Category Archives: Advocacy

Chicken Little moved to hospice

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Afraid so. It is true that evolution is the dynamic element in all the universe – including galaxies, solar systems, life of every kind and certainly every conceivable element of existence – including the planet Earth itself – is subject to change over time. So, too, fantasy and whimsy move on as reality paves a new future.

What was important about Chicken Little’s presence was his belief that it was possible for things to behave as expected – it was just a matter of adjusting a bit to keep reality chugging along. Like the Chicken Little of children’s storybook fame, he often overreacted to what others felt was not so important as to warrant hysterical behavior.

The belief in adjusting has faded as all the world’s activity is in disarray. Human history has become a demolition derby where every conceivable idea is an effort to dismantle rational, logical behavior. Mariner, like Chicken Little, is acutely aware of the abrasion of industrial development against the evolutionary limitations not only of Homo sapiens but all of the planet’s life forms. Homo’s dangerous ability to imagine things that do not exist has been the fire that has set off an Armageddon. For casual readers who may not be familiar, mariner’s examples are any industrial development requiring chemical, environmental or any other destruction of the biosphere. For example, internal combustion engines, killing millions of species for greedy reasons, leveling quantum amounts of forest for commercial purposes, forcing every biological behavior of every species to compensate or die, etc. The result today is, of course, a destabilized, biospheric condition humans call ‘global warming’ which is most commonly observed as changes in the climate.

So mariner is interviewing several applicants to replace Chicken Little. An applicant that has caught mariner’s eye is the squirrel – especially urban squirrels. Squirrels already know that Homo sappians is a destructive creature, said and done. What concerns mariner is that the squirrel already has a bit of skepticism about it’s obsessive neighbors; Amos, another alter ego, already has more than enough skepticism.

Perhaps this is all a sign that mariner is growing old. He’s old enough to be receiving social security but young enough to see it disappear. His brain has been throwing out to trash memories that aren’t relevant anymore. Sadly, he cannot forget Lawrence Welk or Hyacinth Bucket on the British series, Keeping Up Appearances.

Suggestions for a new icon to replace Chicken Little are welcome – an icon that has come to accept Homo sappians as the failure it is but with an innocence that there is a looming Armageddon.

Ancient Mariner

Emerging Theocracy – or maybe Nazism?

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From NPR – the whole article at

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173274834/book-bans-library-funding-missouri-texas-ashcroft?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230504&utm_term=8367890&utm_campaign=best-of-npr&utm_id=39748169&orgid=445&utm_att1=

is horrifying not just for public libraries but for American democracy as well. One quote to show temperament:

“One of the board members said, ‘Well, what about this book? It’s about underage drinking, and underage drinking is illegal, so why would we have this book in the library?’ ” Dawe recalls. “And my question would be, ‘Where does that end? And what are you doing next? Where does this end?’ ”

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has a thought on that.

Higgins recently tweeted about the future of public libraries, saying libraries have become “grooming centers” and that he wants to change the “whole public library paradigm” and help get funding for “beautiful, church-owned public-access libraries.”

The topic makes mariner feel unwell. He will leave this issue in the reader’s hands.

Ancient Mariner

The Pandemic is comparable to Round Up

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With the exception of those terrible times when changing weather patterns, earthquakes, plagues or ice age expansion killed many people and forced an immediate shift in cultural behavior, culture typically changes in an orderly way. It takes about sixty years to move clearly from one set of mores to a different set. Even with behavior-changing inventions like the internal combustion engine or gunpowder, it still takes a while for society to adapt to new ramifications.

But not this time. The timing of the Covid pandemic could not have been worse. The world economy is weak and the poor nations truly are entering bankruptcy; The rich nations have economic problems, too, as global resources are shrinking and forcing governments and economists into new ways of thinking about everything from limitations on wealth to child care.

The introduction of the Internet, social media, and supply chain abuse (e.g. Amazon, Disney, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Google, Facebook and private equity monopolies) have been introduced at lightning speed compared to the slower standards of cultural change. This contemporary fullness of time is fragile and has shallow roots in a newly emerging moral foundation.

Then came Covid. With the crushing power of Round Up plant killer, the cultural transition, halting at best, was stopped dead. Big money was free to manipulate social function; plutocrats took charge of Congress; the wounds from Donald’s presidency could not heal. The working classes, long persecuted under Reaganomics and now caught in a culture at dead stop because of the pandemic, lost faith in institutions, have doubts about sustaining a satisfactory life, and even the birthrate has continued to drop in the U.S. primarily because of economic fears (and helped along by an aging population).

How can the U.S. citizenry restart a process that will grow a new ethos, a new moral character that will control the new age of economics, powerful advances in electronics, social media and provide fair, equitable guarantees for every citizen’s future?

