Tag Archives: corruption

What’s most annoying about the Equifax Data Breach

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By  now (September 8, 2017), most people have heard that there was a data breach at Equifax that has made over 143 million Americans vulnerable (about half of the entire country). Read more about it here.

Equifax hasn’t done itself any favors since the breach. First, it waited a month to let anyone know that their security was compromised. Second, 3 of its executives decided to cash out stock in the company a few days after discovering the breach. And third, in order to sign up for the “free” protection services, you have to agree to their Terms of Service, which basically say that you agree to arbitration and lose the right to participate in any class action lawsuit. None of those revelations sound good for the company.

But what makes this breach most annoying to the average American is that there was no way we could have avoided being involved. Most of us don’t do business with Equifax. We don’t open accounts with them. They open accounts ON us. We are their product, and we don’t have a choice in the matter.

Yet, we’re the ones affected. We’re the ones who will be cheated out of our money and thrown into the poorhouse if this runs the course it most likely will run. Equifax will protect Equifax long before it protects any of us. It’s entire model is not built on protecting consumers, but in reporting on consumers to big companies that give them business.

This is a lot like Facebook, even though you may not realize it. Facebook’s product is us, not its web site. Without us, Facebook has no business. Equifax is exactly the same way. The big difference is: Most of us choose to be on Facebook to take advantage of its use of us. So very few of us EVER chose to do business with Equifax, aside from the few people who wanted to monitor their credit before this all happened.

So, let this be another example to you that there are those companies out there who see YOU as a their product and aren’t willing to give you a single cent in order to exploit you. Feel good about that because it’s only going to get worse. Nuff said.

Why Continuum May Be the Most Subversive Television Show Ever to Air

Politics, Television, , , , , , , , , ,

The story is pretty interesting. It’s about a female police officer from the future of about 60 years who travels back in time to today, following a group of fugitives who are hell bent on causing terror. My friend Teramis wrote about the great writing of Continuum a few weeks ago, but I wanted to go in a different direction, mainly talking about the political implications of the show.

What makes the show so interesting is that the group that comes back in time, while being a terrorist organization, is also doing what they’re doing for the betterment of society. Which, when you think about it, is somewhat subversive on its own. The group, filled with really bad people, uses its evil tactics it used in the future to do its evil to the civilization of the past (today’s time). Their purpose is to change the past in hopes of providing for a better future.

The future is pretty interesting in this show, in that what has happened is that corporations have taken over everything, and people are now minions of the overseers, not the other way around. Freedoms are gone. People live their lives in futuristic splendor, but it’s pretty obvious that to get to that future, a lot of rights were trampled on, and a lot of people were made to live some pretty crappy lives at the expense of those who benefited.

What makes it really interesting is that when the main character returns to today’s time, her purpose is still to stop some very evil people from doing bad deeds in today’s time. But her eyes start to open up to the evil that exists in today’s time. This evil is the sort of thing that leads to the oppressive society that will one day emerge, and she is very much a cog in that wheel that uses the tools of technology to act as an enforcer of some very draconian rules.

What is interesting about the show is that there’s a real grey area here where I’m not sure she’s ever going to recognize that she’s actually the problem that came back in time. She thinks she’s doing the right thing, but as she’s doing it, the police agency she’s working with (in today’s time) is slowly becoming very much more oppressive.

I’m reminded of the whole very recent incident where the British government decided to haul in the domestic partner of a reporter it was targeting over the whole Snowden case. Without a warrant, or even a reason, the government hauled him in and imprisoned him for 9 hours (the maximum amount of time it was allowed before being forced to make a charge). What’s interesting is that no one seems to even recognize that a man’s rights were completely ignored for some kind of governmental vengeance. And no one will ever be held accountable.

That is exactly what Continuum is all about. The good guys in this show are the usual cops and white hat wearing people who always save the day. Yet, they are required to do some really horrible things in order to “get the bad guys”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such grey area in a show before. There are times when I’m watching it when I start to lose focus on who I should be rooting for, even though the show maintains its narrative in a way that keeps you thinking the oppressors are still the good guys.

