By Jamie York
Bill Clinton told columnist Joe Klein that the biggest mistake he made with his health care reform proposal was his support for universal coverage (Time, 8/10/09, p. 35.). The insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists were ruthless and had a well-directed campaign against universal coverage. Clinton was blindsided and had thought he had no choice but to cower and try to sneak away from the fight as the lobbyists got their message across in the media while the voices of single payer advocates were drowned out. While Clinton may think that advocating single payer insurance was a mistake, I think it was his finest hour. His mistake was not that he supported single payer, but that he failed to stand up for single payer as logical and viable. He didn’t even try to fight the insurance lobby. “Hillary, “ he cried, “help me Hillary!” And so the insurance industry reformed itself and “managed care” came into being. At that time there were 33 million people without health coverage and today there are 47 million. So much for reform.
Today, as we witness the political fight over Obama’s health reform plan, it is clear that the insurance company lobbyists do not want any health care reform. Period. These companies pay out millions to get their point of view heard in the mass media, using any scare tactics they can think of. They are against Obama’s plan because they may lose some of their profits if the government insurance option turns out to be better and more affordable than their profit taking system. Obama, while admitting that single payer makes the most sense, turned against his senses and decided to play politics and get what he can get.
I am glad that the American colonists did not simply decide to get what they could get from the British occupiers. They declared their independence and fought for what they wanted. We don’t have the fight in us anymore, I guess. We send our kids off to die in foreign nations while the military contractors reap millions in profits. We sit and watch TV as one constitutional right after another is systematically rendered obsolete by imperial presidents like George W. Bush. We watch events unfold in news soundbytes not in in-depth discussion. If even half of us one day decided to skip work until we have single payer health care, we would have it. No question about it. Compared with the 19th and 20th century fight for better wages, shorter workdays, and for the right to organize labor unions, a general strike is about as American as you can get. Political divisions keep us from communicating and organizing, but when we get to the point where we see ourselves as human beings in a common struggle for things that make sense, for programs that work for the common good and general welfare, then we will begin to communicate with each other. There comes a point where the common good of the people must take precedence over unregulated profit taking. Health care is a birthright.
The insurance company lobby money is paying for a major PR campaign now under way to scare gullible seniors into thinking that the government will have them put to death if they have a terminal illness. This line is being spread around by the conservative bloggers and radio and TV hosts -- the usual unreliable suspects in the media. The truth is that Obama has called for more openness in discussing end of life wishes with doctors. Few people make their wishes known in living wills because the end of life options are just not discussed routinely now as they should be. Again, it is just common sense to be prepared so that your family is aware of your wishes, but the insurance lobby is using the old media formula that keeps Americans in tow time and time again -- repetition, repetition, repetition. If you tell a lie often enough and loud enough, it will soon be accepted as the truth. We are so gullible it is pathetic.
8/02/2009
6/20/2009
Twitter, #iranelection and the pitfalls of Groupthink
By mediagonebad
While I wholeheartedly support genuine movements for freedom and democracy anywhere in the world, I find it interesting that so many Americans have jumped on the #iranelection bandwagon without taking the time to learn about Iran, its culture, its mullahs (supreme leaders), its wars, and its history with the United States.
Groupthink is a decision-making process that occurs when an idea is put forth and becomes publicly accepted without proof. Groupthink is like an intellectual snowball effect carried from person to person with little, if any, firsthand knowledge or scientific scrutiny. The effect of Groupthink is that it makes the quest for historical truth that much harder when people already accept a given idea as the truth. Ordinarily, one would gather information from first-hand sources, then form an opinion and subject it to examination and reexamination. Groupthink forgoes this process and leads directly to an opinion.
Fact: There has been no vote recount in Iran and the winner of the election is still in dispute. This is really all we can be certain about right now, so I cannot make a valid determination about what is happening in Iran in regard to the election results; rather, this is a quick-and-dirty examination of the process through which unconfirmed information received worldwide attention and force-fed public opinion.
There is some suspicion -- although this idea does not get through in the massive tweets -- that the George W. Bush’s CIA had a hand in supporting Mousavi, who now claims election fraud and victory over Ahmadinejad, even though no proof has been offered that either candidate won the election. The Supreme leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the mullah who has the real power in Iran, quickly declared Ahmadinejad the winner, then Mousavi supporters claimed the election was rigged and demanded a new election. State forces, controlled by Khamenei, then attacked a group of Mousavi supporters and #iranelection became the top trending topic on Twitter.
Twitter, a real-time microblogging site where users publish 140-character tweets that can be read anywhere in the world where someone has an internet connection, including on cell phones, can spread information rapidly. Users can attach links and photos and state a brief opinion. The hashtag #iranelection takes the Twitter users to a page where all of the tweets using that hashtag can be found. I left the page untouched and unrefreshed for just a few minutes and had a backlog of more that 1,000 tweets. It would be impossible for one person to keep up with this amount of information, but it gives you an idea how rapidly information -- true or not -- can be disseminated via Twitter, as well as Facebook and YouTube.