To shift metaphor just a bit, fixing the aforementioned issues is a lot like taking a car to the repair garage: society is made up of parts just like an automobile. The citizenry must educate themselves on which parts need to be replaced. For example:

Don’t vote for baby boomers. The world they understand doesn’t exist anymore.

Don’t vote for ideologues – either conservative or liberal. One can tell an ideologue because one or two issues are what is wrong with everything in the world. For example, the move to restrict voting in state governments is motivated by a desire by conservatives to gain the upper hand in national politics even as a minority. Voting, while a bit outdated given modern communication technology, isn’t the primary cause of the nation’s problems.

Don’t vote for identity candidates. It is true that there are many issues that need to be repaired involving race, environment, police, taxes, etc. but a larger issue is that the nation has no unity. Electing candidates with one large social issue will not help with unity.

Do vote for younger candidates – even in their twenties if they seem capable.

Do vote for candidates with an even demeanor who seem pragmatic and capable of negotiation. These are the mechanics that can get the government running again.

Despite the bad name education has received lately, don’t discount it entirely. Ask the candidate a question about an idea rather than a quick fix. How is the idea handled?

Unfortunately, the vote in 2022, 2024 and even 2026 will not settle things very much. Too many issues are rolling along unconstrained. The best bet, though, is to vote in a new set of representatives in all U.S. governments.

Ancient Mariner

 

Books

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It is a rare advantage to live with a working librarian. Mariner’s home is a sub-branch of his town library. Mariner’s wife maintains a steady stream of contemporary works moving on and off their library shelves. One book that has just come and gone is Lisa Genova’s popular book, ‘Remember – The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting’.[1] It is an easy-to-read book with a conversational style of writing. One tip she provides:

“Let’s start with what you eat and drink. Several studies have now clearly demonstrated that people who eat foods from the Mediterranean diet and MIND diet (helps hypertension) cut their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by anywhere from a third to a half.”

Another book in mariner’s personal library is the late U.S. Representative John Dingle’s book, ‘The Dean, The Best Seat in the House’[2]. John holds the record for longest continuous service as a Representative, sixty years! His book recounts his memories and the many historical moments between 1955 and 2015. John was a centrist liberal, very much driven by the human rights of American citizens. He was the first among many who have decried the imbalance of the Senate in terms of its representation of the U.S. population. He died in 2019 at age 92. Mariner recommends the book for its easy to read documentation of the United States through several notable periods of historic change.

Someone who took up John’s lamentation about the Senate and proposed a solution is Eric W. Orts. In the January 2019 edition of the Atlantic, he proposed a redistribution of Senate seats. Mariner reproduces the distribution below as information to ponder, “What would happen if . . .”.

Each state has one Senator by default.

26 states have only that one Senator.

12 states have 2 Senators, as they do now.

8 states gain 1, perhaps 2 Senators.

California has 12 Senators; Texas has 9; Florida and New York have 6.

One example: Wyoming would have one Senator representing 580,000 citizens while California would have twelve Senators representing 39 ½ million people.

It is mariner’s firm belief that the future success of the United States is based entirely on the redistribution of the Senate.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

[1] Remember, Lisa Genova, © 2021, Harmony Books, ISBN 978-0-593-13795-6

[2] The Dean, John Dingle, © 2018, Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-06-257199-1

A New Form of Popular Government

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A new methodology for electing government representatives is emerging. Eighteen states already have some form of ‘ranked choice voting’ in place. Instead of using ballots that pit party against party, the ballot will elect the most popular candidate, party notwithstanding. It works exactly like the TV show ‘America’s Got Talent’. Perhaps for elections it should be renamed as ‘American Politicians Got Talent’. Politico.com has the most succinct description:

“Ranked-choice voting allows citizens to rank their candidate preferences on an election ballot instead of voting for a single candidate. If one candidate does not initially win a majority, competitors with the fewest votes are eliminated from the race and their voters’ second choices are applied to the tallies of the remaining candidates until one candidate achieves a majority.”

The process asks the voter to rank all the candidates rather than selecting just one. Then, exactly like voting on ‘America’s Got Talent’, less popular candidates are eliminated to identify the candidate with the highest ranked votes.

So what does the reader think about this?

Dominated by political party machinery, the election environment has become both complex and expensive. For the 2020 primary, mariner’s own state, Iowa, collapsed under burdensome procedures of trying to determine who would be on the Democratic Party’s ticket. Bean counting became an art form involving many qualifiers that confused voters at the precinct level; it grew worse as tallies were transferred up the chain to State headquarters.

Hand in hand with complexity was the amount of cash required to sustain elaborate party machinations and local campaigning. For years at the national level, all political parties continuously have been increasing fund raising to the point that one had to be a billionaire (Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) to run independent of party machinery. It is conceivable, one hopes, that funding will become a local sport rather than a national one.

