Time to start the revolution

Well, sports fans, the Repugnants in the House got what they wanted: the appearance of a victory on a healthcare bill that reveals them at their despicable worst. In this case, it was more important for them to be seen to be doing something—anything—than to do something productive. So Trump-RyanCare squeaked by in yesterday’s vote—without Congressmorons reading it, without meaningful debate (even by Congressmoron standards) and without a thought for anything except getting it voted on before they take their next recess (at least the second since the beginning of the year).

Some quick thoughts:

Jason Chaffetz, Despicable-Utah, whom last we saw fleeing the House because he urgently needed foot surgery to repair a 12-year-old defect, managed to wheel himself back to the floor to cast his vote in favor of shafting his constituents. Despite being too incapable to do his Congressional work of investigating connections between the Gauleiter administration and the Russians, he literally scooted (on a scooter) back in order to uphold the principle that if you aren't already well-cushioned financially, you don't deserve a decent quality of life. Even if you vote for him. Will you look at the grin on that face? 

(Although, since this is such an important vote, I'm betting he would have slithered in, like he usually does.) He—like all his Repug cohorts—do not see the irony in the fact that, under this new bill’s provisions, his problem with his foot would be a pre-existing condition, which once again becomes grounds for being refused coverage.

But, hey—not a problem, it turns out, because the bill presciently exempts Congressmorons, their families and their staffs from this pre-existing coverage limitation, so they’ll be taken care of. Yay! Chaffetz will now slink back under a rock somewhere in Utah (or maybe somewhere nicer; where there are no constituents to ask him any questions) for his three-week work-free “recovery” period.

Which no other employer in the country would give any employee who wasn’t in a coma on life-support. You call in that kind of sick, they fire your ass. Although, in fairness, hard to distinguish any Repug from a comatose person, and I would personally question whether they’re even a life form.

It’s not clear to me how long it will take for denizens of the red states, who’ve been so vocal in their support for repealing the reviled Obamacare, to realize that what actually got repealed was the Affordable Care Act, the one that provides them actual coverage for a raft of conditions that will no longer be included (or that will cost far too much for them to buy coverage). And that the “death panels” the Repugs threatened them with back when ACA was initially debated (for much longer than 40 minutes) turn out to be the Repugs.

Yo—smokers, chawers and snuff-takers. Ask about tobacco-related conditions. Then prepare to hear a lot of laughter. You’re shafted, dudes. 

(Fun fact: the state of being female is essentially a pre-existing condition for this crowd of bloated white males, so care for pregnancy and other things to do with lady-parts—including rape and sexual assault—are not covered. But that great scourge of humanity, erectile dysfunction, that, boyos, is definitely in.)

I’d almost be okay with that, because you’re the ones who brought this about. It was more important to you to expunge the legacy of a black man in the Oval Office, and to prevent a woman from entering it, than it was to even look after your own interests. You were so intent on sticking it to the mythical libtard elites that you hauled out your Second Amendment assault rifles and shot yourselves, your families, your neighbors and your future.

But you also screwed millions of innocent, hard-working people who never hurt you. This shitstorm is all on you, and the vindictive Kleptocrat and the vicious Congressmorons you sent to Washington. You raised the water level of the so-called swamp to tsunami proportions.

I’d say fuck you, but your elected representatives are doing that anyhow.

But as for you spineless, lickspittle swamp monster Repugnantss laughing your limos to the airport: better start looking into post-Congressional healthcare coverage, because in 18 months, Winter’s coming.

  

No human involvement

  Update from yesterday’s post:

After two emails and an office visit (for which I was chastised by the head of HR for appearing “unannounced”—her actual word; evidently an “open-door policy”—again, her words—means something other than actually, you know, “open”), the chick reputedly managing benefits for my company reluctantly emailed me what she said was our dental plan ID number, along with the advice that I could call Cigna.

Which, when I gave it to the dentist yesterday, turned out to be…not anything recognizable as a plan number for Cigna. (Look—I’m clueless about it, but in this matter I’m inclined to take the word of anyone in a dental office over that of anyone in HR.)

So I had to pay $130 for the consultation and will need to square it away with the insurance company. Deep joy—because there’s nothing more fun than dental work, unless it’s dental work plus fighting with an insurance company.