It’s an interesting premise, and it’s definitely an interesting experiment. If they play it out as the are already doing it, and SyFy doesn’t cancel it, this could turn out to be one of the most important shows to be on television.

What is the rationale for charging the poor more than everyone else?

Business, Economics, News, , , ,

I was dropping off a friend of mine at a car repair place on the other side of town last night when I decided to pick up some McDonald’s chicken mcnuggets on the way home. I’d never stopped at any place in this neighborhood before, but this was one of those ethnically diverse areas where most of the signs were in Spanish, bordering on an African-American-based population area. This was the kind of area where a lot of economically struggling families live, although not so bad a neighborhood as to constitute a fear for anyone visiting the neighborhood. 

I’m a creature of habit. I tend to buy the same thing constantly, so the meal I always get costs me $6.46 at the McDonald’s I normally frequent. This time, however, the charge came to $6.66. For some reason, a few miles from the other McDonald’s, my cost was twenty cents more than what it normally cost me. I paid it, but it left me thinking, why is the charge more here than in the nicer area where I normally get my food? 

It’s not like the people in this area can afford more. Economically, they are less well off than the people who frequent the McDonald’s in my neighborhood. Yet, because they are figuratively in a completely different universe than the other McDonald’s, the pricing is completely different. 

I remember when I lived in San Francisco, and I worked at the Hilton downtown. The people at the Hilton liked to say they were in the “financial district”. In reality, they were in the Tenderloin, one of the lowest of the economic areas in San Francisco. 

Across the street from the hotel, I used to grab a carton of milk every day. It was one of those habit things where I never thought much about it. However, one day, I was a paying more attention than usual, and I noticed that the Arabic clerk always looked at a sheet of tax prices that was centered under a glass sheet on the main counter. My milk cost 99 cents, but the clerk looked on his list and then told me my price for the milk (with tax) was now $1.35. Right then and there, I thought, wait, nowhere in the country is the local sales tax 36 percent. NOWHERE. So, I inquired about this. The clerk said, “tax.” I informed him that 36 percent is outrageous. 

His response wasn’t “Wow, you’re right” and then charged me the correct amount. Instead, he took the milk out of the bag and proceeded to kick me out of his store. When I protested, I actually saw his hand moving towards a spot under the counter, where I noticed there was a revolver. Taking my losses, I left the store. 

What this taught me is that there’s an outright intent to screw people over whenever you can. In the Tenderloin district, I suspect that store owners figure the people are too stupid to realize they’re being cheated, and they’re dimed and quartered (as opposed to being nickle and dimed) endlessly. 

So, what are your thoughts? Is this capitalism at its norm? Is this corruption? Or do people just generally not care because it’s happening to the poor, and they’re supposed to be victims any way?

A Nation Without a Rudder

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Sometimes, it is so easy to fall into partisan bickering that it’s not even necessary to write the column. Circumstances fill in all of the details for you. But if you’re one of those people who purport to be lacking in partisanship, or at least trying to avoid the pitfalls, it’s a lot harder to talk about the same issues without someone automatically believing you are part of the status quo (one side or the other) and immediately fill in criticisms because of such observations and beliefs.

The President of the United States delivered his “jobs” speech last night, and it went over like a lead balloon. The Los Angeles Times (most definitely not a conservative newspaper) took a tongue in cheek approach to covering the speech, and wrote an article that is probably one of the most sarcastic I have read in ages. Here’s an example:

But here’s the catch that Obama and his Windy City wizards missed: Most Americans are not politically obedient machine Chicagoans. Like a linebacker reading the quarterback’s eyes, they’ve already figured out this South Sider’s game.

