Being Woke about Sexism & Guns.

I submitted a column over 6 weeks ago that continued on my theme of income inequality (look for it soon) but I asked the editor to run this one first because the topics are so current.

So where to begin? Let’s start with the least controversial topic of “being woke”. As a 60 year old white man I probably shouldn’t even be using (or knowing) that term, but I really like it. Considering the demographic of the Winters Express readers I don’t need to worry about getting called out for appropriating urban slang, more likely I need to explain it. In a nut shell being woke means that you are aware of and vigilant to what is (or should be) socially unacceptable.

            That leads me to the topic of sexism, more specifically sexual harassment and/or misconduct. Once again, as a 60 year old man should I even be going there? Statistically, I am the problem, personally not so much. First let me explain that as a human male, I have been aware of and sexually interested in females since I was a pre-teen. I remember finding and reading erotic books that my dad had in his desk and also looking at by best friends’ fathers’ collection of Playboy magazine’s when I was just 10 years old. By age 13 I had Playboy pinups all over my bedroom walls and my head was full of unrealistic fantasies.

            I won’t go into any more of my sexual history, just wanted to make the point that I have always enjoyed the female form. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first thing I notice about a woman is her body. Does this make me sexist or a bad man? I’m only doing what comes natural but I’m also “woke” to the fact that this makes women uncomfortable so I try to be sensitive and not obvious as to where my eyes instinctively want to go.

            This brings me to all the high profile harassment claims that are all over the news. Do I believe the accusations? Hell yes. As a man, I know that historically when given an (perceived) opportunity a lot of men will try and take advantage of women for very basic sexual gratification. And that’s just everyday guys; if it’s a man with power and an overinflated ego then women watch out!

            So how do we fix the problem? Well I think what we are seeing right now is a good start. Thanks to the “Grabber in Chief” it’s now easier than ever to talk about it, expose it, and for men to start taking responsibility for it. That’s what I’m doing, I work with mostly young women and I’m very aware of all the sexist things I shouldn’t do. I don’t touch, I don’t leer, and I don’t make sexual comments or jokes. I keep it professional, plain and simple.

            OK, now let’s talk about guns. It’s gotten to the point that with so many mass shootings we can probably all start playing the 6 degrees of separation game. Let me start, this last shooting (as of the time I write this) at the church in Texas was at first just another tragedy in the news. Then my mother-in-law from Michigan called to tell my wife that both parents of the husband of our niece who lives on a military base in Okinawa had been killed in that shooting. Even though we never met them they were still family and it becomes more than just a news story, it’s just a few degrees of separation.

            I’ve never owned a gun and I’ve only shot a 22 caliber rifle when I was a kid at YMCA camp (I wrote a column about that) and once as a teenager I shot a 450 Magnum (my ears are still ringing) when I worked for a guy who thought he was cool and carried it around in his briefcase. In high school my best friend jokingly pointed his dad’s shotgun at me and to this day I don’t know if it was loaded or not but I still remember the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach and it wasn’t a good one.

            In the United States there are hundreds of millions of fire arms; anywhere from 1/3 to ½ of all households have at least one. There are so many that I don’t think there is any way to put the Genie back in the bottle so how do we regulate them? I have a very simple solution; follow the wording of the 2^nd Amendment and require anyone who owns a gun to be a member of a “Well Regulated Militia”.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 11/30/17

The breakdown of civil society

           In my last column I wrote that I thought that “income inequality” was the biggest problem and threat that our society was currently facing. An example of how large the income gap really is is the fact that the top 10% of wage earners receive 50% of all income. The inequality is exacerbated if you factor in race, with Blacks and Hispanics getting the short end of the stick. Another major factor is higher education, the more you learn the more you earn.

            Why do I think this problem is a “threat” to our society? It’s not that I think there will be a violent revolt, the “unwashed” masses will not rise up and kill off the oppressors. I think the militarization of our local police forces has pretty much eliminated that threat. What I fear more is the breakdown of “civil society” because of the desensitization towards the plight of the less fortunate and the anger towards the more fortunate.

            That breakdown is already happening; just listen to the rhetoric coming out of Washington. How about here locally, how is it that we have homeless encampments down by the creek? And I’m not asking how we allowed them to camp there; I’m asking how we allowed them to become homeless in the first place? Or at least that’s the question as a society we should be asking. Isn’t one of the goals of a society to look out for the safety and wellbeing of all its members?

So how do we make the system more equal without tearing it all down and starting over (not that we really have that option)? And exactly what system are we talking about? One of the main systems that need changing is our current model of Capitalism with its primary focus on the accumulation of wealth at any cost. Now as I’ve said before I tend to lean left towards Socialism but that doesn’t mean I don’t like money or the things it can provide, like food, shelter, and entertainment.

What if we could find a compromise or hybrid system? A system that still allows us to earn money and own things but also allows us to be socially responsible. Kind of like an economic Prius, you use fewer natural resources, feel good about it, and still get where you want to go. Well there is, it’s a movement towards what’s being called “Social Capitalism”.

So what is Social Capitalism and how do we participate? One definition is: A socially minded form of capitalism, where the goal is making positive social improvements, rather than focusing entirely on accumulating capital. It is a utilitarian form of capitalism with a social purpose. Any action that lifts up the bottom while still respecting capitalism, liberalism, individualism, and democracy, any “social form” of “capitalism” is social capitalism. In a nutshell it’s using the free market (your dollars) for the greater good of society. Many of you are already doing it by installing solar panels, driving a hybrid car, and buying organic foods or by boycotting businesses like Chick-Fil-A, and Walmart. It’s also about where you invest or don’t invest your time and resources.

