Why winter sucks!

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Sometimes I think about moving out of Kentucky, maybe to some place like dry Arizona or milder Oregon or Washington. Had we the bucks, maybe a compromise like Ft. Meyers, FL in the winter.  Hey, that would be a real plus, since it’d mean we’d see our beloved Bosox in their new digs.

You see, I think winter sucks!

Aw, can’t be that bad living winters in Kentucky.  What about real winter hells like the upper Midwest.  You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen a blizzard sweep its way through South Dakota or January temps plummet to 30 below in Minnesota.  How about a New England snowdrop of 20 inches?

Yeah, man, I know what you’re saying.  In fact, I spent my boyhood in New England and lived in South Dakota and Minnesota, too.  I should add Wyoming.  Damn, that’s a place makes hell’s heat look easy!

Ok, guess it’s an age thing then.  I still don’t like it right down to my sniffles and shivers.  Let me count the reasons why:

1.  Because winter keeps me indoors:

Me, I’m an outdoor guy who lives for his garden.  Dawn means rising to eager endeavors of trimming roses, cutting the lawn, a bit of weeding here and there, off to Lowe’s for plants and fertilizer.  Winter’s like wearing a monitor bracelet.  I can look out, but I can’t really leave.  TV sucks for the most part.   Why I can’t even wash the car.

2.  Because winter makes me feel blah

Think of it this way.  Beginning with spring, nature turns technicolor, with daffodils, tulips and hyacinths bursting through winter’s cold, denuded earth, followed by summer’s contagion of color gone wild in sharp contrast to winter’s monochrome back and white.  Is there a tie-in between weather and how you feel.  You bet there is!  I know summer buoys me and winter drags.

3.  Because winter wars against my taste buds:

Winter means hothouse foods with their dull taste and often decimated nutrition. Warm weather means fresh food, farmer markets, and roadside stands; your own garden veggies just picked, free of sprays.  While frozen veggies and berries help preserve nutrition in our stores during winter, nothing goes down better than just harvested strawberries or home grown tomatoes.

4.  Because winter means shoveling snow:

When  I was a kid, it was a different matter.  Now it’s a damn nuisance that just won’t go away.  It insists on getting done right away and, like housework, often comes right back.  Used to be the kids did it.  They have their own nests now.  Suddenly I ‘m aware I’m up there with the big ones, the import nations like my own.  Food, mail, other victuals–they have to find a way in and that means I’ve got to find a way out.  Shoveling doesn’t get easier when you’re packing on years.  Snow blower?  Would have to dig a path to the shed just to retrieve it, plus more money to buy and “feed” it.

5.  Because winter busts the budget:

Higher energy costs are now a salient feature of modern life and are destined to go still higher, maybe even skyrocket, given diminishing resources concurrent with increasing demand and environmental mandates.  As is, we’re on the budget leveling formula to equalize monthly payments.  Even that plan taxes the budget as winter weighs upon  the summer months in shaping monthly outlay.  Geothermal’s the way to go–that is, if you’re young, don’t plan to move, and have $30,000 handy.

6.  Because winter menaces my health:

Case in point:  my wife and I just had this conversation last night about taking-in Spielberg’s new Lincoln movie, only to decide we didn’t want to put up with the coughing, sneezing, throat-clearing cacophony of the movie audience.  Germs like crowded contexts, multiplying sputum contact and dirty surfaces.  Bad enough in the box stores, made worse by hacking coughers who don’t seem to mind sharing their misery in friendly fire in a crowded aisle.  I can’t even say I feel safe visiting my doctor and enduring the waiting room of obviously people feeling quite miserable,  T’is the season to be jolly?  No, t’is the season to catch the flu!

7.  Because winter inconveniences:

It’s no fun having to chip your windshield free of ice or dealing with handles refusing to budge; or irritating others in holding up traffic while you wait for the defroster to kick-in; or slipping on black ice along with other assorted evils.  Winter driving can even get you to the hereafter sooner than expected or end in serious maiming or an expensive bumper encounter.  It’s a risk you can lessen by escaping to a warmer sanctuary.  Then there are those power outages, falling limbs, and advanced supermarket raids leaving shelves empty just when you need foodstuffs most.  Last, very least, but still annoying–that dry skin that defies all lotion.