But after the laughing subsides, you have to start looking at the bigger picture and wonder what’s really going on here. If it’s just about one side failing, and the other side benefiting, I guess it would be fine (if you were on the side benefiting, I guess), but in this case, we’re not in a zero sum situation (where one side wins); we’re in a no sum situation (where no one wins). The United States is in such need for sustained success, and we’re nowhere near finding it.

Unfortunately, our country is like a boat with no rudder. Granted, it’s a pretty strong boat, capable of floating quite well, but at the moment, no one has any idea where to take it, and even if they did, they don’t know what to do with it once we get where we’re going. Instead, the hope is that things will get better, and all we have to do is just hold our breath until we get to that better place. That’s not a plan for sustained greatness. It’s a plan to avoid bad things by hoping things won’t be so bad if we get beyond the current wave of bad things.

So what is the answer? Well, we need leadership that can focus on what’s really the problems with America and then do something about fixing them. But as long as every leader is only interested in self-interests, like getting re-elected, we’re never going to find a solution because we’re too stupid to realize that we need to allow them to fix things first instead of punishing them for trying to do what’s right. It’s like the whole Jimmy Carter election where he spent his re-election period trying to point out what needed to be done to fix America. He got slammed and destroyed by his opponent because he “hated America” and other such false-isms. We’re so stupid and incapable of realizing our own self-interests that we’ll let someone say nice things about us and then convince ourselves that the person must be a great leader because he said good things about us. That’s how simple the America psyche is. And that’s why we’ll never actually get any success.

America needs a splash of cold water in its face to wake up and realize what’s really wrong. But we’ll never get that because anyone who wants to run for office is doomed to have to say nice things and embrace American exceptionalism rather than try to fix anything that’s wrong. Think of it this way: If I was to run for office and say that the way to fix our cities is to eradicate poverty by actually focusing our attention on improving the lives of people in poverty, while creating a new atmosphere of intolerance towards gangs, racism, hatred, and corruption, and then turned around and devoted my political life to doing just that, my career would be over before it started. However, if I got up on stage and talked about how great America is, how I’ll use my office to put more police on the streets to “stop crime”, and that I will support business to “rebuild this country”, I have a far better chance of being elected, and once in office, I’ll be completely ineffective, but will probably be able to enrich myself by giving rich lobbyists exactly what they need to make sure their clients become richer, while people who really need help get limited help and lots of condemnation for not raising themselves up by their bootstraps. Think about that for a second because I’ve described practically every politician out there, from your local mayor to the President of the United States. And somewhere out there is a voice thinking to itself, “well, the problem is too big, so there’s really nothing that can be done about it” and another voice thinking, “well, if I can’t fix it, I may as well try to profit off of it and make a good life for myself”.

And so the band will keep on playing on.

Several days after the Rapture didn’t happen….

Education, News, Politics, Religion, , , , , , , , , ,

There are a lot of people congratulating themselves on predicting the predictions of the crazy religious guy were not going to happen. Atheists laugh because it makes them feel, well, more justified in their belief that nothing exists, religious leaders feel better knowing that they still hold all of the cards (people can’t determine religious events without relying a church), and everyone else breathes a sigh of relief because Saturday didn’t end with a bad Buffy the Vampire Slayer season finale-like moment in reality. As we in the academic community like to ask, was there a teaching moment in all of this?

I’m going to venture that the answer is no. We didn’t learn anything from this, and chances are pretty good that when the next nutcase comes along, the media will hype his drivel insanely, and in the end, they’ll act like they were the sober ones all along. In other words, we’re never really going to win.

But I did want to ask a rhetorical question just for the fun of it: What if the rapture happened, but no one actually observed it? Think about that for a moment. Everyone talks about how the Rapture is going to be some fire and brimstone moment, but in reality all religious tellings tell us is that it’s going to be a moment when God brings all the worthy up to Heaven to avoid the eventual destructive battle that will take place between Satan, Jesus and, well, the rest of us. But we make a massively interesting conclusion that because the event didn’t happen in a way that was televised by Fox News and CNN that, therefore, it didn’t happen.

