicate that some states are more equal in the eyes of the federal government than others. However, the Republican Party's indifference to the needs of minorities amid the South's changing political landscape might argue that this Voting Rights Act should remain unchanged.

The Republican brand of today is a strange mixture indeed. The great coalition between fiscal conservatives with a libertarian view of less taxes and more individualism (ie: no government oversight for big business) joined to the fervent evangelical amalgam of Falwell and Robertson along with the segregationists who fled the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s appears on the verge of collapse.

Compassionate conservatism is one thing you never hear from Republican leadership today. That principle, or goal, or sales point is dead. Republicans today hate poor people, and there are a lot more poor people in this country than at any time in the nation's history. This is why only 21% of America identifies itself with the Republican Party. Only Republicans would argue that poor people, many who cannot afford a motor vehicle, and hence have no driver's license, must show a photo identification to vote.

Republicans are sinking into irrelevancy. Gallup conducted a poll in January on the State of the State looking at where the political parties favored Democrats, and where they favored Republicans. Republicans showed a double digit lead over Democrats in only four states- Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Alaska. Those are some sparsely populated states, and graphically illustrate the complete demise of the Republican brand. If that is all you have, along with some voter finagling in the South you might be a figment of a brand at this point in time.

Columbine: The Nation Did Go Bowling

It's been seven years since the release of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine. I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Mr. Moore a few times in my previous life, and know him to be a stickler for getting the facts straight. On IMDB.com a small point is made that Eric and Dylan did not go bowling the morning before marching into madness on their high school campus. That could be true, but Michael Moore did get corroborating reports from eyewitness who had been interviewed by the police, the FBI and the local District Attorney's office. He also framed his argument on the image of bowling by asking a question:

"So did Dylan and Eric show up that morning and bowl two games before moving on to shoot up the school? And did they just chuck the balls down the lane? Did this mean something?"

But, the small point entirely misses the bullet hole of accuracy.

Sunday April 20, 2009 marked the 10th Anniversary for the Columbine High School tragedy. Twelve students and a teacher shot dead. The two killers shot themselves as well. Total body count fifteen people dead. A lot of people on April 20, 1999 were horrified at the violence on the high school campus, just not that horrified to change anything in the ten years that have elapsed.

In 1965 with race riots across America, Junior Walker and the All-Stars rang on radios "Shotgun, shoot 'em fore he run." Shotgun, big hit.

1968 was a big year for America in terms of gun violence. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated that year. The same year The Beatles released their White Album, which contained Happiness is a Warm Gun and Bungalow Bill. The two songs contain two very radical and opposing looks at the American preoccupation with guns. The Rolling Stones had Street Fighting Man come out in 1968 with "I'll kill the king and rail at all his servants." Jimi Hendrix took off on Hey, Joe and Machine Gun for audiences that year.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse came with Down by the River in 1969, and a few years later would pen Ohio with his other group of friends Crosby, Stills and Nash. Even Southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd with Saturday Night Special implored in song some sanity regarding the gun. Nothing changed.

Over the years thousands of songs have been recorded about guns and gun violence. Violence, and our fascination with the ultimate period maker, sells.

Even though gun violence is highly marketable, it is tough making sense out of the continual carnage, tougher still finding a way of reducing the arms race in America. Barack Obama gets elected as an agent of change for America. Americans flood gun stores to stock up thinking one change might be limits on guns.

Remember the crazy girl who didn't like Mondays? Big hit for the Boomtown Rats and Bob Geldoff.

That incident would barely register today. It barely registered in 1993 when Colin Ferguson, deranged but armed boarded a Long Island Rail car at Penn Station and decided some people had to die. Six people died and nineteen were injured that December evening. The wife of one of the dead victims, Carolyn McCarthy, ran and was elected to Congress due in part to her son's amazing recovery from the wounds suffered and her tenacity in putting together a campaign to stop senseless gun violence. After twelve years on the job Representative Carolyn McCarthy has learned guns are a much larger third rail than even Social Security. The only legislation of note Representative McCarthy can show for twelve years in Congress was a fairly watered down background check bill passed last year. In fairness this was the first gun reform legislation passed in Congress in over fourteen years. It came on the heels of the Virginia Tech slaughter that claimed thirty-two lives. We still remember that one, but the memory has softened over the two year fade of time.

