Category: Public Health

Four Problems with Perfessor Gingrich’s “American Schoolchild Janitorial Initiative”

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

November 24, 2011

“You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to
fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America.” 
Newt Gingrich speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government,
last Friday, November 19, 2011. 

  Yes, sir. That’s what we’re afraid of . . .

Here’s the well-reported gem from the Perfesser’s comments at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government: “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”   

The story being highlighted in the media is, of course, the one about children acting as junior janitors at public schools in the “poorest neighborhoods,” what we might call the “Newt Gingrich P.S. America Schoolchild Janitorial Initiative.” Yet, that’s not all that is there – contra Gertrude Stein, “There’s a lot of there there.” Closely read, Gingo’s comments reveal a cornucopia of bigoted and often downright wrong perceptions about these “poorest neighborhoods.” His underlying conceptions about the poor and the not-so-poor reveal his well-known failure to dive very deeply into facts and their consequences. He creates a mishmash of facts and not-even-conceivable non-facts like wake behind a cruiser going full speed through a small marina.

Here are four items to consider from his three-sentence backwash:

1. “first of all, child laws. . .”  The Perfesser starts out his observations with a perception that we entrap children in the poorest neighborhoods. My guess, he’s referencing African American and Hispanic urban neighborhoods. Surely, it would be difficult to negate the not merely metaphorical entrapment these children face. Yet, look at what Gingo picks as the first way in which we entrap these children – “first of all, child laws.” That first: Laws that benefit and protect children.

Gingrich neglects the 16% and 13% unemployment rate for African American men and women (respectively), with an underemployment rate that approaches 25%. Also unmentioned is the 11+% unemployment rate of Hispanic men and women. Add to that the low wage status of those who are employed in primarily dead-end jobs. The Census’ September 2011 publication, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, reported that household income for African American ($32,068 ) and Hispanic ($37,759) families distantly trailed white family incomes ($54,629), and in urban areas the margin is worse. Poverty rates approach 27% in urban areas for African American and Hispanic families. Moreover, a recent study found that poor urban neighborhoods are rapidly growing in population and becoming more isolated from other neighborhoods. 

These, far from a complete array of those available, are missing from the Perfesser’s just-throw-it-out-there “analysis” of urban education and labor issues, they always have been. He often simply lofts these half-baked “ideas” into the mediasphere seemingly without fear of pushback, although pushback always comes (today, he tried to revise his statements at Harvard). For a self-admitted genius, he doesn’t seem to learn much from experience. Perhaps, with more time at MENSA . . .

Tackling the historic trend of inequality in the United States would take a 1960’s type effort. The attack would be aimed at strengthening, not weakening, laws that helped end child labor and other labor abuses. We’ve been there before. Yes, Perfessor, times have changed since the Gilded Age, some nibbling around the edges of minimum age laws may be in order. Unfortunately for most of us, Gilded Age standards are what you and the GOP have in mind. You’re a certified “Historian,” Perfesser, how did you miss U.S. child labor history?

2. “the poorest neighborhoods . . .”  There is more to just suggesting that children work as janitors, or in any other occupation, during their school years, particularly when speaking of kids in the “poorest neighborhoods,” as Gingo put it. The federal and state programs that support these children of the working poor are primary targets of Gingrich’s “anti-poverty” proposals. For example, he once proposed disallowing children of legal immigrants access to federally subsidized school lunches. He favors block granting education funds to the states. One can only imagine what Texas or Arizona would do with those funds. In reply, I suppose that the Perfesser would point to the wages the children would earn as part-time janitors and suggest they spend that pittance on their lunch. Again, another brilliant idea, but no thanks. And Gingo’s ignorance goes much deeper than opposing school lunches, pushing draconian workfare programs, etc. He simply makes no connection between a child of poverty and his or her environment, particularly the lack of sustenance that begins in utero for many inner city children.

3. “ought to get rid of the unionized janitors . . .”  Next, let’s turn to the Perfessor’s mini-lecture on labor, in particular, his reference to union labor. He begins (and ends) with this, “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors,” and, of course, hire one “master janitor” and his pre-pubescent minions.  This is nothing new for Gingo, he’s long detested unions. In any event, this small parenthetical gives us a look into Gingo’s . . . heart.  His plan is, as we’ve read, for schools to, first, fire all but one adult janitor and then hire school children as his work force, and all non-union. In general, why do people like Gingrich advocate union destruction? Freedom of contract? As they say, “not so much.” Destroying unions is all about reducing negotiating powers that can only be found in workers’ numbers, and, most importantly, then having the corporate power to reduce benefits, safety expenses, allied costs, and wages. So, under the vaunted Perfesser’s “P.S. America Janitorial Initiative,”

  • Adult janitors would be fired right and left, presumably to take positions at Goldman Sachs, 
  • their unions, should they exist, would thereby be weakened or destroyed, 
  • young children at each “retooled” school would then be employed in their stead, and,
  • the entire janitorial staff could then – and would then – be paid a pittance for their labor, thus helping drive down labor costs throughout the industry.   