What if it did?

What if instead of a big, televised moment, the “worthy” were actually brought up to Heaven and the rest of us are now about to go through the rest of the story? I mean, how many people are really “worthy” to begin with? Think about that one for a moment, just on the semantic principles alone. How many people go to church every Sunday (or whatever day that organization holds its religious functions)? Of those, how many are actually living their lives in true, Christian morality, as opposed to the kind of morality that uses the thought process of “well, I generally do what I’m supposed to do, but it’s so easy to sin, and, well, it happens to everyone”? I ask this because even priests molest children, and their churches don’t hold them accountable, which means even their institutions of religion are seriously corrupt. So, if someone had to actually go out on a spiritual limb and say, who amongst you is truly devout and truly submissive to your specific religion, I argue that there really aren’t that many to begin with. I’m assuming there are probably so few actual idealized indivduals of this nature so that if the Rapture did take place, maybe no one would have noticed because so few people would have been brought up to Heaven in the first place. I figure, thinking generally, that the major numbers of the population all fit into the not so perfect category so that chances are pretty strong that when the Rapture happens, it’s going to happen in such a way that very few of us are ever going to be brought up in all its spiritual wonderfulness. If you buy into that sort of thing.

So if there really is a Rapture, maybe it happened, and the majorit of us turned out to be unworthy of the honor. If you think hard about it, it’s probably not that hard to realize that such a possibility is massively, scarily true. Remember, if you believe in that sort of thing, to the point where religion is that significant to you, how hard is it to make a leap of faith that might point out that an all-knowing God isn’t going to miss any of the nuances that make it possible for the “perfect” religious soul to be lacking in all things necessary to make it worthy of ascendance. I’m just saying.

So, like I said, maybe the Rapture happened, and so few of us got brought up to Heaven. I’d be more interesting in doing a missing persons search to see if a few people went missing that day. I’d argue that they probably live such unimportant lives, unfilled with the morass that we package as fame and fortune, so that so few of the rest of us would ever notice they left. We focus on famous people, celebrities, and the very wealthy, all of whom I would argue would never fit into this category of the person who would be brought up to Heaven for a moment like the Rapture. Oh sure, they’ll protest and get their throngs of followers to condemn such a thought, but no matter how many times Charlie Sheen talks about #winning, it’s really not winning if he’s as corrupt (or worse) as the rest of us when it comes down to the cosmic, spiritual questions.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I”m one of the good ones either. I mean, I’m here, right? No angels descended, grabbed me and brought me up to Heaven, although a very attractive convenience store clerk did give me the eye the other day, so maybe I just missed the sign. I mean, I have as much experience in this sort of thing as anyone else, including the Pope, who would love to convince the rest of us that he has a direct phone line to the Almighty, but in reality has to stand in line like the rest of us; he’s just a lot more comfortable standing in line.

Now, having said all that, the odds are pretty good that we were bamboozled by yet another charlatan who tried to get money out of his many followers by pretending to be something he wasn’t. And chances are pretty good that another one will show up shortly after he disappears from fame and will do it again. And we’ll fall for it again because we’re stupid humans who don’t know any better. I mean, we play the Lotto in hopes of winning and have fights over baseball and football games that sometimes lead to serious injuries and death, not because we’re brilliant, but because we’re generally really stupid people who only can claim advanced evolution beyond primatives because we’re capable of making cell phone calls on our weekend and nights data packages that we pay extra for.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. No one does. But we’ll gladly pay money to anyone who lies to us to convince us there are more answers than we can ascertain by looking up at the sky and seeing that the stars haven’t changed one bit in the last thousand years.

