Author: Tom Fitzpatrick

Life

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In case you are keeping track, there was no Part III as I lost my notes. I can summarize what happened though. After much trial and tribulation. I finally signed up for Health Insurance. It took me three days, 3 or so hours online, five or so phone calls at about a half hour a piece, and a fax (yes you heard correctly a fax).

The good news is I am now signed up.

Or so I thought. It is mid-January and I still haven’t received my insurance card. I called up Wage Works where I learned that I only paid them for my insurance. The insurance carrier is a totally different entity. I would need to call up the insurance company to inquire about my card.

I ask for the phone number. She tells me it was on the back of my insurance card. I told her I didn’t have an insurance card. I reminded her that was why I was calling her in the first place. She sighed deeply, the sigh of someone who knows she has to put me on hold so she can search for phone number she doesn’t readily have. It takes her five minutes of determined clicking but she finds the number I need.

A phone tree answers. This phone tree wasn’t, not for one moment, going to let me speak to a person. I listen through the phone tree until I hear my option. I push the appropriate number. The phone tree informs me that I can go to the on line site for this information. I say “Operator.” This phone tree isn’t falling for that trick. The phone tree replies, “In order to better help you, can you explain what department you want to speak with and then lists departments for me to select

I choose one. The phone tree explains that I can take care of this on line. I scream operator. The phone tree asks me what department I need and gives me the same options. I chose one. The phone tree yet again insists that I can handle this on line. I then lie to the phone tree. God, forgive me. I say I need to make a payment. The phone tree obliging sends me to an operator except that the office is on the East Coast and is now closed.

I call back Wage Works. I explain my problem to a nice woman. She will send an urgent message to the insurance company and would get back with me when she heard a reply.

She actually calls back the next day with an identifier number telling me she has contacted the insurance company. I ask for my insurance ID. She doesn’t have it but the insurance company has been informed that I urgently need my insurance card. She assumes that the insurance company will expedite sending the insurance card.

“So I should be able to call the insurance company and get my number,” I ask.

She didn’t really know for sure but maybe.

With that ringing endorsement, I call the insurance company. They don’t, as a matter of fact, have my information in their system and don’t know why I am calling. I explain that Wage Works told me to call them. The young lady transfers me to a supervisor. I explain my problem again. I don’t know why because he tells me I am not in the system and he can’t help me.

I explain that I have paid Wage Works for my insurance. Wage Works sent the information to Health Net. The man understands but he doesn’t have my information. I tell him I am concerned. I ask him what were to happen if I were in an accident. He gives me the audio equivalent of a shoulder shrug.

I ask whom should I contact. He tells me the county. I snap. I tell him the county doesn’t have anything to do with me. I haven’t given any information to the county. Why would I contact the county? He apologizes he meant to contact Wage Works, the people who I paid.

I call Wage Works and ask to speak to a supervisor. I am transferred and put on hold for ½ hour. I hear music so I think I am on hold. But it is ½ hour, maybe I have been sent to an empty office or the person doesn’t know I am on hold. I hang up and call again. I explain that I have been waiting to speak to a supervisor for ½ hour and I was worried that I might have been disconnected. She assures me that ½ hour wait for a supervisor wasn’t unusual. Very comforting news that is. She says that she will transfer me to a supervisor but will wait on line with me. Every few minutes she would interrupt the music and let me know that I was still on hold. She was good to her word. Now, at least, I knew I was waiting for a supervisor while I waited for another ½ hour.

The supervisor finally comes on the line. I explain my problem. He tells me that they have contacted the insurance company and have asked them to urgently update their system. I explain but it isn’t there and they have had this information since January 6. He says that it takes 5 to 10 business days. I tell him that it has been 21 days. He says that they are probably behind because January is the month they receive the most new members. Since Wage Works just recently sent an urgent request to update my record why don’t we wait until Friday to see if they act?

“What am I supposed to do if I am in an accident,” I ask. I don’t have an insurance card to give them. He gives me an audio shoulder shrug.

“What am I supposed to do if I call back on Friday and the insurance company still doesn’t have my details in their system.” Audio shoulder shrugs all around. I ask him if he could contact someone at the insurance company to investigate this. He says no. All he does is send information via the computer. It is up to the insurance company to put the new customer in the system.

“What if there is a communication breakdown where his company sends information and the insurance company doesn’t receive it. Silence. “You don’t have anyone you can contact at the insurance company?” The answer is no.

I am not sick. Yet. After Friday, I might, however, be in an insane asylum. Hopefully, but not certainly, insured.

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The recent high profile of the MeToo movement and the effect it has had on the careers of certain high profile men is a subject I have wanted to write about for a long time. The problem was that I had difficulty finding the correct words to express what I wanted to say.

