Month: November 2022

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Last week Frontier Airlines announced they eliminated their phone customer service. From now on, customers will have to get information electronically or with live chat. They believe that their digital communications system will “ensure our customers get the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible.” How they determined “expeditiously” is beyond me? My personal experience with web sites is mixed at best. Yes, sometimes, I can find my answer quickly. More often than not though, my digital communications encounters are a trip into Internet Hell. Not all situations are the same. Reconfirming a booking is easy electronically. Correcting an error in a booking is a different story altogether.

This is particularly irksome in situations when I know a company employee can answer my question almost immediately — saving me time, ensuring that I have a clear understanding of my situation and stopping me from frustrated searches through numerous web pages. I guess it is pretty selfish of me to want a quick answer from a company employee when I can just as easily spend hours searching for the right page. Frontier, will counter that there is live chat if I need to reach the company directly. But, and here is my big problem with live chat, I only contact the airline when the digital tools they provided me have failed to help me. I only call when I am desperate. So, while live chat may be an option, by the time I resort to it, I am already frustrated and I just want help. At this point, typing out the details of my questions is just fueling my anger about the lack of help I have already received.

I want to talk to a person when I reach this level of frustration. It makes me feel better. I know that the company understands my problem and I know that someone is working on my problem. But, you say, Live Chat can do that too. It is exactly the same thing except you are communicating through the web instead of a phone. Maybe but I prefer talking to a person and Frontier won’t let me because its position is incredibly limited to the point of arrogance, they are forcing customers to use their digital tools. If a customer has the temerity to call their customer service phone number, the system will eventually hang up on them. Disconnecting customers who want to use the phone is irritating and insulting particularly when last week your company would have answered those same calls.

What irritates me the most is the glaringly dishonest corporate spin that introduced this change in service. The notion that Frontier is providing the the same level of customer service, if not better, than the company delivered before is quite clearly wrong. Nobody hung up on a customer’s phone call a week ago. This is a cost cutting exercise and it has nothing to do with better customer service. So don’t tell me I am smelling roses when I know it is bullshit.

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The ace up the capitalist’s sleeve is that most people like some of the products and services that Capitalism provides. I know I do. Socialism is focused on the basics — reasonable housing costs, reasonable health care costs, fire and police protection, and education. All necessary services but not much fun. Capitalism is fun, Capitalism is a trip to Disneyland, gambling in Las Vegas, seeing a rock concert, attending a football game, drinks with friends on Friday Dinner, a nice diner on the town, a flashy convertible, and any of the thousands of other amusements that consumers distract themselves with. Socialists want to guarantee you a minimum standard of living while Capitalists want you to have a good time. These are two very different experiences.

This is why I find myself very much a mixed economy person. Yes, I want government services but I still want a good time. And this is why getting rid of Capitalism is nearly impossible. We have had the power to stop Capitalism for years. All consumers would need to do is stop buying the unnecessary goods and services that Capitalism provides. Which is practically almost everything a modern persons wants, so this also is why it won’t happen. I mean a Socialist Utopia is a great idea and all but if I have to give up cable television to get it, my decision becomes more difficult.

Giving up consumer items is a difficult sell even to the most sympathetic audience. I was talking with a woman who was railing against business mentality and capitalist greed. She couldn’t understand why people balked at paying more taxes to help the poor. I suggested that we all stopped buying unnecessary consumer items and just buy necessities. If there were no consumers of these products, the businesses that provide them would soon fail. She considered it for a moment and I could see her struggle. Finally, she said, “But I like my things.” And that my friends is the problem. Socialism requires a certain level of surrendering pleasures so that everyone can lead a better life. This is an increasingly difficult argument to make.

A hundred years ago, this same argument would get a better reception because so many people lived at a subsistence level. There was nothing to give up because there was nothing to spare. A broad swath of the Western Middle Class has been having a lot of fun since the end of World War II and they aren’t about to give it up, and, not surprisingly, Socialism has lost its allure. This leaves us with the struggle ahead — how do we make Socialism more fun?

