Ginger56’s Weblog

This morning I opened an email from someone I love. It was a forward entitled “Are We That Stupid” and purported to supply a great many facts about taxes and illegal immigration. The basic suggestion boiled down to this: Illegal immigration costs more than the war in Iraq so people should not concern themselves with the war’s cost but only with the (supposed) social service dollars being used by illegal immigrants. Here is my response:

The short answer is “Yes, I am that stupid.” In spades. I don’t have time right now to check all the links you sent. But here’s one I did check with the response of the sponsors of the site: http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/22958.html. The site itself takes issues with the “facts” in your email.

Second, the supposed list of costs of “illegal aliens” includes some completely unverifiable guesses–such as 200 billion in lost wages. And the diatribe relies on the 200 billion to come up with a tally of less than 400 billion dollars that remains 1/2 or less of the ongoing cost of the war in Ira–and we haven’t even seen the costs of caring for physically and psychologically wounded warriors from Iraq. Many of the jobs performed by Mexican workers are jobs citizens will not do. And aside from the ethnic hostility such emails stir up (by which I am nothing short of appalled) the fact remains that many of these workers (those with phony soc sec numbers) also contribute taxes–without reaping the benefits.

Furthermore, it’s absolutely not true that Barrack Obama plans to raise taxes on most Americans–although I doubt under the present circumstances that he will be able to offer the tax cuts he has promised. Tax increases (or more accurately returns to previous levels) will occur for those in the top 1% of our popultation. Are you making more than $250,000 a year? If you were, do you think it would bankrupt you to pay some of those thousands in taxes in order to rebuild infrastructure and, yes, support the military? You can look at those taxes as insurance to protect you from the social disintegration and criminality likely to result from the continuing redistribution of wealth in this country to the rich and away from the workers–of whatever origin–at the bottom of the ladder? How many of your own benefits–social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, occupational safety, clean air and water, safe drugs . . . are you willing to give up or reduce?

Finally, it is simply LUDICROUS to blame the present mess entirely on the Democratic congress that has had the slimmest majority for 2 years of the last 15 (Republicans controlled national legislation from 1994 until 2006). Much of what the brief majority aimed to do was thwarted by fillibusters. Recognition that rightful moral outrage against the war’s beginning could not translate into an easy answer to the present situation made it difficult to limit it or bring troops home–and save money there. In fact, for those of you who cheer for the surge, that was authorized under this Democratic congress–should they shoulder all the credit for that?

The mess we’re seeing unravel now is certainly of bipartisan–and CITIZEN–creation. Greed at every level, ignorance of the facts, an unmerited trust in our own righteousness and confidence in our unending economic prosperity, and–as evidenced by this poisonous forward–rampant jingoism have put us in a terrible position. The way out is not misrepresentation of the facts or finger-pointing at a group of people whose clout in this nation is notably NOT impressive. If illegal immigration is anything like the problem this email suggests, then the employers must bear AT LEAST as much blame for the problem because people do not come here for welfare–and you can’t get unemployment insurance unless you’ve HAD a job and lost it. (Ask my daughter who’s been looking for work for six months and has a master’s degree.)

And regardless of what costs more. Which is more immoral: preemptive action against a government and people that had NOT attacked and, it turns out had no capacity to attack, us or taking care of people who are living and working amongst us? People who are our neighbors. As a Christian I believe in caring for my neighbors–whoever they are and wherever they come from. And those social services that you accuse these folks of taking (believe me I’ll check the web sites) are also available and used by citizens–including yourself. Ask yourself which party is behind ideas like disability insurance.

I’m sorry to sound so angry. But I am. Forwards like this make me furious. I have always thought of you as compassionate and gentle, but this anger at a group of people whom we hardly know–that extends to the language they speak–strikes me as anything but. It is scapegoating–and an oversimplification of a complicated and long-standing problem.