In the Worst of Times, the Common People Turn on Each Other While the Greedy Hide and Laugh

Business, Economics, Education, Politics, , , , , , ,

It’s turning out to be a very interesting few years lately, now that we’re heading into the decade of the recession. While an economist might argue the recession is over, another might claim it’s still in the future, and another might chime in with the idea that it’s really a depression, and yet one more might claim things have never been better, the simple fact of the matter is that times are tight, and times are tough for a lot of people. If you buy into the lie that Americans are famous for sticking together, you’d be waiting for those Americans to band together and look out for one another. If you buy into the idea that banding together is a crock of crap, you’d probably recognize it when Americans have a tendency to kick anyone who is down and then point fingers, blaming that person for all of the troubles.

Unfortunately, the latter is how we’re responding to pretty much everything. In Michigan, for example, the legislators realized that obviously the people causing all of the problems must be teachers, and have now met and decided that they would tax teachers more (causing them to pay more money for their health care). The teachers, letting their response come from their union, have indicated that they are shocked that the people can so easily turn against them, especially when they are the ones teaching little Johnny to read. Well, if you listen to the people of Michigan, you might start to wonder how it is that the common person has become such a critic of anyone who would dare to be a teacher in this state. Some of the comments are outright hostile, and anyone who comes into the conversation backing teachers is immediately branded as stupid, corrupt, and some kind of radical communist who is teaching Johnny to build napalm bombs to kill all of Johnny’s friends at school.

When did it get to be this way? I know there was a recent batch of hostility towards community college professors for making over $100,000 a year in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Being a community college professor, although part time, I found myself shocked that the population of the city (and state) was nothing but hostile towards teachers. It was as if they were personally paying for these salaries from their own money, and because they weren’t making $100,000 themselves, no one else deserved it.

Now, I’ve come to the conclusion as to why those professors do make over $100,000 a year. This summer, I was offered absolutely no classes to teach as an adjunct (which is the lowest pay of any kind of instructor). Instead, the full-time instructors get first grab at all classes, and of course, they get the premium rate for taking those classes. Thus, their pay aut0matically heads up to those $100,000 figures we were talking about. The solution is simple: Hire adjuncts who are struggling to survive as it is. But instead, they hire the guys (and gals) who are arguably overpaid for the semesters they have already taught. The conclusions are obvious, but no one seems to figure it out, and thus, people will continue to complain.

But back to the hostility towards instructors and teachers. My opinion on this is that people really aren’t anti-teachers themselves but are anti-union, because the unions involved in these decisions are beholden to a tenure structure that massively benefits these teachers. Most every other worker in the state is not a member of a union with such power and prestige, so all they can see is that this class of workers is highly compensated and protected, and the average citizen is never offered the same kinds of protections themselves.

An example is my own job. I’m an at will employee, mainly because I do not belong to a union. I’m not advocating one, by the way, but at the same time because none of us have a union that we belong to, we have no such protections that these teachers all seem to have in their corners. It should not be surprising that those without the same protections are going to see those who are protected as “others” and thus, someone to be criticized for excess and outrageous behavior. It doesn’t take much of an analysis to see how a person in a union of such protection would then be perceived as someone who has too much of a good thing. And then you have a whole bunch of people running around hating teachers. The one to one logic doesn’t follow, but the eventual demise into hatred towards a class of people makes sense, especially if you understand group mob-like mentality.

If one is capable of distincing oneself from the passions of this argumentation, one is then also capable of seeing what is really happening in the background. There are people who benefit from this hostility, and they’re often never even involved in the discussions. I’m talking about corporate leaders and politicians who dig into this rhetoric, using it to feed entire careers of corrupt government service. I say corrupt because when you use the passions of people to rile them up and then benefit from stupidity, all the while doing nothing to solve anything, that’s corruption by manipulation of the masses. Yet, this happens all of the time, and continues to happen to this day.

This is why the whole debacle in Wisconsin took place. Politicians, enriching themselves on hatred and anger, orchestrated people to do all sorts of stupid things at no benefit to the people, yet in great benefit to people in power who seek to continue manipulating power. No one else benefits. Instead, people lost rights, money and power, all in the name of some other people using them through continued manipulation.