Youtube videos from Iran are often uploaded from cell phone cameras. The videos show various scenes, usually with some kind of action or violence. Sometimes there is Farsi being spoken in the background, but many have no commentary, so the viewer is left to decide what the scene depicts without actually having been there to witness it. Comments are then made about about the video and some people post links to the video on Twitter and Facebook. Once there, the videos receive additional commentary, then are reposted and retweeted countless times. Some are even broadcast via CNN, although, to CNN’s credit, they do say that the information is unconfirmed. Citizen journalism is a powerful tool, but the content must still be judged critically and confirmed.
According to Time Magazine (June 29, 2009), “it is impossible for an outsider, in Iran for 10 days, to sift through the governmental opacity, the contradictory demonstrations, and predict what comes next.” Yet, by reading a few Tweets and turning our icons green, we jump on the Groupthink bandwagon in cheering for Mousavi and “freedom.” But, when pressed, no one seems to know of any reforms Mousavi has advocated. No one seems to know what kind of president he would be or how he would treat his opposition. While Mousavi was Prime Minister, thousands of political prisoners were executed and hundreds of striking workers were jailed or beaten. Has he changed? Will he continue to assert Iran’s right to build a nuclear power reactor in spite of warnings from the United States and Israel? Will he assume more state power now in the hands of the religious mullahs? No one has these answers, but one thing is certain in the wake of the violence: the mullahs will go to great lengths to preserve their power.
While I wholeheartedly support genuine movements for freedom and democracy anywhere in the world, I find it interesting that so many Americans have jumped on the #iranelection bandwagon without taking the time to learn about Iran, its culture, its mullahs (supreme leaders), its wars, and its history with the United States.
Groupthink is a decision-making process that occurs when an idea is put forth and becomes publicly accepted without proof. Groupthink is like an intellectual snowball effect carried from person to person with little, if any, firsthand knowledge or scientific scrutiny. The effect of Groupthink is that it makes the quest for historical truth that much harder when people already accept a given idea as the truth. Ordinarily, one would gather information from first-hand sources, then form an opinion and subject it to examination and reexamination. Groupthink forgoes this process and leads directly to an opinion.
Fact: There has been no vote recount in Iran and the winner of the election is still in dispute. This is really all we can be certain about right now, so I cannot make a valid determination about what is happening in Iran in regard to the election results; rather, this is a quick-and-dirty examination of the process through which unconfirmed information received worldwide attention and force-fed public opinion.
There is some suspicion -- although this idea does not get through in the massive tweets -- that the George W. Bush’s CIA had a hand in supporting Mousavi, who now claims election fraud and victory over Ahmadinejad, even though no proof has been offered that either candidate won the election. The Supreme leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the mullah who has the real power in Iran, quickly declared Ahmadinejad the winner, then Mousavi supporters claimed the election was rigged and demanded a new election. State forces, controlled by Khamenei, then attacked a group of Mousavi supporters and #iranelection became the top trending topic on Twitter.
Twitter, a real-time microblogging site where users publish 140-character tweets that can be read anywhere in the world where someone has an internet connection, including on cell phones, can spread information rapidly. Users can attach links and photos and state a brief opinion. The hashtag #iranelection takes the Twitter users to a page where all of the tweets using that hashtag can be found. I left the page untouched and unrefreshed for just a few minutes and had a backlog of more that 1,000 tweets. It would be impossible for one person to keep up with this amount of information, but it gives you an idea how rapidly information -- true or not -- can be disseminated via Twitter, as well as Facebook and YouTube.
Youtube videos from Iran are often uploaded from cell phone cameras. The videos show various scenes, usually with some kind of action or violence. Sometimes there is Farsi being spoken in the background, but many have no commentary, so the viewer is left to decide what the scene depicts without actually having been there to witness it. Comments are then made about about the video and some people post links to the video on Twitter and Facebook. Once there, the videos receive additional commentary, then are reposted and retweeted countless times. Some are even broadcast via CNN, although, to CNN’s credit, they do say that the information is unconfirmed. Citizen journalism is a powerful tool, but the content must still be judged critically and confirmed.
According to Time Magazine (June 29, 2009), “it is impossible for an outsider, in Iran for 10 days, to sift through the governmental opacity, the contradictory demonstrations, and predict what comes next.” Yet, by reading a few Tweets and turning our icons green, we jump on the Groupthink bandwagon in cheering for Mousavi and “freedom.” But, when pressed, no one seems to know of any reforms Mousavi has advocated. No one seems to know what kind of president he would be or how he would treat his opposition. While Mousavi was Prime Minister, thousands of political prisoners were executed and hundreds of striking workers were jailed or beaten. Has he changed? Will he continue to assert Iran’s right to build a nuclear power reactor in spite of warnings from the United States and Israel? Will he assume more state power now in the hands of the religious mullahs? No one has these answers, but one thing is certain in the wake of the violence: the mullahs will go to great lengths to preserve their power.
5/03/2009
Track Dogs
By mediagonebad
[Occasionally I like to throw in an older piece just to get it into electronic format. These are from the pre-computer days when I used a Royal typewriter.]
Thoreau once wrote: "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."
Thoreau's words took on special meaning for me in April 1981, when I was hired as a trackman on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. I was elated. I had a job with good pay and good benefits.
After I had worked five years, however, my elation had turned to bitterness and anger. I no longer cared about the pay and benefits; I just wanted out. Of course, people said I was crazy for wanting to give up "such as good job," but I knew better. I had learned something about people and production and I felt that the C & O had ridden upon me.