Sometimes I do just delete (as the email recommends), but this morning I simply can’t do that. Too much is at stake. If in my checking of web sites, I find some truth in the points you’ve raised, I will apply them to the rest of what I know–and believe to be right. My real problem with this email is its hatefulness and its suggestion that if war is cheaper it is therefore right or shouldn’t be questioned. That is a dangerous as well as an immoral position.

So I am at least as stupid as the people referenced by your email.

And I plan to continue in that path.

Sometime last week in the course of the media’s gluttonous consumption of Sarah Palin, she expressed her view that government is not the answer to everything—implying, quite reasonably but inaccurately, that her opponents believe it is exactly that.

In fact, as a now rabid supporter of the Democratic ticket my concern is not that government answer EVERYTHING but that it shift what it answers, and in particular what it spends our money for.

My counterparts on the right (footnote: try finding a neutral synonym for “opponent,” “adversary,” that doesn’t connote “enemy”)

OK. My counterparts on the right ASSUME that the military is sacrosanct. So in the same way that my fellow lefties view social security as off limits and inviolable, these Republicans never mention the military budget when speaking of cutting federal spending. Instead, McCain, Palin, Bush, and others pontificate on the government’s obligation to protect the people from enemies.

(Equal time: Democrats rarely invoke the enormous cost of social security. They invoke the sacred obligation to fulfill promises and protect people from hard times.)

Here’s the interesting thing. The right’s version of “protection” includes fetal life and military security. The left’s emphasizes health (certainly an implied sub-category of “life” as a constitutional right and core value), privacy, humane incarceration (including no torture), education (a key component in this economy of “happiness”), the environment (without a healthy ecology life will no longer exist . . . period).

My point is that Palin’s formulation—“government is the left’s answer to everything” –distorts reality. It’s not a question of more or less spending—the Bush budget with its enormous growth and deficits due to military spending proves this emphatically. Instead, left and right offer different clusters of issues and circumstances for which government should provide solutions. And, as a consequence, when they “save” money, they will save it in different areas.

McCain and Palin want to reduce the size of government while maintaining the colossal military expenditures. (If you’re interested, there are some excellent visual representations available to demonstrate how current military budgets dwarf all other expenditures outside the so-called entitlements<http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm>, <http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending>, <http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php>.) The candidates speak with moral superiority of eliminating “ear marks”—those are the monies you re-elect your representatives to bring home (the “bridge to nowhere” being a prime example). They will almost certainly suggest some level of privatization for future social security (and please remember what’s happening to your stocks right now when you consider whether that should be the basis for “security” in your children’s futures). The only other areas to cut spending are domestic programs, and that’s a code for “programs that help the poor, defend endangered species and environments, support the arts, and so on.

Obama will be hard-pressed to reduce military spending not only because he (like McCain) will inherit wars already in progress—including, it seems likely this morning—one in Pakistan but also because our economy is so militarized (the military industrial complex is no myth) that to reduce spending on the military you have to figure out what to do for hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans who build weapons and war planes—and not only for the U.S.— to earn their paychecks.

But Obama’s approach will be to seek ways to do that—partly, as Obama has said, by encouraging development of greener energies and industries. And they will want to hold the line on military spending while protecting—if we’re lucky, expanding somewhat– the protections poorer and border-line poor Americans depend on for maintaining a decent quality of life. Democrats will be hard-pressed to do much in this area. But their philosophy will not necessarily be to expand government. Their approach will be to apply its advantages as a giant and over-arching institution and, yes, collector of money, in ways best-suited to its strengths. These include the environment and the social net. Personally, I think education should remain local; the federal government may set the tone but should not attempt to impose achievement and other standards on the states and localities.

Democrats regard the environment as appropriate for federal activity because too many aspects of environment (air, water e.g.) cross state boundaries and many more local actions have consequences that touch the rest of the nation, even the globe, profoundly and irrevocably. Another of these is the grand social net. In part, our mobile society requires a federal answer to generally balancing incomes. This is a now antique (but forgotten mostly) insight from the social activists of the thirties to the fifties. They realized that if New York chooses to take care of its poor while Pennsylvania chooses not to, the poor from Pennsylvania (or Tennessee or wherever) are likely to descend on New York in droves, straining the limits of its charity. The same applies to healthcare, which is not just for the poor.