8.  Because winter interferes with my wanting to go almost naked:

I like jumping out of the car and into the store unencumbered by a coat.  Much better to enter in near runner’s garb, move to the goal line quickly, hop back in and return home.  No hat or gloves to fuss over or accidentally leave behind in a restaurant.  No coat buttons to deal with.

Now don’t tell me you like winter.  Only in places like Minnesota do people say crazy things like that.  Here, you can take my shovel.  I’ll not be needing it in Arizona.

Personal Reflections on Dave Brubeck

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We lost a great jazz musician this week, Dave Brubeck.  As I write, “Take Five” reverberates in my mind.  The two seem connected automatically.  Think of one, you think of the other.  He didn’t compose it  (that was Paul Desmond), but his fingerprints are all over it.

I didn’t know beans about jazz until one day, as a 19-year old air force serviceman stationed at Ellsworth AFB near Rapid City, SD, I was waiting to catch a bus back to base when I chanced upon one of those memorable chats we sometimes sereptiously run into with strangers we never meet again.  For some reason, we fell upon jazz, or rather he introduced me to it, mentioning names I’d never heard of like George Shearing and Dave Brubeck.

In coming days, I began tuning in, beginning with those muffled, soothing keyboard sounds of Shearing, whom I came to adore.  Soon I was into a growing repertoire of jazz greats–the likes of the inimical Duke, Mingus,  Satchmo, Montgomery and, of course, Dave Brubeck. I was hooked!

Across the years, my love for jazz hasn’t diminished, though I confess I’m not enamored of the popular species passed around today as “smooth jazz,” which I won’t pursue here.  I often like to think of jazz as today’s classical music.  I thought I had coined an original in that observation till one day I came across a jazz notable, name forgotten, saying the same thing.  Anyway, I appreciate the confirmation from a reputable source.

I also would contend that jazz has been our best art export, often taking on more popularity abroad in places like London and Paris than here at home where it seems relegated like poetry to backstage scenarios or college campuses, NPR and, sometimes, PBS.  If you’re looking for some great live renditions, you can still find them of course in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Local gigs, alas, seem background to dinner conversation in most clubs these days, with dissonance smothering even the most sultry rhythms with one improvement:  in the old days when public smoking was in, you’d be lucky even to make out the combo in the densely floating haze.

The thing I like most about jazz and that binds me to it fiercely is its heart-and-soul improvisation.  If it isn’t there, hey, it ain’t jazz.  Jazz is the music of freedom, doing it your own way, always in  process, an ever happening.  Jazz makes me feel free, speaks to my uniqueness and yours, captivates with its reverberations of old themes in new ways.

Brubeck was the master improviser, fiercely independent, even defiant.  Ahead of his time, he ardently opposed segregation and refused to perform where it was practiced.

In music, he defined the octet, quartet and trio.  At his most innovative, he departed from the traditional 4/4 jazz beat, composing or playing at 5/4 (e.g., “Take Five”).  It didn’t stop there.

Few people know he barely survived the Battle of the Bulge, which saw his unit trapped behind enemy lines.

Or that he loved classical music deeply, especially Bach and Beethoven.  Like many of his cohorts, his roots lay in classical music and continues in contemporaries like Herbie Hancock and Alicia Keyes.  He aspired to writing serious pieces of his own, composing music for ballets, operas, and even a mass oratorio.  (He became a Catholic in 1980.)

Or that his Time Out album (1959) was the first jazz album to exceed a million sales.

Back in the summer of 1986 while a stipend summer student at Yale, I came across Dave Brubeck within touching reach when he performed on the New Haven Green. And of course it included the mesmerizing “Take Five.” I regret I was then too shy to shake his hand.

Brubeck, a deeply religious man, once described heaven as where his friends Satchmo, the Duke, and Basie were jamming all day, everyday, forever.  They’ve a new member now. and they’re jamming like crazy!