For the first couple of years, I worked on an undercutter on my home division between Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio. An undercutter is basically a large plow. It has hydraulic arms that lift the rails and ties about four feet in the air and then a plow blade is inserted. A powerful winch connected to a one-inch steel cable then pulls the plow, scraping out all of the ballast and dirt. The old, rotten ties are then replaced with new ones and new ballast is dumped on the tracks.
After two years of this, I transferred to the C & O Southern Region Rail Gang, a group of about 75 workers who travel from place to place replacing worn-out rails with quarter-mile strips of "ribbon rail." The transfer meant I would have to travel with the gang and live on the railroad's camp-cars at various sites in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. The first night I was with the gang, near Vanceburg, Kentucky, a co-worker was killed. According to the supervisor, he had been drinking, passed out on a "live" track, then was cut in two when a train came along. The camp-cars at that stop were parked on a side track right next to the main line, so we had to cross over the main line to get to the camp-cars.
The next morning, when we heard the news about the death, the supervisor gave us a speech about safety. Understandably, worker safety is a major concern on the railroad. "Don't crawl under trains" and "Don't step on the rails" were two important rules. Another was "No alcohol, drugs, dogs or women on the camp-cars."
As an incentive to work safely, the supervisor would hand out trinkets -- ink pens, money clips, belt buckles, coffee cups, "safe worker" hats, and the highly coveted C & O rain suits. There were never enough trinkets to go around, so names were drawn out of a hat.
Unfortunately, when a worker claims that he has been injured on the job, none of the foremen or supervisors believe it. Unless the injury is very obvious, like a partial foot amputation or a crushed finger, they try to coerce the employee into admitting he broke a safety rule -- that is, admitting that the injury is his fault, not the railroad's. "Come on, it's not that bad, is it?" "You can work the rest of the day, can't you?" "If you go to the doctor, I'm going to hold a BFI (Board for Investigation) on you for breaking a safety rule." I remember one morning that an employee told a supervisor he couldn't work because he had a bug in his ear. Apparently, a moth had decided to take up residence in one of his ears and would not come out, even after the supervisor poured several cups of water into the guy's ear. Finally, the employee asked to be taken to the hospital to have the bug removed, but the supervisor indicated that he should just keep on working. " You work with a bug in your ear," the employee replied. He was then taken to the hospital and the moth was removed.
It did not take me long to realize that the concept of "worker safety" was a relative term. From the company's perspective, a rail gang is a major expenditure, so the gang is expected to stay on its production schedule. As an incentive to finish jobs ahead of schedule, however, supervisors are given bonuses; the more money they save the company, the larger the bonus.
Supervisors do not live in the tiny camp-car rooms; they stay at motels, sometimes miles away from the camp-cars and the job site. They think nothing of working overtime on a Friday, when the men are eager to get on the road and spend the weekend with their families. Supervisors think nothing about having the men work overtime in thunderstorms or when the rail temperature is 120 degrees and there isn't a drop of drinking water left. All that matters is production. Production first, people last.
One morning, while we were camped along the New River in West Virginia, there was no water left in the water tanker at the camp-cars, yet all of the water coolers had been filled with water. As we were putting bags of ice into the coolers, we noticed that the water was brown. A supervisor had decided that river water was O.K. for us to drink on the job that day. Production first, people last.
A rail gang is essentially a long assembly line and it can spread out for a mile or more. When a worker has to leave his particular job to get a drink of water or use the bathroom, production behind him sometimes comes to a halt until he gets back. The foreman in charge of that section then gets upset because the production line isn't moving. One day I was setting spikes and had to take a shit, so I stopped working and began looking around for an empty spike keg to take into the woods with me. (The C & O did not provide portable toilets at the job site, so the workers had to improvise; empty spike kegs, if the rim is not too jagged, make handy commodes. Luckily, on this particular day, the tracks were in the woods and not out in the open.) When my foreman saw me heading for the woods with the spike keg, he ran after me waving his arms like a madman and screaming that I had to get back to work. I explained to him that I was having a biological emergency and there was nothing I could do, but he didn't believe me. I then offered to bring some back to him on a stick so I could prove it; about 10 minutes later, the foreman saw me come out of the woods with a stick and told me to "get that damn stick outta here."
The C & O supervisors were also good at fascist-style intimidation. One time, at Prince, West Virginia, while the men were at the job site, railroad special agents, accompanied by West Virginia State Policemen and local sheriff deputies, opened or kicked in all doors on the camp-cars and brought in dogs to search for marijuana. They also let the dogs into unlocked private vehicles parked off railroad property along Route 41. No marijuana was found. Another time, near Richmond, Virginia, railroad special agents, along with Virginia State Policemen and Henrico County sheriff deputies raided the camp-cars just as the men returned from the job site and were getting cleaned up for dinner or a night on the town. A couple of employees were later reprimanded after the heavily armed police force found empty beer cans and a small amount of marijuana in their rooms.
Rail gang workers are not criminals. They are working men living away from home, trying to make a living for themselves and their families. The police came in as though they were expecting a battle. In the 19th century, as the railroads were expanding westward with the frontier, the men in rail gangs had a reputation for being hell-raisers. Wherever the gangs went, they became small towns, and drinking, gambling and prostitution were common activities in these rail towns. There was nothing else to do. On the job, these gandydancers (trackmen) were mostly black, Chinese and Irish. The armed foreman thought nothing of killing anyone who got out of line because there was always another worker waiting to take his place.
