It's Enough to Make You Resume Blogging

"Heroes" on Parade

My brother-in-law sent me this article. He said he thought I might "appreciate" it. Well, hell, yeah. I appreciate his pointing me to this, and I appreciate the article like a rampant case of jock itch. Like many other nefarious things going on, I had no idea. This is a miserable piece of news.

It turns out that our so-called "defense" department is paying out millions of dollars to NFL teams to have them honor the troops with salutes and various other displays at games. Fourteen teams and $5.4 million from 2010-14, to be precise. Now I know there are many more millions than that in this country that won't see a thing wrong with this idea. There's more the pity. Only dangerous radicals have problems with this kind of mass manipulation. People like me.

This is, my friends, exactly what national socialism and other brands of totalitarianism is about. This is what they do. Manufacture patriotism and brandish its symbols and slogans on any occasion and in any venue where it can reach thousands, nay, millions of spectators. Think military parades, military ads. military events like air shows, military open houses at bases and on ships, military aircraft flying over stadiums, military getting on planes first, being cheered in airports, etc., etc. All this, and they use your money to do it with. Your taxes are paying for these phony displays. Yes, in the NFL case this is five and a half million bucks that could be used for oh, fixing a school or a bridge or a highway. Or providing food to some American family down on its luck or . . . well, you get the idea. This is an outrage. This is a crime. This is thievery from the American taxpayer. That's what I think of it.But don't forget, I'll be among the first to be swept up when they send the heroes out armed to the teeth to purify American society.

(More than coincidental, I think, that my last blog post, way back in early January, was on this same theme.)

Soldier Worship

I totally agree with this piece from Salon by David Masciotra:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.

It has become impossible to go a week without reading a story about police brutality, abuse of power and misuse of authority. Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile, and in just the past month, several videos have emerged of police assaulting people, including pregnant women, for reasons justifiable only to the insane.

It is equally challenging for anyone reasonable, and not drowning in the syrup of patriotic sentimentality, to stop saluting, and look at the servicemen of the American military with criticism and skepticism. There is a sexual assault epidemic in the military. In 2003, a Department of Defense study found that one-third of women seeking medical care in the VA system reported experiencing rape or sexual violence while in the military. Internal and external studies demonstrate that since the official study, numbers of sexual assaults within the military have only increased, especially with male victims. According to the Pentagon, 38 men are sexually assaulted every single day in the U.S. military. Given that rape and sexual assault are, traditionally, the most underreported crimes, the horrific statistics likely fail to capture the reality of the sexual dungeon that has become the United States military.

Chelsea Manning, now serving time in prison as a whistle-blower, uncovered multiple incidents of fellow soldiers laughing as they murdered civilians. Keith Gentry, a former Navy man, wrote that when he and his division were bored they preferred passing the time with the “entertainment” of YouTube videos capturing air raids of Iraq and Afghanistan, often making jokes and mocking the victims of American violence. If the murder of civilians, the rape of “brothers and sisters” on base, and the relegation of death and torture of strangers as fodder for amusement qualifies as heroism, the world needs better villains.

It is undeniable that there are police officers who heroically uphold their motto and mission to “serve and protect,” just as it is indisputable that there are members of the military who valiantly sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Reviewing the research proving cruelty and mendacity within law enforcement and the military, and reading the stories of trauma and tragedy caused by officers and soldiers, does not mean that no cop or troop qualifies as a hero, but it certainly means that many of them are not heroes.

Acknowledging the spread of sadism across the ranks of military also does not mean that the U.S. government should neglect veterans, as they often do, by cutting their healthcare options, delaying or denying treatment, and reducing psychiatric services. On the contrary, if American politicians and pundits genuinely believed that American military members are “heroes,” they would not settle for sloganeering, and garish tributes. They would insist that veterans receive the best healthcare possible. Improving and universalizing high quality healthcare for all Americans, including veterans, is a much better and truer way to honor the risks soldiers and Marines accept on orders than unofficially imposing a juvenile and dictatorial rule over speech in which anything less than absolute and awed adulation for all things military is treasonous.

