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."

Night time for the Car Biz

Rick Wagoner steps down from GM this week. What a long strange trip it has been from the post WWII heights, where the phrase "What's good for GM is good for America" defined the company, and the nation, to the depths of these past six months.

General Motors is the company that was behind the great American train robbery. I mean by that phrase that GM systematically removed from US cities our public transportation rail system line by line from the 1930s through the 1950s. This was uncovered in a 60 Minutes story that aired back in 1986, and spawned a seldom seen but important and riveting documentary, Taken For A Ride, written and directed by Jim Klein.

This is the company Michael Moore earned his documentary film chops covering in the still pertinent Roger & Me. Today all Americans can now share the pain and frustration exhibited by those seen in Flint, Michigan twenty years ago, which were captured by Moore's film crew.

How does a company create an electric vehicle and then have management decide to destroy the model in less than a decade, and expect any sympathy from the car buying public today? If you're interested you can check out Chris Paine's documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car? on Google video.

I, and I'm sure everybody else today, feels terrible about the many workers losing jobs, homes, health benefits and all traces of former dignity with each successive mismanaged turn this conglomerate has undertaken for the past forty years. John DeLorean left because the company was so unwieldy. The book, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, offers his recollections about the company. DeLorean was really GM design for the entire decade of the 1960s, the last decade the company had real relevance as an automaker. It became a bean counter's company from the 1970s until the last bean counter, Rick Wagoner, signed off.

Good night, and good luck, General Motors.