Posted by mofembot
Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:51:00 GMT
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
Hello out there: this is not an “either-or” proposition.
Clichés really aren’t my cup of tea, but if I had a buck for every time I’ve read or heard a Republican pundit or politician misuse the adage, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime,” I’d be sitting pretty (instead of sitting here in rumpled disarray in the middle of nowhere in rural France).
I am not fond of false dichotomies, especially ones that have an impact on public policy. The fish adage has been used by conservative windbags to try to portray liberals’ views of public assistance as one neverending fish-handout on a grand scale. But nowhere have I found even one instance of progressive, liberal public policy that advocates the dole. The truth is, liberals understand something that the well-fed bottom-feeding conservatives don’t seem able to grasp:
Sometimes you have to feed people so they’ll be able (to learn) to fish.
Many countries, France included, seem to understand this idea better. For example, I was unemployed for a short while, and when I finally got a job (or, more accurately, created my own company), my unemployment payments stopped, naturally enough. But to my utter astonishment, I was rewarded for finding a job: I received several months of unemployment benefits as a lump sum. It was almost as if the French government understood that many people returning to work after being jobless might have job-related costs, such as having having to put down money on a means of transportation to work, or having to pay a deposit on an apartment in a new location near work, or even needing to buy work-appropriate clothing.
Can you imagine the difference that this kind of policy would make in the lives of poor Americans?
“Think-tank” conservatives swimming in their own brine seem to think it’s possible to skip the “feed” part and jump straight to the “teach.” “Workfare” requirements that do not take into account childcare and transportation issues are a classic example of this unrealistic and punitive mindset.
Not long ago, a New York Times article profiled the heartless and ludicrous policy of requiring single parents (usually moms) on welfare to “reimburse” the state for whatever amount of child support they receive. The fact that nearly all of these low-income recipients of child support remain below the poverty line is irrelevant to the legislative barracudas who came up with this rule.
More recently, Paul Krugman wrote a column highlighting the devasting effects of childhood poverty, showing the indisputable link between the failure of our society to feed fish to children in need and those children’s subsequent difficulties in learning to fish for themselves.
Despite the new evidence Krugman cites (which builds upon a great deal of earlier research), right-wingers will still howl about “socialism” and about how “lazy poor people have a great life on the dole so they don’t want to work” and about how “‘welfare queens’ are stealing from taxpayers,” infinitum ad nauseam.
The sad truth is that many reasonably decent, moral folk still unthinkingly swallow this arch-conservative fish tale – hook, line, and sinker.
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:25:00 GMT
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t read yet another story about how our brave soldiers and veterans are being cheated out of promised health care and other benefits by the Bush administration, which has consistently cut funding throughout the 7+ miserable years of its existence. It is already a national disgrace that on any given night, more than 195,000 vets are homeless, and a larger number of them are unemployed. But what is truly unconscionable is that the Bush administration is using our tax money to pay lawyers to fight against veterans’ legitimate claims of neglect and unlawful denial of services: check out this recent article, and this report. (Be sure to check on some of the links accompanying the report.) When this story was first discussed on DailyKos, I commented, “Where can BushCo even find lawyers slimy enough to argue such immoral nonsense?”*
This flagrant violation of fairness and decency makes me livid.
In their wrongheaded quest to kill good government, Bush and his minions are willing to renege on the promises they made to induce our young men and women to sign up for military service. They have extended people’s tours of duty through “stop-loss” orders, failed to provide body armor and armored vehicles (yes, even now, almost 5 years since invading Iraq, there are still soldiers missing equipment or using inadequate equipment), failed to protect soldiers’ homes from foreclosure, failed to prosecute those who illegally refuse to rehire vets … but cheating wounded and traumatized veterans out of needed treatment is the lowest of the low, part and parcel with failing to provide adequate funding to VA hospitals and other treatment facilities.
Bush apparently doesn’t care that it costs more than $220,000 a minute to prosecute his illegal and immoral war in Iraq (perhaps because a significant percentage of this money goes to his corporate cronies), but apparently he is unwilling to spend what it takes to keep our nation’s promises to its soldiers.
Remember the G.I. Bill? Some members of Congress have proposed a new G.I. Bill to reward current vets for their wartime service. This is an excellent idea, just as was the original G.I. Bill, but one that will never come to fruition until after Bush leaves office†. The man who did not bother to fulfill his duty to the Texas Air National Guard doesn’t lose any sleep over failing to fulfill his obligations to those who have put their lives on the line to do their duty: one of the most shameful chapters in a book brimming with shameful chapters.
*Answer: Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law.