One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The “troops are heroes” boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – “They defend our freedom,” “They fight so we don’t have to.”

No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media.

Wars that are not heroic have no real heroes, except for the people who oppose those wars. Far from being the heroes of recent wars, American troops are among their victims. No rational person can blame the soldier, the Marine, the airman, or the Navy man for the stupid and destructive foreign policy of the U.S. government, but calling them “heroes,” and settling for nothing less, makes honest and critical conversations about American foreign policy less likely to happen. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make much sense to call their mission unnecessary and unjust. It also makes conversations about the sexual assault epidemic, or the killing of innocent civilians, impossible. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make any sense to acknowledge that some are rapists and sadists.

The same principle of clear-eyed scrutiny applies to law enforcement agencies. Police departments everywhere need extensive investigation of their training methods, qualifications for getting on the job, and psychological evaluation. None of that will happen as long as the culture calls cops heroes, regardless of their behavior.
An understandable reason for calling all troops heroes, even on the left, is to honor the sacrifice they make after they die or endure a life-altering injury in one of America’s foolish acts of aggression. A more helpful and productive act of citizenship, and sign of solidarity with the military, is the enlistment in an antiwar movement that would prevent the government from using its volunteer Army as a plaything for the financial advancement and political cover of the state-corporate nexus and the military-industrial complex of Dwight Eishenhower’s nightmares.

Given the dubious and dangerous nature of American foreign policy, and the neglect and abuse veterans often suffer when returning home wounded or traumatized, Americans, especially those who oppose war, should do everything they can to discourage young, poor and working-class men and women from joining the military. Part of the campaign against enlistment requires removing the glory of the “hero” label from those who do enlist. Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of divinity studies at Duke whom Time called “America’s best theologian,” has suggested that, given the radical pacifism of Jesus Christ, American churches should do all they can to discourage its young congregants from joining the military. Haurwas’ brand of intellectual courage is necessary, even among non-Christians, to combat the hysterical sycophancy toward the military in a culture where even saluting a Marine, while holding a coffee cup, is tantamount to terrorism.

The men and women who do enlist deserve better than to die in the dirt and come home in a bag, or spend their lives in wheelchairs, and their parents should not have to drown in tears and suffer the heartbreak of burying their children. The catastrophes become less common when fewer people join the military.

Calling all cops and troops heroes insults those who actually are heroic – the soldier who runs into the line of fire to protect his division, the police officer who works tirelessly to find a missing child – by placing them alongside the cops who shoot unarmed teenagers who have their hands in the air, or the soldier who rapes his subordinate.

It also degrades the collective understanding of heroism to the fantasies of high-budget, cheap-story action movies. The American conception of heroism seems inextricably linked to violence; not yet graduated from third-grade games of cops and robbers. Explosions and smoking guns might make for entertaining television, but they are not necessary, and more and more in modern society, not even helpful in determining what makes a hero.

A social worker who commits to the care and advocacy of adults with developmental disabilities – helping them find employment, group home placement and medical care, and just treating them with love and kindness – is a hero. A hospice worker in a poor neighborhood, providing precious comfort and consolation to someone dying on the ugly edges of American healthcare, is a hero. An inner-city teacher, working hard to give essential education and meaningful affirmation to children living in neighborhoods where bullets fly and families fall apart, is a hero.

Not all teachers, hospice workers or social workers are heroes, but emphasizing the heroism of those who do commit to their clients, patients and students with love and service would cause a shift of America’s fundamental values. It would place the spotlight on tender and selfless acts of solidarity and empathy for the poor. Calling all cops heroes too often leads to pathetic deference to authority, even when the results are fatal, and insisting all members of the military are heroes too often reinforces the American values of militarism and exceptionalism.

