The Un-Acorn ...

Driving while Black
Flying while Arab
Pregnant and disagreeing with your doctor ...

eh?

I'm talking about wanting to remain pregnant, but disagreeing with a doctor about what specific course of treatment gives the child and you the best outcome. The new laws are scary in thier possible application. Glad I'm almost past childbearing years. I worry for my daughter. Many places don't have access to good O.B.s as it stands now.

Sometimes I look at the news and am too sad to post. Interesting I mentioned Fallujah last post. I guess we don't have to wait for less experienced reserves to go shooting into a town. In all fairness, urban warfare is ugly. Even if done as carefully as possible without undue risk to the troops. Sadly, I have seen reports from three places now that confirm petty theft by US forces, as part of house-to-house searches is common. Two different sources that US affiliated snipers are being over aggressive. If the US is going to pursue its current tactic of frequent military interventions, I think they need a radical armed forces overhaul. We need a large standing army, proficient in small arms and highly trained in urban warfare. It should include multiple separate large units of military police and engineering corps trained in configuring civil not military infrastructure. Much of the world’s population is urbanizing. This small army or reservists and heavy artillery, relying on airpower for the main attack and augmented by outsourced "military contractors" won't work. And when the goal is making peace and nation building, a blunt-weapon, improperly configured, largely under-trained, and partially outsourced military will only make more war.

Iraq is a mess. Most of the reports (usually from non-US ex-diplomats familiar with the area's history) I read predicting the quagmire the US would find itself in were good predictions. Rumsfeld's recent "Who could have predicted" line was so disingenuous as to be really, really funny. The current situation was one of several likely outcomes. His being unprepared for this possible outcome is unprofessional, qualifying as incompetent. The initiation of the war without UN involvement (thus keeping many NGOs out) was arguably a mistake assuming the goal was nation building. But, there were some nations willing to go in under US command. Forget political pressure at home in those nations, would you keep your troops there under the command of incompetents?

"Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it" A badly over used quote. But, only because people don't learn.

The US is no stranger to documented wartime atrocities. The most publicized in recent memory would have been the My Lai massacre by US forces in Viet Nam. There was an inquiry afterwards and the findings were clear on one area of blame. The junior officers in charge during the incident and the troops under their command were not properly trained. I believe the regular full-time well-trained members of the US Armed forces to day are better trained, and in part because of this. If you send ill prepared poorly trained troops with young poorly trained junior officers into an area where the enemy hides in and blends into the civilians, you are more likely to get serious war crimes.

So in Iraq, we have urban warfare, and insurgents that blend into and use the local population for cover. It’s just like in Viet Nam, but worse, it’s urban. But our troops are trained for this now. Right? Well, yes … but we don’t have enough of them so we are using the National Guard and the Reservists right now. Not only that but we are about to do the largest troop rotation since World War Two. Right now only one in five troops are “part-time” soldiers. After the rotation, almost 40% will be “part-time” soldiers. The heavily trained, seasoned troops are coming home. I’m glad for their families. I’m worried about Iraqi families.

The National Guard itself has been complaining that under current Pentagon plans they are not properly trained. They are called citizen-soldiers since they are patterned after local militias who train infrequently and only take up arms in case of a severe local threat. Falluja isn’t in Kansas. Kosovo wasn’t either. What that means is that we are sending under-trained and poorly equipped local militia forces into situations probably harder than bush warfare in Viet Nam. The people being sent in like that aren’t happy. My family has a proud tradition of military service. They aren’t unhappy to be performing military service for their country. They are unhappy when their country puts them in a situation where they will perform that service badly.

In a situation where the government has stated “winning hearts and minds” is a goal this makes no sense. History should have told them that sending in unprepared troops not only won’t work … but another My Lai is bound to happen … somewhere … soon. If it hasn't already. And when the moderates over seeing this operation are like this one, who will know?

I see the reports that worker productivity is rising. This is no surprise. Of my friends and acquaintances that still have jobs, the opinion is you need to be very, very busy to make sure you aren’t picked on the next lay-off. In a few cases that means staying late and looking like you are working hard even if you did finish your work by dinner time due to smart planning and dedication. Make no mistake, what employers are valuing is the people that work long hours and live their job. That’s nice but there is a price. One friend just told me in e-mail that she had a happy weekend as her husband actually saw his kids. Oi! There are prices for the company as well as the workers.

