Week of 09/11/2017

Socialism Versus Compassion
– by David Matthews 2

The 2017 Hurricane Season is proving to be very destructive for the Atlantic.  First, the rampage of Hurricane Harvey destroying and flooding parts of Texas for a week, then Hurricane Irma blowing up Florida and Georgia as of this column’s posting date, and the full extent of that storm has yet to be determined.  And we still have a whole month to go for the whole season and a few more hurricanes to watch.

And a funny thing started popping up after Harvey flooded Texas...

Certain people started putting in troll messages on Facebook about the need to help bail out those impacted by Harvey.

“Everyone OK with using socialism to clean up after Harvey?” asked one Facebook troll post.  “Or shall we let the free market take care of things?  Asking for a friend.”  Other troll posts follow the same line that any kind of government assistance is socialism and quickly call out those conservative Texans for their philosophical opposition to the very help they’re asking for.

Listen, guys, I don’t mind a little hypocrite-outing.  But, to borrow from “The Princess Bride”, when it comes to socialism, “you keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What a lot of these trolls are calling “socialism” isn’t socialism at all, but a little thing we call “compassion”.

You see, helping people when they really need it, for no other reason than out of kindness, is compassion, not socialism.  The two things are not interchangeable.

Socialism is a socio-political train of thought; a philosophy whereby things are done for the greater good of the community instead of for the individual.  The idea that we should all pay for and provide for primary education, that we should provide medical coverage to the old and the poor, that we should help those in poverty, those are all socialist ideas.  Zoning regulations have been used to advance socialist ideas.  Covenant neighborhoods are enclaves of pure socialism, which I know first-hand  through recent experience. 

Compassion, on the other hand, is an emotion.  It’s a feeling of empathy.  It’s a desire to help those that need it that is not rational or born from reason.  You see someone hurting, someone that needs help, and you put yourself into their shoes emotionally and you want to do something to help them.  There’s nothing rational or reasonable about that.  It’s not about thinking; it’s about feeling.  You might even say that compassion is what makes us human.

Compassion can drive people to act, but there is nothing socialistic about that.  Likewise, socialist ideas can be spread without any kind of emotion to them.  Public education was advanced over a century ago not on some perceived desire to “level the playing field” between rich and poor, but rather to make competent factory workers that could read the instructions on the machines they would soon use.

So when it comes to helping people who need it, specifically the federal government bailing out communities like those in Texas devastated by Hurricane Harvey, and New York and New Jersey after Super-Storm Sandy, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and soon for the Florida area after Hurricane Irma, is that really socialism?

Let’s get brutally honest here... no, it’s not socialism.  It’s compassion.  You’re helping those that need it at a time when that need is the greatest.  You’re helping to clear debris and rebuild homes and rebuild communities devastated by forces beyond anyone’s control.  And then, when that’s done, the help ends.

What would be socialism, though, would be telling people how they should rebuild and how they should carry on afterward.  It would be socialism to tell people in a flood plain that they shouldn’t have their homes built there in the first place.  It would be socialism to tell the businessman that he can’t rebuild his pawn shop or set up a payday loan business or strip club in an area that was once devastated by a disaster.

If you think about it, the so-called “fiscal conservatives” that vote to deny funding to bail out these communities are more socialistic than the people that are quick to call for such support.  Their very argument, that money dedicated to such endeavors would be better spent on other perceived obligations – such as endless wars – is actually a socialistic notion.  It presumes that the “homeland”, the collective whole, is more important than the “individuals” in one small part of the country.  That’s pretty socialistic for a bunch of people who claim to despise it.

Yes, the “free market” fails the community in these situations.  We saw this in all past disasters and we’ll see it in pretty much every future disaster.  Insurance companies will refuse to own up to their part of their deals.  Suppliers will price-gouge at every opportunity.  Then again, it’s not really the “free market” at play here.  It’s capitalism that has manipulated the rules to get the maximum amount of profit for a select group of businesses – a.k.a. insurance companies – with a minimal amount of risk.  And it is safe to presume that this is by design, because they count on our sense of compassion to get the government to do the heavy bailouts.  There’s nothing socialistic about that; it’s just shrewd business strategy and political manipulation.  It’s sociopathic, not socialistic.