Once again, although with due respect for your braininess, Mr. Gingrich, I disagree.

4. “they’d begin the process of rising. . .”  Next on the list of Gingrich’s hit list of “thoughts” is work qua work. When going on about how much his national cadre of child janitors would benefit from his Janitorial Initiative, Gingo’s final words point to the future of these children, “they’d begin the process of rising.” Here he reveals a prejudice as old as our nation’s earliest days, derived from its unfair economic advancement through the labors of enslaved persons, particularly in the south. The notion that people of color must have an incentive to “begin the process of rising” is still afoot, assuredly in Gingrich’s world view.

The work “incentive” he implicitly references is not merely an add-on to an individual’s natural propensity to work. The “work ethic,” according to the longstanding prejudice, is missing in some, particularly in persons of color. By dismantling Gingo’s phrases for their genesis in racial bias, it’s clear he’s not talking about wage or promotion “incentive” here. He’s talking about force: forcing a naturally indigent population to, as he says, “actually do work.”

To push children into the work force who are already disadvantaged by the poverty of their elders, and the concomitant undersupply of nutrition, health, and emotional resources that their poverty brings in its natural wake is certainly enough to commend Gingrich’s idea to the rubbish. But, still dissatisfied, the Perfesser – his presidential contestants, and the GOP base then propose gutting or rendering fictional through block grants the federal programs that help mitigate the real disadvantages among school children and their families.

That’s not inspiration Mr. Gingrich, that’s plain and simply ignorance driven, as it ever is with you, by your inherent nastiness, and the racial and class bias you are not smart enough to shed. Perfesser, just like when you were denied tenure at West Georgia College in 1978, you are dismissed, with prejudice. 

The Floridation of Fluoridation: Pinellas County Commission Votes to Increase Tooth Decay

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

October 14, 2011

NAZIs for Tooth Decay

Teeth Are Highly Overrated. Last night, Rachel Maddow gave us a glimpse at what a Tea party Republican America might look like. It ain’t pretty. And it’s stupider than it ain’t pretty. Moreover, its collective toothy grin will be missing a tooth or two within a fairly short time. . .

On October 4th, Pinellas County Florida’s Tea Party dominated Board of County Commissioners voted 4-3 to remove fluoride from the county water supply, exempting St. Petersburg and a few other cities. Health concerns? Not so much. One could sympathize if the commissioners based their decision on serious health concerns. They didn’t. Indeed, there are no serious health concerns associated with fluoridation according to an overwhelming number of public health researchers.

Then what? One local Tea Partier put it this way, according to the October 5th St. Petersburg Times: “Fluoride is a toxic substance,” said tea party activist Tony Caso of Palm Harbor. “This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government and the world government to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.” He added: “This is the U.S. of A, not the Soviet Socialist Republic.”

Another, an actual voting member of the commission, longtime Republican John Moroni joined Norm Roche, Neil Brickfield and Nancy Bostock in voting to stop the program. . . Morroni compared the practice to the disputed federal health care reform law mandating that people buy health insurance. Ultimately, he said, public support has shifted since he and other commissioners approved the practice. “I don’t think the county government should be telling people they have to have fluoride in the water,” Morroni said. If folks want their water flavored with slime, fish heads, mercury, and petroleum, Morroni will apparently brook no governmental interference. This is a guy who, believe it or not, also serves on the county’s Health and Human Services Coordinating Council.

Pinellas County residents shrugged. In fact, a week after the vote Morroni’s emails were highly supportive. At the next commission meeting on October 11th, he stuck to his guns. Citizens spoke out as well. According to TampaBay.com: “One woman blamed fluoride in her drinking water for making her overweight, causing dentists to shrug. Another woman handed all seven commissioners a book: The Fluoride Deception. . . In a tangle [between two commissioners, one of them] even compared adding fluoride to dropping psychotropic drugs Ritalin and Prozac in the water.” Why not Viagra, I ask.