Don’t get me wrong. I value hard work. I was farm raised, and when I say hard work, I do mean hard work! I have been an employer both running my own small business and running small departments in huge, global companies. I value someone who takes ownership of their work and has a real emotional investment in their work. They do better work. But you know, they do better work than a slouch whether it’s the 10 hours per week they put in part-time or the 70 they put in that week making sure their project met its deadlines perfectly.

I can also vouch from both doing heavy over-time (without pay) workweeks and from being the person responsible for the quality of the work my employees did under a heavy workload … quality goes down with consecutive heavy workweeks. There is only one reason I can see for an employer picking a person who works long hours over an equally competent worker who prefers not to do so. It’s cheaper to pay one person to do two jobs fairly well. It’s more expensive to pay two people full benefits as well as salary to do the job well. Or you could be creative and offer two jobs at half pay in an attempt to get them done right. In today’s corporate culture, it’s more important to do the job cheaply to satisfy investors and analysts. Some of the things that were left unfixed in my career, since fixing them would be too expensive on the bottom line for that quarter, were pretty scary. This bothers me. In the long run, those cheap schemes usually aren’t so cheap. Maybe it’s the company paying up later, or the government cleaning up some mess. It’s also against my values. I was raised being told that a job worth doing was worth doing well.

Then there is the people mess. First there is the mess that the employer and employee share under how benefits work: health care. People that have to work long hours show more health-related wear and tear; in some cases their health may even break. They can’t lead balanced lives. Now, maybe the company can clear them off the bottom line by laying them off as soon as they break. This practice is more common than you’d think. But someone is still paying for that health care. One of my laid-off friends is relieved her health is bad enough now not to go back into engineering. She is sure she’d end back in the vicious cycle where the overtime was required to keep the job, but if she works those hours and neglects her physical therapy and proper eating, she will end up eventually with problems again bad enough to affect her performance, meaning no job. At this point a company wouldn’t even have to pay for physical therapy, just make sure there was enough time left at the end of her day that she could do her exercises, shop and cook balanced meals. But that’s not going to happen in today’s large companies.

Then there is the price paid by the workers, their families and society. In my social circle the children have two types of fathers. They either have a depressed laid of father who is stressed in a long job search or they have an absentee father. I think, especially for boys, a male role model is very important. How can you pass on your values to your children when you never see them? This is even worse in families where both parents work. All family members in the extended family now have to take on all sorts of new duties. You can do whatever studies you want to say whether the kids turn out all right or not, but its still stressful. Studies don’t give facts. Maybe the reason the kids managed to be raised properly was the stay at home aunt that managed to handle two sets of kids all day. Or, because of the grandparent that in their retirement provides all most relevant functions of a parent. Families are coping and managing, but it’s not pretty. I also wonder if it’s sustainable. The one mantra I hear often when talking about problems with children is “Where are the parents? Its their job to monitor / prevent that!” Well, the parents are busy driving worker productivity to new highs.

Of course, all those “non-productive” workers are unemployed. Maybe they left work a time too often to see the school play. Perhaps the stress after ten years of having to work longer and longer hours with less budget and resources finally took a toll on their immune or other systems and they took one too many sick days. Perhaps the company did let employees work sane, sustainable hours but got driven out of business competing with companies that had better “worker productivity”. But for one reason or another, their job was discontinued. Most don’t have new jobs. Of my two friends laid off in the last year, neither has a job equivalent to their last. One teaches part-time now, the other is still looking. One has a family to support, that’s the one that is still looking too. The one teaching now feels slightly guilty. Teaching all these young people how to work in a field with no future, shrinking jobs, long hours where if you are lucky to land a job you better have no family and no life. Well, it’s a job even if it there is a slight doubt on the “honest living” side of things.

As long as company decisions are based on quarterly reports and not what is best for the company and its employees, this won’t change. Me, I’m unimpressed by “worker productivity”. I’m unimpressed by constant large earnings growth. It means the company is either in a “bubble” or they are doing the job cheap, not well. But investors benefit from having it done cheaply rather than well. With current accountability and need for good earnings growth, there is no way to achieve it without doing things cheap and “disposable employees”. And as far as “worker productivity” goes … moderation is the word. Slouches are bad. But overworked is bad as well. I don’t like “super-sized” statistics … I hear the “jobless” recovery is in part because gains in worker productivity allow employers to do the same work with fewer employees. Sounds great, but no thanks.