Besides the overly complex and expensive processes the parties have created, the party system became competitive in its own right for its own purposes – subverting the idea that it was the voter who was most important. Many pundits identify Newt Gingrich as the politician who made winning as a party more important than winning as a nation. This has grown intense over the decades to the point today where party victory counts far more than compromise in behalf of the electorate. Note only the shenanigans of Federal and Supreme Court nominations in recent years. Today the Senate Majority Leader (McConnell) controls every aspect of business in the Senate; in the House the Speaker has the same role (Pelosi) – the Party comes first.

Lastly, because the founding fathers left voting procedures to the States, there are many different election procedures for each state, each city, each county and each Representative district. In this age of cultural change at the speed of light, even the ballot is under pressure to change for the twenty-first century. The familiar list includes government supported elections without private funding; eliminate the Electoral College; reallocate the Senate to represent the population; allow referendums at the Federal level. Now add ranked choice ballots.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Beginning

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May 4, 1970 was the beginning of mariner’s disillusionment with all things politic, including the citizens. His skeptical attitude remains with him today. It was the shooting to death of four Kent State college students and wounding of nine others by the Ohio National Guard. These assassins weren’t every day police, who even today can be expected to do such things; these were part of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Laurel Krause, whose 19-year old sister was killed, wrote on March 7, 2014 “It has been 44 years, and the U.S. government still refuses to admit that it participated in the killing of four young students at Kent State. There has not been a credible, independent, impartial investigation into Kent State. No group or individual has been held accountable.”

One can write all the US Constitutions they want; nothing constrains bias, prejudice and bigotry. The reaction of conservatives was that the students deserved it. They were the same bunch that today rebels against shelter-in-place. They were the same bunch that today rapes children while priests. They were the same bunch that today denies human value by denying health care to those who need it. They were the same bunch that today divides Christianity into racist and elitist factions. They were the same bunch that hoards wealth while thousands die in the US from starvation and disease. They were the same bunch that today elected Donald. They were and are the electorate.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Facts, Ma’am

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Mariner would like to contribute to the effort to defeat Covid-19. There are three valuable, fact driven sources for information on the virus:

https://www.usa.gov/coronavirus for fiscal procedures, enforcement policies and other actions taken by governments.

https://www.coronavirus.gov for medical and descriptive information.

https://www.newsy.com/categories/us/ for factual information on statistics and newsworthy activity. On DISH, see channel 283 or on ROKU, see NEWSY. Of specific importance are the factual presentations of New York Governor Cuomo, usually in late morning hours.

Also as a contribution to the effort against Covid-19, DO NOT ACCEPT INFORMATION OFFERED BY DONALD TRUMP’S PRESS BRIEFING! Largely, it is defensive crybaby arguments, campaign snippets, and undependable ‘facts’ that may be offered one day and retracted the next. The overall effect of this source is agitation, a tone that separates the public rather than unifying it, and a blatant cry for approval of Donald.

By the way, mariner’s Non Sequitur desk calendar is a fine source of wisdom:

Ancient Mariner

Gig Workers

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Why are gig workers striking? “The sharing economy is built on a risk shift from the companies onto the workers. As a result, the workers don’t have access to basic protections, and they don’t have the kind of power that we imagine even a Walmart worker has. I can’t imagine a starker power dynamic than the CEO of Uber, who has direct connections to everyone in Congress, and then a gig worker who can’t even get a low-level bureaucrat at Uber to answer his or her basic questions.” [Protocol Source Code]

Gig workers are workers whose employment relationship with their employers is temporary. The term ‘gig’ probably is best known by show business types saying, “I have a gig in Houston.” There are several conditions under which a person is hired temporarily but not as a full-fledged employee: construction, show business, clerical, consultant, instructor, and so forth.

Mariner is unusually aware of the gig life. For decades he was a gig worker – a systems consultant for operating system conversions. Except for an active market, his first gig could have been his last.

Specialized, in demand gig workers make decent salaries often well above the standard wage in their profession. On the other hand, their job security is short-lived and typical benefits are not available. Mariner has witnessed countless times when gig workers were required to take residence in the government jurisdiction that held their contract. They would sell their homes, move family, and adjust to new standards of living – only to be terminated months later when the winds of corporate finances changed.

A chimera gig worker is a worker who may appear to be normally employed, receive benefits and draw a standard paycheck. However, this worker is still a gig worker in that they are used sporadically, do not have union rights, and have no guarantee of being called to work. A substitute teacher (associate) is a common example.

For a creative person or one with exceptional skills or education, gig work can be an entertaining, well paid career. However, in times of economic uncertainty or great cultural shift, gig workers are the first to be dismissed.