The assignment of heroism, exactly like the literary construct, might have more to do with the assignment of villainy than the actual honoring of “heroes.” Every hero needs a villain. If the only heroes are armed men fighting the country’s wars on drugs and wars in the Middle East, America’s only villains are criminals and terrorists. If servants of the poor, sick and oppressed are the heroes, then the villains are those who oppress, profit from inequality and poverty, and neglect the sick. If that is the real battle of heroism versus villainy, everyone is implicated, and everyone has a far greater role than repeating slogans, tying ribbons and placing stickers on bumpers.

David Masciotra is the author of Mellencamp: American Troubadour (forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky). He writes regularly for the Daily Beast and Splice Today. For more information visit www.davidmasciotra.com.

Munch, Munch

In terms of child poverty, the United States ranks 36th out of the 41 wealthiest nations. There are 2.5 million homeless children in the US, an all-time high. 65% of US children live in a home that receives aid from the federal government. 45% of US children belong to low income families. 45% of African-American children in the US live in “areas of concentrated poverty” (slums). The average American is 40% poorer today than before the recession, and 20% of US households will be able to eat Christmas dinner thanks to food stamps, about that many more courtesy of various food banks and charities. (source)

Happy holidays, y'all!

The Eternal Divide: A Broken Record

Some things I encounter have to be put out there in toto, or much of the point is lost. When once the country rolls over and dies because of the disparity of wealth, such pieces as this will seem prescient. Every single one of these points is telling (not to mention outrageous), but I'm absolutely convinced that no one in this country is the least bit concerned. We're more intent on fiddling while the country falls down about our ears.

 

This article--and it's not included in its entirety--appeared on the Alternet blog. It's just variation on a theme that's been echoing through the nation's consciousness for several years now. But it doesn't seem to be striking any chords.

 A recent posting detailed how upper middle class Americans are rapidly losing ground to the one-percenters who averaged $5 million in wealth gains over just three years. It also noted that the global 1% has increased their wealth from $100 trillion to $127 trillion in just three years.

The information came from the Credit Suisse 2014 Global Wealth Databook (GWD), which goes on to reveal much more about the disappearing middle class.

1. Each Year Since the Recession, America's Richest 1% Have Made More Than the Cost of All U.S. Social Programs

In effect, a reverse transfer from the poor to the rich. Even as conservatives blame Social Security for being too costly.

Much of the 1% wealth just sits there, accumulating more wealth. The numbers are nearly unfathomable. Depending on the estimate, the 1% took in anywhere from $2.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion per year. (All numeric analysis is detailed here.)

Even the smaller estimate of $2.3 trillion per year is more than the budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), Medicaid ($304 billion), and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC [Women, Infants, Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Housing).

2. Almost None of the New 1% Wealth Led To Innovation and Jobs

In 2005, for every $1 of financial wealth there was 66 cents of non-financial (home) wealth. Ten years later, for every $1 of financial wealth there was just 43 cents of non-financial (home) wealth.

What happens to all this financial wealth?

Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1% of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.

On the corporate side, stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they've been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends.

3. Just 47 Wealthy Americans Own More Than Half of the U.S. Population

Oxfam reported that just 85 people own as much as half the world. Here in the U.S., with nearly a third of the world's wealth, just 47 individuals own more than all 160 million people (about 60 million households) below the median wealth level of about $53,000.

4. The Upper Middle Class of America Owns a Smaller Percentage of Wealth Than the Corresponding Groups in All Major Nations Except Russia and Indonesia.

The upper middle class in the U.S., defined as everyone in the top half below the richest 20%, owns 11.9 percent of the wealth. Indonesia at 10.5 percent and Russia at 7.5 percent are worse off, but in all other nations the corresponding upper middle classes own 12 to 27 percent of the wealth.

America's bottom half compares even less favorably to the world: dead last, with just 1.3 percent of national wealth. Only Russia comes close to that dismal share, at 1.9 percent. The bottom half in all other nations own 2.6 to 10.2 percent of the wealth.