How could it not? After all, in this era of the gun let us just recount the brutality of American existence from the growing list of death. In September of 2008 on the roads of Skagit County, Washington six people shot and killed before the shooter turns himself in to authorities. For celebrity sake, we have in Chicago, Illinois Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother shot and killed in their home in late October of 2008. In Arkansas, two days after the Hudson killings two people are killed and another wounded on the campus at the University of Central Arkansas. November 2008 saw an eight year old in Arizona shoot and kill his father and a family friend with a rifle at close range. Right after Christmas in Covina, California Santa Claus shot and killed nine people (family members and friends) before killing himself. Outrage? Not in 2008.

Thus far 2009 we have witnessed a real ramp up of gun carnage. An eleven year old boy shot his father's pregnant fiancee in the head while she slept and then took the bus for school. Seven people were shot, but amazingly no one died at a Mardi Gras parade in February this year. March in Samson, Alabama saw a man shoot and kill nine people before killing himself. According to reports there were ten crime scenes for the Alabama rampage. Also in March, bullets flew into a nursing home where eight people were killed by a middle aged man. And in Oakland four police officers were slain along with their killer in a shootout. This April we have already gotten thirteen dead innocents at an immigration help center in New York state plus the shooter dead from a fatal suicide shot. And two more dead college students at a community college just west of Detroit. Three police officers died this month in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It's hard to get press in Iraq and Afghanistan these days when we're in the middle of bowling people down with carbines.

"Have A Nice Day."

New Doc Prescribes Anvil- Spinal Tap turns 25-

After gurgling down the hot black aromatic morning mouthwash, better known as Trader Joe's Fair Trade french roast, I booted up my computer. I always look at my selected online newspapers first thing in the morning. Every day I wonder, and worry, when I'm actually going to have to pay for my information. All this free Internet, after paying the connectivity to the coaxial pipeline or satellite, reminds me of the old days when broadcast television was free, and cable was really cheap. There are still a lot of cheap shows on cable these days, but all of it costs a bundle. Since I'm on a satellite hookup even broadcast television dings me for my dough these days.

Low or no cost reeled us into the giant tube, and now most of us pay heavy prices for the privilege of a televised rendering of our news and entertainment. I can see the Internet just becoming a broader platform of the same old television drill. A lot of clever people working for really big interests are hard at finding the magic pay-as-you-play formula for all this electronic wonderment.

Speaking of wonderment, I caught a couple of great articles on subjects I love, films and music. The articles were on the same subject matter, a new documentary on a long forgotten but still-hanging-in-there heavy metal band, Anvil. The name for the group is a perfect name for a heavy metal band. And in one of those real life beats fiction moments of serendipity, the film maker of Anvil's documentary, Sacha Gervasi, who wrote The Terminal for Steven Spielberg, was a roadie for the band twenty years ago.

I'm stoked about seeing this movie, which looks like This is Spinal Tap, only about real people. As the ultimate cosmic coincidence, Anvil's drummer is one Robb Reiner. There might be no degrees of separation between the original spoof and the reality here.

This Is Spinal Tap, the finest film spoof of all things metal and all rock music in general, is now twenty-five years old. This is a fine year to celebrate this great satire, which now proves life does indeed mirror art. Anvil looks like the perfect companion for an evening of tribute to the Tap. Rock on Nigel, David, Derek, "Lips" and Robb.

The Blues- Bringin' 'em Back-

I snap the remote clicker this afternoon and finish another brilliant look at the American experience captured in an awesome box-set, Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues. This documentary was created for PBS and first broadcast in 2003. Seven filmmakers put their unique stamp on the search for, and pulse of, the Blues.

All the films offer a loving tribute to the Blues, but I most enjoy seeing the Red, White & Blues documentary that Mike Figgis directed with so many of the British blues greats talking and performing a variety of songs. You cannot go wrong having Tom Jones, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Eric Burdon, Chris Farlowe, Steve Winwood, Albert Lee, John Mayall and Georgie Fame give you the low-down on what the Blues scene in England during the Fifties and Sixties was all about. The striking thing is the pride each feels ( and justifiably so IMO) in rescuing the Blues from obscurity and making it a vibrant art form for an entirely new worldwide generation. By the end of the 1950s Americans had discarded the Blues, and all the great black artists of the time in search of Elvis Presley clones and Sandra Dee look-alikes to drive the white society's pop music train. B.B. King, to this day, continues to thank those young English lads for making his long lived career possible.