As a leftist, I do believe government in some sense is the best answer to providing healthcare for all Americans and, yes, to reduce costs somewhat in the process. That view fits nicely with my view that the elderly should not have to be homeless and penniless, at the mercy of failing pensions, risky stock markets (how’s your nest egg doing this month?) and so forth. I won’t get into how much protection that should be, but suffice it to say that I believe the “right to life” ought to include some level of quality. So just as the unwanted child who ends up abused should be protected from beatings, the elderly person with no other resources should be allowed the dignity of “deserving” and receiving at least enough to “get by.” Personally, I don’t have trouble with pro-life—except when it forces a woman to carry a dead child to term or to risk her life for it or to bear for nine months the reminder of a traumatic sexual assault. But if you’re pro-life (as my pastor pointed out just last week), how can you be pro-capitol punishment? And, by extension, how can you condemn those you insist on bringing to term to sub-standard housing, with wages so low they are unlivable, and often the near certainty of prison time based on your color and your neighborhood demographics?

If you can’t do that (and I can’t), then you have to look at the pile of money and the size of the problems and seek solutions. Some solutions will without doubt have to come from private charity. But some solutions are better imposed either by statute and regulation (which cost money to enforce) or by direct expenditure on programs (which cost money for actually delivery of services). My impression is that those of you who can rationalize leaving such folks to fend for themselves or to depend on wonderful but inadequate private charities, will look at that same pile as the price of protection from terrorists and illegal immigration.

I’ll leave aside for the moment whether that’s a good idea and offer a bargain: I’ll agree to stringent oversight for social programs and to seeking ways to streamline the federal bureaucracies that fund them etc. etc. But you must agree to examine the military budget with a careful eye to cutting spending.

Peace, as others have observed, is not merely the absence of war. Life (at least life worth living) is more than the presence of a heartbeat. However, enemies exist—and opponents who might become enemies exist. The job of government is to fulfill the roles most suited to its nature as our collective pocketbook. Of course, we want to be safe from terrorists. But let’s go back to asking what’s the best way to do that. Should we invade a country, take over its government (to prevent a vacuum) and spend 10 billion dollars a day for five or more years on an experiment in nation-building? Or should we arrange for protection of our borders (in airports, bus terminals etc) while exercising the best diplomacy money can buy and redistributing some of the military’s budget toward giving us economic security—not only in the form of direct social programs and health care but also in the form of job retraining, appropriate federal action on education and protection of vulnerable cities from disasters?

That’s what I’d do. And I guarantee, it can be done without raising the cost of doing the country’s business.

I guess I’m not the only one who sees a link between the Palin pregnancy and sex education. Here’s a link to an article with many more facts than I who reaches a similar conclusion–at least with respect to the kind and availability of sex education.

Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/opinion/06blow.html?th&emc=th

On Mothers’ Day (and as a mom I’m well aware that tomorrow IS that day and fully count on being “honored”) we celebrate an impossible ideal. Culture and media as well as our own rose-colored emotions conjure an image of a saintly, cookie baker that resembles almost no one I know. As one drive-by business sign summarized the prevailing attitude, “Mothers are angels without wings.”

As a flesh and blood, flawed and sometimes regretful member of that class, I cringe at such misrepresentations. They both call on me to be what I am not and tend to kick me out of a group to which I belong in spite of my flaws and transgressions. And, by invoking the entirely demystified and slightly immature cherub—in the tradition of the fairy godmother aunts in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty—the superficial stereotypes reduce the mystery, power, real sacrifice and intense and instinctual relationship compounded in mother-and child-hood. Motherhood is miraculous, but it’s not always pretty. Or even kind.

It occurred to me this morning that many of us suspect compassion in general of hackneyed bathos, syrupy sentimentality—and that the formulation of Mothers’ Day is partly responsible. . When someone speaks of loving neighbors and compassion for all sentient creatures, we think too much of Hallmark Mothers’ Day and not enough of . . . something else.