Maybe it could be seen as Karma that these disasters happen in places full of hypocrites that oppose helping others and then look for help themselves when they need it.  And, yeah, I can’t deny feeling a little bit of schadenfreude in exposing the hypocrisy.  But if you’re going to do it, at least do it right, and stop confusing human empathy with an unemotional idealistic philosophy.

Week of 09/04/2017

Harvey’s Victims To Be Victims Again
– by David Matthews 2

The recent devastation in the Texas area from Hurricane Harvey has proven one thing... that we haven’t learned a damn thing since Hurricane Katrina hit twelve years ago!

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast back in 2005, it brought a huge storm surge as it came ashore, dumping not just rain but also ocean water well into the Louisiana state.  And while most of the focus was on the failure of the levees in New Orleans and the damage caused by that, it wasn’t the only place damaged by the storm.

What made matters worse for homeowners was the realization that all of the money that they pumped into their homes, all of the money they spent on insurance to cover their homes from just such an emergency, all of that was washed away with the storm surge thanks to greedy and miserly insurance companies.  And it was done in such an underhanded way that would make even the worst comic book villain jealous.

If homeowners had flood protection, then the insurance companies claimed the damage was from the wind and therefore not covered.  If they did not have flood protection, then the insurance companies claimed the damage was from flooding instead of wind and therefore not covered.  Either way, tens of thousands of homeowners were denied help because of the duplicitous and miserly sadism of greedy insurance companies.  Sure they got some help, but not from the entities that should have owned up to their obligations in the first place.

Okay, so that was then.  And there were a lot of things that went wrong at the time that needed to be addressed.  Certain political figures made stupid decisions that they needed to own up to and fix.  And you would think that one of those issues that would corrected would be the callous corporate greed involving homeowners insurance and what would be considered “wind damage” and what would be considered “flood damage”.  You would think that budget-conscious GOP conservatives and neo-conservatives would want to make sure they aren’t in the position to bail people out again after being screwed over by Big Insurance.  After all, they needed that money for their endless wars.

But that’s just not how the GOP rolls.

Sure enough when Superstorm Sandy came rolling through New York and New Jersey, nothing really was fixed.  Big Insurance was still being the miserly, greedy, sadistic, screwjob selves and relying on Big Government to help those they screwed over.  Worse yet, several members of the GOP actually voted against giving relief to those devastated by that not-really-a-hurricane storm.  And can you guess where most of them came from?  Right, the very state of Texas that today needs help from Hurricane Harvey!

That’s right, folks, the State of Texas - whose politicians opposed helping New York and New Jersey storm victims in 2012 - are now hurting.  They got screwed over by Hurricane Harvey, and they’re about to get screwed over again by the same miserly, greedy, sadistic, screwjob insurance companies. 

And the truly insulting part is... it should not have to be this way!

Let’s get brutally honest here... these miserly, greedy, sadistic, screwjob insurance company bastards need to be held to what they were obligated to cover.  They were paid money to provide a service should the situation arise.  A hurricane and the damage that comes with it counts as a “situation”.  It does not matter if it is the rain that comes from the hurricane or the wind from that hurricane or the storm surge that was blown in by that hurricane; it is all part of that same storm, it is that simple!

And it really can be that simple.  All it takes is either some simple legislation or a simple judicial decision that says storm damage is both wind and water and that Big Insurance cannot nitpick the difference.

But unfortunately it’s never going to be that simple, because Big Insurance companies influence the regulators that watch over them, and they buy the legislators and literally write the legislation for them, and they force judges to go along with their fine print separation of wind and water.  They write the rules that they can use to screw over the American people and continue to take their money.  “Simple” is a profane word in their greed-driven vocabulary.  “Simple” keeps them from the money that they believe they are “entitled” to.

“Simple” also explains what they are doing in situations like this.  If they promise to provide a service in exchange for money and they’ve been taking money all this time on that promise, and then something happens and they refuse to follow through on what they promise, then the simple word to describe it is “fraud”.