I'm not talking about sweat-shop manufacturing or mill workers when I speak of my friends out of work now. These are bright people, hard workers. All have a minimum of a masters degree in a technical field from a well-respected university in thier field. They have solid work experience. Mill workers and manufacturing going through this is so ... last generation. We are thier children who got that education. This was the key to our betterment and might allow us to support parents whose pensions disappeared with the companies that left. We are the children of immigrants who came and were "productive workers" who spent everything they had on our education, again in hopes that thier children would be able to care for them as they are now destitute from educational spending. If I'd only taken that money spent on my college education and invested it in the right stocks, I'd be rich ... and someone else would be a "productive worker". Boy did I goof!

Well, its official, gay people are getting married in a few places. Not anywhere near me though. I have read how this is supposed to threaten the institution of marriage and perhaps lead to legal polygamy. As a boring married heterosexual, raised in a conservative faith, with children to think of and even a dog, I seem to be the type of person our president thinks should be afraid … very afraid! Afraid enough to forget that many of my married heterosexual friends with children (but not all with a dog) are still looking for a new nice middle-class white collar job after being laid off from their last job nearly a year ago. Hmmmm.

Yesterday, I decided to ask my husband if this affected our marriage. He laughed at me. Today, I tried asking if it might lead him to think about polygamy. He just gave me a strange look and continued working the dog through a few obedience commands. Well, truthfully, it hasn’t made me think about it either. But what about the kids?

My oldest is a teen now and interested in boys. Since she is a she, this is the usual thing. I asked her if she felt that gay marriages being acceptable would have any effect on her marriage choices. I think the reply was “What?!?” Why should I care?” and a confused look. This left my pre-teen. I first asked if he knew what a gay marriage was, he replied it was a boy marrying a boy. Fair enough. My husband told him it could also be two girls but he seemed unimpressed by that tidbit. So we asked him if he though it would effect him if some people did that. He seemed to not care, just said he wasn’t going to have one. Then he thought a moment, and asked to make sure no one would make him consider one. We replied that no, gay marriage was optional. Yes, “The Onion” article is just a spoof. He then announced that he was going back to his spelling homework since the issue was not important and didn’t have anything to do with him.

In the interest of polite political debate as encouraged by the president, I even asked two neighbors I happened to pass by on my evening walk. Just so you know, I live in a boring “nice” neighborhood where people are more interested in “good schools” than activism. There are probably more PTA members than ACLU members. The biggest thing this discussion seemed to accomplish was embarrassing my teen, who was whispering, “You wouldn’t!!!!” after I stated I was going to politely ask them their opinions. Neither one felt it had any affect whatsoever on their marriages either. Both expressions indicated it was an odd concept. There was agreement that gay marriages weren’t something they were happy about, but the reasons they offered weren’t the great threat to heterosexual marriage. They each had quite different reasons for their unease.

Looks like our family will survive intact. And from my random sampling it also looks like the moral fiber of my community is unchanged. That, I guess, leaves only the dog. But, as long as we keep her away from Sen. Santorum, I think she’ll be OK too. Since I already asked my husband about gay and polygamous behavior, I decided to double-check if he felt any different about the dog after rereading Sen. Santorum’s comments. His reply: “The WHAT?!?!” When I explained he just laughed at me some more. I’m so glad he has a good sense of humor.

Granted, much of what I just wrote, even though it all really happened, is a bit humorous. The hysteria that allowing someone else to do something that you have no intention of doing makes it more likely you will do it … is odd. Like my grandmother and mother would ask, “And if that person jumps off the roof you will too?” There are economic, social and governmental issues that do need to be discussed on this topic. But the few who are raising the specter of it affecting my marriage, my values, my children’s values and my community’s values are insulting those things. Fine, let them jump off the roof. But if you think that is going to make me jump off my roof then you are insulting me, insulting my values, and insulting my ability to pass those values on to my children.

