Old Friends and Acquaintances

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Cria Lama_2_Luc_Viatour (400x335)

Attribution: Luc Viatour

When I was working in Colorado, I also raised and sold one or two llamas a year. The babies are seriously cute, and the only way to have room for new babies is to sell the old ones.

I worked with a vet who specialized in llamas. I was his client and paid for his services, but he generously shared his knowledge and taught me how to care for my animals. We’d chat about trivialities too. He once waved away my thanks by saying the more his clients knew, the fewer midnight calls roused him from bed. He’s a very good guy.

I still have three elderly llamas and one old boy’s health issue recently led me to contact my old vet. His caring response reminded me that – I miss him.

Over the course of my life, many people have helped me. Even if we never visited each other’s homes – even if I don’t remember everyone’s name – many people made my life better. From time to time, something happens to nudge me out of my current rut and I remember.

I miss them.

I hope that sometimes I helped others too.

And for those of you who were pains in the ass – good riddance.

J. D., We Hardly Knew Ye

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hillbilly elegyPresident Trump can’t catch a break.  Even when he might have had a legitimate point to make about the events in Charlottesville, the tenuous connection between his mind and his mouth failed him yet again.  Few situations carry more emotional complexity than the proposed removal of Confederate Civil War memorials, and the tragic death of a counter protester heated the situation well beyond the boiling point.  A carefully nuanced response was called for, but as everyone from North Korea to the South Bronx is well aware, The Donald doesn’t do nuance.  His convoluted ruminations wound up sounding vaguely like an endorsement of white supremacy, which it wasn’t.  His critics, few of whom go for nuance themselves, turned their amps up to eleven and let fly, never giving the slightest nod to the possibility that there might be more to the story than the heinous murder of a valiant cultural warrior, abetted by society’s fave villains, the Nazis and the Klan.

The issue seems straightforward; monuments to those who defended slavery are a stain on the moral fabric of modern America that should be obliterated (along with the voices of anyone who disagrees).  Media scribes and civil rights activists are happy to label those who oppose this erasure as racist crackers and toss them into the ninth ring of Hell along with the likes of Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.  Ideologies espoused by groups like the KKK and the American Nazi Party are easily and justifiably condemned,  but the roots of their appeal go far deeper than raw racist bigotry.  Society is always better served by trying to understand its deviants, if only because how we deal with them may determine how many more of them there will be.

How quickly we seem to have forgotten about Hillbilly Elegy.  J. D. Vance’s spare, poignant account of growing up in the world of the white not-so-privileged is still hanging around the NY Times best seller list.  But the lessons it should have taught us about the thought processes of  disaffected poor whites in America apparently didn’t get through. Continue reading →

Social Security Changes

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I ask that you accept that I’m a day late in my usual posting. My wife of 53 years passed away yesterday. She will, of course, no longer receive Social Security benefits.

Much has been written about when Social Security will run out of funds, and President Trump has taken the position that his policies will bring in more income to the fund based on a more vibrant economy. However, there are some changes that will occur to the program without any government action. First, according to the Motley Fool, is that the “full retirement age” will increase from 66 years and 4 months (an increase of 2 months) because of a law signed into effect in 1983 to account for increasing life expectancies. The second anticipated change is that beneficiaries will receive the largest Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) in recent years because of economic data.

The final change is that the “rich” will pay more. All earners are paying Social Security taxes on income from $0.01 to $127,200. Most pay 6.2% of their income while the employer pays an additional 6.2%. Self-employed people pay the entire amount. The Motley Fool predicts that total taxable amount will increase by about 3% to somewhere above $130,000. (Note that the amount extracted from your paycheck is not deductible when you file your federal and state income tax reports!)

A message to all of those who are hoping Trump will fail: If he fails to improve economic conditions, all wage earners will be required to pay more to rescue the Social Security program. Perhaps that outcome is preferable to you when you must pay more to keep benefits from being reduced? For those new to this site, I am not a fan of Trump. However, I don’t understand why doing everything possible to cause his policies to fail is good for the country or you?

You Don’t Want to Get Thrown Under the Bus

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Word Detective offers this thorough definition:

‘To throw someone under the bus’ is defined as Stay out from under the busmeaning to sacrifice; to treat as a scapegoat; to betray, but I think the key to the phrase really lies in the element of utter betrayal, the sudden, brutal sacrifice of a stalwart and loyal teammate for a temporary and often minor advantage.

