hey kid, stop that annoying breathing...

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
--george w. bush

our gentle descent into the jungle continues.

today we're telling low-income parents that they should reconsider taking their sick child to the emergency department--because it's just too darn expensive.

and really, that kid's wheezing asthmatic fit will probably pass. eventually. maybe.

"Washington state's plan to cut Medicaid would limit emergency room visits for potentially serious conditions such as breathing trouble and more. Two-thirds of the 1.1 million state residents covered by Medicaid are children.

"...critics say conditions such as hypoglycemic coma or asthma attacks weren't considered to be emergencies. They worry that parents and patients might self-diagnose and make risky, life-threatening choices to stay under the limit — particularly since budget cuts are reducing other options."

is it not remarkable the things we'll allow so the gentry can avoid paying a few more tax dollars? washington state residents recently defeated a tax on candy, soda, and bottled water, so poor kids could lay around gasping for air while their parents agonize over a trip to the emergency department.

let's savor that a moment, shall we? we in washington state are so enamored of our heart-clogging candy, high fructose corn soda, and ocean-choking plastic water, that rather than pay a few cents more for them, we'll deprive sick children of emergency healthcare.

when did the plan to eliminate poverty become the eradication of the poor? and damn those people for hogging all the emergency care...

"...emergency rooms have only been required to treat all patients regardless of ability to pay since the 1986 passage of the EMTALA Act. And of course Republicans routinely complain about EMTALA to this day, calling it a 'hidden tax' on the insured and railing against the fact that it doesn't allow hospitals to dump illegal immigrants with heart attacks in the gutter."

so, this is what we've come to? this is how we're defining "civilized" behavior in the greatest country on earth (and make no mistake, most states and the federal government are similarly cutting funds for the most vulnerable in favor of those who need no help at all).

we're devolving into a talking-monkeyocracy. before long we'll all be jumping up and down, shrieking, and waving sticks in the air, while dolphins and border collies look at us and roll their eyes.

even "dumb" animals take care of their offspring. you'd think the least we could do is offer ours emergency care to offset all the candy and soda.

it's the civilized thing to do.

walmart cares...but not about you.

walmart wants you to know, it cares.

it wants you to believe it cares about you, dear customer, and your family and your high cholesterol and the cardiovascular disease steadily, stealthily wrapping its cold fingers around your heart.

important note: walmart doesn't care about any of those things. what it cares about is that you keep buying the cheap, sweatshop-made, environmentally rapacious products that pump up its bottom line.

"Walmart is getting on Michelle Obama's bandwagon, announcing Thursday that it will start selling healthier foods.

"The four-year plan, which company officials announced in Washington with the First Lady, includes reducing salt and sugar as well as eliminating trans fats in packaged foods. Officials for the world's largest retail chain also plan to cut the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables — and will build stores in low-income neighborhoods where consumers have few choices to buy food beyond gas stations and convenience stores."

according to a 1994 article in the american journal of public health, trans fats cause 30,000 deaths a year from heart disease. and we've known since 1988 that trans fats are correlated with a "...large increase in coronary artery disease."

meanwhile, according to the la times, "Walmart has more than 140 million customer visits each week." which means over the years the company that cares has pumped its toxic products into billions and billions of its customers' arteries.

"In outlining the changes, officials said they plan to reformulate thousands of packaged foods by 2015. Their goals include reducing sodium by 25 percent and added sugars by 10 percent, and removing all remaining industrially produced trans fats and partially hydrogenated oils."

the information that trans fats kill people has been around for a generation. why did walmart wait so long to care about its customers, one might reasonably ask. is it because they just recently heard the trans fat news, or is it something else? tsk, silly questions!

what's most likely is that the friendly, caring, concerned walmart team recently decided they could make a different kind of killing by tinkering with their product mix, with the expectation of reaping ridiculous profits whilst still ridding the country of its small businesses. and if their little experiment doesn’t meet ROI expectations, it can die, quick and quiet. genius!