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The CDC found that over 50% of all Americans will at some point in their life be diagnosed with a mental health disorder, that 1 in 5 Americans will have a mental health disorder within a given year. A recent study from Indiana University found that 45 % of all emergency room patients are also suffering from mental health issues.These are large and significant numbers of people who need help. These are people falling into drug addiction and alcoholism. These are people who might snap and take a loaded gun into a shopping mall. Because mental health diseases are so widespread, almost ever American is affected by them. If these were physical ailments, alarms would be blaring across the country.

A yearly physical check-up is routine for most Americans — particularly after you have reached age 40. The check up is done whether the person is feeling healthy or sick. The yearly check up allows a doctor to evaluate what is going with the patient from year to year in the hopes of catching and treating hidden diseases earlier than waiting until the patient develops full blown symptoms.

Mental health, on the other hand, is almost always a reactive action. The person breaks down and his condition, now obvious, has to be addressed. This is hardly an effective approach. Early treatment is a better, cheaper and less toxic approach. Why wait until the person has mentally fallen apart when, if the person had periodic psychiatric check ups, any mental health issues can be addressed before a person has hit bottom.

Working with young people is a great place to start such a practice as mental illness often emerges after adolescence. It is also during people’s youth that they are free from parental control and are experimenting for the first time with alcohol and drugs. These illnesses and addictions would be found earlier and hopefully addressed before irreparable damage is done to the person. One of the reoccurring horrors of American life is mass shootings. Every time these shootings happen, people ask the question — what can we do to stop this from happening ? Since gun control is off the table, why not require universal mental health checks for every American — particularly young men who are most prone to these crimes. If mental health is the problem, then we need a mental health solution. A mental health check up fits the bill.

A lot of people still believe old ideas about mental health. It is a personal weakness not a disease. They claim that people didn’t need mental health professionals in the good old days. People were stronger. They just toughed it out. None of which is true. There is absolutely no evidence that people were tougher or stronger in the good old days. First, nobody measured it in the good old days so there is no way to prove this assertion. Also families hid away their problem members if they could so Grandmother never talked about crazy Aunt Alice. There is no better example of the widespread addiction problem in the USA in the good old days than Prohibition. The level of alcoholism was so bad that Americans actually banned alcohol consumption. The good old days weren’t so free from mental health diseases and addiction.

The good old days were free from effective treatment of these disorders. And this is why it is time for Americans to move away from the shame model of mental illness and go to the proactive treatment of mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick from cancer, the same thing applies to mental health. Nobody wants it. It is a horrible experience. Once of the principal reasons that cancer survivability has dramatically improved in the last century is medical professionals are now monitoring their patients and catching it faster. Why not try the same approach with mental illness?

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Apparently Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars to burn through and is looking for people to help him. He just donated a $100 million to Dolly Parton. It is presumed that Parton will help Bezos distribute his extra money to worthy charities. Given her history, I believe that she will. Parton has proven herself a generous woman as she is credited with giving Vanderbilt Medical Center money in order to help find the COVID vaccine.

But, with absolutely no animus towards Parton, why give her even more money to give away. She has so much of her own money that she is already giving it away. So Bezos gives her even more to give away? Whenever I hear about money transfers like this I have to ask, why not take this money out in taxes and let our legislatures determine where it goes. The money is there. The rich are giving it away. They clearly don’t need it for their business. Why let billionaires decide where the money goes?

I can hear people say the Government will only waste it. Perhaps. But there is a fundamental difference here. A Republican led government could put the money to tax breaks, bringing down the national debt, or helping energy companies find oil. Democrats can use it on providing better social services. The key here is that in both cases a number of people are looking at the public good and making a decision that they think is best for the country. I might disagree with the decision but I feel better about a legislative body looking into it than having a single billionaire deciding on a whim.

I mean what if Dolly wants to talk to the animals? Based on her desire, she drops the $100 million into charities that work with humans trying to talk to animals. A noble enterprise I am sure, but is it really the best use of money when we have so many other pressing needs? And, more importantly, why leave this decision to one citizen. And really why does any citizen have so much money that they are giving away $100 million to another wealthy person.

Since Bezos has $100 million to give to Dolly Parton, it mean he can pay more in taxes without a detrimental effect on his life or his business. He is giving it away already. I say if you are giving away $100 million you are begging to be taxed more. Let’s do it.