The nation is in the midst of historic cultural and economic change. Gig workers may be the heroes who help adjust to the change but they also are the most expendable. There is no doubt that restructuring the job market in anticipation of artificial intelligence will take an unusually large gig force – temporarily. There needs to be a special unemployment structure for gig workers.

Ancient Mariner

Where Forth Labor Unions?

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Nevada is one state where unions still play a significant role in political negotiations. A number of news outlets have published articles in lieu of the Nevada primary. The point was made that Mike Bloomberg has never publicly backed unions. It is true that as corporations gained political power during the end of the twentieth century, state governments in particular pushed hard to defund union membership, impose right-to-work legislation and otherwise paint bad images of unions.

Unions are no less saintly than politicians and corporate conservatives. All of them are aggressive in defending their perceptions of economic purpose. However, in this age where citizens no longer participate in the profits of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), where salaries linger at a small fraction of what they should be, where corporations are trying to drop benefits of any kind, having a union fight for a fair share for the workers may not be a bad idea. But unions represent only 1 in 10 hourly workers – down from 1 in 3 in 1955. State legislation in most states would have to go through a philosophical, highly opinionated and greatly resisted battle to reverse the disadvantages imposed over four decades.

Mariner wrote a post “About Labor Unions” (August 28 2019) that suggested the familiar union organization that has prevailed since the 1930s may not work in this new age of automation, rapid data learning and the ability for corporations to move operations anywhere in the world.

As corporations have become an economic force across governmental boundaries, it is difficult for unions to sustain equally flexible membership given location and nationality. Even more problematic, governments have difficulty managing corporations. In this campaign season where ‘socialistic’ ideas are being touted, union leaders may consider joining the national noise of the campaign to back a new national strategy for unionism.

Trying to maintain the traditional ‘local’ organization will not be influential enough to tackle market issues that cross national boundaries. In the recent post mariner suggested the ACLU organizational model. Further, mariner feels that a governmental agency (a new version of the Labor Department) could set regulatory policy similar to the Environmental Protection Agency today – Donald’s interference notwithstanding. The new labor department could negotiate treaties similar to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) except with a fair set of rules for workers.

In any case, righting the economic ship is more than just fixing taxes. It is setting new protective rules for workers in an age where moving from job to job may be the new norm and sustaining economic viability in unemployed neighborhoods may have to be part of the agreement language.

Ancient Mariner

 

A Nasty Crossbreed: Communism and Capitalism

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Communism – a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned (Think Donald’s base, oligarchs, government and the proletariat in disarray; think data gathering corporations that know everything – even about each of us and that information is used to make billions of dollars without a penny owed directly to “the public.”)

Capitalism – an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. (Think corporatism and actually owning the government as well thereby eliminating government altogether).

The crossbreed is the worst of both ideologies: The public at large owns nothing, not even houses, automobiles or privacy. The end result is controlled classism with a socialistic flavor, citizens having no real say in anything, and continuous class war.

What follows are examples of crossbreeding.

֎ [NEWSY] The internet has revolutionized how donors behave. People now give more frequently and in smaller amounts than ever before. But every time you donate online, there’s a processing cost. A Newsy analysis, published in partnership with Politico, found that the small donor revolution has also helped direct millions of dollars to the middlemen that process donations. While it’s a matter of cents on the dollar, those pennies can add up fast. And in recent years, as small-dollar donations have ramped up, credit card processing costs have exploded.

Banks and data tech companies want in on everything and at the moment are getting what they want. Just today mariner received a ‘gift’ from Dish Network. The gift is a TV remote paired with Google’s voice recognition software. It won’t be installed. As to charitable donations online being skimmed by banks, mariner enjoys even more than usual covering that cost by writing a check to the charity and posting the donation through the Postal Service, with a wry smile while he does it.

Put in context the National Rifle Association (NRA), the fossil fuel industry, the government (owned by corporations), mega corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and other independent, do as they like multifunction, multinational corporations, and one realizes the citizenry has nothing to do or say about the US economy, its scruples or its original ‘freedom and justice for all’ myth.

Does the ‘public’ own anything? Does the ‘public’ share in GDP profits? Does the election process have any significant contribution?

Aside from citizens with enough excess resources to invest in capitalist ventures (Wall Street) or actually have enough assets to own a house not compromised by bank oversight, the citizenry is on a path to controlled communist social structures and little or no opportunity to share profit with capitalist corporations.

This is indeed a difficult circumstance for the general public. What makes the situation even worse is that the crossbreed feels no obligation to compensate for the global warming situation, environmental health, free medical support or anything else ‘free’ from the corporate-owned government, or the impact of automated intelligence (AI).

On the good side, it was an unusually warm, sunny day; mariner worked in his garden.

Ancient Mariner