Today, although the people and control methods have changed, the C & O apparently sees its employees as these 19th century hell-raisers and treats them as second-class citizens. Supervisors in some industries at least try to communicate with employees, let them know what the goals are, and make them feel like they are accomplishing something as part of a team. I'm sure there must be good rail supervisors somewhere, but the ones I met on the C & O did not communicate with the men or talk about what was expected for the day. The supervisors did not honor seniority, but they practiced nepotism and general favoritism. If you were in the clique, they gave you the best assignments; if they had a grudge against you, you were given the worst jobs.
One day, while I had a back injury, I completed my light-duty assignment (cleaning the two bathroom cars) and then I went to a tavern to have a beer. I noticed my supervisor's blue car parked at one tavern, so I went in and found him drinking at the bar. Occasionally, he would pick up his two-way radio and give some instructions to a foreman. The men were working on overtime and he was running the rail gang from a tavern.
That incident stuck a nerve with me. In my experience, there was little job satisfaction because the employees were not encouraged to feel like part of a team -- and here was a supervisor drinking in a tavern while the men were on overtime. If we were hell-raisers, it was because we were treated like dogs by management. If we were hell-raisers, it was because there was little for a group of wound-up working men to do after work at the camp-cars but drink beer, play cards, or sleep.
We were usually camped on coal sidings in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town, so it was often inconvenient to try to drive anywhere after work. In some areas, it was best to stay near the camp anyway, especially if you were black. One evening, near West Hamlin, West Virginia, I drove to a tavern after work and found a black co-worker sipping on a beer at the bar. I sat down next to him and ordered a beer for myself. After a while, the bartender leaned over to me and whispered, "You better get your friend outta here." I took a good look around at the other patrons and I knew exactly what he meant. We finished our beers and left.
Sometimes it was even trouble to stay on the camp-cars because the local residents would come to us. The areas we worked in were some of the poorest areas in the United States -- in the heart of Appalachia. While the mountains and rivers along the tracks were beautiful, they were in stark contrast to the tar-paper shacks of the local residents. One evening a woman and a girl approached three or four of us as we sat on the walkway between the camp-cars. The woman was trying to sell her ragged, barefoot daughter, who looked to be eleven or twelve years old. Thirteen would have stretching it. There were no takers in our group, so they continued on to the next car. Who knows, maybe they found a desperate man with nothing else to do that day. On other occasions, I know there were takers.
We were good people in a situation where we had nothing to do in our spare time. Perhaps if the railroad had thought about providing a boxcar with exercise equipment, pinball machines and a Ping-Pong table, and maybe a car with a snack bar and a TV and VCR, it may have been more tolerable. Maybe then we wouldn't have burned those bathroom doors that chilly night near Beckley, West Virginia. Maybe we wouldn't have climbed to the top of that Kentucky coal tipple and fired bottle rockets at the company's dynamite shed. Maybe then the railroad's management style would have seemed more humane. Men without anything to do will find something to do.
I had read Walden before I went to work for the C & O and, after five years, I understood what Thoreau meant. "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."
Acknowledgments
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, (New York: Collier Books, 1978), p. 75.
[Occasionally I like to throw in an older piece just to get it into electronic format. These are from the pre-computer days when I used a Royal typewriter.]
Thoreau once wrote: "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."
Thoreau's words took on special meaning for me in April 1981, when I was hired as a trackman on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. I was elated. I had a job with good pay and good benefits.
After I had worked five years, however, my elation had turned to bitterness and anger. I no longer cared about the pay and benefits; I just wanted out. Of course, people said I was crazy for wanting to give up "such as good job," but I knew better. I had learned something about people and production and I felt that the C & O had ridden upon me.
For the first couple of years, I worked on an undercutter on my home division between Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio. An undercutter is basically a large plow. It has hydraulic arms that lift the rails and ties about four feet in the air and then a plow blade is inserted. A powerful winch connected to a one-inch steel cable then pulls the plow, scraping out all of the ballast and dirt. The old, rotten ties are then replaced with new ones and new ballast is dumped on the tracks.
After two years of this, I transferred to the C & O Southern Region Rail Gang, a group of about 75 workers who travel from place to place replacing worn-out rails with quarter-mile strips of "ribbon rail." The transfer meant I would have to travel with the gang and live on the railroad's camp-cars at various sites in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. The first night I was with the gang, near Vanceburg, Kentucky, a co-worker was killed. According to the supervisor, he had been drinking, passed out on a "live" track, then was cut in two when a train came along. The camp-cars at that stop were parked on a side track right next to the main line, so we had to cross over the main line to get to the camp-cars.
The next morning, when we heard the news about the death, the supervisor gave us a speech about safety. Understandably, worker safety is a major concern on the railroad. "Don't crawl under trains" and "Don't step on the rails" were two important rules. Another was "No alcohol, drugs, dogs or women on the camp-cars."
As an incentive to work safely, the supervisor would hand out trinkets -- ink pens, money clips, belt buckles, coffee cups, "safe worker" hats, and the highly coveted C & O rain suits. There were never enough trinkets to go around, so names were drawn out of a hat.