Mind you, fluoridation has never been popular in Pinellas County. According to the St. Petersburg Times, until its 2004 debut it was, “the largest water supplier in the eastern United States that did not fluoridate its water.” This despite the wide acceptance of fluoride’s positive effect on reducing dental disease.

The Mayor of Florida speaks out

Tea Party Florida-tion of America So, surely, this reaction to fluoride is an anomaly, a local breakout treatable with Clearasil. We’d think even the Tea Party understands the importance of proven public health measures. Well, no. The Tea Party has but one interest: to end anything they consider an “interference” with their brand of “liberty,” or “freedom.” This principle does not spare public health. In effect, they don’t recognize or give credence to the word “public” in any real sense. All men (and, presumably, women) are islands. Therefore, public health measures like fluoridation and vaccinations are invasions of liberty, or, thereby, privacy (a right they do not, by the way, believe exists in the Constitution). No public health measures would be safe in Tea Party America.

For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) rates fluoridation as one of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th Century, right there with these other successes, all intermediated by federal and state governments:

  • “healthier mothers and babies,” (WIC, Planned Parenthood, Food Stamps, etc.)
  • “family planning,” (Planned Parenthood, birth control, right to choose, etc.)
  • “vaccination,” (everything from measles to polio to APV)
  • “safer and healthier foods,” (FDA, Dept. of Agriculture), and
  • “safer workplaces” (OSHA, Mine safety, etc.).

Note that all these are on the national Tea Party hit list. Recall the debate over funding the FDA, the controversy over the otherwise loony Rick Perry’s APV vaccination program in Texas, the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and, most of all, the never ending attack on abortion rights, including some forms of birth control. As you know, there are many more examples of this that affect health or safety, that, in effect, endanger public health successes from reaching the public, particularly the poor.

Of course, a Tea Partiers’ primary peeve is a general one, from which their “policies” emerge like poop from a goose: government regulation of nearly any kind. Since all regulation of individual behavior or business practices are considered by them to be an interference with liberty and freedom, regulations furthering the promotion of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th Century are slated for suppression. Here’s two more:

  • “Motor-vehicle safety,” and
  • “Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard.” 

These are, after all, an interference with an individual’s liberty to kill himself/herself needlessly. Regulations, like seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws, firstly, denies the freedom to be without insurance and then, secondly, let’s them rely on health professionals’ and hospitals’ charity to regain their health. “Responsibility to society” is not, in any real sense, a phrase in the Tea Party repertoire. (Nor is “repertoire”)

In any event, the above covers eight of CDCP’s “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th Century, all slated for serious ugly treatment by the Tea Party. That leaves two more:

  • “Control of infectious diseases,” and 
  • “Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke”

There must be something wrong with these. . . How will they attack them? Well, if not directly, they plan to do so indirectly by defunding national research programs like NIH, CDCP, and others. This is already underway in the GOP-dominated Congress.

Let’s not Florida-date America.

Michele Bachmann, God’s Press Agent. Eric Cantor, God’s FEMA Director

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

August 30, 2011

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians.
We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane.
He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ “

 Michele Bachmann, August 28, 2011, Sarasota, Florida,
relaying God’s growing displeasure with Congress

Ms. Bachmann is correct. Certainly, if I were God, I’d be displeased with the political class. God’s notoriety for biblical-sized temper tantrums is well-earned. Floods. Fire. Brimstone. Brimstone and fire. He’s especially fond of plagues – frogs, locusts, boils, lice, my next-door neighbor. Yes, the Creator is omnipotently equipped to rain down a variety of “hints” when it suits His purpose. The recent eastern seaboard earthquake and hurricane match the Supreme One’s M.O. Agreeing with Bachmann in this case is easy; I too see that God’s sole purpose was to get the attention of politicos of every stripe. Everyone else – whether floating on a rooftop in Vermont’s Winooski River, or trapped in Prattsville, New York with no way out – you may relax. The unpleasantness was not directed at you.

