There must be some kinda way outta here,
Said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief...
From All Along the Watchtower
by Bob Dylan
This whole charade makes me want to get into my car, drive up to D.C., park in front of the Capital, get out, calmly jog up those long white steps, bump into the first elected officeholder I meet and, with complete disregard for party affiliation, beat the living shit out of them. Not that I would ever actually do so, at least not this week. But I don't think I'm alone in the frustration.
I am a political junkie. Depending on what time I need to be at work, my day begins with Joe and Mika and Mike, flipping back and forth between MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Today, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning. At our house we have dinner with Chris and Chenk, Lawrence and Ed and Wolff and their guests. But after a while, the constant barrage of almost incomprehensible stupidity, the failure to act, the divisions, the meaningless rhetoric, the endless wars, the body counts, the bullshit coming out of Washington while the rest of us struggle with rising food prices and gas prices and the prices of everything else while the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed becomes overwhelming, and infuriating.
"There must be some kinda way outta here.... too much confusion...." I can relate. There just isn't any good news, a friend said to me not long ago. It certainly seems so.
There are times when I need to get some distance between me and the evening bad news. Times to move out a bit and get some perspective on things. I've found that distance is often the only thing between my sanity and despair. I've always loved that opening paragraph to Moby Dick, that reads, in part:
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself pausing involuntarily before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
There has to be an ebb and flow to my involvement in the affairs of the day. There has to be a balance. There is a time to tune in, sign petitions, help with the campaign, man the phone bank, write blogs and letters, swear at the idiot on television, call my representatives, email, demonstrate and march, meet up and join up and join in.
But all of that has to be balanced with, as Melville says so well, a "time to get to sea as soon as I can." When, like this week, nothing is getting done and we seem governed by a confederacy of dunces advised by dim-witted professional dullards, I need to go sit and watch the waves, and, if the surf's up, ride a few.
I live inland now, so I don't surf as much as I used to. But the spiritual principle is the same. We need time sitting on the mountain, hiking the trail, watching the waves, sitting in the boat with a line in the water, or on the meditation cushion, doing whatever it is we do to touch the Infinite, to breathe, regain focus. Perspective is everything. To be is to do and if we forget to just be we soon have no idea what to do next.
Politics and spirituality meet the moment we ask, How shall we live together? How will we govern ourselves with justice and compassion? And how do we stand up to those in power who clearly don't give a damn about either?
Now, things are a mess. But when I take time to just be, to get in touch with the Infinite, I realize we are in this for the long haul. Change does happen. Progress is made. It just takes a while. There is a direction, an arch to history. As Dr. King reminded us, "it bends toward justice."
When I was in elementary school my mother and I would occasionally walk the couple of blocks down to the drug store. That was the early sixties, when drug stores had lunch counters. One day I was sitting at that lunch counter drinking my favorite chocolate shake. I noticed a sign behind the counter that said, "We reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone." On the walk back home I asked what that meant. "It means they won't serve Negroes at the lunch counter. And it really shouldn't be that way." It would take a few more years before I had any real understanding of what she meant.
But lunch counters would play a significant role in the Civil Rights movement. Now the sign and the apartheid it sanctioned are gone. Progress is made, slowly. And we have to keep working at it. To see the good news we have to take the long view and not get too bogged down in the confusion of the present chaos. Perspective gives us the hope it takes to wade back into the struggle; the courage to campaign on behalf of those getting the latest raw deal.
It's the only way "outta here."
The Jawbone
Monday, July 11, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Putting the Right People in Jail
Depending on how this goes, there may be a few new neighbors on Mr. Madoff's cell block. It's about time. Our criminal justice system is so often tilted against the poor, minorities, petty criminals and addicts who would benefit more from treatment than incarceration, those without substantial means to defend themselves. Sometimes we put the wrong people in jail. Commit a crime in the street, you go to jail. Crime in the suite? The company picks up the tab and you take your high-priced legal beagle to lunch--on the company expense account, of course. Maybe that's about to change, at least a little.
A couple of years back the state of New York fined United Health Group fifty million for failing to properly pay claims. But hey! What's a few measly million when you're making billions? Like, who cares? So what if the business practices are a bit on the shady side? Who cares if the rules get bent a bit? Get by with it, so much the better for the bottom line. Get caught, write it off as a business expense, sort of like taking your client out to an expensive lunch. Anyway, what's a bit of health care fraud among friends, especially when the company is going to pick up the tab?
Well, thanks to a few good folks over at Health and Human Services, that attitude may be in for a change. Seems some of them got a bit frustrated over the way health care industries have been ripping us off--to the tune of about sixty billion a year. Sixty billion a year!!! This at a time when Congress is talking about cutting my mom's medicare? What's wrong with this picture?
Here's what Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general at HHS, told Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Huffington Post earlier this week: "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy. To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it. If writing a check for 200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."
There you go! Now we just might be getting somewhere. So Bernie may be getting some new neighbors. And for most of us, it's about time. I mean, really, who's the bigger crook? The guy who gets busted and goes up state for getting pulled over with three joints in his glove compartment? Or the guy who's spent years ripping off taxpayers for billions in corporate profits, to the extent that it's killing our ability to provide health care for our elderly parents, and never even gets arrested?
HHS is sending a wake up call to the health industry with their case against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories, a big pharma firm that makes antidepressants and other meds. Last year Forest plead guilty to a few justice department charges, and cut a deal with a check for 313 million. Seems they ignored an FDA notice to stop peddling a new drug that hadn't been approved. But, and here's the key point, as usual, all the bigwigs avoided jail time. So where's the incentive for the folks at the top to stay honest?
I think it's time Bernie got some new neighbors. So here's a notice to all you CEOs and other assorted corporate types who are tempted to break the rules every once in a while in the name of big time cash. It might serve you well to hang a sign on the wall across from your desk. A sign that says, "As they say up state: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
The Jawbone
A couple of years back the state of New York fined United Health Group fifty million for failing to properly pay claims. But hey! What's a few measly million when you're making billions? Like, who cares? So what if the business practices are a bit on the shady side? Who cares if the rules get bent a bit? Get by with it, so much the better for the bottom line. Get caught, write it off as a business expense, sort of like taking your client out to an expensive lunch. Anyway, what's a bit of health care fraud among friends, especially when the company is going to pick up the tab?
Well, thanks to a few good folks over at Health and Human Services, that attitude may be in for a change. Seems some of them got a bit frustrated over the way health care industries have been ripping us off--to the tune of about sixty billion a year. Sixty billion a year!!! This at a time when Congress is talking about cutting my mom's medicare? What's wrong with this picture?
Here's what Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general at HHS, told Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Huffington Post earlier this week: "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy. To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it. If writing a check for 200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."