Thank you, Dave, for the music.  Thank you for the man you were.

rj

The why of anxiety and the how of coping

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How is it we learn to be anxious? Surely it’s rooted in our past, maybe even in our childhood: a teacher’s stinging reprimand, a parent’s rejecting scorn, unsuspecting betrayal by a friend, a passionate love not returned. We all carry wounds and though outwardly they heal, we trace the scars where the knife went in.  Anxiety flourishes when subsequent instances get past our defenses and replay the past.

Anxiety also takes hold when we face threats to our well-being, as in encountering a new geography, job, or intimidating individual, since we find safety in the familiar.  In extreme cases, it can develop into agoraphobia where leaving the house, for example, can trigger a panic response.  I have known such people in their trembling and labored breathing, and my heart swells with compassion.

Anxiety always pervades when we want something too much, forgetting every gain, even when achieved, is encumbered with the threat of loss. Life’s tendency, after all, is to lend rather than grant and to choose when to take back. Anxiety anchors itself in musts, when the true law of happiness is to discern what we can’t control and when it’s time to let go. I once met a woman who clung to a self-centered man, who often treated her badly. Though she knew the relationship was faulty, her anxiety for validation precluded her doing the right thing. Sometimes when we think we’re loving others we’re demanding love for ourselves. When love eludes us in our early years, we look for it repeatedly through others.

In matters of declining health, the scenario can become very scary and our imagination runs wild, rendering us hypochondriacs. It’s easy to become anxious when our bodies no longer respond as they used to and what we once found easy becomes more labored. Like our cars, our bodies take-on mileage and parts begin to break down. Declining health can nullify carefully laid plans and jeopardize our happiness. We help ourselves when we make lifestyle changes affecting diet, exercise, stress and sleep.

Related to the former, our greatest anxiety flows from wrestling with our mortality. When we’re young we give it little regard. As we grow older, we know the actuary tables don’t lie. Indeed, we feel it in our bones. Religion with its tenet of an afterlife capitalizes on the universality of such anguish. Life’s temporal nature can’t be altered, but its dividend is to teach us to value what truly matters. Accepting our mortality and doing what we can to enhance our health, while not easy, works like ginger tea on a nervous stomach.

Living life happily in a context of limitation takes a raw, every day courage, and I’ve met and often read of such people with admiration. It’s not that these heroes escape anxiety, but they”re not wallowing in it. I’m very fond of baseball, not because it’s exciting, which it often isn’t, but because of all the sports I like such things as the constant replay of the face-to-face duel between pitcher and hitter as an exemplum of grace under pressure. The pitcher needs the out; the batter needs the hit. Neither must flinch. I’ve known of players who lose their cool and whom anxiety masters, ending their stardom.

It’s easy to talk about freeing ourselves of anxiety. The trick is in knowing how. Psychology is built upon helping us find our way past worry and dread and sometimes it resorts to pills to help us through, when the truth is the answer lies within ourselves and not a pill that merely treats symptoms.   All anxiety is born of desire–whether for security, love, power, or fame.

To truly overcome anxiety requires our developing a sense of detachment and avoiding taking ourselves too seriously. Life needs to be lived in perspective. Wrong things, hurtful things happen, whether of man or nature’s making. The healing comes from not wanting anything overly, but living with acceptance of life’s rhythms one day at a time, doing what we can. Anxiety changes nothing, and often makes matters worse.

Living life free of anxiety is something akin to a would be swimmer, who before he can swim must first learn to float. It’s all in letting go.

rj

Reflections on Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
That sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
—Emily Dickinson

Hope is a type of faith, a belief it will get better, whether today or tomorrow or then some.

Hope spurs the unemployed to seek work again; lies behind every college student’s quest; perseveres in the face of illness; is the new born child cradled in its mother’s arms.

Hope checkmates impossibility; colors every dream, informs all kindness.

Hope softens hardened grief; propels our good wishes; trumps experience.

