The Answer Is Still 42

[from 6/2/10]

Can we declare war on British Petroleum yet? If not yet, when? We declare war on everyone else. Why can't we declare war on a corporation whose annual income exceeds the GDPs of over 150 countries, including Finland, and acts without respect for our own national interests? If Togo did this to us, we'd have carpet-bombed them back to precolonial days before the end of April.

I think it's because they're so darn adorable. I've enjoyed the company's pronouncements about the Gulf oil spill disaster, drawing delight after delight from them, as they redefine the very meaning of comedy for me.

Oil companies do the funniest things. I'm just now getting over the hilarity of the fact that BP executives only this week are saying "sorry" about this whole Mondo Macondo Blowout business. Talk about slow takes! They've totally out-done Jack Benny!

The drilling platform that blew up, burned, and sank was built by Hyundai, so you'd think everybody would blame them (why not?) but instead Transocean, BP, and Halliburton repeatedly used Congressional hearings to blame each other in 3rd-grade style circular fashion -- A blames B, B blames C, C blames A -- thrilling math geeks everywhere with everyday proof of the non-transitivity of the blame relation.

Speaking of geekdom, the current question about Life, the Universe, and Everything, is "How many US gallons are there in a standard US barrel of oil?" And the bonus point question about Life, the Universe, and Everything is, "Why are there that many?"

Anyway, there are that many, and it's so much that now it's looking like as many as 800,000 gallons of crude oil (20 times more than BP originally guessed) could be leaking out of that well per day. To put that in perspective, that's worth some real money. If BP could get that oil into barrels and sell it, they'd be rich!

I think that's why the method of preference for stopping the leak is the "relief well". The relief well is a method by which ultimately the oil could be rescued to be packaged and sold, rather than the less attractive method, to BP, of just stopping the leak, and holding it in.

Notice: We've just had a demonstration of how dangerous these wells are. But this one is the only one whose operation is suspended! We don't even know for sure why it blew up, and yet everywhere else it's business as usual. It resembles the theory that if I've managed to only plow my car into a public market killing dozens of people once in decades of drunken driving, the odds of it happening again are slim, so, yes, I will have another for the road, thank you.

But don't we all love BP's talk about how they're going to fix this? Top hats, junk shots, top kills. Top kills! It's an action-adventure starring Tom Cruise! Junk shots! It's a segment on America's Funniest Home Videos!

Now that three tries at top kill have failed, the next thing they're going to try is the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) Cap Containment System, which will be used in connection with a riser from, of all things, the "Discover Enterprise" drillship. It's like every bad disaster movie you ever saw. I don't know what any of that LMRP stuff means, but it sounds like it will be really cool when it doesn't work either. Maybe the Discover Enterprise will blow up and sink, too.

After that they try a cheese shot. Cheddar cheese stops me up, but Kraft American slices might be quicker. Don't forget to unwrap them, people! I know when you're in a hurry it's easy to make mistakes.

Then there's the Russian Solution, AKA The Bruce Willis. This is where you let go of 50 megatons and turn the ocean floor at the well site into glass. I'm seeing Jeff Goldblum telling them don't do it -- Chaos! Deterministic uncertainty! -- and dinosaurs unleashed. Then we declare war on BP.

They Have the Right to Remain Silent, But Won't

[from 1/27/10]

I want to tell you the story of "Carl U." I'm keeping Carl's real name from you for now so you won't be prejudiced against him, and you'll appreciate his story better.

Carl was born in Washington, DC, in 1988. He was a big child, and faced cruel discrimination from an early age. He was denied admittance to daycare, just because he looked different and didn't have normal birth parents. He was refused enrollment in public schools. His guardians home schooled Carl, but couldn't get the authorities to recognize it, so to this day, at the age of 21, going on 22, Carl has not been credited with any education. He must fend for himself in the world with no degree, no GED, no diploma, not even a certificate showing completion of first grade.

Unbelievably, Carl was not unique in all this. There were hundreds and thousands of Carls throughout the country. Not only were they kept from attending schools, but federal laws denied them basic freedoms due any citizen, including our highest right, the right of freedom of speech, guaranteed by the 1st and best Amendment to the Constitution. Just because they were physically different and, essentially, orphaned.

Carl and others like him were prevented from doing all the usual things that children do growing up. Admittedly, some of these, like playing house with a cutie, or riding a tricycle, were of no interest to Carl. And true, Carl was actually not at all poor (he could afford chauffeurs.) However, it must have hurt emotionally to know that laws in all 50 states prohibited Carl and his kind from obtaining a driver's license, or even a state ID.