Unfortunately, when a worker claims that he has been injured on the job, none of the foremen or supervisors believe it. Unless the injury is very obvious, like a partial foot amputation or a crushed finger, they try to coerce the employee into admitting he broke a safety rule -- that is, admitting that the injury is his fault, not the railroad's. "Come on, it's not that bad, is it?" "You can work the rest of the day, can't you?" "If you go to the doctor, I'm going to hold a BFI (Board for Investigation) on you for breaking a safety rule." I remember one morning that an employee told a supervisor he couldn't work because he had a bug in his ear. Apparently, a moth had decided to take up residence in one of his ears and would not come out, even after the supervisor poured several cups of water into the guy's ear. Finally, the employee asked to be taken to the hospital to have the bug removed, but the supervisor indicated that he should just keep on working. " You work with a bug in your ear," the employee replied. He was then taken to the hospital and the moth was removed.
It did not take me long to realize that the concept of "worker safety" was a relative term. From the company's perspective, a rail gang is a major expenditure, so the gang is expected to stay on its production schedule. As an incentive to finish jobs ahead of schedule, however, supervisors are given bonuses; the more money they save the company, the larger the bonus.
Supervisors do not live in the tiny camp-car rooms; they stay at motels, sometimes miles away from the camp-cars and the job site. They think nothing of working overtime on a Friday, when the men are eager to get on the road and spend the weekend with their families. Supervisors think nothing about having the men work overtime in thunderstorms or when the rail temperature is 120 degrees and there isn't a drop of drinking water left. All that matters is production. Production first, people last.
One morning, while we were camped along the New River in West Virginia, there was no water left in the water tanker at the camp-cars, yet all of the water coolers had been filled with water. As we were putting bags of ice into the coolers, we noticed that the water was brown. A supervisor had decided that river water was O.K. for us to drink on the job that day. Production first, people last.
A rail gang is essentially a long assembly line and it can spread out for a mile or more. When a worker has to leave his particular job to get a drink of water or use the bathroom, production behind him sometimes comes to a halt until he gets back. The foreman in charge of that section then gets upset because the production line isn't moving. One day I was setting spikes and had to take a shit, so I stopped working and began looking around for an empty spike keg to take into the woods with me. (The C & O did not provide portable toilets at the job site, so the workers had to improvise; empty spike kegs, if the rim is not too jagged, make handy commodes. Luckily, on this particular day, the tracks were in the woods and not out in the open.) When my foreman saw me heading for the woods with the spike keg, he ran after me waving his arms like a madman and screaming that I had to get back to work. I explained to him that I was having a biological emergency and there was nothing I could do, but he didn't believe me. I then offered to bring some back to him on a stick so I could prove it; about 10 minutes later, the foreman saw me come out of the woods with a stick and told me to "get that damn stick outta here."
The C & O supervisors were also good at fascist-style intimidation. One time, at Prince, West Virginia, while the men were at the job site, railroad special agents, accompanied by West Virginia State Policemen and local sheriff deputies, opened or kicked in all doors on the camp-cars and brought in dogs to search for marijuana. They also let the dogs into unlocked private vehicles parked off railroad property along Route 41. No marijuana was found. Another time, near Richmond, Virginia, railroad special agents, along with Virginia State Policemen and Henrico County sheriff deputies raided the camp-cars just as the men returned from the job site and were getting cleaned up for dinner or a night on the town. A couple of employees were later reprimanded after the heavily armed police force found empty beer cans and a small amount of marijuana in their rooms.
Rail gang workers are not criminals. They are working men living away from home, trying to make a living for themselves and their families. The police came in as though they were expecting a battle. In the 19th century, as the railroads were expanding westward with the frontier, the men in rail gangs had a reputation for being hell-raisers. Wherever the gangs went, they became small towns, and drinking, gambling and prostitution were common activities in these rail towns. There was nothing else to do. On the job, these gandydancers (trackmen) were mostly black, Chinese and Irish. The armed foreman thought nothing of killing anyone who got out of line because there was always another worker waiting to take his place.
Today, although the people and control methods have changed, the C & O apparently sees its employees as these 19th century hell-raisers and treats them as second-class citizens. Supervisors in some industries at least try to communicate with employees, let them know what the goals are, and make them feel like they are accomplishing something as part of a team. I'm sure there must be good rail supervisors somewhere, but the ones I met on the C & O did not communicate with the men or talk about what was expected for the day. The supervisors did not honor seniority, but they practiced nepotism and general favoritism. If you were in the clique, they gave you the best assignments; if they had a grudge against you, you were given the worst jobs.
One day, while I had a back injury, I completed my light-duty assignment (cleaning the two bathroom cars) and then I went to a tavern to have a beer. I noticed my supervisor's blue car parked at one tavern, so I went in and found him drinking at the bar. Occasionally, he would pick up his two-way radio and give some instructions to a foreman. The men were working on overtime and he was running the rail gang from a tavern.
That incident stuck a nerve with me. In my experience, there was little job satisfaction because the employees were not encouraged to feel like part of a team -- and here was a supervisor drinking in a tavern while the men were on overtime. If we were hell-raisers, it was because we were treated like dogs by management. If we were hell-raisers, it was because there was little for a group of wound-up working men to do after work at the camp-cars but drink beer, play cards, or sleep.