It’s happening in Michigan right now. We live in a very poor state that is suffering because a lot of very bad, corrupt politicians really only saw the benefits for themselves by rallying up the masses to make stupid decisions for themselves. Look at Detroit if you need to see a great example of this. Corrupt politicians, hiding money they stole directly from the people, cheated the people by promising to be something yet delivering the complete opposite. And then when they were called to account for their misdeeds, they claimed they were targets of politics or racism, or whatever else they could come up with to continue rallying the people behind them while they socked away more money before they were thrown from office (and sometimes directly into prison so they can wait it out before they are able to cheat the people again). Meanwhile, they continue to pretend that the people need to support them at their own best interest, and as always the people end up being screwed.

And when it comes down to it, some politician will use ridiculous rhetoric to lead the people down the wrong path again. And we’ll follow. As we always do.

Because we’re stupid. And to justify our stupidity, we’ll point our fingers at someone else who is probably just going about his business doing something that doesn’t affect anyone else in a bad way. And we’ll pounce on him. Hard.

Because we’re stupid. And we don’t know how to do it any other way.

Sony’s Incompetence Just Proves How the Rest of Us Are Screwed

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I received an email today from Sony Online Entertainment, indicating that their networks had been compromised and that, as a result, a LOT of my personal information (possibly my credit card information as well) has been compromised as well. It states how sorry Sony is this happened, and that it’s essentially now my responsibility to cover my own ass for the near future because of the complete, utter incompetence of the empire that is Sony. The fact that they waited until they couldn’t sit on the story any longer only makes it worse, because if someone was going to compromise my identity and start emptying the accounts in my name, the damage is probably already done.

What bothers me mostly is that I’ve always felt Sony to be incompetent and really hated the company with a passion. Granted, I own a Sony Playstation 3, which I use mainly to watch blu-ray dvds and Netflix streaming, but because of this whole debacle, I’ve basically lost any ability to do anything involving Netflix. Yeah, I can watch a dvd (at least I think I can; it’s been some time since I’ve actually turned on my Playstation 3), but that’s about it. Thanks, Sony.

But as for me hating Sony, I’ve felt this way ever since I first started playing online games that had Sony Online Entertainment tied to it. Everquest was my first experience. And while I enjoyed it when it first came out, at some point you started to feel that Sony’s only intention was to separate as much money from you as possible before you realized there was a lot of bait and switch going on with that game. You know the kind I’m talking about. They promise one thing, but in the end, they give you something you weren’t really desiring. Everquest was constantly like that from servers that couldn’t handle the capacity of the players (or just constantly failed) or quests that were broken, and no matter how many times you contacted customer service, they would never be fixed. And then they started the whole micro-transaction thing where they tried to sell you a whole bunch of things that you should have been able to get for free within the game (because you were already paying them for access). After time, I started to feel I was a cash cow for the company, and I left.

Then SOE started integrating themselves into other games that really could have been so much better if Sony was never involved, like Star Wars Galaxies. Some of the worst decisions of online computer gaming were made by SOE with this game, to the point of where I began to believe the whole process was some kind of psychological experiment to see how much ridiculousness they could spread to their user community before people threw their computers out the window. Again, I left that game very upset.

Whenever I heard that SOE was going to be involved in yet another game, I decided to pass. Even when I hear they’re only slightly involved, I pass. I just no longer felt like being fleeced by that company.

So, yesterday I receive an email from SOE telling me they screwed up again. Except I’m not even a customer of theirs anymore. No, they screwed up with information that was on file YEARS ago when I was subscribing to one of their games. For reasons that escape any rationality whatsoever, they maintained my information so that someone could break into it and steal it. YEARS AFTER THE FACT. We’re talking half a decade here. Yet, Sony has proven yet again that because I made the mistake of doing business with them years ago, I’m screwed.