I should have known that with one job to do, this chick would not get it right. And that when she hawked up a response that basically was “here’s-the-plan-number-call-Cigna-to-find-out-anything-useful-now-go-away”, I should just have called the insurance company. It may be tempting the gods to say that Cigna couldn’t do a worse job of customer service than HR, but since I’m going to have to do it anyway, I should have gone first to the horse’s mouth instead of the other end.

Oh, the humanity

Over the years of my career, it’s been my observation that one constant in every organization is that human resources is just baffling.

As in: I cannot for the life of me grasp how these people stay employed.

I get it that despite using the term “human” in the department title, their sole function is to protect the interests of company management. (Calling them “People Operations”, “Employee Success” or “Employee Experience” doesn’t change that in the least.) Their only interest in actual humans is to ensure that they do not sue the corporation for violating any laws, while disbursing the absolute minimum in the way of monetary outlay they can get away with.

Because shareholder value.

This has been my experience in multi-national corporations of tens of thousands of employees and very small start-ups. The only ones that haven’t fallen into this pattern are the ones too small to have a human resources department. As soon as someone with the letters SPHR after their name is hired, we’re on the slide down to bafflement.

(And the only department to rival HR in that wonder is Marketing. Honest to God, in so many places, Marketing cannot find its way out of a paper bag with a compass and a seeing eye dog. And I’ve worked in Marketing, and I still can’t figure out why it collectively screws the pooch.)

The denizens of HR here are certainly upholding the honor of the profession. I’ve mentioned before how they touted with great fanfare that they were creating an “Employee Downtime” area by replacing several tables in the employee lunchroom with a couple of couches, three TV monitors and a foosball table, for which no one asked. I don’t like to think how much money that cost—money that could have gone into coffee- and tea-making facilities.

But apparently the effort to stand up the down-area plumb wore HR out, because you practically have to file a FOIA request to get any information about your healthcare benefits. The one person in the department who has that remit never replies to a query the first time around; it’s only after multiple emails and voicemails that she’ll graciously condescend to give you an ort from the table—like…the group ID number for the dental plan.

Seriously—why offer the benefit if you’re going to block people from using it?

Oh, wait—never mind. I answered my question back in graf 3 above.

The question for which I do not have an answer is: to whom does one report HR?

Minority report

I’m one of 372 people outside the ballroom of the Washington Hilton who watched Hasan Minhaj’s speech at the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner this weekend. It’s usually a cross between a high school talent show and a Friars Club roast, all centered around the occupant of the White House. But the occupant of the White House has usually had an actual sense of humor plus a thick skin, and of course that’s not the case this year.

In fact, the Kleptocrat announced with extended lower lip in February that he would not be attending the WHCD, the first president since Ronald Reagan to skip the event. (Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt, and even then he phoned in to make a couple of jokes and take his lumps from the journos.) Then the Cheeto-in-Chief directed his Gauleiters to also abstain. Because these people literally cannot take a joke.

Instead the Kleptocrat went to Harrisburg, Penn., to hold a party rally (yes), where he told porkies about how large the crowd was there. The guy really doesn’t understand how the whole smartphone camera, connectivity and social media thing works:

Also—what is it about this guy and size?

The rally was his platform for lying about all his accomplishments during his first hundred days in office. He filled in the space between lies with pouting about the people who are so unfair to him—the press—who he would have us believe were secretly wishing they were up in Pennsylvania instead of at the dinner.

Okay, but back to Minhaj. He said a few things that I thought were dead on target—not directly to do with the Kleptocrat, but with the absolutely critical role the press—the free press—has to play in not only combating the rising tide of fascism, but in the fundamental survival of democracy. He started with a jokey survey of the various media outlets in attendance, before getting around to CNN, the USA Today of broadcast news. (Actually, earlier he took on USA Today, and was pretty funny.)

“CNN is here, baby. Now you guys got some really weird trust issues going on with the public. I’m not going to call you fake news, but everything isn’t breaking news. You can’t go to DEFCON 1 just because Sanjay Gupta found a new moisturizer.”

And this is true—the media in some ways are their own worst enemies, rushing all over the place trying to get something out there before it appears on some blog in Dubuque. Also, leaving aside the failure to confirm the veracity of their stories, they dilute their impact when every story is slapped up as a stop-the-presses kind of breaking news jobber.

