Jul18

When is my money mine?

by joyce on July 18, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Posted In: From this headlines

It seems the GOP is behind efforts to permit employers to control whether or no their female employees have access through their health insurance to contraceptive services and prescriptions, access depending on the employer’s religious beliefs.

Let us follow this to its logical conclusion.  Health insurance is part of the wages employees have contracted to have as a condition of employment.  If my employer can dictate that I cannot spend part of that compensation on something to which he or she disagrees religiously, then can that same employer insist that I cannot purchase a bottle of wine for my Thanksgiving dinner?  Can he or she insist that I cannot purchase a cheeseburger because he or she is keeping kosher, and that is not just for observing Jews?  What about any other way in which I want to spend the money I have earned?

 

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Jul18

Language matters

by joyce on July 18, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Posted In: From this headlines

I have been reading around the blogosphere  lately and one thing has really struck me.  Language matters. Now I will admit up from that I was that dreaded specter the English teacher.  So out in the open, I care about language.  More of us need to.

One reason the economy is in the dumps is because we are not going out shopping, consuming enough.  We consumers.

But we are citizens first.  When we allow ourselves to be portrayed solely as consumers, consumers of goods and services, consumers of government, then we are allowing ourselves to be placed outside of things, passive.

The Constitution of the United States begins “We, the People;” the Declaration of Independence using phrases like “when one people dissolve.”  People, citizens, not consumers.

I remember when the department in a business or college that dealt with employees was the Personnel Department.  Think about what the term Human Resources means.  A resource is something one uses and discards when no longer useful.  Employees who are just resources do not need lunch breaks, pensions, sick leave, parental leave.  They are things to be used and discarded.  Employees who are personnel, on the other hand, do need these considerations.  They are joint creators of what the plant, school, factory, farm, produces.

I pledge to never again refer to a Human Resources Department.  It is the personnel department.  Anyone join me?

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Jul16

Atomic age begins

by joyce on July 16, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Posted In: Today in history

On this day in 1945 the first atomic bomb was tested. Scholars, military historians, politicians, almost everyone since has argued the pros and cons of the subsequent dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan thus ending the Second World War.  Within a few years the Soviet Union had the bomb.  We lived through tension and fear for the next few decades, wondering if the world as we knew it would end in any half-hour period.

I remember the now comical school drills of hiding under the desk with hands over our eyes.  I was in Washington DC during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, attending a seminar at the Library of Congress Folger library just a few blocks from the Capitol.  The constant awareness that death could come at any time and that we at that conference would not know made the poetry and discussions especially poignant.

Since September 11, 2001, our people, politicians, country has reacted to the sudden attack with hysteria, security theater, overreactions.  We are the people who faced down Joseph Stalin and Khrushev.  What happened?

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Jul13

One thing the Congress under the Articles did well

by joyce on July 13, 2012 at 10:34 pm
Posted In: Today in history

July 13, 1787 the Congress of the United States,  this is the government under the Articles of Confederation, passed the Northwest Ordinance.  This is one of the best acts of the government we had before the Constitution.

Under the Northwest Ordinance, Congress set out how to divide the territories into townships, and set up the organized settlement of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana.

But the best thing that this law did was to prohibit slavery in those territories.  The later disputes over moving slavery into new territories applied to the land we got under the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War.

 

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Jul12

Infrastructure and commerce

by joyce on July 12, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Posted In: Today in history

Today in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican, proposed that the federal government pay for and create a system of highways that would crisscross the country and provide easy movement for the armed forces in case of need.

We were in the Cold War, almost two years after fighting ceased in the Korean Conflict.  The Interstate Highway system was passed and the next couple of decades saw the construction of one of the best ways in which our commerce and economy thrived.

Having the interstate allowed companies to transport goods and supplies quicker and with less cost than regular travel.  If you have an doubts about the value of that system, drive from Miami to Jacksonville only using US 1.  Thank you no.

That system was proposed sixty years ago.  What are we doing today that will help commerce and still be as vital in 2072?

We are not repairing the infrastructure we have;  how will we cope when more bridges fail?

I hear talk of privatization, states which have sold or rented tollways;  we tried that way once.

I hear talk of reducing government and governmental services.  Scranton just slashed pay for police and firefighters to minimum wage, no negotiation, just a unilateral cut in pay.  Do we really want a society in which these functions are private?   Remember the reports the last couple of years about a fire department that simply allowed houses to burn because the homeowners had not paid the private company. If you rent, what about depending on your landlord to pay that fee? Societies have been there before.

We, as a society, created certain occupations and facilities as governmental functions because that was what worked best for all of us.

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