We were usually camped on coal sidings in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town, so it was often inconvenient to try to drive anywhere after work. In some areas, it was best to stay near the camp anyway, especially if you were black. One evening, near West Hamlin, West Virginia, I drove to a tavern after work and found a black co-worker sipping on a beer at the bar. I sat down next to him and ordered a beer for myself. After a while, the bartender leaned over to me and whispered, "You better get your friend outta here." I took a good look around at the other patrons and I knew exactly what he meant. We finished our beers and left.
Sometimes it was even trouble to stay on the camp-cars because the local residents would come to us. The areas we worked in were some of the poorest areas in the United States -- in the heart of Appalachia. While the mountains and rivers along the tracks were beautiful, they were in stark contrast to the tar-paper shacks of the local residents. One evening a woman and a girl approached three or four of us as we sat on the walkway between the camp-cars. The woman was trying to sell her ragged, barefoot daughter, who looked to be eleven or twelve years old. Thirteen would have stretching it. There were no takers in our group, so they continued on to the next car. Who knows, maybe they found a desperate man with nothing else to do that day. On other occasions, I know there were takers.
We were good people in a situation where we had nothing to do in our spare time. Perhaps if the railroad had thought about providing a boxcar with exercise equipment, pinball machines and a Ping-Pong table, and maybe a car with a snack bar and a TV and VCR, it may have been more tolerable. Maybe then we wouldn't have burned those bathroom doors that chilly night near Beckley, West Virginia. Maybe we wouldn't have climbed to the top of that Kentucky coal tipple and fired bottle rockets at the company's dynamite shed. Maybe then the railroad's management style would have seemed more humane. Men without anything to do will find something to do.
I had read Walden before I went to work for the C & O and, after five years, I understood what Thoreau meant. "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."
Acknowledgments
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, (New York: Collier Books, 1978), p. 75.
5/02/2009
Restoring Freedom & Democracy post-Bush
By mediagonebad
It is a matter of public record that in August 2001 George W. Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing stating that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization planned to use jet airplanes as weapons. Did Bush read the report? Did he read it and fail to act upon the information? Did he, by extension, allow 9/11 to happen by not acting upon the information in the PDB?
What would Bush have stood to gain by not acting upon this information, by not beefing up airport security immediately? This would have been the responsible course of action would it not? Well, consider first that the Bush family business is oil and weapons. A president whose family stands to gain financially from war might be less inclined to prevent one. Second, the Bush family world view supports Hitler’s view of unrestricted corporatism.
Under the 8-year Bush/Cheney regime, the United States of America was slowly and methodically overthrown by a small group of economic zealots who believed in the Bush/Hitler view of unrestricted corporatism, a group of zealots who brought the horrific future world foretold in the works of George Orwell to our national doorstep.
The government has spy satellites that can focus on a license plate. It has facial recognition software. It has a computer system that can pick out key words in private telephone conversations and emails, all without our knowledge or consent.
Under the Patriot Act, we allow the government to break into our houses and download our computer files without a warrant under the guise of finding supposed "terrorists." We allow the government access to our library records so it knows who is reading what.
We routinely accept government explanations for world events without even asking questions to determine if the explanations are based on truthful and valid assertions. We allow our government to assert its right to imprison and torture foreign detainees indefinitely as "enemy combatants" even though they have not been charged with any specific crime or act.
We allow our elections to be purchased by the rich and powerful while denying the poor and working class proper access to voting machines. We allow computerized voting that does not even print out a paper record in case a hand re-count is needed.
We allow our government to grant oil, chemical and mining companies access to public lands, where they extract the natural resources with little regard for the long-term environmental impact, water and air pollution, and global warming.
We allow our young soldiers to become occupiers and nation-builders in foreign lands, even though history has shown that such occupations inevitably fail as one oppressor is replaced by another.
And we allow corporate “military contractors” like Haliburton, Blackwater, and dozens of others, to make millions of dollars without any public accountability whatsoever. From kitchens to prisons, corporations have become a huge part of the war business, outnumbering even the “grunts,” the foot soldiers.
The new United States of America under Bush had nothing to do with the principles of freedom and democracy that the nation was founded upon. Rather, the new United States was all about unbridled imperialism, privatization and militarization. Public monies were shifted from the public sector -- which funds education, food programs, jobs programs, health programs and Social Security -- to the private sector, which includes big business, military contractors, big banks, and the stock market. In other words, the people's money was withdrawn from social programs and deposited into the bank accounts of the rich and the super-rich. And the people's money was gambled away in the largest casino in the world -- Wall Street.
This is the reality of the nation as President Barrack Obama was sworn-in, yet some misinformed folks on the far right think of Obama as a “socialist,” and they refer to him as “fascist” because Hitler’s world view is often referred to as “state socialism.” Such terms have so many different meanings that they have now become meaningless without a detailed definition of terms, so it is not surprising that these terms might confuse, say, a FOX News viewer. Scholarly definitions are not used on FOX News. FOX prefers catch-phrases that are easy for their audience to understand and repeat.
Hitler’s imperialist dream foresaw a powerful corporate state where a limited government functions primarily as a servant of the rich and powerful corporations that own the means of production, fund the nation's elections, control the military, and dictate its political decisions. Fascism, also known as “state socialism,” is not to be confused with Karl Marx’s “scientific socialism,” which holds that the people must own and control the means of production and that government must function first and always as a servant of the people. President Obama is a supporter of the capitalist economic system. Marxists are not.