†Preferably by being impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, and then shipped off to The Hague to be tried for war crimes… but given the spinelessness of Congress, the dream of justice remains only a dream. January 9, 2009 cannot come soon enough (assuming a fair election).
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Posted by mofembot
Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:38:00 GMT
Nod to Mark Twain for the title. A version of this piece appeared a couple of days ago both in an “open thread,” and as an extended comment in Cheers & Jeers, a regular DailyKos feature.
I have traveled to many countries (upwards of 30 by now), and have used many different models of toilet*, yet have never, ever seen toilets like these outside of Germany. To be brief and blunt… well, there’s this sort of viewing platform: a large, almost flat area in the bowl. It is almost impossible to Evacuate one’s Bowel without the opportunity to critically examine the product.
Despite the ease with which this design permits collecting a stool sample for one’s gastroenterologist, I found (and still find) this quite repellent. But being of a somewhat imaginative bent, I thought that perhaps it would make sense to incorporate some 21st-century features into this ubiquitous model… something I would be tempted to call the ViewMeister 2000, for example.
The new model would incorporate all the (waterproof) hardware necessary to facilitate a biometric readout of salient stool conditions (weight, density, laser-based “topographical” measurement). The inside toilet lid could have color charts and descriptions of “healthy” and “unhealthy” stools. Given how much my German colleagues (and my landlady and her family) seem to love all that is high-tech, this idea cannot help but come out okay in the end.
I did ask a German colleague about the rationale behind the design. Apparently the issue of “splashback” is intolerable to the German mind, much moreso than any problems with odor and flat-out bizarreness. (In fairness, the toilets at work are “normal.”)
*I have not always been successful with certain foreign toilets. Years ago, I had to ask someone how to flush a toilet in France: it just was not obvious at all. I’d looked for a pull-chain, a pull-up knob, a push-down button, a US-style handle, a button on the floor, a built-into-the-tank-top push-down flap… to no avail. There was this little hard-to-see rod on the side… very embarrassing.
PS: I have never figured out bidets. And my favorite foreign toilets are the ones in Turkey, which incorporate a “normal” toilet design with the “best of the bidet,” as it were.
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Posted by mofembot
Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:46:00 GMT
Actually, I don’t mind eating alone at home, so long as that doesn’t occur too often. But I don’t like being away from home and having to eat out all by myself. In fact, I dislike it enough that when I considered my options last night in Heidelberg, I opted for not-wonderful Chinese take-out that I ate in my rented room. I was alone there (the family I rent from were off making Jolly Purchases at Ikea), but I was in my room, not subject to curious or imaginary pitying gazes, and could read my email and usual websites.
I’m posting this from my office at SAP in Walldorf, where I ate my dinner – the various items I took away from lunch earlier today (per my frugal habits when in Germany). Lunch was free because I got into the 3-day training session for which I’d been wait-listed: I went to the training room about 15 minutes before the session to see if I could take the place of somanyone who wasn’t going to show up. Sure enough, the instructor said he’d gotten an email from a would-be participant who was sick. And since no one else on the wait list had shown up (I’m only guessing there were others on the wait list)…
Even though parts of this training are excruciatingly boring because I’ve used some parts of these applications before, I’m learning something. More important, since lowly external contractors such as myself don’t get paid for attending training sessions, it’s a good thing I’m doing this now, when (because of a budgetary snafu) I’m not working anyway. End of April, when the next session is scheduled – well. That would be three days when I would be able to work for pay, and I honestly don’t think I’d do the training under those conditions.
But back to eating alone in a strange land. I dislike it enough that 4.5 years ago, while attending a education conference in Hamburg, I popped up the instant the pre-lunch session was over and proclaimed to the room that I was tired of eating alone, and would somebody please like to eat lunch with me? I ended up with a very interesting lunch companion with whom I ate a couple of other meals as well; she and I corresponded for a short while after the conference was over.
But there is no one to do that sort of thing with here, really: my mentor and my colleagues all go home after work and have to deal with the Making of Dinner and all the family hoo-hah. Usually Urte (my mentor) is here quite late and so I eat my “dinner” while she finishes off a salad or dessert that she took away from the cafeteria. But there was a general, off-campus “all-hands” meeting of regular SAP employees today… so…sniff… I was alone when I ate, with only the world wide web for company.
Could be worse.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:42:00 GMT
Crossposted from DailyKos
There are two basic kinds of war monuments here in France. The most ubiquitous and easy to find are those commemorating the fallen of World War I – “the war to end all wars.” There is at least one in every town and every hamlet, no matter how small, and all bear impossibly long lists of names of those who died “for the glory of France.”
