Thinking In Different Frames Of Reference

          When a situation requires your action, think carefully. Don’t just do what’s expected! Consider your approach by applying the 5 “W’s” and the “H” observed by every competent journalist: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?

           If action is needed, who should do it? You may be expected to, but who, really, is best able to take the action needed? Do you need to delegate, or get assistance, or arrange for witnesses?

           What is the essential outcome? Others will always ‘know’ what you should do, but what do you want to accomplish, or have accomplished for you, and what is the best way to get there? What do YOU think needs to be done?

           When should it be done, for best results? Very often, the answer is NOW. But not always. What are the needs of everyone involved? Keep your objective in sight.

           Where should the deal go down? Your territory or their space? Public or private? What perception do you want to create for principals or observers?

           Why is the action you’ve chosen the best way to get to your objective? Why is it thoughtful and not just a destructive knee-jerk.

           How do you preserve everyone’s dignity as much as possible, honor the people involved, avoid others’ mistakes or obstacles, and achieve the goal that YOU set, to protect the interests of your family, associates, country, employment, or beliefs?

           Around here, whether you’re being proactive or reactive, these are the starting points for thinking in different frames of reference.

Hood Robin And The Bigots

          For scores of years, some Americans have cloaked bigotry and racism with polite “code phrases” that shield their users from disdain. Phrases like, “urban problem” which relates to African Americans; “family values” which places some racial groups, who can’t afford to live in families, opposite poor whites, who can’t afford not to, let alone affluent people who may choose family life; and “immigration problem” which means Asians and Hispanics and dark skinned others, who have, or might take desirable jobs.

           Then the 2016 Presidential campaign comes, and with it a street-wise scrapper who foregoes the niceties of polite discourse. He calls Mexicans criminals and rapists, proposes deporting millions of people, deplores Black Lives Matter, supports violence against protesters, and shows crass disrespect for women. America’s bigots respond enthusiastically. To the international embarrassment of America, they avidly support his snot-nosed petulance, and lack of substance.

           He is the logical conclusion of the greed, privilege, obstinacy, and stupidity of exclusive VS. inclusive thinking. And his nearest competitor is even worse. While he and his ilk want to divide Americans because of economic difficulty, America’s real economic issues go begging. Like, why are there too few jobs, why is our infrastructure crumbling, why is the government short of money, and why isn’t congress addressing America’s needs?

           Around here, we think people need to ignore the manipulators and get busy supporting what has and will continue to make America great. Community, diversity, immigration, and innovation. And certainly not the “reverse Robin Hood” tax concepts of demagogues.

It’s A Billionaire Thing

            A good friend predicted back in the 80’s that globalization would take a heavy toll on America’s economy.  Another said that multinational corporations would become bigger than governments. 

            Submitted for your approval: America has lost some 7 million jobs due to multinational corporations and others shipping the work we used to do to places where labor is cheaper.  If you do not approve, we may have some ideas in common.

            I’d like to buy a shirt made in USA of domestic cloth.  I’d like to go to the Big Box hardware and buy a tool not made overseas, but in America.  I’d like to go to the Bed & Stuff store and buy quality dinner table flatware made in, you guessed it, made here!  Domestic shoes, anyone? 

            Billionaires have something in common.  They all seem to be in favor of things that enable them to make more money.  Whether it’s the TPP, offshore tax havens, corporate inversions, reducing domestic taxes even though schools and bridges etc suffer (can you say ‘Kansas’, boys and girls?), or making sure the penalties for wrong doing at their level are rarely and mildly punished.  To paraphrase Willard Motley, knock on any billionaire’s door.

            Around here, we think this is what makes most ordinary Americans angry, in spite of efforts to get us all worked up about immigrants and people of color stealing our precious prosperity.  Why, then, we wonder, do so many struggling voters want to vote for billionaires?  Does that make ANY sense?  

Selling Jimmy

          So Jimmy! I got this guy, ya know? Need a box of watches? He’s your man, and every one has that little “hood ornament” on the dial the customers want. He makes the best deal! Guaranteed! You need a set of wheels? You can’t do better than him! He knows where they’re at, and he can bring ‘em in. We’re talkin’ dimes on the dollar! I’m tellin’ ya, he drives around in limousines! With showfers!

And money? He buys buildings like me and you buy popsicles! I mean this guy’s made a fortune in buildings alone. Companies too! He’s a guy with a lifestyle, ya know? They wanna eliminate one hundred dollar bills? He’s got to find a new way to light his fireplace! Lap of luxury, Jimmy, that’s it.