5. Ten Percent of the World's Total Wealth Was Taken by the Global 1% in the Past Three Years

As in the U.S., the middle class is disappearing at the global level. An incredible one of every ten dollars of global wealth was transferred to the elite 1% in just three years. A level of inequality deemed unsustainable three years ago has gotten even worse.

 This is the bad news, and it's surely bad enough, but if you continue to read the article, it goes on to suggest that a so-called transaction tax could be used to get the richest to contribute their fair share towards the cost of everything. They don't pay anywhere near that now, you can be sure.

Not So Fast

As somebody commented, let's not rush into anything. Let's see if this is actually going to last.

The New Brutalism

Fascinating article today in "Truthout" by Henry Giroux. About the "new historical conjuncture" of:

attacks on higher education as a democratic institution and on dissident public voices in general - whether journalists, whistleblowers or academics - are intensifying with sobering consequences. The attempts to punish prominent academics such as Ward Churchill, Steven Salaita and others are matched by an equally vicious assault on whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden, and journalists such as James Risen. (1) Under the aegis of the national surveillance-security-secrecy state, it becomes difficult to separate the war on whistleblowers and journalists from the war on higher education - the institutions responsible for safeguarding and sustaining critical theory and engaged citizenship.

These attacks have been labeled "the new brutalism in academia."

This is far too good and lengthy piece for me to try and summarize. Suffice it to say, it's a cogent critique of what our deification of the market has done to us not only in the educational sphere but also in just about any others that matter. It's taken anti-intellectualism in America to undreamt of depths.

The National Pastime

And no I don't mean baseball, even though we're in the midst of what might be a real interesting World Series. I mean the national pastime of pretending that college athletics is not riddled with fraud and cloaked with lies from the top of its (mostly empty) head to the soles of its $300 sneakers/cleats/whatever footwear. This is all over the news today:  

Tarred Heels: For 18 years athletes at the University of North Carolina have been guided into classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies which do not meet, have no professors, and give A's and B's to everyone, especially football and basketball players. The theory is that no one in the University's administration knew this was happening, and no one above the rank of water-boy in the Athletic department had a clue either.

OK, so a prestigious university--it was invariably described on TV news as one of the great paragons of learning in the US--has been cheating by falsifying the academic attainments of its athletes at least since 1993. So what else is new? Can you tell me with a straight face that you think the majority of college athletes are "student athletes"? As in, working for a degree while they play sports? Can you honestly believe that these coddled providers of unholy amounts of revenue for their schools are not in some privileged and special category when it comes to anything academic, such as classes, tests, grades, and GPA? You think UNC is the only place something like this is going on? And that everyone in university administration or with the least bit of connection to the athletic departments in all these schools doesn't know what's going on? [Insert audible derisive scoff here.]

The thing that gets me is, this fiction that these largely underprivileged kids are "in school" while they're playing football or basketball and probably other things too (but the big money-makers are the ones named) is embraced (I cannot believe it's believed) by millions and millions of people. Its one of the great lies that's gained national assent and it takes its dishonorable place daily among a number of other lamentable nationwide delusions.

We are a doomed people.       

Just for Edification

Military budget.  List of countries by military expenditures (in billions of US dollars):

• United States - $640.0
• People's Republic of China - $188.0
• Russia - $87.8
• Saudi Arabia - $67.0
• France - $61.2
• United Kingdom - $57.9
• Germany - $48.8
• Japan - $48.6
• India - $47.4
• South Korea - $33.9

Source: Here

As has been observed time and again, the U.S. outspends the next nine biggest military spenders combined. This country spends almost 37 percent of all the money spent by the entire world for military purposes. With our country coming apart and falling down, doesn't this seem like the basest stupidity? And to think: we've got idiots in Congress saying we don't spend enough.

