Archive for July, 2009
Last you a lifetime!
Posted by redlinedoc in I never saw THAT coming on July 14th, 2009
I found myself unaccountably angry at statements from the auto manufacturers the other day. The mouth of Sauron from Chrysler tells us that to save money and jobs (and get a handout from Uncle Sam), that they’re dropping several lines, among them the PT Cruiser. Not much new. One of the reasons they’re dropping the cruiser is that they put a bad engine in the thing; but it sold. So what!?
So what? So I’m one of the poor schleps that bought a PT Cruiser but had some misgivings about the power train. I put a lot of miles on a car, somewhere around 36000. I bought their extended warranty because it came with ‘lifetime’ oil changes. I figured at 30-40$ a clip and I change oil monthly. Dutifully I took the car in for changes. Once day I heard a horrible racket from the engine. It was the power steering pump, I later found out. My mechanic looked at the car and realized (he called me under the car) to see the broken front motor mount, the torn highpressure power steering link and the torn oil line. Hmmmm.
Cars are for me rather like black boxes. These even -=I=- with my untrammeled vision could easily see. The oil had been changed a mere 3 days before! The dealer never did get back to me. I stopped using the oil change service.
The car will last until it dies. I keep it oiled and well fed but I know that time is not on my side. Now that its been orphaned things will only get worse. The fat cats at Chrysler will dine well and sleep without ethics. What saddens me most is that the country I love, the country I fought for, the country I raised my children in is eating itself, or rather being eaten alive by the corporations who made it.
There was a time when things were built to last. There was always a wink and a smile when some things had built in obsolesence. Where are the buggy whip manufacturers, the boom box makers, the 8 track fabricators .. but things were built with an eye toward building customers.
My next door neighbor when I was a kid used to tell stories of his dad who ran a general store in Coventry CT. One of the customers (in the late 1800’s) came in complaining about the axe he had. ‘Best axe I ever bought’ said he ‘ six new heads, seven new handles. Last me a lifetime’.
Moments of madness
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 13th, 2009
I was driving home this evening listening to the discussion about why the financial institutions are putting out the same hybrid products that brought us this wonderful recession, hearing the pundits explain that it brings capital into the markets and although its a bit (a bit?) risky, these instruments help to drive the market. Ok. I’m no financial whiz but didn’t we just loan billions and trillions of dollars to these self serving financial institutions to NOT have them bet the store? Wasn’t part of the project to make them more fiscally responsible? Somehow we the poor schmoes who pay taxes are subsidizing a very wealthy gambling habit. We’re bound to lose. We may be the house but in this case we hold none of the trump cards.
Trump cards? Isn’t this banking? Isn’t this where the banker sits across the table and says “Well Joe, opening a restaurant is a risky business and we’ll need some collateral” — or so it was in the past. Now we have bankers betting (your house) on 10:1 or 100:1 odds knowing that the worst will be that the government will for a time be paying into their bank. Where are their ethics.
Ahh ethics. It seems that capitalism trumps ethics. Do undo others before they do unto you. The Ivory Tower at Havard spoke several weeks ago about plans to include teaching ethics to the business school. Its the piper teaching the cobra. Once the cobra leaves the nest, well then its just a bunch of snakes isn’t it?
It wasn’t until the sentencing the other week that I got it. Bernie Madoff…. made off with our monies. Too sweet. such onomatopoeia. No one saw the deal too good to be true, 30:1 winnings? Get real folks. Its all about the casino, and we the taxpayer have been at the largest gaming table ever, Bernie and his friends (and there are more no doubt) are pikers compared to the banks and so called financial houses that take our monies and throw it on the international craps table. Oh lost a few billion in that scheme. Not to worry Uncle will back you. . . .and he has.
Just want to dip my beak …..
Posted by redlinedoc in Universal HealthCare on July 9th, 2009
Strange you say. Governor Rell (I’m a yankee) just vetoed Sustinet. Sustinet? Sustinet was a plan to insure every citizen in Connecticut starting with the most vulnerable, including state employees and rolling in small businesses and non-profits to make a large coverage group competing with private insurance companies for benefits and coverages. No one would be forced to enter Sustinet (other than the current state medicaid/safetynet and employees) and it would have to stand on its own merit. It was broadly supported and overwhelmingly voted in both senate and house chambers in the state.
Why veto it? Governor Rell seems to have forgotten some history here. In the 1700’s the citizens of Connecticut recognizing that they didn’t want to replicate the Dickensian debtor prisons of England, established havens for those to sick or unable to work; town farms. The town farms were by no means a happy haven but residents there worked on the farm as they could, helped to be self sustaining, had some funding from the Selectman’s budget in the town and had food and clothings and housing and medical care. This, from the compassionate citizens of Connecticut. Fast forward. When larger government programs superseded the Town Farm System, the program became State Aid to General Assistance (SAGA) one of the safety net programs here in Connecticut.
No one wants to see SAGA patients. Getting referrals from primary care (I work in an FQHC) to tertiary or upper level care is nearly impossible. SAGA pays poorly for advanced care and since its coverage mostly (a devilish word) is for poor folk; Who cares. The devil in the mostly is that folks who have worked all their lives but had some dreadful disease may find themselves on SAGA. Folks who have a sickness in the family, monies wiped out by the vagaries of the current ‘he who has the gold makes the rules insurance system’ may find themselves on SAGA. The list goes on. The poor line up and are anointed with the least of the least.
Sustinet looks in ways to fix this, to level the playing field by making no distinction between rich and poor by allowing all access to health care. Bah Humbug they should pull up their bootstraps, you say. WHO will pull up the bootstraps. My 24 year old daughter recently fell into the hole between parental coverage and no coverage from work. Luckily she had her health. Needed medications, however, consumed a fair bite of her savings.