Hope is the elixir of imagination; grants patience; teaches forgiveness.

Hope makes love possible; validates the future.

Hope is a tender flower. Nourish it and it will bloom.

Be well,

rj

Let’s get rid of the SATS!

Call it the “Rites of Adolescence,” but every month millions of high school students will sweat through the ACT or SAT tests in hopes of earning scores that will get them in to the college of their choice.

I happen to think there’s a better way than assessing scores to determine “the worthy,” and fortunately the gig may soon be up for such tests anyway as more colleges are dropping the requirement or making it optional.

As is, the traditional way of ranking students on the basis of test results is fraught with cultural bias, even though testing originally had potential for leveling the playing field. Now all you had to do was prove your smarts, and no matter your ethnicity, gender, locale, or social-economics, you were guaranteed a place at the table. No more governing factors such as money and class. Whatever the nobility of the seminal motive, the system now in place hardly assures equity.

Consider that test results are sensitive to coaching and those who can afford it resort to this approach. Some take the test multiple times, trusting schools will consider their highest score only.

There’s also the risk of cheating as in this year’s Long Island scandal.

Additionally, some institutions wanting their way into U.S. News and World Report‘s annual rankings manipulate the data to their advantage, the most notorious example occurring at Claremont McKenna College in 2007, leading to the resignations of several administrators.

Those who defend testing contend it has value in assessing how well students will perform in their first year of college. I would counter that the new research indicates students outside the testing paradigm do fairly well so long as their grades were good in high school. After all, motivation plays a big part in succeeding as a college student, given the rigor of many college courses, and good grades throughout high school are strong markers of that needed discipline.

Advocates would also claim the tests indicate mastery of writing, reading, and reasoning, skills needed in college.

If the latter is true, you might think that SATs and the like are essentially IQ tests and you wouldn’t be wrong, since researchers have found a strong correlation. I think of IQ tests as setting up a kind of caste system, again with the more affluent at the top, reflecting greater access to good schools and high culture. It reminds me of playing Trivial Pursuit. If you win, does it mean you’re smarter than your fellow game players? On the contrary, it merely shows you may be more informed through greater exposure.

I have always thought we would do better by evaluating aptitude. We’re all different, and we all know people who are book smart, but rather clumsy at anything else. On the other hand, I’ve known everyday people with little education beyond high school whom I’ve relied upon to solve the daily complexities that often render me helpless. I don’t know about you, but I’m all thumbs when it comes to mechanics, carpentry, and things electrical. I have two graduate degrees, but I’m really horrendously bankrupt in so many areas. I may second guess my doctor, but never when it comes to my plumber!

In closing, consider the wise counsel of former Towson University president James L. Fisher:

“For more than 50-years, replicable research has indicated there is a better predictor than any combination of all the present predictors (class rank, GPA, and standardized test). The best predictor is an easily computer academic composite score derived from subjects taken in secondary schools and English, mathematics, grades received, certain science courses, foreign language and advanced placement courses with weights assigned based on grades received)”(www.tcp/news/).

Sorry Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Henry Ford that you didn’t get-in. Have you thought about joining the Army?

Raindrops keep falling on my head and I’m lovin’ it


What comes to your mind when you think of rain?  I started thinking about this the other day after taking-in a round of pop music on my iPad.  While love pervades as a music theme, the rain motif isn’t any slacker.  I think of songs like

    “I’m Singing in the Rain”

    “Rain Rain Beautiful Rain”

    “Rain”

    “Broken Umbrella”

    “The Gentle Rain”

    “What Have They Done to the Rain?”

    “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head”

    “September in the Rain”

    “Because of Rain”

    “It never rains in California”

In brief, there are scores of songs featuring rain, often not apparent in song titles. So what gives?

To be sure, many of us find rain depressing.  I knew a woman years ago who lived a year in Tacoma, and found she couldn’t bear it.  Rain as a downturner is common even in some of our frequent idioms:  “I don’t mean to rain on your parade.”  Psychology confirms that rain can be a depressant and often employs a passed-around acronym, RAIN, to mark off the steps in overcoming the blues.