Ubiquitous Stalker

Have you checked the newspapers lately? Magazines? And most of all cable TV? Have you noticed that there's growing terror about Ebola? Some ridiculous figure like 41 percent of Americans fear a serious outbreak of the disease in the United States? You cannot escape the "continuing coverage" of this story. You may be getting to the point where you can't stand to hear the E-word any longer, but the media is salivating, masturbating over just about anything remotely connected with Ebola. Stories about "Mr. Duncan," the Liberian victim of the disease, who died in a Dallas hospital about 2 weeks ago. And stories about the couple of health care workers he had who have come down with the disease. Aren't we getting tired of seeing people in plastic space suits carrying stuff out of cheap Dallas apartments? Aren't we tired of seeing that NIH doctor talking to yet another talking head about what he talked about yesterday and five times already today?

I wonder how often I have to observe the ignorance and stupidity of the American people. Indeed, I could probably start another whole blog and organize it around that theme. Ever since 9/11 the country has been victimized by a ubiquitous stalker who's name is Fear, surname Unreasoning. I think somewhere in all this clutter I learned that you have a much better chance of being struck by lightening than you do of contracting Ebola in this country. That should be more than enough perspective for most people to apply their brains to. But it ain't.

Another One

A second nurse who helped take care of Ebola victim Robert Duncan in Dallas has come down with the disease. Now, I'm not among the panic stricken here that see an outbreak occurring in the U.S. at any minute, but this news does give me pause. For I seem to recall a couple of weeks ago how one of the big wigs at the Dallas hospital was telling us that the "U.S. is not West Africa" and that everything here was in hand. You could not escape the impression that this ebola case was an aberration, and that our technology and general excellence would more than be enough for this virus. Just one question: what do you say to this now? Especially since you realize it's quite likely that the second shoe hasn't even dropped yet.

Yes, They Are What You Don't Want to Think They Are

Yes, Indeed They Are

What you see above are "cookies." These are cookies that a kid brought to her second grade classroom as the weekly reward for her classmates' good work. Her mother made them for the class. Her feminist, insane mother. She told the teacher that she thought it would be a good teaching aid for the second graders to learn about vaginas. (No, I am not making this up. How could anybody make up such a thing?) You can read the whole story from the teacher's keyboard right here. Including and not to be missed, the email from the mom to the teacher after the nasty shouting incident in the classroom in front of all the second-graders in which the word "vagina" was used in a loud voice at least 987,000 times, according to the teacher. The email which ended "I hope you end up with an abusive husband that beats on you every night."

We are a doomed people.

Break a Leg!

Are you ready for this? Some guy in Portland, Oregon, had his leg broken in multiple places as the result of an altercation with employees of a Costco store. The dude, named Timothy Walls, is suing the story for $670,000. Apparently he took exception to an employee of the store grabbing his basket as he was leaving because he had not shown his sales receipt on his way out. (They do this at Sam's too, but with people who are so old they make me look young. One presumes it was the same in Portland, but we don't know from the news story.)  According to the report, another employee--not the one who performed the original stop--laid some sort of Ninja move that he learned in the military on Walls and that resulted in the multiple fractures to his leg. Walls claims the store did not have the right to detain him just because he had not shown his receipt.

I tell you this story not because it's surprising--who knows anymore in this country what can happen to you if you exhibit any kind of behavior outside the norm?--but because my sympathies are automatically with the shopper, and I wonder how you feel about it after reading the account.

Cowardly Dissimulating Midgets

The wonderful phrase is James Kuntsler's from his angry blog this week entitled "Barbarism vs Stupidism" which begins thus: "In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today." Notice, he tells us, how the crisis in Ukraine has disappeared from the news and front pages. Why? Because:

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. . . . So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

And this before he sinks his teeth into the incredibly insane policy we've just initiated in Syria.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle. . . .

We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.  