I'm not sure what happened to our culture here in this country, but the Blues are once again hiding out these days. You have to look for them on little shiny discs, old black vinyl, or on obscure websites. I view the disappearance of this medium, this feeling, this beat as a sad culmination of instant gratification coupled with 24/7 marketing for just-in-time distribution.

This cultural retreat has nothing to do with the Internet.

Some bright artistic creative people who love music have created the ARChive of Contemporary Music. Keith Richards, the world's greatest rhythm guitarist, is an adviser, donor and curator of the Keith Richards Blues Collection for the organization and its website. He just helped get an incredibly rare Robert Johnson recording "Me and The Devil Blues"/"Little Queen of Spades" for the ARChive organization. A cool little obscure Internet site devoted to music and the Blues.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, people reflected before they acted. Maybe a marketing guy with an engineer at some cellular phone division inside some telecommunications conglomerate found the frequency needed to uncork the great id from the bottleneck that restrained total consumption.

How many people do you see in your current day-to-day life are marked with sadness? Sadness takes on a variety of shades but, always takes some time to quietly examine loss and isolation to come to certain realizations of the situation. Sadness, or the Blues, takes a long time to develop.

A lot of emotional feelings take nanoseconds to get expressed. Rage happens instantly. Depression occurs the moment your son son describes dying his hair black and blue to impress the girlfriend of some other guy.

I know today a lot of people are depressed. The economy, the wars, the housing market, Wall Street, the banks, gay marriage, not enough Jesus, blah, blah, blah depress great hordes of society. These are sad people but they do not suffer from sadness. They have been bamboozled by the Pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry into swallowing heavy doses of anti-depressants to combat their ignorance in challenging times while ingesting infotainment as a daily news source. Charles Barber wrote a book, Comfortably Numb, which was published last year detailing the meteoric rise of these mind altering drugs. In 2007 over 227 million prescriptions for antidepressants were given out. It's hard to experience the Blues when you're medicated out of your mind.

Blues is a sober feeling with a splash of 80-proof fast moving liquid in a slow moving liquid for companionship. The Blues has no place for anger. Anger is red-hot and immediate. Anger generally finds litigation, or law enforcement close by. Judging by our prison population there might be as many angry citizens as medicated ones going around. And these angry ones now make up more than 7 million people serving in some form of incarceration here in the land of the free. The United States has five percent of the world's population but has twenty-five percent of all the prisoners in the world. That is not a misprint. Click here for a recent CNN story.

I'm a creature of habit. I still subscribe and read the local fish wrap, The Bakersfield Californian. Today the paper had a fine Blues-worthy column by Lois Henry on the state of the parolee population in Bakersfield. It turns out Bakersfield has a little higher percentage of parolees per 1,000 residents than Fresno, and almost twice the percentage of parolees than Sacramento. Of course, Kern County is the prison capital of California with a big prison in almost every little town. Kern County is home to CCI in Tehachapi, the Kern Valley State Prison and the North Kern State Prison in Delano, the Wasco State Prison in Wasco, a federal prison camp in Taft that is privately operated. And then there are the several county jails located in Shafter, Mojave and Ridgecrest. A barbed wire salesman can do pretty well in this county.

All these little cities now live off of what the prisons provide. You know, the jobs that come from maintenance and construction along with the positions securing the prisoners. And those guards will live close by where they work and will get their gas and food and have kids who might work there or be guarded there and so on. Reminds me of medieval castles and a feudal economic system of serfs subsisting on slave labor.

The thought of growing gulags in America could bring back a full case of the Blues, if people would only stop and think about it.

Okie Dokie, Grapes of Wrath Turns 70 Today

Relief in the Southern San Joaquin comes with a cool arctic blast blowing through some much needed rain for the weekend and crisp breezes for the beginning of Income Tax Week. Tuesday dries out the unexpected rain cycle slowly with clouds keeping the temps way below normal. When you know six straight months of furnace blast nears these surroundings, periods like this one are sweet relief indeed.

Our oldest son turned twenty-seven this past week. We got him a Bosch plunge router to further his arsenal of tools as he builds sets and stages at the junior college where he works in the theater department. I can't get him covered for health care, but I can buy stuff with the potential to hack off digits and limbs. Happy Birthday, son.