Which brings me to my supposition that this proves that no matter what I do in the future, I”m always going to be screwed because it now means that every company I’ve ever done business with is just waiting to screw me because of incompetence. So, because I bought a toaster from the Good Guys (a company that’s been out of business for about a decade or so), someone can break into their records and have all types of personal data on me that they can use to take over my identity. I mean, we haven’t even touched the surface of the crimes against individuals that exist because someone might have your personal information, yet all of us are victims because we can’t do a single, freaking thing to avoid the fact that at some time we trusted a commercial entity with our information because they required it in order to buy a package of Twizzlers.

All we can do is be more suspicious of everyone we do business with in the future, which is great, but it doesn’t change the fact that at one time we were stupid enough to not realize that the future was one where Big Brother isn’t government, but it our own information. Okay, I take that back. I still don’t trust government, but instead of just worrying about them, I have to worry about any dealings I did by paying with a check at Chuck E. Cheese back in 1970.

So what is the common person to do? We have no recourse whatsoever. Sure, we can sign onto a class action suit, but that doesn’t do anything but make a bunch of lawyers rich, and the rest of us get a month worth of coupons for Tide laundry detergent, if we choose not to send in an opt out form. Count on Congress to respond? Yeah, I’ll hold my breath on that one.

Basically, we’re all screwed. And we have Sony to thank for that. And then every other company we’ve ever made the mistake of ever doing business with in the past.

No End to the Misery that is the City of Detroit

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , , ,

On Sunday, in Detroit, a man walked into a police station and opened fire, injuring four officers before being killed by the rest of the officers who returned fire. As of the next day, there has been no motive, explanation or even bizarre justification for his actions, other than he was some guy who walked in off the street and decided to pursue “suicide by cop.” Since then, there have been all sorts of commentaries, ranging from the expected to the outrageous. But what hasn’t been discussed at length is how much this should have been expected. I mean, no one expects these things, and when they should, they rarely do.

Detroit is one of those cities that ends up on practically every bad list that gets reported about cities in the United States. Literacy is lowest, crime is highest, murder is highest, corruption is constant, racism is everywhere (from expected racism to reverse racism), gang activity is amongst the highest in the nation, and the city is pretty much a cesspool and an example of what should not be done with a city if you want to achieve some sense of normality and progress.

The former mayor of the city is in jail, as are numerous members of its former governments. Crime is so out of control that people don’t even think about moving there; it’s on the lowest of the low lists for people moving to a city. Whenever a television show has something to do with Detroit, it’s almost always a gritty police procedural where people die, cops are on the edge, and there’s lots of gang violence. I have yet to see Meg Ryan looking for love in Detroit, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some random hood beating the crap out of a suspect with a baseball bat because “dat’s how we do tings in da Troit!”

What’s interesting is that Detroit is one of those cities where if government really cared, it could actually use the city as a petri dish of improving urban despair all over the country. Other than Washington, D.C., and maybe parts of Los Angeles and New York, Detroit has pretty much everything going wrong for it so that a concentrated effort might actually make a very significant difference.

But no one seems to care about places like Detroit, except for the people who live in Detroit, and for some reason they don’t seem to matter. If you follow the politics of a place like Detroit, you notice that quite a few of the people running for office all run on the same types of platforms, about improving Detroit so people can be proud of it. But then a few years down the line, people throw those bums out because it turns out they weren’t interested in helping the city, but in helping themselves, usually to the coffers and whatever they can lay their hands on before they’re either caught or voted out of office. Even when they’re caught, quite often the masses will rally around the culprit, somehow claiming that going after a public official the people elected is wrong, that even though the person is corrupt and stole millions of dollars, he’s “their” thief, so the government should leave him or her alone. It’s often enough to cause one’s head to spin continuously at the ridiculousness involved.