They have been barred from enrollment in Social Security. They are denied TANF, Medicare and Medicaid.

Speaking of TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) Carl et al are not allowed to form families! A gay man can at least marry anywhere in this country, so long as he marries a woman. A lesbian has the right to marry a man. But Carl is not permitted to marry anyone at all! And if Carl tried to raise children they'd be taken away from him by the authorities. It is amazing that anyone should be treated that way in our so-called free country.

But that's all about to end. The times they are a-changin' and soon freedom will ring and Carl and his kind will overcome! For the Supreme Court, the Highest Law in the Land has spoken!

That's right. Carl U is Citizens United, and his was the case that finally established that corporations are people, too, when it comes to the 1st Amendment.

They've come a long way, baby! At our country's founding, corporations had less rights than slaves. Their existence was a privilege to be granted and periodically re-established. Only in 1886 did people begin to admit that corporations were persons, with rights and feelings, with people who love them, with hearts and souls. OK, people didn't say all that then, but they will.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is just the beginning. Once a people begin to take their freedom they cannot be stopped.

The Carls of this country now have 1st Amendment rights. They have had 2nd Amendment rights. Don't ask me how, but they got those first. I guess when you're a big baby, no one takes your popgun away. Anyway they're going to collect the whole set of rights, now. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure, right to due process, freedom from double jeopardy, right to jury trial.

Above all the 14th Amendment will come to have full force, and corporations will enjoy equal protection under the law throughout the land. In 43 states, it will be legal to breast feed a corporation in public. Here in Washington, you will only be able to commit a corporation to a mental institution if it is a danger to itself or others.

On the plus side, we might be able to commit some.

Nuclear Families Explode

Time for another installment in our epic History of the Poor! Today's chapter concerns homelessness and the breakdown of the nuclear family.

Periodically, I read other people's opinions. Usually, it's by accident. My eyes are open, writing is in front of them, and I read it, mistaking it for a recipe for soda crackers. Suddenly I am shocked to find myself immersed in an alien world-view. The other day someone stuck a lament for the nuclear family in front of me.

It went like this: "In my day the nuclear family was strong. Mothers stayed home and took care of the kids. Dads put food on the table. They instilled their children with values, and the children always had a home. We didn't have youth homelessness in those days, because kids weren't estranged from their parents."

According to this lament, the nuclear family was the normal family until Roosevelt and the New Deal began destroying it.

Well, I got news for all these lamentators. Even the term "nuclear family" only dates to just after WW II. It's true there have been nuclear families since prehistoric times, here and there, but they have not been the norm.

Prior to WW II there were "families." Lets review, then, the history of families.

The word "family" comes from the Latin familia. It's the same word that "familiar" comes from, as in black cats and all. It meant servant or assistant. "You can undress in front of Grovulus; he's just one of our familiars." Since Rome was patriarchal, the wife and children were familiars to the ruling patriarch, who could therefore sit around in his skivvies all day long. So the family consisted of the patriarch, his wife, their children, their children's children, and whoever else he owned.

Variations, some matriarchal, of this scheme are called extended families. The extended family, not the nuclear family, is the norm among those cultures that have low rates of homelessness. If you want to blame homelessness on a breakdown of families, you have to lament the replacement of the extended family by the nuclear family, rather than the breakdown of the nuclear family. By the time the nuclear family has replaced the extended family social disintegration is inevitable, because the nuclear family sucks.

I'll explain that below. But first, why do people think the nuclear family is the norm? The reason is corporatism. The rise of corporate power and the establishment of legal rights for corporations, overwhelming the rights of human individuals, led to the geographical breakup of extended families. Employees faced choices such as lose work or relocate to the new plant. Mergers and corporate restructures that served only stock holders and management added to the problem. There might not be a new plant to relocate to; somebody still has to move out to find work in another county or another state.

At first these pressures were minor and rare. But they increased steadily, so much so that the breakup of extended families has become a part of our tradition.

Recent US Census data on internal migration shows that one out of every five people living in the United States over the age of one year lived in a different state one year before. Another one out of five lived in the same state, but a different county. With that kind of mobility there's no hope of reinventing extended families anytime soon.

We think nuclear families are the norm because corporations promote them. They don't want us nostalgic for extended families. They like us mobile and fluid. So corporations have used images of nuclear families in the majority of their advertising since Sears Catalogs. The propaganda has worked.

As for nuclear families sucking? Well, it took corporations, a massive civil war, a couple of massive depressions, a Dust Bowl, and two world wars to shatter the extended family. Whereas nuclear families collapse every day from their own inadequacy.

You can't expect a husband and wife team to handle that much stress alone.