In an election year, this seems like a good topic. I’d like to start out with a confession. I don’t always vote. Why? Usually it is for one of two reasons. If it’s a large election, say presidential or governor, I don’t think my vote matters. If it’s a local election and I haven’t had time to become informed on the issues and candidates, I refrain from voting. Sometimes that means I go in to vote but only vote in specific races.

Why doesn’t my vote matter? By the time I am included in the political process for that vote, usually nothing about any of the candidates is appealing. As a matter of fact, I can assume none of them will do most of what they chose as a platform. “Platform” is what political parties pick carefully to sell their candidates. Why should I go vote for the least offensive and in some way validate a process that does not represent me? Yes, I know technically the USA is not a “democracy”, but it is supposed to be a representative government. I often wonder of those who do vote regularly, what percentage are voting as a way of voting against the greater evil rather than for a system they approve. The system was not designed to handle modern political parties, and in general it doesn’t.

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” -Winston Churchill

Then there are the races that may have viable candidates yet I refrain from voting. A typical ballot is huge and often confusing. There will usually be races for positions and offices I had no idea existed. If I have a chance to educate myself on every office, on every candidate and their position and feel like my media sources were semi-trustworthy during that self-education then and only then do I feel like I should vote. Going in and voting for someone who’s name sounds comfortable to do a job I am clueless about sounds like a poor process to me. I’m very well educated and politically aware, but still find a large ballot to be a messy, complicated thing and resort to “cheat sheets” if I attempt to vote the whole ballot. One of the better ones I rely on to give me thumbnail sketches of each race and the candidate’s position is “The League of Women Voters” guides before elections.

I grew up around Washington D.C. with a fair grounding in politics from some interesting people. I have known since before I could vote that my individual vote happens so late in the election process and that the election process is such a small part of the political process that is was not significant. Initially this did not bother me. Sure in the 70s and 80s the governments weren’t amazing but I had no sense that there was anything being done that was so horrid I was morally bound to stop it. Progress in directions I preferred was slow, but I had been taught that the slow-moving changes in the government were actually a bonus to stability. Even if your vote didn’t matter, you were still supposed to go vote as a civic duty. In a way, this was a vote of confidence in the system.

In recent years I feel the government has been making decisions, both abroad and domestically, which I feel are bad. Very bad. I can educate myself on who is running for local sheriff and vote and make a difference. It was a hotly contested big race for county sheriff here last election too! But, it is not my local sheriff who is up to political mayhem. My vote is still just as useless on the big races in November as it ever was. You can always go protest vote. In the past there has always been someone. Perot. Nader. Not that they are a solution to anything, but perhaps a way of expressing yourself that the political party system hasn’t completely robbed you of a valid choice. But, it had. Sometimes I often wish Americans would have a way to express they were intentionally boycotting a certain race on the ballot. In many other countries when people feel that none of the choices on the ballot are representative they refuse to vote and validate the election. Sometimes I want to do that.

Refusing to vote in an election in which there is no candidate you support is perhaps just another version of a “protest vote”, but since its not generally held in media as a reason for “low voter turnout” I’m not sure anyone will notice. So, I’ve graduated to getting involved in the system. I perform the usual letter writing and phone calling. Sometimes though I feel a little guilty saying I won’t vote for some official I’m writing. No, I won’t vote for them. But, often I see the other name on the ballot running against them and I realize I can’t vote for that person either. The threat of “please behave or I refuse to vote at all in your next election race” just doesn’t sound … threatening. And one vote still doesn’t matter. But, there is advantage in numbers. I’m in and watching organizations like “Move On” (see sidebar). I wouldn’t say I agree with every position they have taken, but they are more palatable than picking the Republican or Democratic Party and trying to work my way up either … without a cool couple of million to flash for influence. But with all of them its not about votes, its about how much money you can raise.

And for foreign reader’s, if I did vote for one of our politicians it is likely I wasn’t “voting for” them in the sense of a democracy. I was just voting against the other guy who seemed to be a little bit worse. We are such a nice populace, give us two choices we dislike and we happily go vote for the one we dislike the least. This is not working. It's customary not to discuss politics. But, the more I have talked politics the more and more people I have met that feel this way to some degree.

Up and customized with colors calmer to tired eyes. Set up links as well. First "real" blog entry later.

Well, its made. If this works, this will be the first entry.