After reading Andrew Sullivan article in New York Magazine, I now have the words I want. Sullivan’s point is that men and women have different attitudes about sex. Men are more horny, more handsy, take more chances regarding sex and that heterosexual women need to understand this. It’s just man’s nature. Men have more testosterone that creates a greater sex drive. He then points out that gay men fuck often and indiscriminately because they don’t have the restraining factor of a woman’s sexual drive.

So how should society deal with these different sexual natures? Sullivan thinks nothing, at least, nothing that would change men’s behavior. Sullivan argues, by and large, women understand man’s sexual nature and are OK with a it. Indeed women would become antagonistic to the MeToo movement if it continued their campaign to make men more accountable for their sexual harassment. He also thinks that nature is more important than patriarchal institutions in how sexual relationships proceed. The horny man is always going to be chasing after the less horny woman. Women would just have to learn how to put with the big lugs and there is nothing that society can do about it.

The very problem with Sullivan’s argument is his argument. He thinks men are different than females. If this is true, then might women take another view of men’s groping hands? Might women become irritated with men who make sexual innuendos in the office, particularly if she isn’t interested in the man and the man blissfully disregards her feelings regarding his innuendos? Might it be frustrating that in order to stop these harassments, the woman has to go to Human Resources and files a complaint about the man’s behavior. Wouldn’t it be easier for men to just behave appropriately? Take a slower path with his flirtation?

And this is where the patriarchy comes in. In Sullivan’s world, women should just understand a man’s nature. He doesn’t mention a reciprocal responsibility for man to understand a woman’s nature. Why is the woman stuck with tolerating the bores? Wouldn’t it be just as easy for men to behave appropriately at work. Oh that’s right because men will be men. Their bodies are full of testosterone, they just can’t think straight when a woman is around. It’s there nature.

What about women being women? What happens if the man happens to be the woman’s boss? In the past, the woman could complain to Human Resources but what would HR do? Would they listen to a low level employee over the word of an executive? The power is with the man. He controls her livelihood. He has the power to make the woman’s life miserable. So her choice is to live with the harasser or quit. How does Sullivan propose women deal with this difference in power? Particularly in the very awkward situation of a horny boss chasing his woman employee. Who wins this showdown?

Then Sullivan goes after the feminists who are leading the charge to change the argument. They are trying to give more power to the women. Sullivan finds their arguments alienating, that they are making men the enemy and regular middle class people will be alienated by their arguments. To a degree, he is correct. The vast majority of people won’t agree with Feminist ideology. Sullivan thinks this will drive these people into the Republicans/Right Wing. Why is Feminist ideology more alienating than Right Wing ideology? Finally, who usually fights the battles in these struggles? It would be nice to think that nice middle class people will start the battle. But usually they don’t. Who fought the opening battles for Women’s right? I believe it was the hated and alienating Suffragettes.

These battles have to be fought. More importantly, these battles require us to look at all types of harassment – from annoying to egregious. Al Franken’s boorish behavior is not the same as Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment. But how do we know until someone brings it up? Yes, it is messy. Yes sometimes it will be unfair. And we will only get better at dealing with these situations and distinguishing between behaviors as we look at them.

Requiring perfection stifles change. Sullivan thinks men and women have different sexual natures. Since better than 90 percent of the population are committed heterosexuals, how do we move forward recognizing these differences. To stop talking about sexual harassment because some men might be hurt only means women will keep their mouths shut. Women will put up with the roaming hands and sex jokes in order to keep their jobs. Not talking about sexual harassment doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves the pain to a different gender. Then you must ask are men’s lives more important than women’s lives?

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I know London Spy is an old television show. Our viewing practices are to let someone else test drive the program first and wait for their recommendations. This means we are usually a good year behind everyone else which is why I am know talking about London Spy. It really irritated me.

Not at first though, in fact, the show caught our attention. It was fast, stylish, interesting characters, intriguing plot and good-looking men taking off their cloths for no particular reason. They had us hooked. Alex, lonely genius, brought out of his shell by good time party boy Danny. Everything is cupids and arrows until the mysterious Alex disappears.   Danny tries to contact Alex but he knows nothing about him – only where he lives. Then a key to Alex’s apartment arrives one day, which moves this from stylish love story to stylish spy story.

Danny finds Alex’s body. Things get strange. It turns out Alex was not the lonely virgin sitting at home pining for love. There is evidence at Alex’s apartment that suggest Alex was an S and M aficionado and had had numerous trysts with other men. Alex’s parents try to discourage Danny from pursing his amateur investigation. Danny continues. Danny’s friends in high places try to discourage him from continuing. He continues.