Think about this for a moment: if Big Insurance actually did pay out what they owed the people affected by Hurricane Harvey, then it would mean less money that the state and federal governments would have to generate to bail those areas out.  How many of you supposed “deficit-conscious” conservatives would be opposed to that?  It also means that the people wouldn’t have to take out a government-backed mortgage on top of their current mortgage at a time when our true economy is still pretty stagnant, which is less money that can be put back into that economy.  Wouldn’t that be a good thing too?

Like most people, I don’t have a problem with the idea of insurance; but it comes with the caveat that it will do what it is designed to do, which is provide a safety net in the event of some emergency.  That’s what you see in all their advertisements.  They continually promise to be there for you in those times; to have your back when you need it.  But if they can’t be trusted, what good is it to give them money for a service they won’t provide?  Worse yet, why should we then be obligated to pay for that service through legislation and regulation?  Because the other “simple” word to describe that kind of action that nobody wants to hear… is “extortion”.  And, no, having it done by the government still does not make it “okay”.

Week of 08/28/2017

The Very Real Effects of Income Inequality
– by David Matthews 2

So you may have heard this story in your community or out on the Internet.  It certainly became a subject for the Atlanta area news on a few occasions: local law enforcement aren’t getting paid enough to make ends meet.  The men and women that are supposed to keep law and order (operative words being “supposed to”) are having to go on food stamps because they’re so poor.  You know, food stamps... that government welfare program that conservatives and neo-conservatives hate with a venomous passion and think that anyone who needs food stamps should undergo sick, sadistic trials of shame and disgust every time they use them.  And we’re talking sadism at a level that would even make the Marquis de Sade sick.

That should shock you, right?  The very idea that our police officers are needing to go on food stamps.  Well that’s what the law enforcement community want you to believe, and I’m really not going to disagree with them on that.  Quite the contrary… I’m going to side with them on it. 

But I’ll only do so with a caveat: we’re all in the same boat as them.

Or... most of us are.

A recent report from the job-hunting website CareerBuilder says that eight out of ten Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Eight out of ten!  And the disturbing thing about this is that we’re not just talking about people at the poverty level or even the mythical middle class.  This is including people who make six-figure incomes.  And, according to this same report, it is because of the debt they’ve accumulated that they can’t get rid of.

So what does this have to do with the supposedly underpaid police officers?

Everything!

Who do you think really pays the salaries of police officers?  We all do through our various local taxes.  The reason the various law enforcement communities are bitching about being underpaid is so they can guilt us, the taxpayers, into giving them more money through higher state and local taxes.

They certainly can’t go to the retail community and demand more money!  Are you kidding?  They’re falling apart!  The malls are become wastelands!  Wal-Mart is destroying your mom-and-pop stores, and, if they aren’t, then Amazon is, and let’s not forget Sears-slash-K-Mart going down the drain faster than White House credibility.  They can’t cough up the extra money to pay the police.  Ask them, they’ll tell you!  They work long hours and have their people work long hours for low money just to keep the business open.  Not to mention that they’d just have to raise prices to make up the difference, which means that we, the customers, would end up having to pay for it anyway.

And we certainly cannot expect the big-money companies who sustain and employ the community to cough up the money!  If you try to approach them with the bill to pay for higher salaries for police, then they would reply with “You try to stick us with this and we’ll pack up our bags and go find another community.  Maybe even someplace in another country that is more appreciate of us!”  These are the major players that enjoy all sorts of local and state tax breaks for the “privilege” of being there and keeping the masses employed and continue to live paycheck-to-paycheck.  They can’t be “bothered” by paying the police more money.  That’s not “their” problem.  That’s the “community’s” problem.  In other words, it goes back to those “ungrateful” working peons who are “stupid enough” to live paycheck-to-paycheck.

You see, boys and girls, the real villain in this story is a little thing that the conservatives and neo-conservatives and the Donald Trumps of the world don’t want us to talk about, and that is income inequality.