All the big guns wanna be his pal, and he don’t skimp with it. If he wants something, he’ll make you a deal. He’s got a plane bigger’n your house, and a boat too, probably. I ain’t never seen it though. Now Jimmy, he ain’t no saint. He’s known to enhance shall we say, the truth, if it gets the project down the road. Ya know? But he’s a doer! You wanna buy a company? He’ll build one for you. You wanna start a business? He’ll ride it up with you.

This guy’s aces Jimmy. He don’t fool around. He needs what he gets and he gets what he needs, is what I’m sayin. A person could do worse for a pal. He axed me to talk to you. T’ing is Jimmy, he wants to marry your daughter. Jimmy! Jimmy! Where ya goin?!!!

The Government We Deserve

          The maxim is that voting gets us the government we deserve. The polarization and gridlock keeping congress unproductive on the big issues that matter to most people, is a function of the inability to overcome a predilection for clinging to ‘our positions’ to the exclusion of all others. That predilection is what helped produce eight years of notoriously disrespectful, bull-headed obstruction in the last few congresses. That, and fear are keeping the egregious waste of legislative energy going in the present congress. America’s psycho extremists are still at work fanning fear, anger, misogyny, racism and hatred.

           Meanwhile, those people pouring billions of dollars into influencing our hapless legislators are getting exactly what they want. No reduction in pharmaceutical prices, no action to drastically reduce humanity’s carbon footprint, no action on controlling the huge institutions that gave us the Great Recession, no tax or immigration reform, no national minimum wage, continuing attacks on safety net programs, attacks on improving America’s healthcare system, attacks, attacks, attacks, delivered with partisan smiles. 

          Hardly a day goes by without someone petitioning congress to not do stupid, wasteful, discriminatory, or destructive things. Hardly another goes by without some candidate promoting stupid, wasteful, discriminatory, or destructive things.

           Around here, we’re wondering, “Where are the jobs? The ‘job creators’ now have most of the money. Why do we still have 50% unemployment in some minority communities? If you can’t recognize that demand, not the kindness of strangers, creates jobs, you probably really do deserve the government we have.

Getting Healthy on Finger Food

           I am one of the Forgotten Americans who don’t eat properly or go to the gym. I eat in the car on the way to work. I could eat maybe some milk and candied cereal, but I don’t want to set a bad example for the kids. They’re teenagers, and being a parent who reduces the amount of sugary cellulose fiber available for their well being, well that just isn’t me. So I sleep in until 4:30 AM. My wife would fix breakfast, but she works nights these days.

           There’s something about a bread-egg-mystery meat-cheese sandwich eaten in the dark, in the car, that makes me just drool. So I start every working day by going to the drive thru to get a “droolie”. I take my own coffee of course!

          For lunch it’s drive-thru salads, (with chili to kill the taste). Not really finger food, but I like to eat healthy at least for this one meal. There’s never enough time, so I eat in the car. It’s not dark, but then one does not eat salads, especially with chili, in the dark.

          For dinner, I let go—burger,fries, and a soda! Once a week, I go even further and change the soda to a milk shake. I eat in the car on the way to my other job. It’s not dark yet, most of the time. But while you can get away with salads in the dark, only a fool eats French fries in America without looking at them first.

Cheese Would Smell Better

          Mitch McConnell and The Obstructers, the U.S. Senate’s favorite choir group members, are grinning like a glee club. They don’t really like their next likely NOM-CAN-POTUS, America’s own Trumpeter Swan, The Donald. They have that in common (and I mean ‘common’ in the worst possible way) with God’s own grandiose ‘Ted’ Cruz. But they also hate Cruz, and that’s the one thing they get right with the majority of America. Even Texas hates Cruz and THEY voted FOR him. So it looks like Lady Liberty is headed for a bad case of the D.T.’s.

           But Mitch and The “O’s” are still gleeful. They believe they’ve found another political ‘golden fleece’—the mantra that American voters deserve a say in who the next Supreme Court nominee will be. It’s a great line and Mitch has been SINGIN’ it. It’s not a verse from the U.S. Constitution, however. It’s just a choir song, and who can say the choir isn’t one hunnert pussent ‘Merican.

           Problem is, it sounds good, but there’s no reason why it should. The Senate has a Constitutional duty to review and vote on Obama’s nominee. Most Americans feel whatever happens, if you are being paid to do a job, you should do it, or quit. Probably not a lot of Americans know how much we pay our U.S. Senators to do their jobs. Even at that, we deserve better than some con artist’s choir verse from the people we elect.

      My dog, Woof-man, would probably say, “It sounded like cheese being unwrapped, but it wasn’t!”