Not all our popular phrases come from the King James Bible or Shakespeare – there is, apparently, no antecedent phrase about throwing someone under the wagon. This phrase belongs to us, so you’d think its origin would be clear. You’d be wrong.

Merriam Webster says:

The origins of throw someone under the bus have been attributed to minor league baseball, Cyndi Lauper, the slang of used car salesmen, and various other improbable sources…

The 1984 quote from rock star Cyndi Lauper where she uses the phrase “under the bus” (without “throw”) may or may not count as a sighting, according to Word Detective.

But Merriam Webster attributes the earliest written usage to Elinor Goodman, Financial Times (London, Eng.), 10 Dec. 1980:

Some still pin their hopes on the “under the bus” theory which has Mr. Foot being forced by ill health—or just the pressures of the job—to give way to Mr. Healey before the next election.

This, however, lacks the malevolent flavor of current usage. A better citation comes from Julian Critchley, The Times (London, Eng.), 21 June 1982, but a completely satisfying citation has eluded me.

So I must conclude that, while a recent phrase generates a lot of possibilities, it isn’t any easier to pin down than a venerably aged phrase.

I’ll Show You a Tyrant

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Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro (By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0)

If you are a pessimist, 2017 has so far been a pretty good year.  The chaotic beginning of the Trump presidency has provided the nation’s media with truckload after truckload of low-hanging political fruit, and pundits are in breathless competition to enumerate the ways in which Donald Trump is likely to destroy American democracy.  Readers of The Times or The Post could be forgiven for believing that we are on the verge of following pre-WWII Germany down the terrible road to tyranny, and the picture painted on social media looks even worse.  Angry Twitterers and Facebookers would have us believe that political conditions here are fast approaching the level of disarray currently on exhibition in Venezuela.

As it happens I recently stumbled upon an interview with the last American journalist to be granted a visa to report from Caracas.  Hannah Dreier, who writes for the Associated Press, spoke to Politico Magazine about what life was like in a country where democracy is actually circling the drain.

Venezuela was once one of the richest country in South America, a beautiful tropical land above and the world’s third largest petroleum reserves below.  But political instability, economic inequality and poverty have long persisted there and, a la Cuba,  populist discontent eventually brought populist Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.   After the bombastic Bolivarian revolutionary ascended to the presidency, he courted the masses by spreading the wealth generated by $100-a-barrel oil.  But collapsing oil prices deprived the country of most of its cash flow just as the death of Chavez, from cancer in 2013, deprived it of charismatic leadership.  Enter Nicholas Maduro, Chavez’ Interior Minister and political heir, whose futile – and increasingly brutal – efforts to keep the Chavista Revolution alive have left his country economically paralyzed and its people descending into anarchy.  Since winning the presidency by a bare 1% margin Maduro has shown no proclivity for running Venezuela other than to make absolutely sure that he gets to continue ruling it.  Bolivarian democracy means never having to say Vaya con Dios!

What has Maduro’s brutal incompetence meant for Venezuelans?  Dreier’s reports that even the most affluent are becoming malnourished while the poor are approaching starvation.  Inflation has rendered the national currency nearly worthless.  The Black Market is the only source for staples like toilet paper.  Kidnappings and robberies happen hourly, and no neighborhood is safe.  Dreier tells of being robbed only to be told by her local friends that it was a “good” robbery, since she survived it.  Later she was also kidnapped and was momentarily relieved to discover that her abductors were none other than Maduro’s secret police, who nevertheless threatened her with rape and worse.

Despite international sanctions, Venezuela continues to sell millions of barrels of oil per day, but no one seems to know where the money is going.  It is certainly not in evidence anywhere outside Maduro’s circle.  Rioting, however, is everywhere, as are Maduro’s police and the (presently) loyal military, their control measures growing more violent as the death toll rises into the hundreds.  The situation is so horrific, reports Dreier, that many Venezuelans are willing to embrace Maduro’s nascent dictatorship just to see some stability in their lives. Continue reading →

Another Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge Update

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A previous posting mentioned that anti-Rocky Flats activists had filed suit to stop construction of a visitor center at the refuge on the grounds that the requirements for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) had not been met. The good news is that the suit has been dismissed. The bad news is that the court dismissed the suit because the activity is not imminent. The exact wording from the July Rocky Flats Cold War Museum Newsletter is that the “. .  .plaintiff’s (the activist organizations) made a motion in the case for a temporary injunction to stop the construction of the Visitor Center.  The judge denied the motion citing the fact that construction is not imminent anyway.”