There you go! Now we just might be getting somewhere. So Bernie may be getting some new neighbors. And for most of us, it's about time. I mean, really, who's the bigger crook? The guy who gets busted and goes up state for getting pulled over with three joints in his glove compartment? Or the guy who's spent years ripping off taxpayers for billions in corporate profits, to the extent that it's killing our ability to provide health care for our elderly parents, and never even gets arrested?
HHS is sending a wake up call to the health industry with their case against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories, a big pharma firm that makes antidepressants and other meds. Last year Forest plead guilty to a few justice department charges, and cut a deal with a check for 313 million. Seems they ignored an FDA notice to stop peddling a new drug that hadn't been approved. But, and here's the key point, as usual, all the bigwigs avoided jail time. So where's the incentive for the folks at the top to stay honest?
I think it's time Bernie got some new neighbors. So here's a notice to all you CEOs and other assorted corporate types who are tempted to break the rules every once in a while in the name of big time cash. It might serve you well to hang a sign on the wall across from your desk. A sign that says, "As they say up state: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
The Jawbone
Thursday, May 12, 2011
One Dollar, One Vote... Sending Wells Fargo/BofA a Message They'll Hear
Yesterday morning I got up, had my usual coffee and bagel, showered, looked into my bathroom mirror, and smiled. This is election day. The day I go to the polling place alongside every other morally responsible American, and cast my ballot. As with all other election days, some choices I make leave me feeling I've done something good, assisted in positive change, helped a little old lady across the street. Others, not so much, as though I need to go home and take another shower. It's the way I feel when I know the best I can do is enter the boothe, hold my nose, and cast my ballot for the least objectionable, stench-reeking, dirty, rotten scoundrel whose vulgar name I would never say out loud in front of my mother.
What? You missed it? You missed election day? You didn't vote? Well, no, you didn't miss it. And you did vote, several times, a dozen times, more than a dozen, maybe a thousand, or more. In America, every day is election day. Here lately, I've been trying to choose my polling places with a bit more discretion. Growing up in the sixties, the only child of Kennedy Democrats, I was taught that voting was a sacred act, not all that different from going to church.
This particular morning I was certain of doing the right thing. I headed for my local Wachovia Bank branch, today's first stop on my tour of local polling places. A bit nervous, I exited my very used old dodge and headed for the door. Would this be the gunfight at the OK coral? What would I say when they asked, as they surely would, "Why are you closing your account?"
How could I keep my cool? How could I keep from launching into a two-hundred page dissertation detailing the long list of faults and crimes against human dignity of which I found this foul establishment guilty as charged? These are good people who work here. They are not the enemy. The real enemy is far more subtle, more hidden behind cloaks of respectability. These are my neighbors who, as Lama Surya Das reminds me in his Prayer for the New Millennium, "want and need as I do." The criminals I'm after live in gated communities, guarded by rent-a-cops, meet in suites, ride in limos, and, not having to work three jobs waiting tables to make ends meet, usually tip quite poorly.
I approached a nice looking lady at the counter, handed her my check and said, "I'd like to close this account, please." I didn't want trouble. But then, here it came. "I'm sorry, sir. But I can't do that. You'll need to speak to the manager." Careful, I thought to myself. Breathe. Don't reach for that verbal six gun. Repeat. "She's not the enemy... She's not the enemy..." The last time I felt like this was upon many of the occasions in high school when I got kicked out of class and sent to the dean's office. Once again, referred to a higher power for judgment.
With trepidation, I approached the manager's desk, took my seat, and stated yet again the cause for my visit. "I'd like to close this account." She smiled. Good. Maybe this won't be so difficult. She took my info, then the fun started. Here it came. The question. The opportunity to state my case. Would I follow through, or wimp out? "Why are you closing your account?" A moment of pride, courage welled from the depths of my battered consumer soul. I sat up straight, looked into her eyes, and delivered the big one: "Because of Wells Fargo/Wachovia's disproportionate support of the Republican Party and it's policies."
The poor woman could not have looked more surprised had I leaned over the desk and slapped her across the face with a wet and slightly rotten flounder. Ah, I thought. I've landed a point. A moment of awkward silence ensued. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did you say you're closing your account because we don't support the Republican Party enough?" Prior to this moment, I'd always thought I spoke fluent English. Apparently not. Pulling another smelly flounder from my bag, I sallied forth with another attempt. "No. I'm moving my money because this bank disproportionately supports a political party, the Republican Party, whose agenda and policies I am vehemently opposed to." There, I thought. That's got to do it. We have a meeting of the minds.
Reaching for her mouse, she scrolled down her screen, befuddled, taken aback. How to record this frontal assault, this arrogance, this act of defiance of the establishment status quo upon my permanent record? More awkward silence. The system didn't allow for this impertinance. Surely, she must have thought, these things do not happen in civilized society. No one defies the mighty Wells Fargo/Wachovia Empire! She breached the silence that had fallen between us. "I guess I'm just going to have to check other."
Out the door, smiling, I'd made my statement, defied the status quo, struck a blow against the establishment. This must be the kick ass feeling King David had when he let fly the stone that slew Goliath!
Down the street I flew to Freedom First Credit Union, where I struck a second blow for human dignity and freedom. Sitting down with a very nice young lady, Leslie, I opened my new account. I'd studied this phenomenon, done my homework. Respected friends, far more in the financial know than I, told me credit unions are most often locally owned and operated, worked for their members rather than just the stock holders, and that I, indeed, such as I!! actually had a stake in the enterprise! I'd cast my ballots of cash against the tax dodging, foreclosing, blood sucking, CEO bonus taking with my tax money Evil Empire! "Take that you generation of Swine!"
I headed for my next polling place. More ballots to cast. Another statement to make. But this time, it would leave a foul stench my nostrils. I pulled into my local Walmart. Walmart. Was I really going to stoop this low? Pulling my hat down low over my forehead, I hoped no one would recognize me as I passed through the door, a pilgrim in an unholy land.
Yes, this was one of those hold-my-nose choices I had to make, despised though it was. Walmart has a long history of discriminating against women, and generally of treating their employees as chattle. And here was my moral dilemma. I have a choice to make. I can spend a few bucks here, cast a few cash ballots, and have a few left over to put into the collection plate on Sunday morning where God knows my church, not to mention other charities I support, needs such little as I can give. The choices we face on election day are not always pretty, nor easy. The electoral politics of the market place are rarely pure as the driven snow. Nothing high minded about this, I thought as once again I plunked down my hard earned debit card.
In America, every day is election day. Some choices are more good than bad, others more bad than good. There are always choices. And all choices are in between choices. No ballot I cast is without taint of moral ambiguity. Despite most everything I read these days, I'm sure the big banks, and even Walmart, do a little good every now and then. Even if it's no more than providing a decent job to some of my neighbors while saving me a few bucks to give to causes I really believe in.