But that isn’t the way rain usually works for me.  Sure, I rail against it when it spoils picnic plans, etc., or when there’s too much, too long.  On the other hand, I often find rain an elixir in slowing my pace, a catalyst to deeper thought bringing me into better contact with myself and spilling over into reassessed, more appreciative relationships with loved ones.  In this sense, I think of rain as a sweetener, or sugar, that can actually enhance life’s daily brew. Rain gives me time-out.

I suppose the latent psychology of this is why our movies so often foreground interims of reassessment as in The Bridges of Madison County.

It’s like this in serious literature, too, where rain often assumes the role of archetype, or innate symbolization in humanity, regardless of culture.  While rain can connote death as fate in Heminway’s A Farewell to Arms, a novel that both begins ands with rain, it more often intuits regeneration as in the ancient myths.  Rain offers hope, if there is any, in Eliot’s The Wasteland, and the poem’s thunder towards its end augurs salvation.

I can’t speak for you, but I love going to sleep at night to the soft snare drum of raindrops on the roof.  And when I can’t have it that way, I’ll resort to my iPad Nature application with its bubbling brooks, ocean surf and, my favorite–the pitter-patter of falling rain. Who needs Ambien?

Insatient Romantic that I am, I’ll often fall into these moods with the first gentle Spring rains of April, and just wish I could stay outside all day in it.

And when I’m actually caught in such a shower, I’m transposed into Gene Kelly, replete with unfurled umbrella, and I’m singing, yes, I’m singing in the rain!

rj

Is government planning to nationalize the pension system?

Currently, rumors have been floating like broom-seated witches in the wind that the government wants to not only overhaul America’s pension system, but replace it with its own.  Nationalization then is the buzz word here.  Private plans such as IRAs and 401(k)s would ultimately be eliminated (National Seniors Council).

How tenable are such rumors?  We do know that the Labor Department has been looking at pension reform, soliciting input from several interests such as the AFL-CIO, who are urging more government regulation of private retirement accounts and maybe replacing 401(k)s, for example, with government annuities.  Some on the Left argue that 401(k)s and IRA’s discriminate against the poor.

Those on the right, however, fear that the government would set-up its pension annuities similar to Social Security, which is invariably used as a slush fund to buoy up government spending.  Benefit taxes would be subject to a sliding scale based on individual or family income. In short, redistribution would be built in.

Now let me give my view, not necessarily pleasant, but hardly fraught with fear-mongering conspiracies of a Marxist coup d’etat.

Yes, government is seeking to overhaul the pension system, but only to generate more revenue.   Huge deficits can’t continue without having to pay the piper.  Ask the Europeans.  Washington isn’t interested in nationalizing the pension system, though Argentina is about to do it, or eliminating private pension options.

Let’s take your IRA or 401(k), for an example of the way government sees them as potential sources for increased revenue.  At age 70.5, you have to make regular withdrawals known as “required minimum distributions”.  You pay a tax on those withdrawals, but they can be strung out over a very long duration, depriving the government of revenue.

As is, present contributions to 401(k)s are anticipated to swell tax deferrals by the billions in coming years.  For instance, backtracking to fiscal 2011, deferrals resulted in an estimated $111.7 billion revenue loss.  For 401(k)s alone, the loss is put at $67.1 billion (egis.ebscolhost.com).

Then there’s that issue of fairness I mentioned at the outset.  While you’re currently allowed in 2013 to contribute as much as $17,500 and a catch-up contribution of $5,500 for those age 50 or over, how many of us can actually contribute anywhere near the maximum?  But the rich can and do, reaping substantial tax benefits.  It’s the old formula perhaps that money makes money.

I think you get the picture.  Even here in Kentucky where I live, state government is looking for increased revenue sources too.  Currently, it’s on the drawing board to tax Social Security benefits just like the federal government.  By the way, while some states may seem tax havens for retirees,  know that laws can change.  Right now, Kentucky’s Homestead Exemption Act provides a break in taxes on property assessed value for senior citizens at age 65.  Even that isn’t chiseled in granite.  In 2011, Minnesota dropped their provision.