Although the Bush regime is gone, many of its democracy-damaging policies remain in force. Perhaps Obama will overturn these policies, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, citizens have a responsibility to defend our freedom and democracy. To do that we need to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and bring the troops home. We need to strictly regulate corporations and hold them financially responsible for breaking those regulations. We need to defend the labor unions and progressive organizations that became targeted for extinction under the Bush government.
Our responsibility is immense. Our responsibility extends to all citizens of the world who look to us as a beacon of hope for human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and justice. It we fail, the world fails with us.
4/20/2009
We The People: Taxation, Spending, and Big Government
By mediagonebad
Hardcore free-market Republicans often rail against “big government,” so let’s take a few minutes to figure out what the role of government should be in the United States.
What do we want from the federal government? What do we, as citizens, expect our government to be? What services do we want it to provide on our behalf?
The first thing about government is that we all want it to work for us, not against us. We do not want to be taxed excessively and we do not want to be spied upon like “big brother.” We want our elected officials to serve us honorably and we want our justice system to be fair and equal. I would venture to guess that few Americans would argue with these general points, no matter what their political beliefs.
Now, forget government for a minute. What do American citizens want America to be? Do we want the best health care and education in the world? Do we want retired citizens to have a guaranteed income? Do we want the strongest military in the world? Do we want clean energy? Do we want to do our part to end global warming? Do we want strong bridges? Do we want clean drinking water systems and good sewer systems? Do we want clean air to breathe? Do we want corporations to be able to do whatever they want without accountability or do we want them strictly regulated? Do we want corporations to have the same constitutional rights as individuals? Do we want a safe interstate system without potholes and other hazards? Do we want high-speed rail? Do we want safe food? Do we want equal rights for all, including the right to same-sex marriage? Do we want a minimum wage? Do we want a living wage? Do we want an unregulated mass media, with as few as five conglomerates controlling more than 50 percent of the news we get? Do we want more licenses for low-power radio and television stations? Do we want to permit torture techniques to be used on foreign prisoners? Do we want affordable housing? Do we want to ensure that the unemployed have an income until they find work? Do we want to bailout failing banks and large corporations?
Obviously, this list could go on and on and on, but for our purposes, we will end it here. These questions, when used to decide what role government should play, are where people part ways as Americans and become political opponents. There are those who look at a budget and scream “Pork!” when they see proposals for more unemployment insurance, a raise in the minimum wage, money to repair bridges on secondary highways, housing for the poor, more schools, local water projects, repair of inner city sewer systems, and so forth. Some people believe that the federal government should not be spending money for such things, yet they invariably support unlimited spending for war and preparations for war.
The problem with spending in general is, if we want something, someone has to pay for it. No one these days wants to take responsibility for increasing taxes, so the burden is passed on from the federal government to individual states, counties, cities, towns and villages. Revenue is created by increasing various kinds of taxes -- like fuel taxes, hotel taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, “sin” taxes, and so forth. People who call for no tax increases and limited federal government mean that they do not want to say they support taxes at the federal level. They are not putting the needs of America first, but are playing party politics. They are trying to win House and Senate seats by claiming that they support limited government and no tax increases, but these shady politicians know full well that there will be new taxes at the state and/or the municipal level. Otherwise, the United States would fall apart at the seams. Oh wait, it already is!
It is largely the Republicans who want to be known as the party that believes in limited federal spending and the Democrats who believe the federal government has a responsibility to spend money for things that most Americans want and need. Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich and super-rich and Democrats want this exclusive group to pay more federal taxes, largely by plugging the loopholes that allow the rich to maintain overseas addresses in order to escape the responsibility of paying federal taxes at all.
The thing that all Americans who have been hoodwinked into narrow thinking by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly need to be aware of is that taxation is a responsibility of civil society. If we want Social Security to be viable -- and it still is viable right now -- then we need to pay into the system and perhaps even increase the amount of federal withholding for Social Security. Those who call for privatization -- letting people choose to invest in the stock market instead of Social Security -- would ruin one of the best federal programs ever created. The needs of the majority of Americans outweigh the needs of a few rich bankers who would get even richer from privatization. At some point we have to say “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” And we say NO to privatization just as we would say NO to bank bailouts.
That said, we also must be responsible in the way our taxes are used. No question about it. We have to prioritize and plan. We have to save for projects that may not even be completed in our lifetime. For example, America’s infrastructure is old and in need of an upgrade. Many inner city and rural water and sewer systems, subways, bridges, roadways, housing projects, and railroads need replaced as soon as possible. These are long-term projects that may take 50 years or more to complete! Obviously, completing them is in the best interest of every single American, but are a nightmare for selfish politicians who want votes now and do not want to plan for the future or allocate funds for projects that may not be completed while the politician is still alive. America is slowly crumbling away and will continue to do so until citizens find the spine to think collectively and put all politicians on notice that the real needs of America and Americans must come first.
Now, I ask again, what do we want from our federal government? What do we want government to provide on our behalf? Does anyone not see how important the federal government is in our lives? We joke about it all the time -- taxes to study the mating habits of the South American swamp rat, for example -- but it all comes back to needs and priorities. No one wants to pay taxes for useless things and the working class are already taxed to the maximum, so the corporate rich and super-rich need to pay a greater share for the greater overall benefit of society. It is not the size of the federal government that matters, even if the federal government becomes the top employer in the nation and provides new public works jobs to tens of millions. What matters is that OUR federal government serve WE THE PEOPLE. That OUR federal government meets OUR needs -- not the short-term, selfish needs of politicians, political parties, war profiteers, and unscrupulous media commentators.