Another election day has passed. Having cast my ballots, I return home where I will get online and puruse the daily records of humanities' endless struggle to find, let alone do, the right thing. This is not unimportant, though I often find it infuriating. There's war going on. A war in which, like it or not, I am a combatant. A war declared by the rich against the rest of us. A war of budgets that take from those who can least afford it, and give to those who already have more than their fair share. Daily we read of it's disasters and the hooray for me and to hell with you battles.
Naysayers will tell you it doesn't mean shit to Wells Fargo/Wachovia or any of the rest of the big banks that one guy moves a few hundred bucks out of their coffers. They lie. What if the one gets multiplied by a million? ten million? tens of millions? An avalanche starts with the slipping of a single stone. Movements that bring down tyrants begin with one pissed off sister who decides she's mad as hell and isn't going to take this lying down.
Goliath is big, but he doesn't always win. Every once in a while, we David's get to strike a blow for the little guys.
Mahalo,
The Jawbone
What? You missed it? You missed election day? You didn't vote? Well, no, you didn't miss it. And you did vote, several times, a dozen times, more than a dozen, maybe a thousand, or more. In America, every day is election day. Here lately, I've been trying to choose my polling places with a bit more discretion. Growing up in the sixties, the only child of Kennedy Democrats, I was taught that voting was a sacred act, not all that different from going to church.
This particular morning I was certain of doing the right thing. I headed for my local Wachovia Bank branch, today's first stop on my tour of local polling places. A bit nervous, I exited my very used old dodge and headed for the door. Would this be the gunfight at the OK coral? What would I say when they asked, as they surely would, "Why are you closing your account?"
How could I keep my cool? How could I keep from launching into a two-hundred page dissertation detailing the long list of faults and crimes against human dignity of which I found this foul establishment guilty as charged? These are good people who work here. They are not the enemy. The real enemy is far more subtle, more hidden behind cloaks of respectability. These are my neighbors who, as Lama Surya Das reminds me in his Prayer for the New Millennium, "want and need as I do." The criminals I'm after live in gated communities, guarded by rent-a-cops, meet in suites, ride in limos, and, not having to work three jobs waiting tables to make ends meet, usually tip quite poorly.
I approached a nice looking lady at the counter, handed her my check and said, "I'd like to close this account, please." I didn't want trouble. But then, here it came. "I'm sorry, sir. But I can't do that. You'll need to speak to the manager." Careful, I thought to myself. Breathe. Don't reach for that verbal six gun. Repeat. "She's not the enemy... She's not the enemy..." The last time I felt like this was upon many of the occasions in high school when I got kicked out of class and sent to the dean's office. Once again, referred to a higher power for judgment.
With trepidation, I approached the manager's desk, took my seat, and stated yet again the cause for my visit. "I'd like to close this account." She smiled. Good. Maybe this won't be so difficult. She took my info, then the fun started. Here it came. The question. The opportunity to state my case. Would I follow through, or wimp out? "Why are you closing your account?" A moment of pride, courage welled from the depths of my battered consumer soul. I sat up straight, looked into her eyes, and delivered the big one: "Because of Wells Fargo/Wachovia's disproportionate support of the Republican Party and it's policies."
The poor woman could not have looked more surprised had I leaned over the desk and slapped her across the face with a wet and slightly rotten flounder. Ah, I thought. I've landed a point. A moment of awkward silence ensued. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did you say you're closing your account because we don't support the Republican Party enough?" Prior to this moment, I'd always thought I spoke fluent English. Apparently not. Pulling another smelly flounder from my bag, I sallied forth with another attempt. "No. I'm moving my money because this bank disproportionately supports a political party, the Republican Party, whose agenda and policies I am vehemently opposed to." There, I thought. That's got to do it. We have a meeting of the minds.
Reaching for her mouse, she scrolled down her screen, befuddled, taken aback. How to record this frontal assault, this arrogance, this act of defiance of the establishment status quo upon my permanent record? More awkward silence. The system didn't allow for this impertinance. Surely, she must have thought, these things do not happen in civilized society. No one defies the mighty Wells Fargo/Wachovia Empire! She breached the silence that had fallen between us. "I guess I'm just going to have to check other."
Out the door, smiling, I'd made my statement, defied the status quo, struck a blow against the establishment. This must be the kick ass feeling King David had when he let fly the stone that slew Goliath!
Down the street I flew to Freedom First Credit Union, where I struck a second blow for human dignity and freedom. Sitting down with a very nice young lady, Leslie, I opened my new account. I'd studied this phenomenon, done my homework. Respected friends, far more in the financial know than I, told me credit unions are most often locally owned and operated, worked for their members rather than just the stock holders, and that I, indeed, such as I!! actually had a stake in the enterprise! I'd cast my ballots of cash against the tax dodging, foreclosing, blood sucking, CEO bonus taking with my tax money Evil Empire! "Take that you generation of Swine!"
I headed for my next polling place. More ballots to cast. Another statement to make. But this time, it would leave a foul stench my nostrils. I pulled into my local Walmart. Walmart. Was I really going to stoop this low? Pulling my hat down low over my forehead, I hoped no one would recognize me as I passed through the door, a pilgrim in an unholy land.
Yes, this was one of those hold-my-nose choices I had to make, despised though it was. Walmart has a long history of discriminating against women, and generally of treating their employees as chattle. And here was my moral dilemma. I have a choice to make. I can spend a few bucks here, cast a few cash ballots, and have a few left over to put into the collection plate on Sunday morning where God knows my church, not to mention other charities I support, needs such little as I can give. The choices we face on election day are not always pretty, nor easy. The electoral politics of the market place are rarely pure as the driven snow. Nothing high minded about this, I thought as once again I plunked down my hard earned debit card.
In America, every day is election day. Some choices are more good than bad, others more bad than good. There are always choices. And all choices are in between choices. No ballot I cast is without taint of moral ambiguity. Despite most everything I read these days, I'm sure the big banks, and even Walmart, do a little good every now and then. Even if it's no more than providing a decent job to some of my neighbors while saving me a few bucks to give to causes I really believe in.
Another election day has passed. Having cast my ballots, I return home where I will get online and puruse the daily records of humanities' endless struggle to find, let alone do, the right thing. This is not unimportant, though I often find it infuriating. There's war going on. A war in which, like it or not, I am a combatant. A war declared by the rich against the rest of us. A war of budgets that take from those who can least afford it, and give to those who already have more than their fair share. Daily we read of it's disasters and the hooray for me and to hell with you battles.
Naysayers will tell you it doesn't mean shit to Wells Fargo/Wachovia or any of the rest of the big banks that one guy moves a few hundred bucks out of their coffers. They lie. What if the one gets multiplied by a million? ten million? tens of millions? An avalanche starts with the slipping of a single stone. Movements that bring down tyrants begin with one pissed off sister who decides she's mad as hell and isn't going to take this lying down.