Whats with the beak dipping? Governor Rell is a leftover from the Rowland administration here in Connecticut. She distanced herself from John Rowland (who spent some time waiting for a better paying government job — quel suprise!). Republican administrations believe that business will make it all perfect. That the shareholder marketplace will bring equity and equanimity to the medical system. Each of the stakeholders will ‘dip his beak’ only taking a fair share of the monies, pleasing the boards and CEO’s. I think this more akin to crows feasting at the carcass. There isn’t much money and pleasing the shareholders never improved wellness. There is a finite supply of monies and pleasing the CEO’s and padding their golden parachutes never helped struggling parents with sick children. Dipping their beaks, sucking up the juice.
Ahh for sure, all that will be left of Sustinet will be the bones, no juice, no meat, no insurance, no coverage. And the fat cats will be daubing their beaks with linen napkins.
Its Monday — everybody works on Monday
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 8th, 2009
That line from the movie “Dave” would be poignant if it were not so sad here . Most of the people I see want to work — but there is no work. “Work was something that used to exist” — Jean Sheppard — and he was talking about the ‘Great Depression’. Alas it was neither great nor did we learn from it. But I digress.
Yesterday one of my patients arrived all smiles and cheery… yes.. he just got a job. A real job in a field (food service) he wanted to work in. There’s something radiant about someone who just got a job, a glow and an aura about them. He had been jobless for nearly 1 1/2 years, looking looking but not finding much of anything. A sniff a lead and he was overjoyed.
I hear much talk about how the poor make themselves that way. I see something quite different. I go to the stores in the neighborhood where change is made poorly and incorrectly. At first I thought this an oversight but it happens so frequently that I realized that this is a way of doing business to increase profits, since many don’t check the change. There is loansharking for food, an egregious plot on the poor where 30$ in groceries on Thursday becomes 60$ (or more) on Monday. It doesn’t need much enforcement since there really isn’t much alternative place to go. Additionally the stores carry such small cans of items (2 ravioli in a can), that the prices end up enormous for minimal nutritional value.
Work is hard to find in this poor urban area. Transportation is available but not always convenient. There are dangers, the indolent prey on the poor. There aren’t many but ripoffs and knockdowns occur regularly. Most people travel with one hand free.
My guy. All smiles. He’s looking forward to work. I think most are. Its depressing being marked ‘poor’ and then no places to work. Poor areas become poorer. Business shys away from the area. Poor areas become poorer yet. The spiral continues.
I wish that all the folks here could feel the joy … pleasure … of work, of a job.
Its Monday. Everyone SHOULD work on Monday
And the dirt falls….
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary on July 4th, 2009
Today we burried a cat. Not just a cat but a family cat of 14+ years. She came to us as a small fur bundle, not a handful, not eyes open yet, abandoned mewling. We tiger milk fed her with noises from the kids about what a pain she was .. .
And she became ours. She was first and foremost my daughter Shelley’s cat, sleeping with her, cuddling with her being her special friend through out her teen years. She was always a second tier cat until last August when the lead cat, Hobbes left us.
Today, as I dug the hole, a mitzvah, a good and special deed, and had help from my guys from Adam and from Jeff, making the hole deep enough wide enough to fit the box. We’d stored the cat in the freezer waiting for everyone to gather. She’s our last cat, last animal. We’ve lost many, dogs, fish ,birds, iquana, and cats. We’ve never been without some animal in the house even in our earliest days with gerbils (from graduate school) and then Svivon the cat who came to visit with us only for a short time. There was Anhanya who we adopted (let me tell you its easier to adopt children) and she stayed with us for nearly 23 years! So here we are … just us. The no kids thing we’ve adjusted to. They come home and we’re always glad to see them. But they leave and go to their own lives and their own fortunes and their own households and all of them have pets. Petless we are.
But as I dug the hole, I had a flash of my own mortality, of being IN the hole .. of hearing the dirt splash on me, of being covered of being morned and I can’t shake it. Its like a wet blanket. Despite a friend who came for the day, despite the children, despite Brenda … its hard to shake that cold feeling. And then to top that off, in the boom box parade, there was this specter, death pulling the death wagon and it was, for me, very real.
I know it wil pass as will the mourning. I know we will search for another animal – we’d both love a dog but know that we’re really not at the level to care for such a responsiblity another family member but we shall.
Annie was a good cat. I miss her
From My Window
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 20th, 2009
Its sometimes a sad view, a view of contrasts, a view of contradictions, a view of humanity. I look out into the swirl of mad colors, through the colors of people, through the colors of spring turned summer, through the bright signs to the monochrome lives of the poor on our block.
She must be 15, maybe. She swirls out the door of the rattrap that fucntions as home slamming the door, wearing nothing to deceive the immagination. She would be pretty but she has mean and hungry eyes. They aren’t child eyes of wonder, that luster long gone. The inquisitiveness of memory is locked away. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.
She clambers to a car, her high heels a misery to satisfy yet another customer. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now. They are off but it is not long that she appears again, on the street, long legs up and down the block this child lost grown too fast. And yet again in but a few minutes she is gone from sight. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.
And so this long afternoon progresses. From time to time, as we all do, I look out my window at some block familiars and some I haven’t and will probably never again see. They are all hungry. All waiting. And then she appears but in new colors and new shoes, striding out with her hard child-long-gone eyes.
I see her walk down the block. A throw away child. I doubt that there is a want ad which reads “Join the fun life, you too can be a street prostitute at 15″. Yet. There she is.
Hungry. Money. Use me. Now.
Child, poor, poverty, urban, vulnerable
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