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I was surprised to see this article about teens illegally working for PSSI, a company that cleans up for meat plants. So here we are in 21st Century USA where companies hire underage labor to do their work. In this case, the work also is dangerous because it requires the use of toxic chemicals and machines capable of killing a person.

PSSI claims that it did a thorough check. It is not their fault if these precocious teens used false documents to get their jobs. This argument will probably get them off the hook. The company may have to pay a fine, an upper management person might have to fall on his sword but when all is said and done the country needs people willing to clean the dirty floors of meat plants.

The teens in question were immigrants which makes me curious about this company’s HR practices. Being immigrants, I would think the company would be particularly careful when a prospective employee provides this information. The Federal Government requires every employee to prove that they can work legally in the USA. This is the whole reason for law. But 31 underage teens got employed. I mean I can give PSSI one or two teens getting through a rigorous vetting of the documentation but 31 suggests something altogether different. HR was either not checking them at all or not caring that they were fake. Also forget the documents, I suspect that some of these teens actually looked like teenagers. There were 13 year olds working at the meat plants. That someone in charge wasn’t a bit startled to see all these fresh face youths working in the plant and not question their age is alarming.

This raises another question for me. If PSSI wasn’t checking documentation to ensure the age of their employees, how well were they checking the adults they hired for their immigration status. I suspect not very well at all. Which gets us closer to the real problem — PSSI can’t get many American citizens to do this dangerous job for the wage they are paying. I mean why else would they overlook the law regarding underage employees. The company was taking a risk. The fines are probably minimal and, mark my words, there is probably a tidy sum set aside for just such an exigency. So if a company needs to pay low wages with little risk of getting caught and minimal financial hardship or legal punishment if they get caught, what is a company to do? Hire the most vulnerable and desperate people and hope they don’t get caught.

Capitalists are pretty adamant that prices must follow the market. If there is less of a product and high demand, the prices go up. If there is a surplus of a product and low demand, the prices go down. The same, at least in theory, applies to wages. Except it doesn’t. Companies set the wages they want to pay and then find the people who will work at those wages — even if they have to act illegally to get those employees. They would rather illegally employ children in dangerous jobs at low wages than up their wages in order to attract a legal adults. This is not how market capitalism is supposed to operate.

It makes me curious as to why the Republican Party has not latched on this particular problem. They oppose immigration. They say they want Americans in good private industry jobs. Enforcing child labor laws and immigration laws would seem like a no brainer. Make it difficult for companies to employ illegal immigrants and children. Hurt companies with hefty fines and imprisonment of executives who break these laws. If there are no jobs for immigrants, a large wall on the border would be unnecessary. They wouldn’t come.

Of course a large wall on the border would involve all kinds of construction and money, money, money for everyone and the immigrants would keep coming. Business secretly wants these low wage immigrants because they can control them better than American citizens. If the Department of Labor started enforcing labor laws, it would get messy fast. The Federal Government might see how business actually operate, the government might even try strictly enforcing these laws which might force companies to pay higher wages.

This is why we have children in 21st Century America working with toxic chemicals at dangerous jobs.

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Ten years or so back, I stopped watching movies set in Concentration Camps. I got the point even before I began watching the movie — concentration camps were horrible places, human beings can do horrible things and we can never let this happen again. I agree. If I never watch another movie about Concentration Camps, I will still remember this. It is permanently lodged in my memory as few other things are. Watching a new Concentration Camp movie isn’t going to change anything.

So what if a new Concentration Camp comes along that surpasses all other Concentration Camp movies in artistic merit, in messaging, in production values, in acting — shouldn’t I see the movie for the art? Maybe, but I don’t want to. That’s all I can say. I don’t want to. I feel like I am wasting my time seeing an excellent rendition of something I already am convinced was horrible. Just because something is done well, doesn’t mean I need to watch it. I am not required to see all good art. More importantly, it just depresses me. Why put myself through that even if it is great art?

I once slipped and started watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas because everyone was raving about it. The premise of the movie is that the German son of the Concentration Camp Commander befriends a Jewish boy through the fence of the camp. The fence is no match for the industrious German boy who soon visits the Jewish boy in the camp. I am betting that most of you can see where this movie is going. Tragedy. I stopped watching when I figured out where this story was going. What point was there in seeing the end? So I can see a well done depiction of a horror that I have seen many times before? How was this going to make my life any better?