"In Washington, consumer advocates praised the news. 'I applaud Walmart for using its marketplace muscle to move the food industry in a healthier direction,' said Michael Jacobsen, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

"'This announcement will virtually eliminate artificial trans fat in packaged foods and help spur food manufacturers to cut the sodium in their products over the next several years,' he added. 'Those two moves by Walmart ultimately should save thousands of lives each year that might otherwise be lost to heart disease or stroke.'"

excuse me, michael, but isn't this a bit like praising the gila monster in the chicken coop for passing up the high-cholesterol eggs?

sure the chickens are all dead, but the risk of heart disease is greatly reduced. yay, gila monster!

and by the way, michael, doesn't walmart sell cigarettes and other tobacco products? yes, yes it does. and isn't it true that cigarettes kill 400,000 americans every year? yes, yes it is. just sayin', mister walmart cheerleader.

the funny thing is, even if walmart makes available every manner of lowfat, low sodium, high omega-3 option and alternative, many of the store's clientele will take one look at the healthful array and say, "uh, no. none of that organic stuff for me and my family. that's for elitists and socialists and french-speakers. we like head cheese. pork rinds. gahddam beef byproducts! that's what's for dinner at our house!"

butbutbut...isn't it a good thing that walmart is offering healthier products, no matter how cynical and self-serving its motivations might be? sort of. if manufacturers can be pummeled into incremental product improvements by the threat of walmart's economic hammer, great. if, as a result, millions of walmart customers improve their unhealthy diets the tiniest bit, better still.

but if it's just another way for the company that doesn't really care to increase its clout--enabling it to continue its ravening, unethical, inhumane business practices--that's not so good.

clever PR campaigns and facile solutions to real problems are no reason to get all warm and snuggly with the corporate lizard.

seeing the light

pack up all your dishes
make note of all good wishes
say goodby to the landlord for me
sons of bitches always bore me
throw out those LA papers
and the moldy box of vanilla wafers
adios to all this concrete
gonna get me some dirt road back street...

~ jerry jeff walker

the missus and i have had an epiphany.

so we're moving.

we're not sure where, or when, but we're moving.

this is not a "move to a bigger house in magnolia" kind of move. this is the kind of move where we leave the neighborhood entirely, on our way out of the country.

catalonia, maybe. or the southeast of france.

we're not sure of the destination yet, pending scouting expeditions starting the first half of 2011.

back to the epiphany, which upon further review isn't particularly epiphanous. it's that corporate america would like to bleed us dry and kick us to the curb at its earliest convenience, and take its healthcare along with it.

meanwhile republicans, who by all accounts are poised to take back control of congress, would like to give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest americans and spending cuts to everyone else. most credible economists agree this is exactly the wrong thing to do, economic policy-wise, and will deepen the current recession brought about by republican economic policies.

this, according to nobel-prize winning economist paul krugman, has a real chance of setting up a japan-style lost decade of long-term unemployment, cash hoarding and deflation. which means we'll be lucky to stay employed during the next ten years, while the value of our assets declines.

the missus and i aren't up for riding out a lost decade. and really, what's the point? if the best we can hope for is to keep working for the privilege of being allowed to keep working, suddenly the whole "american dream" contrivance doesn't seem so dreamy.

it's not rational to keep participating in a game in which the winners (the very wealthy) are predetermined and everybody else gets to stay poor.

so, we're leaving.

we're not sure when. we're not sure where. we just know it won't be anyplace that worships corporate gods or the elected representatives who serve them.

somewhere civil rights are respected and healthcare is a human right.

someplace civilized.  