Minhaj also calls it correctly when he talks about it being a trust issue. It’s not just the Kelptocrat and the Gauleiters and the Repugnants muddying the waters with their screeches about fake news every time someone reports what they’ve said and done. Although Lord knows, they are muddying the waters. But he goes on to nail it:

“I know I’m busting balls. I don’t have a solution on how to win back trust. I don’t. But in the age of [the Kleptocrat], I know that you guys have to be more perfect now more than ever. Because you are how the president gets his news. Not from advisers, not from experts, not from intelligence agencies, you guys. So that’s why you gotta be on your A-game. You gotta be twice as good. You can’t make any mistakes. Because when one of you messes up, he blames your entire group. And now you know what it feels like to be a minority.”

I don’t much give a toss about the media being accurate reporters because they’re how the Kleptocrat gets his information—he’s going to cherry pick whatever fact or fiction suits his notional reality, whatever gets him what he wants in any given moment. I do care that the news media be able to demonstrate integrity and rigor in publishing or broadcasting because I need to trust them. And because all thoughtful, truth-seeking people need to trust them. And because somewhere along the line, the courts of justice and of history are going to need to be able to trust them as a source of facts about this administration and our society.

I also think he called it when he categorized the press as a minority—both collectively and individually held responsible for the actions of the worst among them. You screw up—everyone with a press pass (and their editors and their publishers) takes the hit. One reporter from the not-failing New York Times elides a statue in the Oval Office (subsequently correcting the mistake), and the second-rate Goebbels starts screaming how every news story is massively fake. And he’s believed.

That’s exactly how minorities are viewed in this society, and I think it would be really good for the news industry to consider that—both as it applies to themselves and to how they report on other minorities. If a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel misspells some Gauleiter’s wife’s name, the entire US Press Association should not have to file affidavits abjuring misspelling Gauleiters’ wives’ names. Ditto seeking statements from black, or Muslim, or Asian community leaders when one of their members goes postal.

(Although, of course we do want to encourage all reporters to verify the spelling of Gauleiters’ wives’ names—and everyone else’s names, as well as all other facts in their stories that they can cram in and still meet their deadlines. Because see above about being the trusted source of news about the world we live in and will leave to our descendants. When the Kleptocrat, his Gauleiters and the Repugnants in Congress can lie about things they have been recorded saying and doing—those records are all that stand between us and a Buñuel film.)

Like Minhaj, I don’t have any solution, just a suggestion—that they do not debase their journalistic coinage and turn out crap like Breitbart or the Drudge Report. And that they hold fast against the threats that the Kleptocrat is thinking about changing libel laws, making it easier to sue publications. Because the hometown paper absolutely has it right:

Gratitude Monday: May Day

It’s Gratitude Monday and it’s International Workers Day and it’s May Day.

So I’m grateful for Spring in Northern Virginia. For drifts of azaleas and clouds of dogwood. For the explosions of leaves on trees and eruptions of hostas through the mulch.

(I’m not so grateful for allergies and a bad hair day that will last through mid-September, tbh, but that’s the price I pay for the change in seasons.)

This year I’m also grateful for the anticipation of putting out tomato plants and a summer of suppers alternating between caprese salads and poached chicken breasts with tomato mayonnaise, with glasses of Pinot Gris or Prosecco to sip. Because there is nothing in this world like tomatoes you bring into the kitchen still warm from the vine.

I’m also grateful for workers of every stripe—Metro drivers, baristas, call center representatives, trash guys, help desk techs, grocery shelf stockers, factory workers, pharmacists—all of them. This year I’m also keeping in my thoughts journalists, editors and publishers; judges all up and down the line; teachers and teacher aides; ACLU lawyers; federal employees; Congressional staff-who-answer-phones (sorry, guys, I know you’re on the front line of a war you probably never saw coming; wars are like that) and the men and women of our armed services.

(The Kleptocrat, his Gauleiters and Congressmorons too spineless to #doyourjob—not so much. For the precise reason that they are not fulfilling the fundamental part of their oath of office, which is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.)

Back in the last century the skipper of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower used to close his morning announcement by saying, “Thanks for coming to work today.” Well, it was a little dopy, because it’s not like anyone aboard ship had any choice in the matter. But we all need to consider what our day would be like if someone didn’t do their job, and we all like to be appreciated for doing our job.

May Day/International Workers Day has traditionally been a time for the laboring classes to march, and it’s been a day for bloodshed, as left- and right-wing extremists fought in the streets, both here and abroad. I’m hoping we won’t see that kind of thing today, although given the kind of organized provocation by supporters of the Kleptocrat at protests and marches recently, I know this is wishful thinking.

Still—this isn’t about Big Movements, this is about small gratitude; my gratitude. So I’m focusing on appreciating the world around me, natural and man-made.