This is how I feel about the recent television series Dahmer. I have very few complaints about the series. There is great acting, great production values, and an interesting story. Yet I hated almost every great minute of it. Dahmer, as portrayed by Evan Peters, is an inarticulate loner with an unchecked alcohol problem who tries, always unsuccessfully, to make friends. He has an early fascination with taxidermy which may lead him to his future murderous actions. He stumbles into his first killings but, after these “accidental” murders, he realizes that killing and cannibalism are the only things that satisfies his sexual urges and thus begins his descent into serial killing.

There are 10 episodes in the series which easily could have been cut down to 3 to 5. Yet, the movie goes on and on showing him preying on his victims, his family complaining about how strange he acts and why doesn’t he behave like a regular person, his neighbors complaining about his strange behavior and meeting with police indifference to this strange man and his strange behavior. Yes, it’s well done. So what? Dahmer is difficult person to connect with so, despite all of the episodes, his motives are still baffling at the end. He is a seemingly bland ordinary person who, for no apparent reason, descended into Hell and brought every person he meets into Hell with him. There is no suspense, no identification with him as person, and no hope that anyone could ever stop future serial killers from slaughtering their victims.

And, because there are 10 episodes to fill, the producers and director keep showing the same terrible situations over and over again. But, just in case you missed it or didn’t understand it before, the series gives the audience a fairly comprehensive accounting of what a monster Dahmer was. If you need this confirmation, by all means, see Dahmer; otherwise try to find some other well done television show, or book, or painting that enlightens you or entertains you or makes you look at life in a different way because Dahmer is a well done bummer.

Most importantly, always remember, you don’t have to see something because it is good.

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I use to worry more about election results because I thought that whoever won the election, now was responsible for governing. With age, comes wisdom. I now realize that elections might tip scales in favor of one party but there are so many institutions that a law must pass before it actually takes affect that it is nearly impossible for radical change to happen in the USA. At least not immediately.

This daunting process involves the House, the Senate, the President, and the Supreme Court. All of these processes may cause changes that require the law to start the whole process from the beginning. The filibuster, as one example, requires a super majority for passage in the Senate, and as we have all experienced in the past few years, it slows the process down considerably. Then there is the Federal System. Each individual states can make their own laws that can run counter to the federal law which then may have to go to the Supreme Court. It just isn’t easy to change things here.

The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, created so many road blocks to change that it is really difficult to get much worried about an election. Rarely does one party have safe control of all the levers of power to get what they want and, even if they did, the individual states would provide another barrier.

What about the January 6th coup? Yes, it is concerning but, interestingly, the system did work on January 6 even with a bat shit crazy President, the active participation of some members of Congress and right wing kooks storming the Congress. Despite all of that, Biden took office without much problem. Most active opposition to Biden taking office took place after he was safely in the White House. Enough Republicans did the right thing in January to ensure that Biden became president. Months later, they denied any participation but, by then, it was too late to change presidents. It was a craven bow to their angry voters but, in no way, something to worry about. And let’s be clear the Republican Establishment hates Donald Trump just as much as the Democratic Establishment. They aren’t interested in revolution as much as they want to keep their money safely hidden from the hands of the tax collector.

Both parties have a tendency to demonize the opposition party. If the Democrats win, socialism will follow. If the Republicans win, facism will follow. It never does though. Elections come and go but before much of anything can really happen, the system grinds through the process and comes up with some version of the change that the majority can live with.

Democracy, unlike revolutions, is a pretty boring process. It takes a lot of to and fro with different competing interests and it takes forever to get anything done, but, it is a much better path than revolution or civil war. I know it is difficult to deal with Republicans who, in my humble opinion, want to stand in the way of progress. They won’t listen to reason and are unwilling to make meaningful concessions.(Republicans undoubtedly think the same about me). But, then, imagine how much more difficult it will be if there is blood in the streets. Will the dead bodies of friends and relatives make it any easier.

The end is not nigh. The country is going through difficult times but the country is always going through difficult times. The Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II were all dangerous times and we weathered them all. Now is not the time for sword.