Detroit is very much becoming one of those Mexican provinces where government has collapsed, and the drug gangs have taken over. The police are fighting a never-ending battle to regain control of the city, but like a proud parent, they just refused to believe that they’re really not in control. It would not surprise me to discover the culprit in this current case is some drug dealer who felt slighted by the police, and this is his way of striking back, or that he’s some trigger man for a drug gang that has decided to send a message to the cops.

Or he’s some delusional man who decided life wasn’t worth it, and suicide by cop was the easiest way out. Either way, there are problems in Detroit that need some serious attention. Unfortunately, the experts IN Detroit are obviously not the ones who are capable of handling the problem. They’ve been doing the same things over and over, hoping for different results (the Internet definition of insanity).

I used to drive through Detroit a couple of times a month, and it’s like entering a different world when you do. You go from the nice, grassy landscape, and then the journey on the freeway turns into dirtied concrete, and you realize that this is not a place that has any respect for itself. And why should it? It’s just getting worse and worse.

What’s going to happen over the next few days, and possibly weeks, is locals will point their fingers at what they’ve always pointed their fingers at, blaming unions, gangs, politicians, big government, little government, the auto industry, drugs, guns, overzealous police, underzealous police, and they’ll come up with the same conclusions they always do. But in the end, they’ll do nothing, hoping it was an anomaly that will never happen again.

Until it happens again, and then some reporter will start off a story with some ridiculousness like: “They never believed it could happen here.”

Vote for Elmer, my stuffed animal frog, for office

Politics, , , ,

I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of political signs up on the sides of the road these days, all instructing me to vote for people I’ve never heard of, promising me that these unknown people somehow have my best interests at heart. But whenever I read the newspaper, I read nothing but bad things about the people we elected, and the bad articles go on for days, never ending until the next corrupt person enters office and starts the cycle again. I read the letters to the editor section of every newspaper, and there are so many people trying to convince me that some  unknown dweeb has the best qualifications to be elected for some random position.

Then someone will come on the news and berate me for not wanting to vote. In some sanctimonious tone, some rich, privileged individual will tell me, matter-0f-factly, that by not voting for a bunch of people I know I can probably never trust, that I’m somehow responsible for the bad state of affairs in this country, in my county, my state, my district or wherever. It’s always my fault. If I vote for someone, it’s my fault. If I voted against someone, it’s my fault. If I don’t vote, it’s my fault. Not once has anyone ever thought of the possibility that maybe the fact that we’re voting for people in the first place means it’s THEIR fault.

That’s why I’m proclaiming Elmer my choice for every political office under the sun. Oh, I know you won’t vote for him, because you’re so convinced that Joe Politician has your best interests at heart, even though he’s never done anything personally for you, has been accused of all sorts of crimes of stealing OUR money, but because he’s actually a living, breathing person, he’s a much better candidate in your opinion.

Well, let me tell you about Elmer. He’s never cheated on his taxes. Not once. He’s never even thought about it. Not once did he vote to send troops into harm’s way. He’s never even written a letter to the editor claiming that would be a good thing to do. Not once has he ever taken money that didn’t belong to him. He’s never been friends with anyone who did either. He’s just that good.

Let me tell you what he has done. He’s ALWAYS been a good friend no matter what happens. When I came home drunk from that party and didn’t score with that girl I was trying so hard to win the heart of, he was there for me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He’s just that kind of guy. Instead, he sat there and let me figure out how to get ready for the next day without any condemnation. A politician would have thought less of me. But not Elmer.

Elmer has also never lied. Not once. Whenever he speaks, he speaks the truth.

He also cares about everyone. He’s willing to let everyone hug him and be his friend. And he’s never taken back that friendship from anyone. He’s just that way.

So, when the next politician starts lying to you to gain your vote, think about Elmer. Would Elmer do that? No, he wouldn’t.

So vote for Elmer next time you vote. You’ll have to write him in, but that’s okay. He’s not proud. He’ll take whatever he can get. And he’ll even work for free. Or hugs. Whatever you want to give him.

Let’s see another politician promise that, and mean it.