Resistance moon: The voice was chanting

We’ve reached the end of National Poetry Month, another journey through humanity and the universe we inhabit as seen through the lens of those we trust to distil it down to its most basic chemistry. Coincidentally we’ve just passed Day 100 of the Kleptocrat’s rule—a point at which we were promised we’d see great things, believe me. And then, in the past couple of weeks, we were told that the first hundred days are a completely artificial construct, so unfair, so we’re not to expect…well, whatever it was we were told we’d be getting by now.

What a maroon.

I’m grateful to have had the poems to focus on these past 30 days. To remind myself that we as human beings have endured worse than the Kleptocrat—even we as Americans. Letting the poets deconstruct both repression and resistance down to the basics has been therapeutic. A crowd of sorrows, an artillery round, a politician’s spit, a bear’s DNA, a Green Card, a mansplaining bishop, an order given in Polish—these are the building blocks of both the good and the evil that we contain within ourselves. It’s up to choose, as Anne Sexton pointed out so succinctly, how we’re going to face it.

Well, this is the end of the month, but not of the road—pretty sure that the Gauleiters have more tricks up their brown-shirted sleeves, and we need to soldier on. As the abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips said in 1852, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”

It’s not clear to me why this sentence is not being repeated at every public gathering these days. It’s also depressing as hell to realize that this kind of crap—power taking from the many to give to the few—keeps coming around and around.

So to close out this month, I’ll give you something that dates from the last big national crisis in the 1930s and 40s, from another man of the heartland. Woody Guthrie.

Guthrie was from Oklahoma, which—as I hope to God you know—was one of the hardest-hit areas of the Dust Bowl. When I was a kid my mother, a third-generation Californian, still sniffed about the Okies, who’d flooded the state decades before. (One of the best takes on their welcome to the Golden State is in Guthrie’s “Do-Re-Mi”, and one of my favorite takes on that is by John Mellancamp.) Guthrie drifted restlessly from one end of the country to the other, walking, hitchhiking and riding the rails; it was from these travels that he distilled the essence of America that became “This Land Is Your Land”.

Like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “This Land Is Your Land” is a whole lotta wrapped up in unadorned paper: straightforward melody, four chords, easy harmonies. It’s a simple—albeit revolutionary—concept, too: America belongs to all of us, not just the propertied and the powerful. Yeah, it even belongs to the ignorant, the fearful and the aggrieved (although I do wonder what Woody would have made of his heirs in the red states now, voting against their own interests and swallowing in great gulps the claptrap dished out by the plutocrats who got them into the current state of affairs and intend to keep them there)—just not exclusively. It belongs to all of us.

Guthrie was the mortal enemy of fascism. If you enlarge the photo above, you'll note the sticker on his guitar. He would have been at the front of every protest against the Kleptocrat, his Gauleiters and the spineless, lickspittle Repugnants in Congress. And while he was in jail waiting for the ACLU and the twelve gazillion GoFundMe campaigns to get him out, he'd write another shedload of songs about it.

I was at a pub sing a few weeks ago with a roomful of people who perform for pleasure. We were singing largely Anglo-American-Celtic pieces with varying degrees of enthusiasm and confidence. When “This Land” came up, pretty sure the walls of the pub vibrated. Back in January, when the Kleptocrat issued his first failed executive order on banning immigration from select Muslim countries that don’t host any of his business interests, protestors at Philadelphia’s airport sang “This Land”. I cannot imagine a more appropriate choice.

As with “Blowin’”, everyone’s sung “This Land”. Every folk group, starting with The Weavers. Pete Seeger must have sung it about a squillion times in his lifetime. Bernie Sanders—yes mam. Ani DiFranco, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga the Mormon Tabernacle Choir… Springsteen called it the greatest song ever written about America. (He and Seeger sang it at the Lincoln Memorial to mark the inauguration of President Obama, the event that set off the racists and gave the Kleptocrat traction.)

Here’s Springsteen again, in a recording that melds Woody into his son Arlo’s voice, with Little Richard, Bono, John Mellencamp and Taj Mahal from a PBS show called A Vision Shared, about Guthrie and Leadbelly, the two iconic folksong writers of the Depression.

This cover contains several verses that have been airbrushed out over the years—like the one about the No Trespassing sign and the one I think speaks loudest to me right now:

Nobody living can ever stop me

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

Please carry that thought forward with you. It’s true.

Peace out.