Although I agree almost totally with Kuntsler, particularly in his disgust for the imbecility that passes for leadership of this country, I'm not sure I agree that the NLF-saturated, smug, overfed gullible idiots who allow their government get away with so many monstrous lies and to perpetrate an unending stream of outrages on common sense without taking to the streets in dudgeon right now will one day be stirred enough to register some massive protest to these crimes. I agree with the general proposition that people can only take so much, but don't you see? We're past the point of doing anything about it. We've let things go too far to get anything changed without a blood bath ensuing. We'll be gunned down like dogs if the national security state decides that we finally get it. And half of us, at least, will be right there with the storm troopers applauding the final crushing of American constitutional democracy, not that we're not well on the road already.

It's Far Worse

"When I woke up today, I thought I knew roughly how much of a problem income inequality is in America. But then I saw this graph showing just how much the richest 1 percent make, and it shook me to my core so completely that I now realize everything I thought I knew is wrong: The bottom 70 percent of Americans are actually experiencing NEGATIVE growth since the year 2000. Down is really up! The richest 1 percent have tripled their money EVERY year since 2005." (Source)

Neighborly Spirit in HI

I cannot believe stuff like this happens. I guess I'm just too old and naive. And she's got her little kid in the car. What's he going to turn out like? I cannot imagine acting like this in front of one of my kids under any circumstances. Lord help us all.

The Death of the Liberal Class

Chris Hedges talking about the main ideas of his book, The Death of the Liberal Class. The man makes a lot of sense.

Freelancers Taking Over

 Ran across this interesting piece puttering around today.

A new report shows some 53 million Americans—or 34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the Freelancer's Union and freelance markeplaces oDesk and eLance. It's also "a cultural and social shift" that will "have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power." 

That's more than a third of the workforce. I am one of these guys. I do freelance editing for a publishing house. And I fit easily into one of the demographics below. I don't need to do this work, but I like it, and it's nice it pays a little something in return. I'm not saying I'd do this without pay, but . . . well, you take my point.

Here's how the report breaks these 34 million people out:

• Independent contractors (21 million). This group hews closest to our "traditional" idea of freelancing: individuals whose main source of employment involves working on a project-to-project basis in their field. They make up about 40 percent of freelancers.
• Moonlighters (14.3 million). These are individuals who work regular full-time jobs and also do some amount of freelance work. This group includes 27 percent of freelancers. 
• Diversified workers (9.3 million). These are our serious hustlers, the folks pulling in income from multiple sources, including traditional employment and freelance work. A diversified worker may have a 20-hour per week bartending or retail job and supplement her income with freelance graphic design work and some time as an Uber driver. This group makes up about 18 percent of freelancers. 
• Temp workers (5.5 million). Temp workers are those working with a single employer, client, job, or project but on a temporary basis. This could be "a business strategy consultant working for one startup client" (the report's example) or a recent college graduate doing grunt or admin work for different companies each week through a temp agency. They make up about one-tenth of freelancers.
• Freelance business owners (2.8 million). This group includes people employ between one and five others and who consider themselves both freelancers and business owners. They make up 5 percent of the freelance economy.

And there are some other observations:

• 77 percent say they make as much or more money now than they did before becoming a freelancer
• About half (53 percent) say going freelance was totally their preference; the rest say it was out of necessity. 
• The main reason people take on freelance work is to earn extra money (68 percent), followed by the ability to have a flexible schedule (42 percent).

What the report doesn't address are the penetrating questions posed above, which all boil down basically to what's this doing to us? It's a major cultural and social shift, with major impacts, we're told. But you look in vein for what this might mean. Which upon reflection seems reasonable since analyzing and explaining major cultural shifts is something that gets done after they get done. Would be nice to know where we're headed though.

8 Facts . . .

The name of the piece is "8 facts that explain what's wrong with American health care." Wanna know what they are? My guess is, you already do know some of them, if you're a reasonably well-informed American . . . and if you're a knee-jerk reactionary or Tea Partier, you're going to deny the facts anyway. But then again what are the odds, unless you're a government snoop (and I have no doubt you're out there and I'm on a hundred watch lists), that you would be reading this subversive's screed?

