Hard Days

[Daveparts still]

Hard Days
By David Glenn Cox




Some days are harder than others, I’ve been told that I take politics too seriously.Some days it’s hard to smile at the rain and some day’s alcohol just isn’t as strong as it used to be. For those of you who thought Dennis Kucinich didn’t have the political gravitas to be President, ha,ha! Shows you! He sold us out didn’t he? By current American political standards that is the gold standard.

I’ve been told that I take politics too seriously. I think too many people don’t take politics seriously enough. Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, and his financial whiz kids testified before Congress the other day saying that the economy is getting better but that high levels of unemployment were going to be with us for a long time. Geithner was asked, how long is long? “Well, er, um, a long time.” When Geithner was then asked if, in light of his previous answer, if he thought the administration wasn’t taking the unemployment crisis seriously enough, he answered, “Well, er, um, yes, maybe, tax cuts?”

Geithner actually seemed surprised by the question and had few answers. As one of the long-term unemployed I take offense at that. It doesn’t take a genius to pull a few good statistics out of the manure pile and draw up a few graphs filled with happy, colorful lines. But, at the end of the day, putting people back to work is all that matters.

A Superior Court in Connecticut has ruled that prison officials in the U.S. may continue force-feeding a prisoner who is on a hunger strike. The prisoner claims that his estranged wife falsely charged that he raped her in 2005 in order to claim sole custody of their children. William Coleman was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Eight years of his sentence were later suspended and he is due to be released in 2012.

Coleman’s issues are the unfairness of his conviction, the unfairness of the legal system in general and his treatment as a prisoner. His weight has dropped from 250 pounds down to 137 pounds. Coleman claims that he has the right to a hunger strike as free speech and his right to privacy. The state wasn’t really all that concerned with Coleman until other prisoners began to emulate him.

So, if I’ve got this correctly, the courts in this country claim that corporations can use their almost unlimited amounts of money to swamp Democratic elections in the name of their free speech rights. But a prisoner trying to draw attention to his own personal plight with a hunger strike doesn’t have the right to free speech, even when it comes down to the decision of whether to eat or not. For years I have heard pro-choice advocates say, “If the courts tried to tell men what they could or couldn’t do with their bodies, the debate would be different.” You see, the courts now disrespect our rights equally.

In my mind’s eye I imagine Gandhi being hog-tied as they shove the feeding tube up his nose. Here is an excerpt from the Coleman case. "In addition, the Department of Corrections Clinical Director, Dr. Edward Blanchette, has responded to claims by Coleman that he has been in pain when being force-fed through a tube inserted in his nose by observing: 'I was as gentle as I could be in the face of a patient who was resisting me at the time.'”

God Bless America.

“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.” Mohandas Gandhi

Yesterday The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found that in the March crash of a Toyota Prius in New York, the car’s accelerator was engaged and no attempt was made to use the brakes. Claims have been made by a University of Southern Illinois professor that the Toyota Prius’s might have a software flaw that would cause sudden acceleration. Within hours of the NHTSA announcement Toyota demanded an apology from ABC news regarding a story which included the Illinois professor's claims.

Toyota’s lead council Christopher Reynolds said, “Toyota deserves a public retraction and formal apology from ABC News for your irresponsible broadcast.”

Toyota is claiming full vindication from the problem based on one accident report. A report that said only that the accelerator had been engaged. Ever drive a car down a road without the accelerator engaged? Toyota faces over 100 class action lawsuits worldwide because of sticking throttles and sudden unintended acceleration.

The government serves up a softball and Toyota hits it out of the park. Toyota’s actions are no different from those of Geithner. Sure, the economy is turning around; I found a dollar in the parking lot on the way in here! Now add this story to the bonfire: “U.S. regulators (our friends at the NHTSA) have tracked more deaths in vehicles made by Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC and other companies combined than by Toyota Motor Corp. during three decades of unintended acceleration reviews that often blamed human error.” Three decades? Are the NHTSA regulators or lobbyists? This story was released to the press just two days before the single New York Prius report.

We have a government agency prostituting itself in the face of naked corporate power. ABC stands behind its news story and I’m sure that Toyota dealers nationwide have already received the e-mails about Toyota co-op advertising dollars and ABC affiliates. The apology will be coming soon, count on it. The issue is not about ABC or Toyota’s fears that negative publicity might hurt sales. It is about stifling criticism altogether. Toyota is free to starve ABC and ABC is free to starve itself for a principle.

This sort of pretzel logic makes me want to pull the hair from my head and write angry letters to the distillers association about the declining quality of modern alcohol products. I see millions of otherwise rational people who fail to understand that the health care debate is about control. Western Europe and every other industrially developed country in the world have health care systems built on a government-controlled, single payer system. America has chosen a system run by for-profit corporations.

You will continue to pay the rates that the corporations tell you to pay; you will continue to pay more than the rest of the world for health care because the corporations made a deal in Washington. Those who refused to go along with the deal were threatened with being kicked out of the club. To the millions of Americans who wrote to their congressman or the White House or signed petitions, myself included, concerning single payer or the public option, our voices mean nothing.

Morgan Stanley’s Asia Department Head Stephan Roach said Paul Krugman’s call to push China to allow a stronger yuan is "very bad" advice and that increased Chinese spending is a better way of reducing trade balances.

“We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman -- I mean, I think that the advice is completely wrong,” Roach said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Beijing when asked about Krugman’s call, characterized as akin to taking a baseball bat to China. “We’re lashing out at China rather than tending to our own business, which is raising U.S. savings," Roach said.

Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist and was expressing his personal opinion while Mr. Roach is in the employ of a corporation that earns millions upon millions of dollars by doing what’s best for Morgan Stanley. Which story was the headline in the business news?

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- "China is in the midst of 'the greatest bubble in history,' said James Rickards, former general counsel of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP.

“'As I see it, it is the greatest bubble in history with the most massive misallocation of wealth,' Rickards said at the Asset Allocation Summit Asia 2010 organized by Terrapinn Pte in Hong Kong yesterday. China 'is a bubble waiting to burst.'”

While the rest of the world’s currencies float or sink in a free market, the yuan’s value is set by the dictators in Beijing. They set its value to aid their national interests, not yours.

Dear Sirs,

I write in complaint about the decline in quality of your modern alcohol products. It seems that no matter how much of your product I consume I cannot seem to forget the madness that is all around me, and this didn’t used to be the case.

Yours very truly,
David Glenn Cox