How is it that the economy can be so great and companies can report record profits and yet people are still struggling to make ends meet?  Because the business world has a mad-on fetish for profit at all costs, and instead of rewarding employees for good work, they reward the high-ups for their supposedly “sound business sense”, which just happens to include keeping wages insanely low to cut down on overhead.

And this is not something that can be blamed on Donald Trump or Barack Obama or the Great Recession or George W. Bush, or even Bill and Hillary Clinton.  This has been slowly happening for decades now.  This is a generational swindle.

It goes like this: in order to cut down on overhead and maximize profits, employers pay new employees less and they give the current employees smaller raises, expecting the experienced workers to be overjoyed at getting anything extra.  The problem is, though, if you get a 1.5% raise and the cost of living goes up 7%, then you’re not getting ahead.  You are actually losing 5.5%.  But nobody really notices it because they’re still being told that they’re getting a raise and that they should be grateful about even getting that.

Now if that only happens for maybe one or two years, then that’s okay.  That can be managed.  But this is happening year after year after year after year, during good times and bad, during economic booms and busts.  And we are conditioned to believe that this is okay.  If times are tough, just get a second job, or a third or fourth, or look for new work.  There are supposedly all sorts of jobs out there now, at any given time.  The onus always being put “on us”, the supposedly “ungrateful, lazy, and irresponsible” masses to work two or three jobs.  To quote Bush Junior, that’s “uniquely American”.

And guess what else has been happening while this is going on?  The lifespan of major appliances have been getting shorter and shorter.  A television set used to last us a decade.  Now you’re lucky if it lasts half that time.  And that’s not a coincidence or because of supposedly “sloppy workmanship”.  That means that we have to spend money that we don’t have just for things that used to last but now don’t.

Let’s not forget the script!  The damnable consumption script that tells us that we “have” to get a new car, that we “have” to get a new home, that we “have” to get that new cellphone, that we “have” to go on that cruise or take that vacation, that we “have” to get the latest and greatest and best things for ourselves and our family.  And if money is an obstacle, banks will be “happy to help” by putting us further in debt.

That, my friends, is how someone making $125,000 a year can still end up working paycheck-to-paycheck.  Because they have to pay for that new house and that new car and that new TV set and that new wardrobe and that new cellphone on top of the basic necessities which continue to get more and more expensive while their own pay stagnates.

Let’s not forget that other script – the one recited like a church hymnal on talk radio and Fox News – that says that taxes are too high and they need to be cut and government is too big and too bulky and too cumbersome and it needs to be trimmed.  You cannot regurgitate that mantra and at the same time say that the cops deserve raises.  Where do you think the money comes from?

Let’s get brutally honest here… these are all the long-term effects of systemic income inequality here in the United States of America.  Because greedy companies put profits ahead of people, especially when it comes to their own workers, there is less money for people to pay for the basics, which continue to get more and more expensive, and it also means that there is less money for them to pay the taxes that would keep wages competitive for public employees such as cops and teachers and firefighters. 

Something needs to give here, and it can’t continually be those supposedly “ungrateful, lazy, irresponsible” masses.  History continually shows that when that happens, it does not end well.  The French and Russian aristocracies found that out the hard and bloody way.  And even when it doesn’t get violent, it does lead to things that conservatives and neo-conservatives and Trumpets claim to despise as well.  Things like socialism and communism.  If you really hate these things, then you need to stop being the very reason for these things to take hold. 

This is a problem that cannot be resolved overnight.  We’re having to fight decades of entrenched social scripting as well as a system that rewards profit above everything else.  But we still need to start somewhere, and a good place to start is a new message going up to those on the other end of the income inequality.  The ones at fault; the ones that created this mess in the first place through their blind stinking greed. 

They need to hear this message and heed this message loud and clear: If you don’t want history to repeat itself, if you don’t want to be fighting the encroachment of things like socialism and communism, if you want people to afford the things that you expect them to buy, if you want cops and teachers and firefighters to be paid better, then it is you, the wealthy and the powerful, that have to give something up for once.  You need to give up the greed.