But what, exactly, have our political folks done to get God’s robe in a bunch? Lapses in ethics? Sleeping with anything that moves? Making criminal for others activities they engage in on a daily basis? Permitting David Vitter to remain in the Senate? No. No. No. And No. According to Ms. Bachmann, Yahweh’s press secretary, this wrathful acting out was fiscal in origin, not humanitarian. Last Sunday, the sage of Minnesota explained to her Sarasota Florida audience exactly what God was trying to convey to tone deaf national legislators, and a certain President: “Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. Because they know what has to be done. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink. Congressdwellers, primarily Democrats of course, reverted to their political default setting of touchy-feely whininess urging government funded disaster relief for citizens floating down various rivers. One prominent politician, however, the GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA-7), clearly understood a divinely inspired hint. Mr. Cantor, first among all his tightfisted GOP colleagues, apprehends God’s fiscal concerns. Cantor knows that at such an advanced age, God is getting increasingly testy, i.e. Old Testament testy, Old Testament remedy testy. Like many in God’s age group the day’s concerns revolve around making the rent, funding an affordable medi-gap Medicare supplement, stretching that monthly social security check, and finding the car keys at least three times per day. And taxes! Oy! A klog tzu meineh sonim! Or in colloquial English, “Oy! A curse on my enemies!” So, one can see, what God does not need is more federal spending that does not directly benefit. . . G.O.D. And God does not reside in an earthquake or hurricane disaster area. Think. Would an omniscient God smite Himself with His own earthquake and hurricane?

Mr. Cantor gets it. He gets hints. His own congressional district, after all, was the epicenter of the quake. Tanya Somanader at ThinkProgress reports: “While touring the earthquake damage in his district, Cantor surmised, ‘Obviously, the problem is that people in Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.’ As the Insurance Information Institute notes, ‘earthquakes are not covered under standard U.S. homeowners or business insurance policies, although supplemental coverage is usually available.’ So, for Cantor, the problem here is that Virginians didn’t have the foresight to predict an exceedingly rare natural disaster and pay out of their own pocket in advance.”

Exactly, Ms. Somanader! Fiscally responsible constituents would have purchased earthquake insurance. And flood insurance. And to be safer yet from the pesky acts of a disgruntled Supreme Being, one ought to cowboy up on plague insurance and secure oneself from losses due to frogs, locusts, boils, reality television, Newt Gingrich, teenagers, and golf. I have these forms of insurance. In addition, I purchased glacier insurance and, because I suspect my next-door neighbor, I possess a zombie damage policy. This is what Mr. Cantor would correctly label “responsible.” If a next-door zombie devours my poodles, I will not require government assistance. Will you?

Pay As You Row. As he observed the damage to his Virginia district, Mr. Cantor continued to opine: “The next step will be for Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to decide whether to make an appeal for federal aid,” Cantor said. The House Majority Leader would support such an effort but would look to offset the cost elsewhere in the federal budget.“All of us know that the federal government is busy spending money it doesn’t have,” Cantor said in Culpeper, where the quake damaged some buildings along a busy shopping thoroughfare.

And why should he? Certainly, there are many “potential offsets.” Why can’t Medicaid freeloaders contribute to disaster relief? And since Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, let’s carve out a few bucks from these Ponzis. Moreover, FEMA is a boondoggle. Let’s close it down! Let Goldman Sachs privatize disaster relief with catastrophe backed securities. With those money saving offsets perhaps we might loan Vermonters a few bucks to buy hurricane and flood insurance from Mr. Cantor’s insurance company contributors who, during his ten year congressional career, have contributed $1.1 million to his campaigns. They’d appreciate some ROI.

The lessons God graces us with during His latest calamity rage out are simple. I’ve put my mind to it and here’s my take:

  • God is good, but cranky.
  • “Acts of God” are generally unremitting in unpleasantness.
  • Disasters are the free market stomping on your private parts.
  • Insurance makes disasters profitable enterprises for nearly everyone.
  • Government is Satanic.
  • Newt Gingrich is an insufferable ass.

What’s The Difference Between Economist Robert J. Samuelson and a Bucket of Spit?

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

July 29, 2011

Older Americans do not intend to ruin America,
but as a group, that’s what they’re about.
Robert J. Samuelson, 
Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid.
Washington Post, July 28, 2011

Answer: The Bucket.  Mr. Samuelson, a right-wing economist, in yesterday’s Washington Post POSTOPINIONS column didn’t bury the lede: Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid.  This (unfortunately) memorable title tells you where this is going, and Samuelson does not disappoint, except one does walk away from his screed a bit more disappointed than usual in how right-wingers think. They relish attacking those who live one crisis away from poverty. Samuelson gives those weakened geriatric gray hairs a good beatdown, like Seinfeld‘s Kramer when he thrashed those prepubescent youngsters in the karate dojo, “I’m dominating the dojo. I’m class champion!” Or the man who plotted to throw his mother off a train, but in that case, decided against it. Samuelson did not.