Goliath is big, but he doesn't always win. Every once in a while, we David's get to strike a blow for the little guys.
Mahalo,
The Jawbone
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Death of a Terrorist: Is the Celebration Misplaced?
"Being rational and free, human beings are capable of being diabolic. This is a feat which no animal can duplicate, for no animal is sufficiently clever, sufficiently purposeful, sufficiently strong-willed or sufficiently moral to be a devil." (The Perennial Philosophy, p. 229, Aldous Huxley)
Dancing in the streets. Waving the flag. Boisterous gatherings from Times Square to Pennsylvania Ave. to L.A. and everywhere main street USA. Understandable. Let us be clear. There is no doubt evil in this world of ours. Evil that must be confronted, and, when absolutely necessary, eliminated. Such is part and parcel of the tragedy of human existence. Caution, however, should prevail. Let us not be overzealous. Zealots, it seems, are always blind.
I remember where I was when word came that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Mrs. Trinko's seventh grade American History class at Breckenridge Jr. High School. I was sitting behind Cathy Webb when another teacher knocked on the door, entered, and gave us the news.
When you're in the seventh grade, there's not enough lived experience to allow you to process such an event. I doubt most of us could even have spelled assassination. In a moment everything changed. We'd felt safe, but now, who knew if we were safe or not? I remembered my Dad telling my Mom one night in a conversation they thought I couldn't hear from my bedroom down the hall. "If the sirens go off, take Alan, and go downstairs to the shelter." Was that what was coming? Was it time to "duck and cover?" This was the moment that defined our generation.
Flash forward. September 11, 2001. The event that began to define my daughters' generation. I was probably one of the last people to find out what had happened. We were living in NH, and, as we all remember, it was a beautiful day. I got up, looked out the window, flipped on Surf Line, heard the waves were up--storm surge--tossed my board and wet suit in the back of the truck and made for the coast. An hour and a half before mid-tide. I could get there just in time.
Beaches in NH and ME, especially those frequented by surfers, are rocky and somewhat secluded. What summer crowds we are plagued with are gone by then. We rode for a couple hours, then just hung out, enjoying the day. Pease air base was just down the road. Huge tankers lumbered in and out every hour or so. Nothing unusual. A little body surfing on the low stuff and I decided to head home. 4:30 in the afternoon. Tossed the gear in back of the truck, headed out, and flipped on "All Things Considered." The coastal route 1A is lined with some pretty fancy digs, and I wondered why all the flags were at half-staff. It didn't take long to find out.
"Do you think an anti-missile system would have helped New York?" or some such thoughts were the first words I heard. To call this a WTF moment is an understatement. First thought: Somebody finally dropped the big one. Second thought: Is NYC still there? If memory serves, it was a good ten to fifteen minutes before they got around to repeating the headline. About the time I answered my cell to discover my wife, sobbing, had been trying to get in touch with me all day. "This isn't over, is it? It's not going to stop, is it?" was all she could get out.
As the horrors of the day were played again and again and again that night, I remember thinking how close to the brink we were. "What does it mean, Daddy? Is there going to be a war?"
I'd grown up with a Dad in defense, with dinner table stories of what the inside of Cheyenne Mountain looked like, bomb shelters in back yards and basements, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It meant our jets were in the air, our submarines at launch depth, missile crews out in the Montana desert on high alert. Nervous fingers on hair triggers. Nobody on either side of the ocean slept well that night. But we all woke up to a different world, again....
Fast forward. Okay. Ten years after. Got the bad guy. "Justice has been served." True enough, I suppose. And we didn't wipe out half a continent in the process. So maybe in some tragic way it's a step forward. But I think we disrespect 9/11 if we don't look a little deeper than that.
Violence, wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, is not limited to the use of the knife or the gun. The overt violence of the knife or gun is but an outward manifesting of the more subtle violence of real or perceived injustices to our fellows, to nature, and our willed separation from the Divine Source of Our Being.
Returning to Huxley on human suffering, at length: "The truth is, of course, that we are all organically related to God, to Nature, and to our fellow men. If every human being were constantly and consciously in a proper relationship with his divine, natural and social environments there would be only so much suffering as Creation makes inevitable. But actually most human beings are chronically in an improper relation to God, Nature and some at least of their fellows. The results of these wrong relationships are manifest on the social level as wars, revolutions, exploitation and disorder; on the natural level, as waste and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources; on the biological level, as degenerative diseases and the deterioration of racial stocks; on the moral level, as an overweening bumptiousness; and on the spiritual level, as blindness to divine Reality and complete ignorance of the reason and purpose of human existence." (p. 233.)
As Huxley is careful to point out, this is a fundamental truth of every religious expression; true for the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or obscure aboriginal tribesman. Everything stands or falls apart on proper relationship.
More precisely, if we are truly concerned about the violence of the gun and the knife; we cannot be content merely to trade eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. We have to go deeper than that and look at the root causes of suffering and address those issues such as economic inequality, poverty, and the insidious darkness that one finds in every religious fanatic--the tendency to elevate my faith to a position of absolute rightness against and above all others. More violence has been visited upon humankind in the name of that absurdity than any other. Killing in the name of God has to be the ultimate expression of human evil.
Is this celebration a bit misplaced? Probably. At least it's a bit too exuberant for my comfort. If only because so much of what I hear in the streets seems less a celebration of justice served and more of revenge carried out.
Ten years after. Okay. Got the bad guy. Now where do we go?
Dancing in the streets. Waving the flag. Boisterous gatherings from Times Square to Pennsylvania Ave. to L.A. and everywhere main street USA. Understandable. Let us be clear. There is no doubt evil in this world of ours. Evil that must be confronted, and, when absolutely necessary, eliminated. Such is part and parcel of the tragedy of human existence. Caution, however, should prevail. Let us not be overzealous. Zealots, it seems, are always blind.
I remember where I was when word came that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Mrs. Trinko's seventh grade American History class at Breckenridge Jr. High School. I was sitting behind Cathy Webb when another teacher knocked on the door, entered, and gave us the news.
When you're in the seventh grade, there's not enough lived experience to allow you to process such an event. I doubt most of us could even have spelled assassination. In a moment everything changed. We'd felt safe, but now, who knew if we were safe or not? I remembered my Dad telling my Mom one night in a conversation they thought I couldn't hear from my bedroom down the hall. "If the sirens go off, take Alan, and go downstairs to the shelter." Was that what was coming? Was it time to "duck and cover?" This was the moment that defined our generation.