My wife has been suffering through a frozen shoulder, originally diagnosed as calcified deposits near the rotator cuff, which gets the prescribed physical therapy treatment from doctors until the insurance company says twelve treatments is the limit for the year. Now my wife has been through a health care drill that goes like this: exam with x-rays at the primary doctor followed by anti-inflammatory drugs, when no improvement results she gets physical therapy and when that fails returns to the primary doctor where she gets clearance to see an orthopedist, which gets her a new exam, more physical therapy until the insurance cuts off the treatment. Insurance company X finally informs doctor and therapist that it will only cover more therapy if surgical method is undertaken to free the frozen shoulder.

My wife asked her primary doctor about taking the surgical option at her first visit three months ago. Nope to that hope for a quick solution. We have now paid in out-of-pocket fees more than five hundred dollars on this exercise of pain and futility to get back to square one, and she has the best plan her company offers. As her birthday approaches surgery awaits. Happy Birthday, sweetie.

I'm listening to a tune about the same age as my oldest son. Little Steven Van Zandt's song, Voice of America, cries out "Can you hear me, wake up. Where's the voice of America?" The lyrics mean more today than when they were first written for many people, probably due to our awakening realization of urgency amid our collective debts. America has become a collateralized debt obligation. We find ourselves again as the Great Depression era's sad-sack cartoon character, Wimpy, glad handing for a burger today that we promise to pay for next Tuesday.

I note that today marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of John Steinbeck's great depression era novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck remains a galvanizing spirit in American arts and literature. I've met many fans of Steinbeck, and many who think he worked for the Soviet Union in some clandestine capacity to undermine everything virtuous in America. I still find it amazing that my current county of residence (Kern County) banned the book from being taught in the public school system from 1939-1972. It banned the book from the public library for two years from 1939-1941. By the time the book was allowed to be taught in literature classes here, John Steinbeck was four years dead. Truth eventually wins out, but truth can take a long, long time to finally emerge. Happy anniversary, John Steinbeck, where ever you are.

Tea For Who?

Talk radio and hysterical bloggers from the extreme right wing of the political landscape are urging all tax haters to come together on April 15, 2009 for a big Tea Party. Of course, April 15 is the annual deadline date for filing your income taxes and what better way to celebrate unemployment or underemployment than hanging with your outraged pals and rail against America's outrageous tax burden.

But wait. What if we're not really that heavily taxed when compared to most other industrialized nations? Bruce Bartlett from Forbes Magazine has an excellent column on this very subject. Check the link to get the facts. I can briefly state from the information Mr. Bartlett provides is that this year will mark the lowest tax revenue intake as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product since 1950. I can also say only four countries from the 30 nations who are partnered in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have a lower tax rate than the good old USA, which clocks in near the bottom with a 28% overall tax rate. The countries listed below the USA are Japan, which is one-tenth of one percentage point lower than our rate here in America, Korea, Turkey and Mexico. Mexico, is at the bottom with a twenty percent tax rate, or they could be listed first in the hearts of tea party enthusiasts everywhere.

Now prospective tea party attendees, what country today not in the heart of Africa undergoing civil war or being occupied by US forces, would you probably rate as the unsafest place to be in the world? Yo voto para Mexico. Could getting very little in tax revenues lead to drug lords and organized crime ruling the country? You decide.

I will say that these tea party events are not really about paying taxes, but about how taxes are spent. Back in February, after the televised meltdown by an investment trader that got so much play on the Daily Show and CNBC, Patric Jonsson wrote a brief piece for the Christian Science Monitor. Click the link if you want to read his original take on the tax protests. Here is a pertinent excerpt from my point of view:

- "It’s worth remembering that the rise of the New Right and the Christian Right, one after the other, were both spurred by tax issues, the whole idea of paying for things they don’t believe in,” says sociologist Eugenia Deerman at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston who studies conservative social movements.-

So this is really about a group of folks who found out in November the world had moved on without them. These people realized that tax money was going to go for things like birth control, medical privacy, health coverage for all, the environment and public education (which still strongly resists religious dogma as part of the curriculum) and hence the protest. Certainly there are plenty of other issues (gay rights, regulation of industry, undocumented workers) these protesters take exception to that government finds itself in the middle of these days as we try to set a different course from the Republican dominated past three decades.

This really isn't about taxes, but no more taxes has always played well to the bamboozled members of the self righteous. Even now with so many studies available to document how many have lost so much while so few benefited so mightily from the Republican led tax cuts enacted over the last 28 years a Tea Party resonates with folks feeding at the right wing talk radio trough.

On tax day I guess we'll see how the irresistible forces of change meet the immovable objects of no. For me I'll be putting on a Tea For One.

For the believers, the pagans and the lost but found- Happy Easter!