What? What component of love do those flowery cards lack that reduces them from true compassion to kitsch and, even, hypocrisy?

One component is sustainability. On selected days, for fleeting moments, a child or sister or mother, declares a gratitude and recognition that during the rest of their lives—outside the theater of the holiday—is soundly contradicted by “real world” behavior. Everyone shares a tear-filled moment, like the emotion conjured in a tear-jerker film, but no one can carry that sentiment into the everyday. Heck, it may not last through dinner. Leave the theater, buy an ice cream or coffee, and you’re right back in yourself, no permanent transformation accomplished because the experience is based on a fiction.

The frilliest of cards for mothers describe saintly self-sacrifice—without any of the emotions or conditions that made her behaviors sacrificial. The cornball postulate that by becoming mothers women achieve some level of apotheosis belies the moments in any mother’s (or other person’s life) when she (or he) was anything but angelic. And watching the relationships of those who exchange such platitudes, I often experienced a sense of subdivided personality. No doubt there is real feeling somewhere, but on a daily basis it’s revealed as considerably different from the representations on the cards.

Another missing component, then, is honesty.

True compassion, I suppose, detaches from all moments—the celebratory and sacralized as well as the ordinary and secular—and having observed truly but without judgment, accepts and honors, despite what in the course of life have been and will continue to be conflicts, pain, struggle and enduring existential isolation.

In this sense, the humorous card serves as the better vehicle for true connection. In shared laughter, by choosing to recognize what falls short of glory people generate true connection. Of course, it’s quite possible (though difficult) to find (or compose) cards that express heartfelt, real gratitude, but that real sentiment will never hold up an impossible standard as having been met when the recipient will know (almost certainly) that the image in the mirror is a lie. Instead, true sentiment remembers the concrete and recognizes that true heroism occurs among the flawed and the human.

In films, people always tell little boys that true courage is not an absence of fear but a moving forward despite it. Why can’t we tell mothers the same thing? No matter mistakes you have made—and will continue to make—your relationship matters. If you have worked against your grain, suppressed your own desires, bitten your tongue, even over-reacted in fear for the safety of your child, you have been a good mother. And because that’s one key relationship in any person’s life, celebration of whatever it was and preparation to improve whatever will be are worthwhile. So in honor of your true—and imperfect—reality, we will not propose an impossible standard but will take this moment to say we love you anyway. In that way, Mothers’ Day (and holidays like it) could further the quest for true compassion. The teacher who first explained Buddhism to me called it a recognition of “suchness:” the absolute individuality of an entity. He spoke of experiencing this knock-you-off-your-feet insight in response to a dandelion pushing through a sidewalk crack. We can begin that project by acknowledging our real mothers–and children. By rejecting the phony rose for the scrawny but miraculous—and actual—flowering weed.

10 March

Spring Break has ended and I am back. My adventure cured me for the present of my fear of flight. Yesterday morning, I could not wait to board, to take-off. To get home. My husband figured large in that, though sun and relative warmth were very welcome. We flew non-stop after Cincinnati, gradually leaving the blizzard to the plows and the natives of the north. In Tampa, we were welcomed like the long lost, “I’ll have you home in no time,” promised the parking shuttle driver. And he was right.

The whole experience folds away now, sinks back into and under routine.

Two images endure: the dining room of “refugees” with the waitress braving the elements to serve us. The chatting. The ersatz bonding. The chill blasts from the entry doors opening on a steady stream. Coming and going. The piles of dishes as customers rotated through and the overworked waitress simply sat the next at a different table like the Mad Hatter at Alice’s tea party. From that picture, so many questions linger: Did my elderly women get back to Dayton? Did the teenager on break from her prep school ever join her grandparents in Puerto Rico? What will become of two-year-old Nathan who befriended everyone he could charm? Did that couple ever find the right hotel? Did the single robin poking for worms in the drifts survive?

And the snow.