Hardcore free-market Republicans often rail against “big government,” so let’s take a few minutes to figure out what the role of government should be in the United States.
What do we want from the federal government? What do we, as citizens, expect our government to be? What services do we want it to provide on our behalf?
The first thing about government is that we all want it to work for us, not against us. We do not want to be taxed excessively and we do not want to be spied upon like “big brother.” We want our elected officials to serve us honorably and we want our justice system to be fair and equal. I would venture to guess that few Americans would argue with these general points, no matter what their political beliefs.
Now, forget government for a minute. What do American citizens want America to be? Do we want the best health care and education in the world? Do we want retired citizens to have a guaranteed income? Do we want the strongest military in the world? Do we want clean energy? Do we want to do our part to end global warming? Do we want strong bridges? Do we want clean drinking water systems and good sewer systems? Do we want clean air to breathe? Do we want corporations to be able to do whatever they want without accountability or do we want them strictly regulated? Do we want corporations to have the same constitutional rights as individuals? Do we want a safe interstate system without potholes and other hazards? Do we want high-speed rail? Do we want safe food? Do we want equal rights for all, including the right to same-sex marriage? Do we want a minimum wage? Do we want a living wage? Do we want an unregulated mass media, with as few as five conglomerates controlling more than 50 percent of the news we get? Do we want more licenses for low-power radio and television stations? Do we want to permit torture techniques to be used on foreign prisoners? Do we want affordable housing? Do we want to ensure that the unemployed have an income until they find work? Do we want to bailout failing banks and large corporations?
Obviously, this list could go on and on and on, but for our purposes, we will end it here. These questions, when used to decide what role government should play, are where people part ways as Americans and become political opponents. There are those who look at a budget and scream “Pork!” when they see proposals for more unemployment insurance, a raise in the minimum wage, money to repair bridges on secondary highways, housing for the poor, more schools, local water projects, repair of inner city sewer systems, and so forth. Some people believe that the federal government should not be spending money for such things, yet they invariably support unlimited spending for war and preparations for war.
The problem with spending in general is, if we want something, someone has to pay for it. No one these days wants to take responsibility for increasing taxes, so the burden is passed on from the federal government to individual states, counties, cities, towns and villages. Revenue is created by increasing various kinds of taxes -- like fuel taxes, hotel taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, “sin” taxes, and so forth. People who call for no tax increases and limited federal government mean that they do not want to say they support taxes at the federal level. They are not putting the needs of America first, but are playing party politics. They are trying to win House and Senate seats by claiming that they support limited government and no tax increases, but these shady politicians know full well that there will be new taxes at the state and/or the municipal level. Otherwise, the United States would fall apart at the seams. Oh wait, it already is!
It is largely the Republicans who want to be known as the party that believes in limited federal spending and the Democrats who believe the federal government has a responsibility to spend money for things that most Americans want and need. Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich and super-rich and Democrats want this exclusive group to pay more federal taxes, largely by plugging the loopholes that allow the rich to maintain overseas addresses in order to escape the responsibility of paying federal taxes at all.
The thing that all Americans who have been hoodwinked into narrow thinking by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly need to be aware of is that taxation is a responsibility of civil society. If we want Social Security to be viable -- and it still is viable right now -- then we need to pay into the system and perhaps even increase the amount of federal withholding for Social Security. Those who call for privatization -- letting people choose to invest in the stock market instead of Social Security -- would ruin one of the best federal programs ever created. The needs of the majority of Americans outweigh the needs of a few rich bankers who would get even richer from privatization. At some point we have to say “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” And we say NO to privatization just as we would say NO to bank bailouts.
That said, we also must be responsible in the way our taxes are used. No question about it. We have to prioritize and plan. We have to save for projects that may not even be completed in our lifetime. For example, America’s infrastructure is old and in need of an upgrade. Many inner city and rural water and sewer systems, subways, bridges, roadways, housing projects, and railroads need replaced as soon as possible. These are long-term projects that may take 50 years or more to complete! Obviously, completing them is in the best interest of every single American, but are a nightmare for selfish politicians who want votes now and do not want to plan for the future or allocate funds for projects that may not be completed while the politician is still alive. America is slowly crumbling away and will continue to do so until citizens find the spine to think collectively and put all politicians on notice that the real needs of America and Americans must come first.
Now, I ask again, what do we want from our federal government? What do we want government to provide on our behalf? Does anyone not see how important the federal government is in our lives? We joke about it all the time -- taxes to study the mating habits of the South American swamp rat, for example -- but it all comes back to needs and priorities. No one wants to pay taxes for useless things and the working class are already taxed to the maximum, so the corporate rich and super-rich need to pay a greater share for the greater overall benefit of society. It is not the size of the federal government that matters, even if the federal government becomes the top employer in the nation and provides new public works jobs to tens of millions. What matters is that OUR federal government serve WE THE PEOPLE. That OUR federal government meets OUR needs -- not the short-term, selfish needs of politicians, political parties, war profiteers, and unscrupulous media commentators.
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