Conspiracy?  Socialist take-over?  No way!  The fact is that we live in lean times.  The challenge is then to cut spending meaningfully and fairly and safely.  But how you do that in a long-term marginal economy has thus far eluded resolution.

rj

Jane Holtz Kay: a Voice in the Wilderness

The sun rises and sets each day, and every morning we wake anew to life’s daily rhythms. Busy with ourselves, we often miss what happens beyond our sphere, confirming Auden’s poignant observation concerning the personal nature of human suffering in his poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts”.

Take the death of Jane Holtz Kay, for example, from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease on November 5. Apart from a NYT piece (November 20, 2012) calling her “a prophet of global warming,” her death has been largely missed by media. It’s probable most of us have never heard of her. That’s been true of me.

Out of curiosity, I researched Wikipedia and came up with nothing. A google search reported her death and provided a link to a Guest Book, presently with eleven entries, written by those who knew her personally.  I checked the archives of  The Nation magazine as well, since I had learned she was its architecture critic for 30-years.  No mention of her death.

Perhaps what really matters in the context of our mortality is not who we were, but what we did.  We touched lives, bringing healing, insight, and acceptance. We left behind an ongoing legacy of wisdom and wise counsel, making the world better.

In 1997, Kay wrote a landmark book on automobiles: Asphalt Nation: How the automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back.  A classic, it demonstrates not only the cost to our environment (carbon dioxide emissions speeding up global warming), but the destructive social aspect of cars themselves: the loss of historical sites, decline in public transit, suburban sprawl and, not least, the automobile’s weakening of social ties. Interestingly, she points out the Amish repudiation of cars is not because somehow the combustion engine is inherently evil, but because it dilutes proximity and, hence, community.

She had written three other books on monitoring our natural resources and managing our urban space, but Asphalt Nation, timely and passionate, may be her most memorable. She left unfinished a follow-up called Last Chance Landscape, dealing with the fallout of global warming in our immediate future.

I think she’d be pleased that coal, at least, seems on the decline in the U. S. But then there are those  troubling developments in China and India, where auto manufacturing is increasingly viewed as a linchpin to economic prosperity.  According to the World Resources Institute, 1200 coal powered plants are at least in the planning stage globally, with three-quarters of them slated for China and India (rpt. in Time, November 21, 2012). Since coal is the single, most contributing factor in accelerating global warming, we may just all be doomed if these coal plants come on-line.

Such environmental callousness chagrined Kay enormously, and sometimes she lamented that she felt like a voice in the wilderness with nobody listening. That’s what makes global warming so insidious: it seems distant, vague, not immediate, despite the increasingly savage storms, drought, flooding and record temperatures. It didn’t even emerge as an issue in the four recent election debates. It’s also an inconvenient issue when governments can’t manage their budgets

Though the earth still spins and life seems to go on, the truth is each day is lessened in its quality by our crimes against Nature’s delicate fabric.  While the world may little note Jane Holtz Kay, we ignore her legacy at our own peril.

rj

Sugar and Cancer

Sugar and cancer

I never realized just how dangerous sugar can be to good health. Not only can it lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, it can actually encourage cancer. Consider these three facts about cancer:

1. Cancer flourishes in an anaerobic (low oxygen) environment.

2. It thrives on glucose.

3. It needs iron.

The good news is there are steps you can take to prevent encouraging cancer growth:

1. Select an aerobic form of exercise to oxidate your blood.

2. Limit sugar and high fructose corn syrup

3. Avoid excessive iron levels.

But back to sugar per se. I would highly recommend you look at medical researcher Gary Taubes’ New York York Times piece, April 13, 2011, on the subject, which summarizes the findings of the highly regarded Robert Lustig of the University of Californa (San Francisco). It will change your life. Maybe even save it.