I was enthralled until I realized somewhere in the last episode that everything is falling apart. The big reveals meant nothing. The explanations make absolutely no sense in relation to plot already laid out. At the end, I realize that I have been hoodwinked yet again. Another television series has hooked me into watching to have my misplaced confidence shattered by an ill thought out, forced and ultimately nonsensical ending. For series television the ethos is the final episode doesn’t have to be good, it just has to end the series.

Spoiler Alert. I am about to reveal the end of London Spy.

First MI6 wanted to stop Alex from creating a magical truth algorithm. You see Alex had created this algorithm that could determine the truth of any statement. Bad idea Alex. Alex must be stopped. The thing I didn’t realize until watching London Spy was how incompetent and indiscrete television MI6 is. For example, every MI6 agent in a 20 mile radius of London descends on Alex’s apartment to discourage him from pursuing his algorithm. Klieg lights shine on the apartment from the outside just so everyone inside and outside can see as if it was daylight. Everyone who enters the apartment must also don a hazmat suit.

This seems, to my amateur eyes, overkill. All they want to do is to talk to Alex about his truth algorithm. Doesn’t seem like the Klieg lights and hazmat suits are all that necessary. Plus it isn’t like this clandestine spy agency is drawing any attention to their presence, I mean with the Klieg lights and hundreds of men walking around a quiet London neighborhood in hazmat suits. I’m sure that the none of neighbors took notice of all this falderal.

Then, for some reason that only television MI6 agents know, they stuff poor Alex into a trunk. You know those old fashion-travelling trunks that people used to take on long journeys. Why they do this eludes me. They are trying to talk sense into him, not get information out of him. Why not just sit him in a chair? Television MI6 has it ways however. They definitely think it is better to stuff Alex into a trunk where everyone must now yell at him to carry on a conversation.

They bring in Alex’s mother. Except she isn’t really his mother. Which was a big reveal and you think it means something and the importance of this fact will be explained. It isn’t. It is really just a red herring. It means nothing and doesn’t change anything. It did fill about 15 minutes or so of an episode so there is that. Mother or not, she has no luck in convincing Alex about stopping his truth algorithm. How do we know this? Why television MI6 uses the truth algorithm to determine whether Alex is lying. Which makes killing him seem kind of beside the point because MI6 has the algorithm which they don’t want anybody to use, except they have it and or using it. Why kill Alex? Well, says television MI6, we don’t want him to give the truth algorithm to some other hostile country.

Sometimes you just have to give into television logic. I gave television MI6 the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe killing Alex will stop him from giving the truth algorithm to the rest of the world. So all right kill Alex. Now this is the most baffling part of the entire series. Television MI6 decides to just let him suffocate in the trunk and leave his body rotting for a month until they then decide to pin the murder on the jealous Danny.

Do you have that? Now I am not a television MI6 expert by any means but it would seem to me that if you are trying to get rid of a body – you don’t leave it rotting in an apartment for over a month. And you certainly would look for easier way to do the job then suffocation via a trunk. Like any sensible killer, you would remove the body and dispose of it in a discrete manner. No body, no evidence, no police, no press and unfortunately no further story line.

Television MI6 decides to send Danny the key. Danny finds the body and calls the police to investigate. Since MI6 is trying to make Danny take the fall, they leave these sexually incriminating photographs of Alex laying around the house so this gets the press involved. MI6 hopes this will make Danny jealous and behave crazily so they then can pin the murder of Alex on Danny. Except Danny doesn’t act crazy enough, so in order to convince Danny that Alex was not a virgin genius but an S and M boy toy, they inject Danny with the AIDS virus. See Alex must have been sexually promiscuous because he gave Danny AIDS.

It was at this point that I decided that if I was a television British taxpayer that I would really be upset at the incompetence of television MI6. I mean there a lot better, more stupid and more evil projects that the television British taxpayer might want to see their taxes applied to.

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I have been negligent with my blog. I have it written in over a month. I know it. I’m sorry.

I mean the absolute worst thing a blogger can do is to stop blogging. Like I said before, I am sorry.

I know I probably ruined your whole holiday season because instead of making merry with friends and family, you’re thinking where is the third installment of Customer Service Apocalypse and why hasn’t Tom published the end of the story. How inconsiderate of him to make me wait.

Look, I’ve already apologized. Twice.

I had things to do.

And, like, I am artist. You can’t force the Muse to produce when the Muse has job interviews and Christmas to prepare for. The Muse must prioritize.

But, as you are my loyal readers, and I appreciate your loyalty, I offer you now an explanation.