Sent from my iPad

plan B

plan A never goes according to plan.

most often, plan A goes sideways the millisecond after you put the finishing touches to it. good thing you've got a back-up plan, huh? 

nuh-uh. same thing applies to plan B and plan C and so on through the alphabet.

because no plan can account for the many variables you can think of, and all those you'd never conjure up in your most intricate anxiety dream. 

so while planning is very conscientious and comforting and human, it's mostly an exercise in delusion. the next time you think you're in control of the situation, no matter how innocuous the situation may seem, take a step back and allow yourself the languid terror of imagining how many ways you might be wrong. 

it won't make you feel better, but it'll bring you into the moment like a rake handle between the eyes.

and what could be more fun that that?

let's say, by way of example, that you have a deep, oppressive fear of flying. despite your fear and your careful avoidance of airplanes, some improbable set of variables aligns to absolutely require air travel. so you suck it up and get on the plane. settling into your seat, every sound you hear~from the loading of bags to the closing of the cargo door to the hissing of the ventilation system~confirms what you already know: the plane is seriously malfunctioning and inevitably going down.

take-offs and landings, you know, are the most dangerous. so as you roll down the runway, gaining terrifying speed, you hold your breath and wait for the end...which doesn't come! yet.

in flight, you're quite certain that every bump is the one with your name on it, the one that will put the plane into an unrercoverable dive. next thing you know, however, the captain is asking the flight attendants to prepare for landing. already? is it possible? still, you're not ready to be grateful, as the landing will shirley be disastrous.

but no, the landing is flawless, and as you taxi toward the gate, you're ecstatic. everything went according to (somebody's) plan. you take a deep breath and smile. almost simultaneously, you hear shouting. there's a disturbance behind you. people are fighting!

is it 9/11 all over again? the world goes dim, and you faint... only to learn later that the hijacking was just a flight attendant having a hissy fit and exiting the plane. down the escape slide with a couple beers in hand.

not part of the plan. and now you're traumatized in a whole new way.  

moving on, let's say you're sitting in the waiting area of a local hospital. it's quite luxurious, really, compared with, say, the rest of the world. you got your comfy chairs, your cable tv, your multiplicity of outlets powering everyone's wifi-enabled devices. hungry? there's a nice internet cafe. bon apetit.

there are so many creature comforts and distractions, it's almost possible to completely compartmentalize where you are and what might be happening just beyond the big gray door over there on the right side of the room. almost. because someone you care about is having surgery right through that door. 

and if you accidently allow yourself a stray moment of high alert~entirely appropriate given the surroundings~you remember that anything can happen the next time that door opens and someone in scrubs walks through.

it's a slow-motion moment in which you can hear yourself breathe and feel the blood moving through your veins and you experience the same feeling your ancestors did when they realized the wolf pack had caught their scent and was turning in their direction.

not part of the plan.

this is not to say that every plan goes upside down whenever the wind blows, ushering in an epoch of suffering and darkness (the bush administration notwithstanding). most plans play out just he way they're constructed, blithely unperturbed by the infinite variables whizzing past. any one of which could send the planet spiraling into the sun, but somehow doesn't. 

no, this is simply to say that as responsible as we all are, planning and forecasting and predicting with such adorable certainty...there's really no such thing. and the sooner we realize that plans A through Z have gone hilariously awry, all through history, the sooner we get to beer o'clock. metaphysically, that is.

speaking of which...

ahhhh.

it's good to have a plan.


Sent from my iPad

a death tax we can live with

the washington state legislature is pondering ways to balance the state budget.

this is not an idle exercise, as the governor is required to propose a balanced budget, state law forbids the state to be in the red at the end of a two-year budget cycle, and borrowing money to fill a gap in the operating budget requires a 60 percent vote in both houses of the legislature.

yes, i looked it up.

so, in a pro forma attempt to be fiscally responsible, along with the usual draconian cuts to education, healthcare and other human services, the legislature proposes to raise the tax on cigarettes by a dollar a pack.

the people affected by the cuts have no recourse, of course. not to worry, they're used to getting screwed. the tobacco industry, however, has the unlimited resources and unmitigated gall to fight anything standing between their products and their victims.

to that end, a front group for the death-by-tobacco industry is running ads in washington, using anti-tax teabagger talking points in an attempt to derail the proposal. their radio spot starts out like a straight right-wing anti-tax screed, but quickly shifts into high tobacco-defense mode.