My conversion to the Left

Let me tell you of my conversion to the Left

1.  The Great Recession:  Our worst economic crisis since the stock market collapse in 1928, its genesis clearly lies with Wall Street speculators and the banking industry.  With dollar signs for eyeballs, they lured many home buyers, often minorities, into high end mortgages fabricated by a bubble market swelled by over investment.  Subprime and adjusted rate mortgages flourished.  Ultimately, there were too many houses out there, reducing home mortgage values and, boom, the stock market debacle of 2008.  I believe government banking reform might have preempted this crisis.

2.   The transfer of wealth:  Whatever gains in wealth we’ve made over the last 30 years have largely benefitted the wealthy.   The collapse of the housing market is just one  recent example, with middle class buyers exchanging their already limited capital for long-term indebtedness on over priced homes.  While they may think they own their own homes, the reality is the banks own them for up to the next 30 years; in most cases, at huge profit.  Just do the math.  Ironically, the financiers responsible for the collapse have gotten away with their greed, some of them bailed out with tax payer money, even as they show no such charity towards those who default.  Their current vogue is to buy up these foreclosures for potential investment, particularly by foreigners.  Meanwhile, millions of other below-water “homeowners” struggle to honorably meet their monthly payments on houses no longer worth their purchase price in states where they have no recourse.

3.  Tax inequity:  Is it fair that a candidate for the presidency worth $240 million, owning several mansions, and with $100 million invested for his sons,  should pay at a tax rate of only 14% on his income in the last two years while many of us with median middle class incomes pay proportionately more?  This is but one example that surely could be multiplied by the thousands privileged to enjoy loopholes you and I can’t access.  Even social security gets rigged in their favor, with the salary max for social security taxes on 2012 income capped at $110, 000.  Talk about a windfall for the rich!

4.  Deficient health care:  Even the progressive Health Care Reform Act (to be fully implemented in 2014),  fails to remedy what ails us–the lack of a single payer system such as Canada enjoys with consequential lower costs and universal access.  As a fallout, you and I pay more for health care than in any of the developed nations,  concurrently with limited options.  I’m a retiree on Medicare, for example, yet must pay out of my pocket fully for eye glasses and hearing aids.  And then there are the ever escalating medical costs for all Americans far in access of annual inflation.  I say we can do better.

5.   Foreign policy:  We’re meddlers strutting our imperialism with a Daddy knows all approach.  We lavish more on the military than all the world’s countries combined, including Russia and China.  We’re beholden to Israel, an apartheid nation that would happily snare us into waging their conflicts for them and is busy killing Gaza civilians as I write.   In America, every decade seems to threaten a new war.  Now there’s pending trouble with Iran.  Our children bleed and die.  Iraq was a terrible folly and Afghanistan seems increasingly pointless.  We got our man.  Let’s go home.  Now!

6.  Environment:  Those on the Right simply laugh off or prove indifferent to climate change, some even proclaiming it a hoax.  For them, it’s business as usual, with profits their end-game.  As such, they remind me of those anti-evolution die-heads of years ago, still latent in today’s creationists.  While a few may admit to climate change, they downgrade its human component.  More coal, more oil.  Now their rage for Keystone. For the sake of a wounded Earth and for future generations, I cast my lot with the Left in its vibrancy as to what’s at stake..

7.  The crazies:  Conservatives, neo-cons, tea party devotees–they make me shiver–all those tirades against pro-choice, gays, immigrants, stem cell research, health care reform;  denigrators of the UN, deniers of global warming, the need for cap and trade, alternative fuels, they wed themselves to the past.  I dislike, too, their moral politics fettered to a religious view:  the creationists conflating theism with science, the zealots for capital punishment while decrying abortion; the unfeeling purists on death with dignity legislation, which they defeated in my native state of Massachusetts two weeks ago.  It’s company I choose not to keep.  I  prefer the affirmers, not the deniers; those who foster fairness and reconciliation, not callousness and division; those who champion change, not stultifying tradition; those who embrace optimism, not pessimism.

While I love my country dearly,  I think it can do better.  Like Bruce Springsteen, I’m proud to be born in the USA.  It’s a really great place. That is, if you’re on top.

Be well,

rj