As you remember, I was writing a three-part expose that was going to blow the lid off of bad Customer Service called Customer Service Apocalypse. I carefully wrote my notes on the back of an old envelope while I was on hold with the Customer
Service agent.

 

Which I think I should get some ecologically conscious points for. It’s not like I took a clean piece of paper and started writing. No, despite my irritation with the customer service agent, I retained my eco-consciousness; I scrounged for an old envelope so I wouldn’t have to fell a tree using a blank sheet of paper. Because I care, you know.

 

The notes were fantastic. They ran across three old envelopes. Every word of my conversations with the Customer Service agent and her managers noted. I scribbled the wonderful, witty, sarcastic thoughts I was going to write when the time came. I counted the minutes I was on hold so you would get the sense of the time I was wasting. I noted the number of times I was transferred to illustrate the company’s confusion about what I was asking. Everything carefully documented. It was positively brilliant. The blog was writing itself.

Then Thanksgiving happened. We had houseguests. And I am not blaming the houseguests in any way. They were here however. This can’t be ignored. After they arrived, the muse somehow slipped out the back door. And, of course, while she was away things happened. Drinking happened. Dinners happened. Nights on the town happened. Movies in the afternoon happened. Late rising mornings happened. The muse is a sensitive being. She stayed away the entire time we had houseguests.

After Thanksgiving, the Muse was ready but I had a job interview. The Muse has to eat too. I prepared for the interview like a demon. I investigated the company. I diligently rehearsed replies to standard questions. You know the ones about my strengths, my weaknesses, and what my boss would say about my work. This takes a lot of time and the Muse wasn’t about to stick around the house for that. She is an artist after all. She wants to hang out with Tom the artist not Tom the job seeker.

So the day of the interview comes and damn if the interviewer didn’t ask all of the questions I so carefully prepared for. He pitched a question about my strengths. Kaboom. Home run. Then another question flew across the plate about my weaknesses. Kaboom. Home room number 2. Then a question about what my old boss would say about me. Kaboom. Home Run number 3.

I was batting 1.000 until he threw a curve ball. A really tricky curve ball. He asked why I managed less work than all of my colleagues. Now where did he get that information and who the Hell gave him that information? Well, apparently, I did. He shows me these numbers from my resume and quotes some numbers I gave him during the interview. He does some fancy math that proves I was managing less work than my colleagues.

There is no way his figures be right. He surely has made a mistake and I am the person to show him the errors of his way. So I do the math.

Not like any sane person with a piece of paper and a pen. Or quietly in my head. No I use that sure fire double combination of the invisible blackboard and mumbling incoherently. You see, I have to see numbers, if only for second in my mind, in order to remember the numbers I am calculating. I raise my finger to the air in front of me and begin writing so I can begin calculating. The interviewer awkwardly stops speaking and watches me do my math.

He hears something like this. “Murmur, murmur, murmur carry the two, murmur, murmur that makes this sixteen, murmur, murmur, no that can’t be right.”

The numbers, of course, don’t add up. I erase the air blackboard and try to recalculate. I still can’t get them to add up. Finally, the interviewer puts me out of my misery and says, “it isn’t important.” Except, for me, it has suddenly become very important. Every question afterwards is tainted with me trying to redo the math. I become distracted and don’t hear questions. I ask him to repeat himself. The great interview I was giving slowly slips into mediocrity.

Needless to say, but I will any way, I didn’t get the job. Which bums the Muse out. The Muse and I take a few days off to mourn my loss. And then, what do you know Christmas happens. Christmas requires a lot of attention and travel and well before you know it is a month without blogging.

So here we are today. I am trying to write Customer Service Apocalypse Part III. The muse is ready. My fingers are rested and ready to type. Full Speed ahead, right. Wrong. Unfortunately, the envelopes with all of my notes have gone missing. Well, I think they have gone missing. They may be somewhere on my desk. Chances are it is there because I never throw any of the scrap papers the Muse writes her fantastic ideas on.

Indeed, I have maybe thirty or so old envelopes and scraps of paper scattered across my desk. I have checked each and every one looking for my notes. And I rechecked them again when I can’t find my notes. There there somewhere I know it.

No problem says the Muse. You can write your story from memory. It was such a vivid and emotional experience. Just the type of experience that will stick in the old noggin, right? Wrong. I am at a loss about what happened and even how it ended.

The Muse is irritated. She suggests writing about one of my other ideas on one of the many scraps of paper on my desk. “You can return to Customer Service Apocalypse Part III when you find your notes,” she says.

Her response, of course, irritates me. She is all art art art. She wants to create. Lives to create but has no business sense or feelings of responsibility to our readers. Besides, I think, it was her damn idea to write my notes on all those scraps of paper in the first place. Now that we have a crisis with the blog, she is all forget it, move on to the next blog, don’t worry about any obligation you have to your reader to complete a story.