Flash forward. September 11, 2001. The event that began to define my daughters' generation. I was probably one of the last people to find out what had happened. We were living in NH, and, as we all remember, it was a beautiful day. I got up, looked out the window, flipped on Surf Line, heard the waves were up--storm surge--tossed my board and wet suit in the back of the truck and made for the coast. An hour and a half before mid-tide. I could get there just in time.
Beaches in NH and ME, especially those frequented by surfers, are rocky and somewhat secluded. What summer crowds we are plagued with are gone by then. We rode for a couple hours, then just hung out, enjoying the day. Pease air base was just down the road. Huge tankers lumbered in and out every hour or so. Nothing unusual. A little body surfing on the low stuff and I decided to head home. 4:30 in the afternoon. Tossed the gear in back of the truck, headed out, and flipped on "All Things Considered." The coastal route 1A is lined with some pretty fancy digs, and I wondered why all the flags were at half-staff. It didn't take long to find out.
"Do you think an anti-missile system would have helped New York?" or some such thoughts were the first words I heard. To call this a WTF moment is an understatement. First thought: Somebody finally dropped the big one. Second thought: Is NYC still there? If memory serves, it was a good ten to fifteen minutes before they got around to repeating the headline. About the time I answered my cell to discover my wife, sobbing, had been trying to get in touch with me all day. "This isn't over, is it? It's not going to stop, is it?" was all she could get out.
As the horrors of the day were played again and again and again that night, I remember thinking how close to the brink we were. "What does it mean, Daddy? Is there going to be a war?"
I'd grown up with a Dad in defense, with dinner table stories of what the inside of Cheyenne Mountain looked like, bomb shelters in back yards and basements, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It meant our jets were in the air, our submarines at launch depth, missile crews out in the Montana desert on high alert. Nervous fingers on hair triggers. Nobody on either side of the ocean slept well that night. But we all woke up to a different world, again....
Fast forward. Okay. Ten years after. Got the bad guy. "Justice has been served." True enough, I suppose. And we didn't wipe out half a continent in the process. So maybe in some tragic way it's a step forward. But I think we disrespect 9/11 if we don't look a little deeper than that.
Violence, wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, is not limited to the use of the knife or the gun. The overt violence of the knife or gun is but an outward manifesting of the more subtle violence of real or perceived injustices to our fellows, to nature, and our willed separation from the Divine Source of Our Being.
Returning to Huxley on human suffering, at length: "The truth is, of course, that we are all organically related to God, to Nature, and to our fellow men. If every human being were constantly and consciously in a proper relationship with his divine, natural and social environments there would be only so much suffering as Creation makes inevitable. But actually most human beings are chronically in an improper relation to God, Nature and some at least of their fellows. The results of these wrong relationships are manifest on the social level as wars, revolutions, exploitation and disorder; on the natural level, as waste and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources; on the biological level, as degenerative diseases and the deterioration of racial stocks; on the moral level, as an overweening bumptiousness; and on the spiritual level, as blindness to divine Reality and complete ignorance of the reason and purpose of human existence." (p. 233.)
As Huxley is careful to point out, this is a fundamental truth of every religious expression; true for the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or obscure aboriginal tribesman. Everything stands or falls apart on proper relationship.
More precisely, if we are truly concerned about the violence of the gun and the knife; we cannot be content merely to trade eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. We have to go deeper than that and look at the root causes of suffering and address those issues such as economic inequality, poverty, and the insidious darkness that one finds in every religious fanatic--the tendency to elevate my faith to a position of absolute rightness against and above all others. More violence has been visited upon humankind in the name of that absurdity than any other. Killing in the name of God has to be the ultimate expression of human evil.
Is this celebration a bit misplaced? Probably. At least it's a bit too exuberant for my comfort. If only because so much of what I hear in the streets seems less a celebration of justice served and more of revenge carried out.
Ten years after. Okay. Got the bad guy. Now where do we go?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Rich vs. Poor: Does God Take Sides?
In the ongoing struggle between the haves and have nots, people of faith need to ask, "Does God take sides?" Which does God favor? The Rich? The Poor? Or can God be said to "take sides" at all? How could we begin the search for an answer?
First a caveat. I've long thought there cannot be meaningful dialogue on any issue of faith until the parties involved come to some basically agreed upon understanding of what the word, "God," means. And there are myriad definitions. Eric Rust, my former philosophy professor, illustrated the dilemma thus: A professor was walking down the sidewalk when he passed an alley and overheard a tremendous ruckus from the windows above. Two women were hanging out of their windows, each shouting across the urban abyss from their respective apartments. Each was certain of her rectitude. Neither harbored a doubt as to the self-righteousness of her opinion. Having listened for a moment, the good professor looked to a fellow passer-by and said, "These two will never agree. They argue from different premises."
I've spent more than forty years in search of my own understanding of what the word "God" means. My early church years were spent in the Southern Baptist Church of my parents. Decades later, I describe myself, when I must, as an Episcopalian Tibetan Buddhist with slight Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Hindu leanings, who, on certain days of the week when the wind is right, enjoys reading Native American earth-centered spirituality and other sources to numerous to mention here. The more I've learned the less I'm sure of. To me, that's a good thing. "God" is a big word. And personal experience has taught me that whenever I have the misfortune of meeting anyone who is sure they have definitive knowledge of who and what the word "God" means is to run, not walk, mind you, but flee in haste in another direction. So I gladly accept the ambiguity of the term. As Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Go thou, and do likewise."
For today, though, I'll stick with Jesus. He had his own distinct view of "God" and wished to broaden his followers understanding. His day was not entirely like our own. Poor equals not so good, not so fortunate, bad. Rich equals good, fortunate. More than a few thought that if you were rich it was a sign of God's favor. Poor, that meant the opposite. God didn't like you very much. Jesus turned this common understanding on it's head.
In Luke's Gospel (6:20-) we find, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Most of us have heard that so long it's lost it's impact. Allow me to help us regain the offensiveness of Jesus. Blessed are you when Bank of America files improper paperwork so they can foreclose on your house a few months sooner than the law allows. Blessed are you when your unemployment benefits run out. Blessed are you when your child is one of the seven living below the poverty line. Blessed are you when you are over fifty-five, out of work for two years, and not likely to ever, and I mean ever get a job making close to what you used to make. Blessed are you when you get evicted from your apartment. Shall I continue?
What's going on here? Well, the most I've ever been able to figure out is that being blessed has something to do with where God, as Jesus understood the word, puts God's primary concerns. To be blessed means to be the object of God's concern, God's interest, the focus of God's benevolent intentions, of grace. I'll be the first to tell you knowing that doesn't keep you from being an object of foreclosure, or pay your electric bill. At least it didn't work for me. What it does mean is that Jesus would like us to know that we're not alone.
