It wasn’t ‘Liberal Idiocy’.

I saw a headline for an article that Liberal Idiocy caused the current measles outbreak. I was not able to read it because I was not able to pull up the actual article.  So I can only write about the title with no knowledge of the actual article.

I have to say I was upset about the title. It has nothing to do with ‘Liberal’ anything. This is a result of people not vaccinating. It isn’t a ‘liberal’ thing for some parents to mistakenly think vaccines cause autism or the belief that people should avoiding vaccines because God is the only healer and sickness is a punishment from God.

I will agree that it is an ‘Idiocy’ thing. That misconception about autism has been repeatedly disproven.  And avoiding medical treatment and medicine in general because of warped religious belief is beyond idiocy.

As a liberal, I am all for vaccinations. I had mine and I don’t see them as a bad thing. Not getting children vaccinated endangers all children.

The Lie of Home Ownership and other myths of the Supremacy of Modern American Life.

One of the hallmarks of the ‘American Dream’ is home ownership. The phrase “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” originally meant life, liberty and the pursuit of property. (Or so we were taught in my college government course)

But I would argue that it is a myth. It isn’t really true.

Lets say you buy a house and over the years you get it paid off early. So now you feel it is truly yours and you no longer have to pay the bank. You have a deed that states that house and bit of dirt it sits on is your personal property. You still have to pay the government to actually have the right to own it. If you don’t, the government can seize it. Even thought you OWN it. It used to be that the local government could seize it to put a road through as well. But that law has changed. Now they can seize it if they want to build a mall there or if they want to put in a country club.

Ultimately, this means you DON’T really own anything. Despite what you paid to get that piece of paper saying you own it. At least you got a tax break on it. Oh wait, no. Romney wants to take that away. So you will no longer get that deductible on your taxes, which is about the only reason, anymore, that they say ‘owning’ is better than renting. 

At least if you rent, Renters insurance is less costly than home owners insurance and if you need something fixed, you just call maintenance and you don’t end up with a repair bill. 

Seems to me, renting is now the way to go.

Basically, home ownership is more like having a feudal estate.  You don’t ‘own’ the land, it is loaned to you by the government for you to manage for them.  And then you send in a portion of what you earn from the land in ‘taxes’ to the king.  Only people don’t usually ‘work’ a lot that a house sits on for income.  So you pay income taxes on the work you DO do and then you pay property taxes from the same work income. 

Wow.   I think those feudal landowners’ probably had it better.  They only paid one tax.  They just had to fight for their lord when war happened.  Oh yeah, we do that too.  Sometimes through volunteer service and sometimes through a draft.  And, sometimes, people who volunteered and served their term of service are not allowed to leave when their time is over.  So maybe they were still better off back then.

At least we have better medical treatment.  Although, for an industrialized, first world nation, we have the worst rates for easily prevented death from asthma.  We also have a strangely high infant mortality rate from other preventable deaths (from conditions that should have been preventable).  This is because medical costs are so high that people don’t go to the doctor for things that don’t look, seem, or sound serious at the moment.  Not like other industrialized countries with nationalized health care and people can go to the doctor for things more often without going into bankruptcy (even thought many people who lose everything because of medical dept actually have health insurance).  So while we have better medical treatment it is too costly for people to access it.  Lets call that a null.  So feudal people are still better off.

The working conditions were not great.  At least we have that better.  Well, if you can find a job.  And if it has a good health package.  And if it has high enough wages.  Even all those added together, we actually work more days a year, have less days off.  So we have better tools and equipment and work conditions but we work more and have less time for ourselves.  I might call that a wash too.

I guess the freedom to live our lives the way we want and no one telling us how to live.  Nope. We don’t even have that.  The GOP is trying to turn back the clock on women’s reproductive rights and religious people are trying to tell people who they cannot marry.  Which is a bit a change from the king being able to order certain knights or lords or marry their daughters to other certain knights or lords.  Still, it is one person dictating who can or cannot marry. 

Finally, I’ve found one thing in which we have going better for us than in feudal times.  We live longer.  That’s about it.

Zero Tolerance

This is a term we hear all the time these days about many things.  It started out as part of the War on Drugs.  That was sure successful.  Not.  But the result was people being prosecuted or losing jobs for some things that were not actually drugs.  Everyone heard about the railroad employee that tested positive.  He had the same breakfast every morning his entire career.  A poppy seed muffin.  And yes, if you were to eat that EVERY DAY, you would get a hit on a drug test.  But the people who tried to say, oh, I had poppy seed bread today, soon found out that it wouldn’t wash.

It is used for steroids and sports.  Athletes getting legitimate medical treatment for a number of conditions can test positive for certain performance enhancing steroids.  Sometimes they are given a pass on it and other times they are forced to sit out while they are under treatment.  My question is this – do those legitimate treatments actually deliver enough of the steroid to actually improve athletic performance or is it just barely enough to make the test positive.  If it is the first, I can understand telling them they can’t complete.  If it is the second, then it has no impact and they should be allowed to perform.

It is used in regards to weapons in school and applied so broadly that a kid who glued tiny, plastic solders to a hat to honor his military father was sent home because the tiny, plastic solders had guns.  Primary school kids get suspended or expelled because a parent packed a lunch with cutlery so the child could cut up his or her food.  Kids get suspended or expelled for teeny tiny representations of weapons that even the TSA would let pass inspection.

And it is applied to shoplifting.  So much so that people who grab a soda while shopping, have it in the cart, and miss getting it scanned will be arrested.  Even if they have the money and have NO PROBLEM whatsoever paying for it.  They admit they missed it.  Sure, there may be the occasional person who is trying to get away with something.  But on the whole, when someone isn’t going out of their way to hide anything and are happy to take care of it when they see it themselves or when someone says, you missed something, I don’t think they are intentionally trying to steal anything.

But these days, the stores are going overboard.  Honest mistakes have been criminalized.  Intent is meaningless and seems to have no place in the justice process anymore. 

It has gotten so bad that when I was waiting in line at a customer service counter one day, I felt that the parents of a preteen were making a huge mistake.  They found out, after they left the big chain store, that their daughter had shoplifted something.   They were clearly angry with her and they were bringing her back to return the item and apologize.  They were going the route of public humiliation as punishment as well to help drive the lesson home.  But it isn’t the policy of the big chain store to let it go at that.  I don’t think the parents realized that their daughter was then going to be arrested and taken away to be booked and processed and prosecuted.

Still, at least in cases like that, the person actually intended to steal something.  It wasn’t some stupid oversight that was wasting a whole lot of people’s time and money.  People get charged fines for frivolous law suits.  When someone made a small mistake and is happy to pay for the item, that kind of waste should be criminal and the companies should be charged fines for frivolous law suits. 

People (companies really)  need to learn the difference between criminal intent and a brain fart.