There are other monuments, often just plaques, affixed to what seem to be random walls and fences and buildings, scattered here and there in cities and suburbs: these are from World War II, and they commemorate a specific act at a specific moment in time that occurred on that very spot: members of the Resistance executed by the Nazis, for example.
What kind of monument will be built in Iraq?
In France, it does not matter how remote the place: even the tiniest hamlet on the most hard-to-get-to mountaintop has in its central square a monument to those who fell during World War I, “the war to end all wars.” As I have traveled from place to place and looked around at the small number of houses still standing, still inhabited, the lists of names seem implausibly long: this village could not possibly have supplied so many soldiers!
Most heartbreaking to see are the same family names over and over again: Entire generations were wiped out, entire families obliterated. France lost one-quarter of its men between the ages of 18 and 45 in the First World War. It would be a much harder statistic to wrap one’s brain around, but for the monuments: each name represented crops unharvested and animals untended, a schoolhouse without a teacher, a factory without skilled workers, a town without a leader. There are derelict buildings dotting the landscape that date from that conflict some 90+ years ago.
The outbreak of monument-building following the Great War was a way to honor the dead, to provide some small measure of consolation to those many widows and children left behind and bereft, and to remind generations to come of ultimate sacrifice. Some of the monument-builders and sculptors presciently left space to commemorate the fallen of subsequent wars, and many of these same monuments list the dead from World War II (with far fewer names). Every so often the same monument includes a handful of names belonging to the wars in “Indochine” (Vietnam) and Algeria, listed without commentary about the relative morality of these two latter conflicts.
But there is a second kind of monument, dating from World War II, that is also found all over France, but most particularly in the strongholds of the French Resistance. These are not so easy to find: they are rarely large, and they are almost always tied to a spot where something happened. Unlike the more formal monuments, these plaques, usually affixed to buildings and walls and fences, tell a brief story as well as list the names of the fallen. One senses that these plaques are there to keep the outrage alive as much as to honor the dead: whereas the monuments of World War I rarely make reference to the enemy, those who notice these plaques as they walk or drive by are directly reminded of the perpetrators’ identity and guilt.
The impetus for writing this diary was my finally taking the time last week to pull over and read what was written on a monument on the side of a road that I take fairly often. Built pretty much in the middle of nowhere, this was a free-standing World War II monument, a tiny obelisk, and its plaque read something like this:
On this site, on [date in 1944], these brave resistance fighters were shot to death, victims of Nazi barbarianism [la barbarie Nazie],” followed by roughly 20 names, and then an admonition: “You who pass by, remember their sacrifice.”
It did not matter to the French families of the victims that most German soldiers did not round up and summarily execute suspected Resistance fighters. Likewise, it will not matter to generations of Iraqis to come that most American soldiers were not guilty of “shooting first, and asking questions later,” nor that many were kind and tried to be helpful to the Iraqis among whom they lived.
What kinds of monuments will be built in Iraq? There is only one possible answer: Iraqis will erect the kinds of monuments that will fuel outrage at the deeds leading to deaths of those listed. And if marked at all, our soldiers’ deaths in that torn land will be remembered only as a “victory” for the insurgents.
What kinds of monuments will we build in America to honor our soldiers, who are almost without exception brave and decent human beings? Our soldiers are loving husbands and wives and sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. They have left their homes and loved ones far behind at the behest of unscrupulous leaders and corporate profiteers who know little and care even less about the horrors of war. Our soldiers have died viewed as enemy occupiers, unmourned in Iraq. Nationally, politically, Bush and his minions keep them as invisible and as generally unlamented as possible: in a failed war, even heroes are an embarrassment and a liability. But they are mourned by their loved ones and by those in the towns and cities whence they came.
Still, the sad truth is that America will build no monuments to their courage and sacrifice for many years to come, if ever.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:24:00 GMT
It’s bad enough when I end up spending some “forever” number of minutes semi-consciously trying to remember the name of my oldest daughter’s first boyfriend, for whatever reason, but then Rudy Giuliani played a bit part in another dream.
This would be disturbing even were I Republican.
However, perhaps in recompense, I officially woke up with this intercultural gem in my mind:
(::ahem::)
Haiku-doodle-du!
It’s a Japanese rooster:
Let’s make coq au vin.
(Mr. Mofembot laughed and laughed at this, but then again, he had just woken up.)
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Posted by mofembot
Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:51:00 GMT
Yesterday my husband and I trotted down to our tiny town hall to pick up our respective “récépissés” – the official document that acknowledges having received our applications for 10-year resident cards. We had both been without valid one-year cards for a while: mine expired on December 16th, and Brent’s on January 1st. (This would have possibly posed problems had we needed to return to the States: we might have been obliged to buy a ticket taking us out of France after 90 days.)