“Would Charles Dickens leave one story incomplete and start another one leaving his readers in the lurch?”

“Would Charles Dickens lose his notes in the first place,” she replies.  “ Besides, there are no rules to blogging. That is the whole point of blogging. You can do what ever you want whenever you want. “

I let her bully me into starting a new blog but I insisted on explaining to you dear readers who are waiting for Customer Service Apocalypse Part III what happened so I can lessen any anxiety you might be experiencing.

I am sorry if this upsets you. All I can say in my defense is I am artist.

Damn it.

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When last we left our hero, he needed to determine the decision date for continuation of his medical insurance. He tried using all the written documentation and the on line information provided.   He learned absolutely nothing about the decision due date. He goes to bed pledging to renew his battle the next day.

Thinking it would be a simple phone call, I call WageWorks, the insurance company, approximately an hour before I needed to depart for a lunch date. I also figure in a quick shower within this hour. After all, I have plenty of time and all I want is a lousy date.

I call WageWorks which goes to a call center that is obviously not in the United States. I explain to the woman that what I need. She immediately puts me on hold. Every few minutes, she checks back with me explaining that she is looking for the answer. I wait patiently, listening to the on hold music which is really bad. I mean it is really really bad. It sounds like a recording of a painfully untalented six year old. Every so once in awhile, the keys are pounded vigorously, and then short but frequent gaps of no music when I imagine the prodigy is trying to find his place on the sheet music, then either a tentative ting on the key or a hammer like pound on the ivories. I put my phone on speaker and renew my own search for the date on line.

After about fifteen minutes of bad piano, the woman returns to the line and explains that she can only help with HSA accounts and that I would need to call my former employer to see how to handle my COBRA account. I reply that my document states I need to contact them. She says only for HSA accounts. My document doesn’t say that. Her command of English deteriorates as our conversation continues. Realizing I am getting nowhere with her and knowing that my old companies call center is in the US, I decide to try them. After all, all I want is a lousy date.

The benefit’s representative asks me for my employee number. I explain that I am no longer an employee. I am calling about COBRA benefits. She says they don’t handle COBRA. I tell her that I was told to call my former employer as WageWorks didn’t have this information. She tries pulling my details through my social security number. Nothing appears on her screen. She explains that she will need to find someone who can help me.

The second woman listens to every painful detail of my story before deciding that she too would be unable to help me. She puts me on hold while she locates someone who can help. I patiently wait. The on hold music, however, is quite tolerable. It is easy listening instrumentals of classic rock that seem to be performed by professional musicians.   In the interim, I received a text message saying that my lunch date needs an additional 15 minutes, which I am glad to have gotten the reminder as I had kind of forgotten about my date. I check the clock. I have about ten minutes before I have to leave. I am already committed to the phone call , so I opt to wait for the representative to return and I will go to my lunch smelly and scruffy.

While I am rearranging my schedule to accommodate this phone call, a third woman comes on line with a strained voice of someone who is about to deliver bad news. I wait. She explains that they have outsourced the Health Insurance elections for Cobra to a company called WageWorks and that I would need to call them. I tell her that WageWorks just told me to call my former employer. She wearily responds, “I know that.” I am frustrated. I tell her all I want is a lousy date. “Can’t you do anything for me?” She sighs. She would like to help but she doesn’t have any of my information. I needed to call WageWorks. Wageworks has all of my information.

Then I remembered that WageWorks indeed has all of my information as I was able to register last night and the system filled in all of the blanks with my name, address, phone number and even my bank’s routing information. Since they were delivered all of this private information with the anticipation of me signing up for benefits, they certainly must be able to help me. I am registered. Armed with this new information I feel ready to tackle WageWorks and get my decision date. Except now I have run out of time and need to leave for lunch. Part of me thinks that this will be easy, it will take one second to get this information. Then, the other part of me, the rational, reality-based Tom realizes that this is not going to take a minute and I decide to tackle this assignment after lunch. I leave unshowered, unshaved and frustrated for lunch.

So after trying for little more than an hour yesterday evening and another hour this morning, I still don’t know when I need to make my decision.

Stay tuned for Part III — the third and final installment.

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All I wanted was a due date.

My Health Care company sent me a 40-page document explaining the big changes in coverage for 2018. One small but important detail was missing from this opus – the date that my decision was due. This date was extremely important because the document stated, in no uncertain terms, that if I missed the closing date that they would make my health plan selection for me.