There is Presence to sustain us, and, ultimately and most importantly, Presence to help us in the ongoing struggle for economic justice. The kingdom, the Presence, belongs to those who are the most in need of economic justice in an economically lopsided world. There's hope because God cares; at precisely the time your house is being foreclosed on; exactly when it feels like no one in government gives a shit about you or your kids or whether your mom's already inadequate social security is going to become even more inadequate.
As in contrast with the rich. "Woe to you who are rich," he says a couple of sentences later. Enjoy what you've got because it's the only thing you've got and that's pretty much going to be it. Deal with it because God is, apparently, not very pleased with the way you're running things. God is concerned with the poor. The rich, well, not so much...
This gives me a bit of hope, and, I must mischievously confess, more than a little to grin about as I reflect on the fact that I, who just returned from H and R Block, paid more federal taxes than GE, Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, and quite probably more than a few fat cats sitting in the top two percent of our rich-getting-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer society.
This on a day when, just after I got up, I walked into the kitchen and for the first time in my nearly sixty years on this earth heard my mother suggest a congressman should be taken into the streets and shot. Mom, it turns out, seems to have taken offense at Congressman Ryan's budget offerings. She was, of course, speaking facetiously. I think. Still, I paused for a moment of thanks that when dad died my cousin took all the guns to his house. Hell hath no furry like a mom who reads congressman Ryan and his Party-of-the-Rich colleagues are going to reduce her Social Security, her Medicare, and worthy social programs like Medicaid and Women Infants and Children. Talk about reading a budget as a moral document! I mean, Jesus Christ!....
Exactly....
What would Jesus, the Jesus who, poor himself, taught that the destitute are blessed and the rich, not so much, have to say about congressman Ryan's budget? Or any budget that favors the wealthy with tax cuts and corporations with zero tax liability while supporting an out of control military/industrial/congressional war machine?
Maybe God, as Jesus understood Her/Him/It does take sides in the sense that God has God's concerns. And for those of us who would try to take Jesus seriously, might that not mean that we should adopt Jesus' concerns as our own? Shouldn't our focus be on caring for the health and well-being of the ninety-eight percent of us who live in that Social Security Medicare Hourly-wage Medicaid and Middle Class enclave called the United States where 27 million are under or unemployed? 50 million without health insurance? public education remains underfunded? corporations get wealthier while their workers still can't get a decent pay raise?
The wealthy are not without hope. St. Paul, writing to Timothy (I Timothy 6-): "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant (Are you listening, Donald?) nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Are you listening Mr. Congressman? Mr. Senator? Mr. President?
So much for the unrestrained sins of laiessez-faire capitalism. When the rich young ruler asked what else he could do, Jesus told him to go sell everything he'd accumulated, give the proceeds to poverty relief, and follow him. The story ends there. We're never told whether the young man did, or didn't. Only that he went away sorrowfully, because he had many possessions.
People of faith need to choose. We need to take sides. And it would seem to me that the side we need to take, the concerns we need to adopt as our own political and economic and social agenda are those of Jesus. And in his economy, the rich don't seem to fair very well.
Mahalo, (Feel free to tweet and facebook)
Alan
First a caveat. I've long thought there cannot be meaningful dialogue on any issue of faith until the parties involved come to some basically agreed upon understanding of what the word, "God," means. And there are myriad definitions. Eric Rust, my former philosophy professor, illustrated the dilemma thus: A professor was walking down the sidewalk when he passed an alley and overheard a tremendous ruckus from the windows above. Two women were hanging out of their windows, each shouting across the urban abyss from their respective apartments. Each was certain of her rectitude. Neither harbored a doubt as to the self-righteousness of her opinion. Having listened for a moment, the good professor looked to a fellow passer-by and said, "These two will never agree. They argue from different premises."
I've spent more than forty years in search of my own understanding of what the word "God" means. My early church years were spent in the Southern Baptist Church of my parents. Decades later, I describe myself, when I must, as an Episcopalian Tibetan Buddhist with slight Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Hindu leanings, who, on certain days of the week when the wind is right, enjoys reading Native American earth-centered spirituality and other sources to numerous to mention here. The more I've learned the less I'm sure of. To me, that's a good thing. "God" is a big word. And personal experience has taught me that whenever I have the misfortune of meeting anyone who is sure they have definitive knowledge of who and what the word "God" means is to run, not walk, mind you, but flee in haste in another direction. So I gladly accept the ambiguity of the term. As Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Go thou, and do likewise."
For today, though, I'll stick with Jesus. He had his own distinct view of "God" and wished to broaden his followers understanding. His day was not entirely like our own. Poor equals not so good, not so fortunate, bad. Rich equals good, fortunate. More than a few thought that if you were rich it was a sign of God's favor. Poor, that meant the opposite. God didn't like you very much. Jesus turned this common understanding on it's head.
In Luke's Gospel (6:20-) we find, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Most of us have heard that so long it's lost it's impact. Allow me to help us regain the offensiveness of Jesus. Blessed are you when Bank of America files improper paperwork so they can foreclose on your house a few months sooner than the law allows. Blessed are you when your unemployment benefits run out. Blessed are you when your child is one of the seven living below the poverty line. Blessed are you when you are over fifty-five, out of work for two years, and not likely to ever, and I mean ever get a job making close to what you used to make. Blessed are you when you get evicted from your apartment. Shall I continue?
What's going on here? Well, the most I've ever been able to figure out is that being blessed has something to do with where God, as Jesus understood the word, puts God's primary concerns. To be blessed means to be the object of God's concern, God's interest, the focus of God's benevolent intentions, of grace. I'll be the first to tell you knowing that doesn't keep you from being an object of foreclosure, or pay your electric bill. At least it didn't work for me. What it does mean is that Jesus would like us to know that we're not alone.
There is Presence to sustain us, and, ultimately and most importantly, Presence to help us in the ongoing struggle for economic justice. The kingdom, the Presence, belongs to those who are the most in need of economic justice in an economically lopsided world. There's hope because God cares; at precisely the time your house is being foreclosed on; exactly when it feels like no one in government gives a shit about you or your kids or whether your mom's already inadequate social security is going to become even more inadequate.
As in contrast with the rich. "Woe to you who are rich," he says a couple of sentences later. Enjoy what you've got because it's the only thing you've got and that's pretty much going to be it. Deal with it because God is, apparently, not very pleased with the way you're running things. God is concerned with the poor. The rich, well, not so much...
This gives me a bit of hope, and, I must mischievously confess, more than a little to grin about as I reflect on the fact that I, who just returned from H and R Block, paid more federal taxes than GE, Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, and quite probably more than a few fat cats sitting in the top two percent of our rich-getting-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer society.