So back to the point: 8 Facts that explain what's wrong with American health care. You should certainly read the entire piece. I've just hit some of the highlight language for you here. But the whole read is certainly worth your time.

1. Americans pay way, way more for it than anyone else.

"We spend $2.8 trillion on healthcare annually. That works out to about one-sixth of the total economy and more than $8,500 per person — and way more than any other country."

2. We pay doctors when they provide lots of health care, not when they provide good health care.

The best way for a doctor to make money in the United States right now is simple: prescribe treatments.The American health-care system by and large runs on what experts describe as a "fee-for-service" system. For every service a doctor provides — whether that's a primary care physician conducting an annual physical or an orthopedic surgeon replacing a knee — they typically get a lump sum of money. That's how most businesses work. Apple gets more money when it sells more iPads and the Ford gets more money when it sells more cars. But health care isn't like iPads or cars. Or, at least, it's not supposed to be.

 3. Half of the health care spending goes for five percent of the population.

 4. Our health insurance system is the product of random WWII-era tax provisions.

The health insurance tax break is the biggest in the federal budget; the government loses out on $260 billion annually by not taxing health benefits. The majority of non-elderly Americans get their health insurance at work, and with good reason: the tax-free dollar can buy a lot more medical care.

5. Insurance companies have small profit margins.

As to who makes the most money, it's mostly drug companies and device manufacturers — the people who make the things that insurance companies buy. They typically run profit margins around 20 percent. One reason the cost of American health care is so high is that insurers are so weak. Having hundreds of different carriers, for example, means no one insurer has lots of negotiating power — hence those high prices drug and device makers can charge.

6. Getting health care in the United States is dangerous.

We don't know exactly how many Americans are killed in hospitals each year, but we do know that it is a lot. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published a seminal report titled To Err is Human, which estimated that at least 44,000 patients — and as many as 98,000 — die in hospitals each year as results of medical errors. Even using the lower-bound figure, that would mean medical errors in hospitals kill more people annually than "such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS." A follow-up study published in 2013 argued that the IOM numbers were a vast underestimate, and that medical errors contribute to the deaths of between 210,000 and 440,000 patients.

 7. One-third of health care spending isn't helping.

The United States spends $765 billion annually (about one third of our overall health care dollars) on things that do not make Americans any healthier. "I'm always amazed at these conversations I have with physicians," says Amitabh Chandra, a health economist at Harvard. "They'll openly say that about 50 percent of what happens in medicine is waste, but it's hard to always know which care was waste." Much of the waste in our system has to do with the fact that we run an inefficient health-care system, in which hundreds of health insurance plans all charge different prices for the same surgeries and scans. That requires lots of billing staff: for every three doctors in the United States, there are two administrative staff to handle all the paperwork. That's unique to the US system.

 

8.  Obamacare is not universal health care.

Obamacare doesn't eliminate [people without health insurance] in America; instead, it cuts the number of people lacking coverage about in half. Even after Obamacare is fully implemented, budget forecasters still expect that 31 million Americans will lack insurance coverage — a bigger group than the people buying coverage on the exchanges. Our uninsured rate will still be in the double digits, hovering around 11 percent.

Happy Labor Day Tomorrow

Don't forget to celebrate the dignity of labor tomorrow.

Welcome to Ferguson

Sorry, I just can't seem to let this Feguson thing go. It says so much about what's America today.

Pattern Crimes: The second largest source of income for the city of Ferguson, MO is the $2.6 million it gathers from fines levied on its citizens for parking, speeding, jay walking and the like. Ferguson is, of course, a white-run black community where 86% of vehicle stops involved a black motorist, who is twice as likely to be searched as a white driver and also twice as likely to be arrested. The average black household in Ferguson is hit with three warrants a year, resulting in the loss of $300 to fines and fees. And if you can't pay the fine or cover the fees, you go to jail. Welcome to Ferguson, MO, where Michael Brown was stopped for jaywalking.