So having a récépissé is a good thing, but it tells us nothing: we don’t know if the Préfecture will grant us the 10-year cards we would so dearly love to have, or if we will simply have our one-year temporary cards renewed. (It’s highly unlikely that they’d kick us out.) We will theoretically receive one or the other sometime before the end of April, when the récépissé expires.
I am inhabiting not just the “10-year v. one-year limbo,” but also the What Do I Do About Work limbo. I am going back to Germany for several days next week to try to figure out if continuing to work as a contractor makes sense. For the moment, all contractors for this German firm are in limbo: the 2008 budget has yet to be approved – a fact that completely astonishes me, given the size and general success of the company and all – so some contractors, including me, are not working this first quarter because it’s possible that we won’t get paid for any work we do. Meanwhile, I am still paying for my currently-uninhabited room in Heidelberg. I am reluctant to give it up because (a) the thought of finding something else is daunting; (b) it’s in a great location – a 7-minute walk to the train station, close to tram lines and grocery stores; (c) a month’s rent is equal to or cheaper than a week’s stay at a hotel; and (d) the landlady/lord are nice.
But larger questions are still totally unresolved: will it be possible to work more from France? In principle, it should be. When will I know? Who knows. My current project manager is on vacation until mid-week next week – which is why I “ate” the return ticket I had for this past Sunday: no point in showing up when questions of working and being paid cannot be resolved. Another issue is that the work in Germany is overall pretty boring. But the pay is pretty good. How much of my life do I have to trade? How much time must I spend grubbing after euros – time that could be spent working on my book (the one that is supposed to make me Rich and Famous)?
And there’s the even larger question of how my working long-distance works/does not work with our family situation. Now that Brent will be in France two weeks out of three (granting that at least one of those weeks is complicated and will for the moment require a 45-minute commute each way), will we be present enough to effectively deal with our youngest daughter? (Let’s not get into whether we “effectively deal with her” when we’re here. That question, unfortunately, seems wide open for the moment.)
Given how much I loathe uncertainty, I can’t say that I see much difference between Limbo and Purgatory… okay, well, fine. My understanding (boosted in some measure by the ever-handy Wikipedia) is that Purgatory is a place of “purification” through (active) suffering. Souls in Limbo don’t go through (physical?) torturous purification. But waiting and not knowing sure seem psychologically painful to me.
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Posted by mofembot
Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:10:00 GMT
Here it is, Super Tuesday and all, and I am… waiting. Since a medical emergency called me out of the country when my absentee ballot arrived, and since I didn’t get back in time to ensure its arrival at the town clerk’s office in Massachusetts today, I will be voting in the Democratic Global Primary instead. (I can vote in the Global Primary anytime between today and February 12th.)
Decisions are not very easy for me, and never have been, really. It took me a long time to become reasonably decisive. People would ask, “One egg or two?” and/or “Scrambled or fried?” – and my response would be “Whatever is easiest for you.” While it is true that that response may well have reflected genuine indifference toward the outcome, there is an element of people-pleasing within it that goes hand-in-glove with the rife abdication of responsibility … well. Let’s just say that regardless of psychological underpinnings and personality traits that such wishy-washiness indicates, I finally got better about asserting some kind of preference, feigned or no, so as not to drive other people quite so crazy.
But here I am today, unsure about which candidate will get my vote. I was going to vote for Edwards, and I may still “on principle,” hoping that my tiny voice will join with those of other Edwards supporters, thereby creating enough volume to ensure that the poor and disempowered will be included at Barack’s or Hillary’s table.
But part of me is thinking ahead to the November general election, however, and so I am trying to figure out if I think Hillary or Barack is the better candidate–in the sense that I would want to vote for someone who will beat McCain in November. Quite honestly, I think/thought Edwards could, but I’m not sure about either Obama or Clinton: The attractiveness of their diversity, if you will, may prove a liability when viewed through the prism of the GOP slime machine. I am enchanted at the thought of a woman president. (In fact, when I was a kid I rather expected that I would be the first woman president.) I am encouraged at the thought of a black president: encouraged that maybe, just maybe America has come far enough for such an idea to become reality.
But the GOP-driven Clinton-hating knuckle-draggers and the anti-Obama lying bigots and the Big Money and the Swiftboaters … all of these antithetical-to-everything-that-is-truly-American thugs scare me. As hopeless as it should be for any Republican presidential candidate to get elected, we’re talking about a machine here that successfully stole the two previous elections, and which, even if it loses, will spend huge sums to bloody and belittle and damage as much as possible the Democratic president-elect. The GOP is very experienced at playing to the worst that can be found in the shadows and cesspools of the American psyche, and this will indeed be an ugly campaign season.