This on a day when, just after I got up, I walked into the kitchen and for the first time in my nearly sixty years on this earth heard my mother suggest a congressman should be taken into the streets and shot. Mom, it turns out, seems to have taken offense at Congressman Ryan's budget offerings. She was, of course, speaking facetiously. I think. Still, I paused for a moment of thanks that when dad died my cousin took all the guns to his house. Hell hath no furry like a mom who reads congressman Ryan and his Party-of-the-Rich colleagues are going to reduce her Social Security, her Medicare, and worthy social programs like Medicaid and Women Infants and Children. Talk about reading a budget as a moral document! I mean, Jesus Christ!....
Exactly....
What would Jesus, the Jesus who, poor himself, taught that the destitute are blessed and the rich, not so much, have to say about congressman Ryan's budget? Or any budget that favors the wealthy with tax cuts and corporations with zero tax liability while supporting an out of control military/industrial/congressional war machine?
Maybe God, as Jesus understood Her/Him/It does take sides in the sense that God has God's concerns. And for those of us who would try to take Jesus seriously, might that not mean that we should adopt Jesus' concerns as our own? Shouldn't our focus be on caring for the health and well-being of the ninety-eight percent of us who live in that Social Security Medicare Hourly-wage Medicaid and Middle Class enclave called the United States where 27 million are under or unemployed? 50 million without health insurance? public education remains underfunded? corporations get wealthier while their workers still can't get a decent pay raise?
The wealthy are not without hope. St. Paul, writing to Timothy (I Timothy 6-): "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant (Are you listening, Donald?) nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Are you listening Mr. Congressman? Mr. Senator? Mr. President?
So much for the unrestrained sins of laiessez-faire capitalism. When the rich young ruler asked what else he could do, Jesus told him to go sell everything he'd accumulated, give the proceeds to poverty relief, and follow him. The story ends there. We're never told whether the young man did, or didn't. Only that he went away sorrowfully, because he had many possessions.
People of faith need to choose. We need to take sides. And it would seem to me that the side we need to take, the concerns we need to adopt as our own political and economic and social agenda are those of Jesus. And in his economy, the rich don't seem to fair very well.
Mahalo, (Feel free to tweet and facebook)
Alan
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
United Health Group; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous
Meet Lisbeth Salander, heroine of the late Stieg Larson's Millennium Trilogy; three novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. A world-wide publishing phenomenon like none before.
Salander sits in a pitch dark, scantily furnished apartment. She has been victimized, abused, physically, emotionally, economically, betrayed by almost everyone she thought she could trust. She's angry, and has every right to be. The only light in the room is the faint green glow that emanates from the only weapon she can fight back with--her laptop. In her hands, and in the hands of her compatriots buried deeply in cyberspace, the secret network of those dedicated to bringing their own brand of vigilante justice to the bad guys, it proves more formidable than any firearm. Lisbeth is a super hacker. And she may be a literary heroine for our time.
************
Meet Anonymous. The real life version of Lisbeth and her associates. Anonymous and friends managed to get inside Bank of American, no paragon of financial honesty, and not only uncover but expose for all the world to see yet another one of the many, many frauds BofA has long been known to perpetrate on its unknowing customers.
Nice going, folks. Many thanks from those of us who don't have your gifts of stealth. Those of us tax payers who are sick and tired of being abused, lied to, financially screwed over in every way imaginable. Thanks especially from those who lost their homes to foreclosure while BofA filed improper paperwork, not giving the working stiffs who are busting their asses everyday for hourly wage a chance to just maybe save the roof over their heads. Let's hope there's Hell to pay.
BofA, isn't alone. We've read the news. Citibank. Morgan-Stanley. Chase. The list of criminals goes on. Crime in the street will get you locked up. Crime in the suite will get you a fine bonus. We're putting the wrong people in jail. The execs in these companies should have a room beside Mr. Madoff, who, it's interesting to note, now says, "Of course the bank knew about it. They had too!"
And BofA has the temerity to cry "Foul!" when Anonymous raises the cyber rock and shines the light of day into the darkness where these roaches scurry for cover. I understand there may be a few laws against getting into someone else's computer. But what if, on the other hand, the only way to expose the criminals is to break a couple of rules yourself? Interesting question. Maybe the cyber ethics question of our time.
************
Getting from the outside to the inside to expose the bad guys breaks one set of rules. But there's another rule breaker, one even more feared by those in the corporate world who want us to look the other way while they stack the deck against those of us who work rather than steal for a living. The guy who breaks the rules from the inside. The whistleblower. The list of heroes abounds.
Remember a few years back, when those good folks down at the tobacco companies swore on their mother's graves that they weren't boosting the nicotine in their already deadly products to increase addiction? "Trust us," they said. "We'd never do anything like that. It would be illegal, not to mention immoral." So one guy with a conscience steps out of the darkness into the light with the documents to prove tobacco execs had been lying all along.
Then there's Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of Pentagon documents to WikiLeaks. He's not the first, of course. Those of my vintage will remember the Pentagon Papers. Right now he's sitting in a military jail. I think the guy deserves a medal.
Since I've started writing about my time spent in the belly of the healthcare beast--United Health Group--I've heard from all sorts of people who've blown their own whistles. Lest anyone jump in on UHGs side, let's be clear: this is a company that was fined fifty million back in 2009 for underpaying claims, more than a few for those struggling with cancer. One, Jerome, interviewed on the Today Show, pointed out how, just when you've fought with everything inside you just to stay alive, UHG refuses to pay up. Check out "Today's" archives. It's a story worth keeping alive, and one UHG would rather we forget about.
Just Google United Health Group, click on complaints, and start reading the plethora of information from patients, from lawyers, the lawsuits, the fraud. But due to the power of the internet, we just may be getting to a place where it's more and more difficult for the pepetrators of these moral and civil crimes to find a flat rock to hide under.
Welcome to the Age of Transparency, when any person of conscience has the power to stand up in the middle of the parade and say, "The CEO has no clothes!!"
Micah L. Sifry, in "The End of Secrecy," writes: "...the reason the recent confrontation between WikiLeaks and the US government is a pivotal event is that, unlike these other applications of technology to politics, this time the free flow of information is threatening the establishment with difficult questions." (The Nation, March 21st edition) Much of what Sifry says about government secrecy and WikiLeaks is equally applicable to the corporate secret keepers. Indeed, the military, corporate, Congressional/government complex is all part and parcel of the same entity dedicated to nothing but it's own survival and the keeping of privilege--mostly at our expense.
"...they (the government) probably understand that the conditions for maintaining their monopoly on critical information have been broken. But they apparently still hope that the next Bradley Manning... will be dissuaded from an act of conscience if he believes either that the personal cost will be too high or that his actions won't make a difference... neither approach will work, as long as millions of other government (and, I would add, corporate) employees have access to the information..."
"The threat of massive leaks," says Max Frankel, former New York Times editor, "will persist so long as there are massive secrets."