Jihad Grandpas & Grammas

You may not have known that your seemingly sweet Granny and Gramps were on a jihad bent on burying you and their other children and grandkids under mountains of nationalized debt. I would’ve never suspected my own grandparents, they were always good for a hug and a cookie. (There are exceptions, however. My Aunt Ruth, for example, for my ninth birthday, gave me the 670 page 1955 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage. Obviously, by that act alone, she proved that she’d do anything to anyone. Thus, she, now at 89 years, remains suspect of burying us all under mountains of public debt.) 

Samuelson’s point is obvious, a lot of those rampaging elders are gaming the system, many do not need the benefits they receive, especially from Social Security and Medicare. He ignores the fact that a national social welfare program ought to embrace all the elderly; after all, well-off elders may, during their retirement, lose everything. (And don’t be fooled, Samuelson believes that poor Americans in any age group don’t deserve their benefits either.) Statistics show that the majority of elders need social security to live any kind of decent life at all. Medicare to live a healthy life at all.

Of course, Obama and the Democrats are Samuelson’s villains de jour, but he includes his own companions:

“the shunning [of even discussing entitlement cuts] is bipartisan. Tea Party advocates broadly deplore government spending without acknowledging that most of it goes for popular Social Security and Medicare.”

Thus he proves that he is worse than Tea Partiers. He forgets that the vast majority of retirement aged Tea Partiers collect Social Security and Medicare, (rightfully) believe they earned it, are therefore “entitled” to it, and would smack you with their canes should you try to even discuss cutting benefits. Of course, they also believe that other groups of elderly persons do not deserve what they have; funny how that works, eh? Samuelson doesn’t understand politics very well, doe he?

It’s the Social Contract

The social contract which we have includes income and health security, and yet does not eviscerate free enterprise. It’s benefits are for all citizens. Samuelson is no friend of our social contract:

“By now, it’s obvious that we need to rewrite the social contract that, over the past half-century, has transformed the federal government’s main task into transferring income from workers to retirees.”

To him, and the GOP/TP when it suits them, the federal government ought to have few mandates, i.e., foreign relations, border protection, building a national armed forces, and, most of all, cutting taxes paid by those who, by and large, are already doing quite well. For people like Samuelson, doing well is always the best revenge on those whose paths through life are rocky and dangerous. Tea Partiers, in particular, detest those they consider lazy welfare queens and kings, despite the fact that many Tea Partiers collect what the call “welfare,” within which they have been known to include Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. When this wrongheaded enmity is pressed against the elderly, especially those who rely upon those programs, on those who have lived long enough to achieve old age, it’s akin to saying to them, “Thanks for your hard work, and drop dead.”

Robert Samuelson’s Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid proves he’s comfortable warring on the nation’s elderly. Period. Paragraph. Throw him off a train . . .

Cheney Love – House Congressloon Paul Ryan’s Worst Endorsement EVER!

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

May 22, 2011

Yesterday, Ex VP Dick Cheney revealed that he “worships the ground that Paul Ryan walks on.” Mr. Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and champion of the embattled “Kill Medicare” budget provision, had no immediate comment. In fact, Mr. Ryan has made no comment on any topic whatever since Cheney’s endorsement. Or was Cheney intimating not so much a political endorsement as a declaration of romantic interest? 

The Cheney Effect.  At a KPMG Global Energy Institute event at the InterContinental Hotel in Houston, Mr. Cheney expressed his devout admiration for the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, whose budget plan created a hornets nest of ill will among nearly 75% of the country’s citizens. Mr. Cheney, however, and nearly the entire GOP, Libertarians, and Tea Partiers embraced the plan warmly. The former VP under President Bush (“Dubya”) obviously embraced it more thoroughly than others, and was seen by reliable sources drooling and panting slightly as he spoke of Mr. Ryan. Mrs. Cheney later told reporters, “I didn’t see it coming. He can barely pull his pants on in the morning to shoot out the bedroom window at some tiny birds and neighbors. I’m mystified; really, totally stunned.”     

Speculation began immediately whether Congressman Ryan, who occasionally expresses interest in a 2012 presidential run, could survive Cheney’s endorsement. Efforts to reach Mr. Ryan for comment were unsuccessful. His Chief of Staff indicated that Ryan’s doctors were with the disconsolate congressional firebrand, and administering intravenous Lexapro, Haldol, Ambien, Cialis, buffalo relaxant, and an experimental tranquilizer dart designed to safely bring rabid monkeys out of trees. “No success thus far,” according to an anonymous source, his wife, Janna Ryan.