it's so painfully transparent and obvious that it would be funny...if it weren't coming from people who traffic in disease and death on an epic scale.

there are 440,000 tobacco-related deaths a year in the u.s. i'm no mathematician, but i'm pretty sure that's a lot of lung cancer. and pancreatic cancer. and cervical cancer. and stomach cancer.

it's a lot of pain and suffering and since we don't give proper due to such things, it's also a lot of money. direct costs, loss of productivity, loss of tax revenue. funny, nobody ever points at tobacco companies and says, "you cost the economy $100 billion a year, so we're going to tax you enough to make up the difference. is that okay with you bloodsuckers? 'cause if it isn't, we'll just shut you down."

framed that way, the i bet the bloodsuckers would be okay with it.

healthcare is unaffordable or unavailable to tens of millions of americans -- so who could argue with a tax on the world's leading cause of morbidity and mortality? republicans, of course.

in this case the tax would be paid by the customers, which seems a little unfair, since they're paying extra for the privilege of dying a slow, excruciating death. but, whatever...the customer is always right.

what a strange and wonderful country we live in, where the idea of taxing people to pay for government services is an outrage...but allowing a product that kills 440,000people every year to stay on the market is okie-dokie.

it's funny how death is so easily accepted, but taxes?! positively unamerican. no one tops the u.s. in this particular brand of cognitive dissonance and bizarro non-logic.

the washington state budget ain't the only thing unbalanced around here.

this is one of those times

there are times when so many difficulties swirl about us that it feels like the inside of a tornado.

and from your tilt-a-whirl perch you wouldn't be a bit surprised to see almira gulch on her bike, pedaling endlessly, as if it were possible to ride out of the storm and into, oh-i-don't-know-what. freefall, maybe.

perhaps you're familiar with times like these. perhaps, you'd say, this life is solely and entirely composed of times like these. that anything else is illusion.

you'd get no argument from me.

just by way of example: a friend of mine, kary, has leukemia. she's been battling it for months, putting up a hell of a fight. recently a nice doctor told her there was nothing else he could do for her, that he wanted to call in hospice, and that oh-by-the-way, she had a week to live.

way to go, nice doctor.

trouble is, kary wasn't prepared to play out her part in that particular script. she wasn't quite ready to stop living, see, so she basically told the nice doctor to go fuck himself. she got on the phone with a different doctor, who agreed dying could wait. to that end, she told kary to hop in the car and drive from flagstaff, arizona, to phoenix, for a red blood cell transfusion.

so, kary and her mom madly drove to phoenix only to find that, hospital protocols being what they were, she'd have to keep driving. to tucson. everyone must adhere to protocols, mustn't they? even the dying. because protocols and formalities and rule-following should be a top priority for the dying, after all.

kary's mom drove on to tucson, to the university of arizona medical center. kary checked herself into the emergency department and got her transfusion.

it's been more than a week now, and kary still refuses to lay down and die (the nice doctor notwithstanding). apparently the U of A physicians and protocols and treatments are focused on keeping the living alive until such time that they're no longer alive.

if you can imagine such a thing.

according to her sister, kary is scared and "in need of hope--lots of hope." which is what i was thinking about as i ran errands today.

on my way to somewhere, i passed a car with a bunch of bumper stickers on it. most of them were old and faded, but one looked brand new, and that's the one i read in the 1.2 seconds it took me to pass by.

it said, "be kind...be true...be brave."

it was one of those surreal moments that go by in slow motion, to make sure you don't miss it. no, i don't believe in such things, but there it was, and there i was, and the moment vibrated like a cosmic tuning fork.

maybe it was a quiet call for me to send whatever good karma i've accumulated on to kary.

and maybe it was a reminder that the challenges facing the spaceneedl family are really nothing by comparison. that we should acknowledge and embrace our ridiculous good fortune, and stop bitching about our diminutive problems.

and maybe, since i don't believe in such things, it was a coincidence.

probably that's exactly what it was.

but there are times when i'd like to believe otherwise.

this is one of those times.