I was certain the date would be somewhere in the colorful charts and graphs liberally displayed throughout the 40 pages. I mean who writes a 40-page document with constant warnings about the due date and not give the due. I skimmed the document quickly. The decision date was missing. I carefully and slowly reread the document and I found my answer. Wait, that’s not true. I found some wording that pointed to an answer – it said check the WageWorks web site for the closing date with yet another warning about being prompt about my decision or else.

This meant I had to reread the document yet again. Much to my chagrin, I don’t find a website address. I do notice, however, that every time the document had the word WageWorks that it was in a different color print much like if you were reading a document on line. The brightly colored print highlights the hyperlinked words. If I were reading on line, all I would have to do is click the hyperlink. The only problem is I was reading a print document. Clicking on a piece of paper takes me no where. I do try in case I was wrong because I hate when you talk to a help desk person and they snarl something like, “you didn’t try to click on the print document.” And, of course, you feel like a complete idiot when the action you thought was obviously wrong was in fact the right thing to do. You will be happy to know, I was correct. There is no need to click a hyperlink in a print document. It will not send you to the web site.

After taking a fourth look at the document, I surrendered and googled WageWorks. I found the WageWork web address and went  to the site. There was a lot of positive feedback about the company and what it was doing, it’s goals, etc. but I failed to locate a closing date for my medical insurance decision. I am doing this all at midnight so their help desk is closed. I read something that leads me to believe that if I register with WageWorks, everything I ever wanted to know about Wageworks would be then revealed to me. I figure I would have to register eventually so I register. To my shock, it is easy. Wageworks has all of my information. I type in F and Fitzpatrick appears. I type in T and Thomas appears. All I have to do is confirm if they have the correct information. I carry on until I see my bank account number and my banks routing information.

This upsets me. How did they get my banking information? I didn’t give it to them. I never even heard of Wageworks until I opened the document they sent me. I try to close out of the document but they have hidden the little X in the corner that will close you out. After hitting escape and various other keys without luck, I decide what the hell they already have the information. I am not keeping them from anything and I will probably have to register with them and they will need this information anyway. Why not complete the registration and I can talk to them tomorrow and straighten things out. I depress the enter key and voila, I am registered.

Except registering doesn’t give me access to any more information than I had when I was unregistered. The due date is still missing. There is a tab called questions. I depress it. The screen changes but there is no little box where you type your question. Maybe it is hidden in one of the other tabs. I click through them seeing if there is a box for me to type my question or, better yet, a due date for my decision.

I try a different web browser because I have had this problem with a different company and learned that if you change your browser, sometimes everything works as designed. Which is annoying and I brought this up to the help desk person who offered this solution. “How am I supposed to know which browser I should be using?” She cheerfully replied, “Oh you can’t.” I pointed out that her company’s preferred solution in handling this known problem was to wait for the customer to become so frustrated and angry that they are forced to seek assistance from the help desk. She cheerfully informed me that this problem had been escalated to the highest level of the company and that we should expect a solution any day.

I could go on about this customer service problem but I digress from the customer service I was original talking about. I don’t want to be confusing. Really, I don’t. Any way, I try a different browser. Complete and utter failure. I can’t see a due date and I can’t find a question box. At this point, I surrender. I realize I am going to have to contact them in the morning. Except that I am wired now and I can’t get to sleep. I am grinding my teeth and imagining the pithy statements I will be making tomorrow once I finally reach a person who can take me out of this Hell. Or not.

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In reaction to yesterday’s shooting in Texas, Donald Trump stated that this was a mental health issue and not a gun access issue. Well yes it is actually a mental health issue. If you gave a loaded gun to most sane people, they can be trusted to use it responsibly.   It really is a small dangerous few that are causing all the problems. Given that there are new slaughters of innocent people at the hands of these mad men, it would be a good idea if we could act quickly to stop the carnage. Clearly restricting access to guns isn’t going to happen. The second amendment to the Constitution established the right to bear arms. Even if it were possible to change the Second Amendment, which I strongly doubt, it would take years to change.

This leaves us with Donald Trump’s assertion that this is a mental health issue. I know that this is a little outside the box but perhaps Trump is on to something. Honestly, I really don’t want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, and, if it is as Trump says, a mental health issue, I wanted to protect Americans from the criminally insane. Let’s make mental health a civic responsibility. If you are prone to be criminally insane then it is best for everyone, including the criminally insane, if they were off the streets and under protective medical care. Of course, we would need to change some laws but as long as they didn’t infringe on the second amendment, I am sure Trump and the Republicans could muster the will to get them through Congress. For example, once a year every American adult over the age of 18 must get a certification of sanity. If the person passes, then the process ends until the following year. If the person fails, then he would have to go through further psychiatric evaluations up to and including incarceration if psychiatric professionals deemed the individual criminally insane.