Doctor Day

Shower and shave before throwing down a fruit bar with the usual java gulps to get the day off to a proper start. I've got some old Genesis on the Beamer's audio system. When did progressive rock go bad? Your Own Special Way still sounds good through the trimmed forest in the ear canal. {Too little on top, but plenty where you never want to see it. Hair. Might just shower in Nair one day.}

Dad's got another doctor's appointment with the professional system he loves to hate, that offers no cure, but remains the only source of the lung candy he requires to gasp along in the sedentary stasis of his twilight years. Dad realizes he finds himself as one lucky guy having a chauffeur when the need mandates, and possessing insurance as well as Medicare to cover all the incidentals. My sister, former agricultural specialist for the US government, finds herself driving a truck cross country everyday without any health insurance as she approaches 55 years of age.

{"Got your chips cashed in.... Truckin'......"}

The doctor goes through dad's brief check up. He's lost a few pounds. Too much effort trying to breathe burns through the calories. Eat before bedtime is the suggestion. See you in three months. Bye. Another appointment made and disease management triumphs again with a suitcase of pills as your ticket for the long slow decline. Those pills cost a lot, but he is covered and one of the very lucky ones

My in-laws are in much worse shape. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say they too are both with terminal ailments, take lots of expensive drugs and get managed by the system to pay as high a tab as possible for these drugs while having been denied some more expensive up-front solutions a few years back that might have mitigated both the drug intake and the disease. The proposed solutions could also have failed, but having an HMO rather than a doctor make the final decision just seems wrong.

America finds itself as a really sick nation, and the reason we are so sick has to do with our health care system. Frontline just put together an exceptional program looking at this issue. The report is call Sick in America, and it follows another exceptional program done last year, Sick Around The World, in exploring the growing health care crisis and the now urgent need to fix the system here in America.

We cannot afford to pass the buck on universal health care any longer. For those who stop by this blog to check on the musings of this Thrasher, I recommend strongly that you check out the links provided in the posting and view these informative programs. Some of the stories will bring a tear to your eyes, or remind you of some of the people you know struggling to survive in a market that cares more about profit than people.

Lisa Girion from the Los Angeles Times, one of the several featured people in the Sick in America story, has an article in February of this year on California health insurers exceeding the state issued rates for last resort health coverage. This type of coverage is designed for people who cannot get coverage on the open market due to a previous condition or when they have lost their job. Vulnerable people in the worst circumstance are the ones the insurance companies prey on for maximizing premiums and when they get the chance to drop you do so out of hand.

April Fools

Sun's up. A morning breeze cools the french roast in my hand with doves, jays and sparrows taking their usual breakfast places underneath the plum tree. The dog trots on patrol from one side of the yard to the other letting out various low sounds of growl indicating a feline intruder wandered the grounds recently. The morning commute echos in the air, forming the usual wall-of-sound din that serves as the sonic background to my urban lifestyle. My big cat inside the house peers through the french-door windows with a look of disgust at his imprisonment. I walk inside with the dog to cheer him up. It's not my endearments, but the offering of dried salmon which rescues the awkward reality. The lady inmate cats appear quickly to receive their usual ration of dried fish, which always must follow the big guy's preferred bribe.

The cracks in the stucco need a patch and quick touch of paint. I retrieve my tools and arm myself with latex gloves. I cover the spider web lines of separation at a corner and underneath a few of the windows. I complete the fill in the back of the house where a broom handle marks the final area of wear. A fast brush after getting the paint put back together with a quick stir ends the project.

Several kids move up and down the street with ipod cords bouncing in rhythm to their steps. I see a lot of kids out and about throughout the town everyday. Apparently school schedules must be on flex time these days.

NPR buzzes with Sam Donaldson. Sam serves up some memories of Nixon, and actually praises Oliver Stone's film of the same name. Sam tells a funny story about questioning Ronald Reagan amid his popularity slide in the early eighties when the economy was about as bad today. Reagan, as Obama does today, had a habit of always reminding the nation that the previous office holder and party created the mess. Sam's question was when would Ronald Reagan accept responsibility for some of this financial crisis. Reagan's response was funny. He acknowledged that, yes, he had once been a Democrat.

I need some tunes on to calm the critters before heading out the door. I put on a collection of oldies the Nixon chronicles had tweaked into my brain. Arthur Lee exclaims, "I just got out my little red book the minute you said goodbye......................... There's just no getting over you."