Arizona – No Taxation Without – Or With – Representation!

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 12, 2011

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the taxes.”
A (mild) paraphrase of Shakespeare’s “let’s kill all the lawyers”
Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

Ken Silverstein’s July 2010 Harper’s Magazine article, Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona, surveys the political landscape of that Tea Party dominion. It’s relevant today as the GOP has seized control of the House and maintains its unofficial “filibuster majority” in the Senate.

Below are some excerpts:

Since the days of Barry Goldwater, an axiom of Arizona politics, particularly among Republicans, has been that tax cuts generate economic growth in all circumstances. Hence total state taxation has declined during fifteen of the past seventeen years; the individual income tax has taken the biggest hit, but sales, property, and corporate-income taxes have also come down substantially. The legislature has created tax exemptions for everything from country-club memberships to pedicures to food purchases by airlines (the latter at the behest of local airline lobbyists). None of this has produced the hoped-for effect. Although tax cuts “have lowered government revenues,” they “have not had any perceptible effect on the state’s economic growth,” concluded an Arizona State University business-school study, published last November, that examined the past three decades of fiscal policy.

Instead, to raise cash, the legislature has pursued a series of wild sell-offs and budget cuts. It privatized the capitol building and leased it back from its new owner, an arrangement that brought in substantial revenue but over time will cost Arizona far more. The legislature has sold off numerous other state properties at bargain prices, and has put up future lottery revenues as collateral on a $450 million loan. Meanwhile, Arizona removed more than 300,000 adults from state health coverage and terminated one health-care program for 47,000 poor children. Funding was slashed at the agency that deals with reports of child abuse and neglect, and also at Children’s Rehabilitative Services, so that parents of children with cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, and a number of other conditions are now required to pay 100 percent of treatment costs. 

The anti-government attitude in Arizona is now reflexive, especially because of its entanglement with the issue of immigration. As one local resident, who didn’t want to be identified because she has a government job, told me: “People who have swimming pools don’t need state parks. If you buy your books at Borders you don’t need libraries. If your kids are in private school, you don’t need K-12. The people here, or at least those who vote, don’t see the need for government. Since a lot of the population are not citizens, the message is that government exists to help the undeserving, so we shouldn’t have it at all. People think it’s OK to cut spending, because ESL is about people who refuse to assimilate, and health care pays for illegals.”

There’s a lot to think about. And not just in Arizona . . .

Spoons: The Unexamined Cause of Deaths, Only Second to Firearms

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 11, 2011

“We have spoons that are too big and too numerous.
It’s not the spoons that make people fat
and it’s not the guns that kill people,
it’s people that kill people.”
Congressman Louie Goehmert (R-TX)

NOTE: The always dependable Texas congressloon, Mr. Gohmert, who spends much of his time perfecting the field of logic, recently “logicked” the syllogism above. In my earlier version of this blog, I posted this as an explanation to my many readers who, obviously not logicians, failed to follow his meaning. I post this again here in commemoration and admiration of Mr. Gohmert’s demonstration of logic. Read it and learn. . .

Try taking down a warthog with a spoon. Spoons do not have triggers, so, unlike bullets expelled from guns at high velocity, spoons cannot kill a wart hog from a distance of more than approximately three inches and not without an abnormal amount of exertion on the attacker’s part and an equally abnormal passivity on the warthog’s part. Without a doubt, a spoon-armed attack on a warthog is a nasty task, as I found out.  I still wake up running through the neighborhood screaming like a guy in a Wes Craven movie.

I looked this up.  Statistics bear out the Congressman’s observations: In the United States, from 1990 to date the number of accidental deaths/homicides/suicides by spoon are swamped by bullet-related deaths.  Swamped. (Although, please note, I do not wish to imply that spoon crimes and negligence ought to remain unaddressed.)  Also, from the FBI website, arrests in the 50 states for carrying a concealed spoon track quite closely Health and Human Services data on obesity. 

Try eating a pudding with a bullet. I did so, forthrightly testing Congressman Goehmert’s logical argument. For a full 10 minutes, using a highly recommended Remington 9mm 124 grain FMJ (full metal jacket) bullet, I attacked a 12-oz. bowl of room temperature chocolate pudding. I was able to stuff the concoction into my gullet, but the  bullet’s small size caused me to consume far less pudding than I had in the pre-test whilst employing a spoon. Clearly, this validates the Congressman’s observations.

I hope this helps. Never forget:

All men are mortal.
Louie Gohmert is a man.
Therefore, all men are spoons