The advantages of such a system are so great that I am almost giddy from thinking about them all. I mean the unintended consequences alone make this project worthy of consideration. You heard me the unintended consequences make this a great idea. I mean, since everyone must get a psychiatric check up, we might get ahead of other run of the mill mental health problems like depression. Instead of waiting for a complete mental breakdown, like we do now, we might catch some of these conditions before they get out of hand. Also imagine the new data we would have on mental health. We would have the full range of the sanity scale from completely sane to totally out of their fucking mind and all the variations in between. This again would give us more information about everyone and we would better act as a community in stopping both the criminally insane and preventing your standard every day breakdown.

And let’s not take our eye off of the ball here. What we really want to do is stop mass shootings. If the psychological professional can determine these dangerous propensities before hand, we hopefully could stop shootings from ever taking place in the first place. Instead of police shooting and killing the mentally ill man who acquired guns and is running amok in a crowded mall. We can just take them off the street before they snap.

I know you are going to say. This sounds good and though I agree that this is a much better alternate than taking away law-abiding citizens right to bear arms but can we really afford this? And here is the beauty it will practically pay for itself. First, once people start coming in for their yearly examinations, there should be less mental health issues as we would begin to treat them before they got out of hand. We should see a significant reduction of urgent health care costs and move to the less expansive managed health care costs. Since more of mental health issues will be managed, there also will be a drop in time taken from work for mental health days, so productivity will go up. There will be less damage to public buildings and private property because fewer people will be shooting up public spaces. Since more people will be managing their mental health through medication, the pharmaceutical companies will be booming. There would be a need for more pharmacists and more psychiatrists so those professions should see an increase in their ranks. Best of all, the economic boom would be evenly divided throughout the country as every person in every state would need their sanities verified. And don’t get me started about the trickle down effect. It is a win win idea.

I agree with Trump completely on this. Let’s address this as a mental health problem. If it is a mental health problem then we need to hold him to coming up with a mental health solution because gun violence is now a mental health crisis.

 

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When Americans talk about our national history, we tend to emphasize the positive. We like to talk about immigrants yearning to be free. It is a compelling national story which gives Americans a sense of pride in the nation we have built. Our history highlights our exceptionalism. The conversation grinds to halt however when we talk about the big divisive issue in American History – the Civil War and the racism that supported the institution of slavery. This is all rather unpleasant and difficult.

In the past few years, people have even tried to reframe the American Civil War. They say that most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, how could they be fighting for slavery when they didn’t own slaves? That had to be motivated by something other than slavery, something nobler. Or the rebels fought for states rights not the continuation of slavery. What upset southerners was the imposition of northern ideas on the South. We are told that Robert E. Lee hated slavery, so he fought for the South because he loved his home state of Virginia and could not fight his neighbors. The South’s struggle, in other words, had nothing to do with slavery and therefore racism need not be considered either when looking at the war.

More importantly, it saves us from thinking that our ancestors are racists. Making slavery irrelevant to the Civil War obfuscates the real causes of the conflict and makes the southerner’s position sound almost noble. It was just a dispute between two groups about how a democracy should function. One group believed that the Federal Government takes precedence over the State Government, the other side believed the opposite. After all, we still are debating the role of the Federal Government in American life today.

Except that it isn’t the truth. The truth, however, is pretty horrible and that is why people prefer to downplay the importance of slavery in the war. Because if slavery becomes the cause of the Civil War, then our ancestors are responsible for some pretty horrible things. What is slavery? Why did people want slaves? Why were black people made slaves and not white people? Why did white people think they could black people slaves?

Even now when we do learn about slavery, we learn about in the passive voice. Slaves were brought to USA. But exactly who brought African blacks to the USA? Who made them slaves? Who bought and sold them? Slavery and racism happened to blacks as opposed to someone imposing it on them. We use this passive voice because it is difficult to explain the ugly truth. White people brought African blacks to this country against their will for the purpose of slavery. The vast majority of white people in the south thought they were superior to blacks and that this gave them the right to use blacks as slaves. In 1860, white southerners thought that Lincoln would abolish slavery so they risked civil war to prevent him from taking away what they viewed as their property. Following the Civil War, when southern whites regained control of their state governments, Jim Crow laws were set up which created laws that blocked blacks from education, housing, jobs, voting and ultimately justice. While blacks gained full civil rights in 1965, whites resisted these new laws and continued enforcing Jim Crow laws on an informal basis well into the 21st century. Blacks had to use the courts to force whites into complying with the new civil rights laws.