"If all it takes," writes Sifry," is one person with a USB drive, the 'least trusted person' whose conscience may be pricked by a contradiction in his or her government's (or corporation's) behavior, that information can move into public view more easily than ever before. That is the reality of the twenty-first century."
Bank of American, United Health Group, the Pentagon; no one need fear the Age of Transparency, unless, of course, they happen to be committing fraud, theft, or some other crime. What they do need is to keep in mind that the game has changed. We, like Lisbeth, like Anonymous, like any whistleblower on the inside, have a new and powerful weapon in our arsenal. And it's only a click away.
Inside? Got the goods? Let's see 'em. Darkness fears nothing more than light.
Facebook this....
Mahalo
Salander sits in a pitch dark, scantily furnished apartment. She has been victimized, abused, physically, emotionally, economically, betrayed by almost everyone she thought she could trust. She's angry, and has every right to be. The only light in the room is the faint green glow that emanates from the only weapon she can fight back with--her laptop. In her hands, and in the hands of her compatriots buried deeply in cyberspace, the secret network of those dedicated to bringing their own brand of vigilante justice to the bad guys, it proves more formidable than any firearm. Lisbeth is a super hacker. And she may be a literary heroine for our time.
************
Meet Anonymous. The real life version of Lisbeth and her associates. Anonymous and friends managed to get inside Bank of American, no paragon of financial honesty, and not only uncover but expose for all the world to see yet another one of the many, many frauds BofA has long been known to perpetrate on its unknowing customers.
Nice going, folks. Many thanks from those of us who don't have your gifts of stealth. Those of us tax payers who are sick and tired of being abused, lied to, financially screwed over in every way imaginable. Thanks especially from those who lost their homes to foreclosure while BofA filed improper paperwork, not giving the working stiffs who are busting their asses everyday for hourly wage a chance to just maybe save the roof over their heads. Let's hope there's Hell to pay.
BofA, isn't alone. We've read the news. Citibank. Morgan-Stanley. Chase. The list of criminals goes on. Crime in the street will get you locked up. Crime in the suite will get you a fine bonus. We're putting the wrong people in jail. The execs in these companies should have a room beside Mr. Madoff, who, it's interesting to note, now says, "Of course the bank knew about it. They had too!"
And BofA has the temerity to cry "Foul!" when Anonymous raises the cyber rock and shines the light of day into the darkness where these roaches scurry for cover. I understand there may be a few laws against getting into someone else's computer. But what if, on the other hand, the only way to expose the criminals is to break a couple of rules yourself? Interesting question. Maybe the cyber ethics question of our time.
************
Getting from the outside to the inside to expose the bad guys breaks one set of rules. But there's another rule breaker, one even more feared by those in the corporate world who want us to look the other way while they stack the deck against those of us who work rather than steal for a living. The guy who breaks the rules from the inside. The whistleblower. The list of heroes abounds.
Remember a few years back, when those good folks down at the tobacco companies swore on their mother's graves that they weren't boosting the nicotine in their already deadly products to increase addiction? "Trust us," they said. "We'd never do anything like that. It would be illegal, not to mention immoral." So one guy with a conscience steps out of the darkness into the light with the documents to prove tobacco execs had been lying all along.
Then there's Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of Pentagon documents to WikiLeaks. He's not the first, of course. Those of my vintage will remember the Pentagon Papers. Right now he's sitting in a military jail. I think the guy deserves a medal.
Since I've started writing about my time spent in the belly of the healthcare beast--United Health Group--I've heard from all sorts of people who've blown their own whistles. Lest anyone jump in on UHGs side, let's be clear: this is a company that was fined fifty million back in 2009 for underpaying claims, more than a few for those struggling with cancer. One, Jerome, interviewed on the Today Show, pointed out how, just when you've fought with everything inside you just to stay alive, UHG refuses to pay up. Check out "Today's" archives. It's a story worth keeping alive, and one UHG would rather we forget about.
Just Google United Health Group, click on complaints, and start reading the plethora of information from patients, from lawyers, the lawsuits, the fraud. But due to the power of the internet, we just may be getting to a place where it's more and more difficult for the pepetrators of these moral and civil crimes to find a flat rock to hide under.
Welcome to the Age of Transparency, when any person of conscience has the power to stand up in the middle of the parade and say, "The CEO has no clothes!!"
Micah L. Sifry, in "The End of Secrecy," writes: "...the reason the recent confrontation between WikiLeaks and the US government is a pivotal event is that, unlike these other applications of technology to politics, this time the free flow of information is threatening the establishment with difficult questions." (The Nation, March 21st edition) Much of what Sifry says about government secrecy and WikiLeaks is equally applicable to the corporate secret keepers. Indeed, the military, corporate, Congressional/government complex is all part and parcel of the same entity dedicated to nothing but it's own survival and the keeping of privilege--mostly at our expense.
"...they (the government) probably understand that the conditions for maintaining their monopoly on critical information have been broken. But they apparently still hope that the next Bradley Manning... will be dissuaded from an act of conscience if he believes either that the personal cost will be too high or that his actions won't make a difference... neither approach will work, as long as millions of other government (and, I would add, corporate) employees have access to the information..."
"The threat of massive leaks," says Max Frankel, former New York Times editor, "will persist so long as there are massive secrets."
"If all it takes," writes Sifry," is one person with a USB drive, the 'least trusted person' whose conscience may be pricked by a contradiction in his or her government's (or corporation's) behavior, that information can move into public view more easily than ever before. That is the reality of the twenty-first century."
Bank of American, United Health Group, the Pentagon; no one need fear the Age of Transparency, unless, of course, they happen to be committing fraud, theft, or some other crime. What they do need is to keep in mind that the game has changed. We, like Lisbeth, like Anonymous, like any whistleblower on the inside, have a new and powerful weapon in our arsenal. And it's only a click away.
Inside? Got the goods? Let's see 'em. Darkness fears nothing more than light.
Facebook this....
Mahalo
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
UNG; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous
What could United Healthcare, Bank of America, Lisbeth Salander--for those of you who may have been living on another planet and haven't been home for a while, she's the heroine/anti-heroine known as Steig Larson's, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--and Anonymous, possibly have in common?
Awaiting for a bit more info to arrive... Stay tuned.... There is a thread of commonality here that can be neither dismissed or denied. We may have discovered the most powerful, perhaps the only, available weapon the workers and middle class have left with which to combat the corporate, congressional, military complex.
If you're on the inside.... dump it.
Mahalo
Awaiting for a bit more info to arrive... Stay tuned.... There is a thread of commonality here that can be neither dismissed or denied. We may have discovered the most powerful, perhaps the only, available weapon the workers and middle class have left with which to combat the corporate, congressional, military complex.
If you're on the inside.... dump it.
Mahalo
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