Such are my fears, and so I ponder my choices on this day. I will support the Democratic nominee in any event. How I wish that the upcoming general election would magically turn into a genuine contest of ideas and aspirations! – And while I’m at it, I’d like a billion dollars and a pony.
Tags choices, Clinton, Edwards, GOP, Obama, Super, Tuesday, voting | 1 comment
Posted by mofembot
Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:34:00 GMT
Note: An earlier version of this post can be found at DailyKos.
As an American citizen, an ex-pat who is currently a legal resident of France, I have at least one very specific concern which I hope will be addressed – no, that must be fixed – by the new Democratic president, whoever she or he may be: rolling back the extra-Constitutional powers granted to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Would that this problem were fixed long before Inauguration Day 2009!
In my guise as “mofembot,” I have been a fairly active participant in a couple of venues besides DailyKos; most notably, I often write comments in response to (comments in response to) editorials and letters to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune. In one such recent exchange, I was accused of cowardice for using a pseudonym. I replied:
I do not use my real name here nor in most other electronic venues because I genuinely fear that I will be put on the “no-fly” list, and family circumstances are such that I cannot afford to take that risk. Perhaps I will feel safe to do so when habeus corpus and other civil liberties are restored, and when something is done to re-balance the need for security with the need to respect people’s privacy and freedom.
Call me selfish, but one of the very first things I want changed is TSA’s power to detain travelers on a whim. I have read enough stories of babies and young children, famous individuals, and even “common folk” being placed on the no-fly list for completely scurrilous reasons – including publicly criticizing Bush and his minions – to worry about the possibility of one day finding myself on the list. (And I would not be flying to the States, by the way, unless circumstances urgently required my presence there, so being stopped would be intolerable. Whatever my political or social opinions, I am most certainly not a security risk.)
At the very least, I want the “no-fly” list abolished or made public such that any person can challenge the appearance of his or her name on it. I want utter transparency about the procedure by which someone’s name can be placed on it. Who is able to put people’s names on it? What constitutes a valid reason? How can the no-fly list be challenged? Further, I want the back-log of cases being currently appealed to be handled immediately and expeditiously and fairly. I want the presumption of innocence to be the rule again: TSA (et al.) should have to show cause for putting anyone’s name on the list, rather than requiring people to prove their innocence.
I want due process in place for any and all travelers who are pulled aside for whatever reason and denied boarding. I want sane and humane practices in place when dealing with people who are accused of technical or administrative (i.e., visa) infractions.
I want a means of immediate appeal. I want to be able to speak with people who are empowered to overrule the no-fly list. I want to deal with reasonable people who will listen instead of glory in their ability to impose their will upon me. I want to be able to reason with TSA personnel without being thrown in detention for so doing. I want guarantees that any detained person will have the ability to contact a lawyer and family and friends… especially those waiting in vain at the other (arrival) airport. Whims and willfulness should not be the basis for life-changing decisions on the part of TSA nor of any other entity or person granted authority.
While I can live with taking off my coat and even my shoes for security’s sake, I want all useless “safety” rules abolished, high among which would be the ridiculous “no liquids” restriction.
I want the new Democratic president to help us, the battered and cowed traveling sheep, to turn back into people again. I want the new Democratic president to stand up with us against bureaucratic arbitrariness and bullying, particularly in the face of nonsensical rules that add nothing to our travel safety while contributing to frustration and delays.
I wish I didn’t have to wait for January 2009 to hope for any and all such changes, but I frankly don’t have any faith that the current Congress will make things right without true leadership emanating from the White House. And I wish that current circumstances didn’t make me feel so darned paranoid.
Tags freedom, security, TSA | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:47:00 GMT
The more I heard Edwards speak, the more I read his speeches and got to know his platform, the more I liked him. It had been my intention to vote for him by absentee ballot in this upcoming “Super Tuesday” election.
So in some ways I am not as disappointed as I might have been that circumstances conspired against my getting my absentee ballot on time. (A family emergency called me away to Madrid at the beginning of the week before my ballot arrived, and I did not get back with enough time to spare to ensure that it would get back to Massachusetts on time.)
Obviously I will vote for the Democratic nominee, whether Barack or Hillary (or at the last minute, Al? Al?)… And I suppose I am hopeful that what Paul Krugman wrote was true: that Edwards’ progressive platform has positively influenced the platforms of both Clinton and Obama. So perhaps the poor and the powerless (or, hey, the vast majority of us) will not be entirely forgotten after all.
But still, dang it all.
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