Racism didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It was created to defend whites owning slaves. This is why white people bear the burden of changing a racist society. Yes, there may be racist blacks but blacks have never held power over whites. And by power I mean the power to force whites to provide unpaid labor, to stop them from living in certain areas, to stop them from voting. Whites have done all of these things. You may argue – this is still unfair. Not all white people participated in slavery and Jim Crow. Yes but they did stand by when other white people did. Just because you weren’t a part of the lynch mob doesn’t exonerate your actions when you know who was in the lynch mob.

It is completely understandable why white people find it difficult to talk about slavery. It is embarrassing. Our ancestors were horrible. If white’s were to face up to this history, they would realize that, at best, their ancestors watched injustice go on for years without lifting a finger to stop it, and, at worst, were wrapping a rope around a tree. How do you explain this in school to students in a white majority nation? What would the students think about their history? Their ancestors? We can only change what we can face and it is time to face the ugly actions of our ancestors and move forward.

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Bill Koch, third and, I believe, poorest Koch brother, has a serious problem with wine counterfeiting. You see he buys vintage wine. You are unfamiliar with this problem? So was I. When I purchase wine, I am inclined to choose volume over quality. I would rather buy 4 OK bottles of wine for $20 then spend $20 for one good bottle. However Bill Koch is different. Way different. I mean way way way different. He prowls the auction houses looking for really good deals on vintage wine. He will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a bottle of wine.

Koch once bought 4 bottles of wine that were purported to come from Thomas Jefferson’s vineyards. He paid $400,000 for the 4, yes you figured it correctly $100,000 a piece for a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, the gullible billionaire discovered after purchasing the wine that the bottles were fake. Which is a little irritating because the only advantage, at least as far as I can see, from owning a bottle of vintage wine is, in fact, owning it. If it isn’t authentic, the taste of the wine hardly matters. Who wants to pay $100,000 for repackaged French table wine?

Well Bill Koch was, to say the least, angry and wanted to put a stop to these swindlers. Being a billionaire, he also had the resources to fight this important battle. He spent nearly $35,000,000 trying to stop these counterfeiters from continuing their fraudulent activities. He met with some success and now the FBI and the courts are bring these people to justice. Hurrah.

So if Bill Koch is using his own money to buy vintage wine and fight his defrauders. What business is of mine? Let me tell you.

There are people who believe that taking money away from the rich is preventing the rich from investing their money in things that will ultimately bring wealth to the whole society and lift poor people out of their poverty. If you tax this money then you are preventing these people from investing these poverty reducing business ventures.

I think Koch’s experience provides evidence that proves this thesis wrong.

Let’s start with purchasing the bottles of wine. The bottles were fake so the trickle down theory hardly is relevant here. There are no poor grape picker or winery workers involved in this story. There are some swindlers and some suckers but no one that is going to advance the cause of commerce.

Even if the bottles were authentic, taxing Koch and extra say 25 percent per bottle would not have prevented him from buying the wine. He still would have plenty of cash to spare on his vintage wine. The worst-case scenario is he might have to shave a bottle or two off the purchase but he can still afford to spend $100,000 on a bottle if he so desired. Again as these are vintage bottles, the grape picker and winery worker are long dead, so no real innovative ideas are thwarted here. If you want to shed a tear, it would be for the poor wretches who work at Sotheby’s.

Koch spends $35,000,000 dollars trying to find and prosecute these counterfeiters. Agreed that these are people engaged in a criminal activity and should be stopped. However the people who gain anything by stopping the counterfeiters are pretty much limited to private investigators and billionaires. This isn’t investment money for the development of commerce and industry. This is pure revenge on Koch’s part. He doesn’t like being swindled.

If, instead, the $35,000,000 were given to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the money would still be better spent. More electrical appliances, new cars, and new houses would be bought. More money would be put into the hands of people who would use it buying things that might stimulate the economy than, let’s say, a billionaire interested in vintage wine.

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Today, I was trying to find new music. So, I googled top ten lists and I stumbled upon this song from Johnny Cash called “Hurt.”  I had heard Cash’s version of “Hurt” before and I knew I liked it. I can’t remember why I didn’t buy it back then. The song is an odd choice for Cash because Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, wrote the song. NIN is, for lack of a better categorization, a metal band and Johnny Cash is traditional country.  Cash, however, found the perfect song. It is brutal and haunting.  Cash’s voice, rough, deep and resonant, cracks with emotion.  Cash gives Reznor’s words a deeper meaning as it is coming from an older man who has experienced a world of hurt and personal mistakes. Now he is looking at his pain and the pain he caused with pitiless eyes.   It’s a great rendition of the song but it hurts.  It really hurts. I think these type of emotional wallops should be taken in small doses. Which is probably why I didn’t buy it the first time.  But, God, you should give it a listen.