So philosophy and economic theory is all well and good but how can any of this help us with the social discontent that’s festering because of income inequality? The first thing we need to do is rethink the whole “greed is good” mentality. We are seeing a little of that in the way that ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli was vilified after astronomically raising the prices (for no good reason) of the drugs his company sold.

We also need to stop blaming the poor for their lot in life. We need to be more empathetic because so much of where we all are in our socio-economic standing is just the luck of the draw. Some are born a Trump and some are born a Dump, we don’t get a choice. We may not get to choose our social birth place but what we do get here in America is opportunity, and it’s that opportunity that needs to be equalized for us to fix the problem of income inequality.

           I’m talking about equal opportunity for health care, education, and a safe environment to live in. If we as a society make those things a priority for all our members then we provide them the opportunity to succeed and contribute. But how do we do this in the real world? Well I don’t have all the specific answers or enough room in this column to spell it all out but in my next column I’ll give some examples of how it could work using Social Capitalism.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 17 of the following link. Winters Express 9/28/17

Future of society isn’t looking good.

            In my last column I wrote about health care, one of the things I said was that I thought that we should have access to socialized medicine. Using the word “socialized” got me thinking and wondering about all sorts of things related to society. Everything from what it means to be social or anti-social, the American stigma related to socialism, civil society, the prominence of social-media, social-norms, social security, and the implied social contract that most of us live under.

            At 60 years old I still feel as socially awkward as I did when I was younger. One of the reasons I enjoy writing these columns is because I have time to think and edit, unlike in most social interactions. I’ve always been uncomfortable socializing because I’m usually worried about sounding stupid and most of the time my internal dialog is keeping me from paying attention to what is being said to me.

            That’s one kind of social, the small group interaction. What about a little bigger like the Winters community. Since moving here in 2001, I’ve always felt welcomed, safe, and included. I’ve voiced my opinions and concerns at city council meetings, I’ve voted on community bond measures, I’ve financially invested in business, and in most instances my self-interest has been in line with the communities. Even when there’ve been disagreements the discourse has been civil, and win or lose we’ve just moved on.

            That’s an example of civil society at work, but what happens when it doesn’t work so well? If you believe everything you hear from the fear mongering media then society has already broken down and we’re all doomed. I don’t think that it’s broken down; I think it’s gotten too big. What I mean is that there are too many “sub-societies” to work cohesively for the good of the larger American society.

            There have always been these smaller groups that are united by common religions, ethnicity, ideology, geography, or even bigotry against other groups. For most of our history those smaller groups could function independently without much problem or social interaction with other groups. But over the last century with the changes in industry, communications, mobility, and the growth of government the ability to stay independent has disappeared.

            The different segments of our society have become interdependent on each other and that trend will continue to grow. The thing that’s forcing us together is economics; ironically it’s also what’s tearing us apart. I think that economics has always been the glue that holds societies together. In the olden days it was the farmer selling his grain to the miller who then sold the flour to the baker who then sold his bread back to the farmer and we had a nice simple economic circle. At some point the government stepped in and demanded a tax in exchange for security or infrastructure and the circle was broken, never to be simple again.

That’s where we are now; we have this complex socioeconomic relationship with everyone else that we share the country with. What we’ve lost sight of is the fact that the economic wellbeing of one is in the self-interest of all, that’s how society should work. Our society has always been divided by economics, in essence the haves and the have not’s.

One of the biggest problems we’re experiencing right now is trying to reconcile the fact that many of the “haves” ancestors got that way on the backs of the ancestors of the “have not’s”. I’m not just talking about slavery because since the Civil War there have still been sweat shops, indentured workers, child labor, underpaid undocumented workers, forced prison labor, and many other types of exploited workers.

After WWII there were 30 plus years of prosperity that helped build a vibrant middle class that also help boost the economy of all segments of our society. We were still working off the WWII motto of “together we can do it”. But then in the 70’s and 80’s the “me” generation came along and said “greed is good”, so I want more than my fair share and I don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

Labor unions were vilified while their member’s jobs were outsourced. Employer / employee loyalty became a thing of the past. As education became more important to finding a decent job, the public school systems were allowed to decline. The cost of health care skyrocketed while fewer businesses offered health insurance as an employee benefit.

            Those, along with many other factors have contributed to the biggest problem our society is facing, income inequality. If we can’t figure it out soon I don’t know what the future will look like, but I don’t think it looks good.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 9/14/17

A healthy solution

             As I write this I’m not sure what the outcome will be of the current Republican plan to repeal and replace “Obamacare”. The media talking heads are all over the board depending on their ideological or political leanings but what I still don’t hear is any talk about actual healthcare reform. I’m talking about figuring out how to get American healthcare costs down to the international average.

            Why are Americans paying almost double the world average for pretty much the same quality care and why is the healthcare debate primarily just about who pays? If you remember my column from a few years back, I was bitching about how Obamacare was really just Corporatecare in that it mainly just focused on health insurance and provided a windfall to the companies the sell it.

            Not only was it a windfall for the insurers but it was for me as well. That’s right, I benefited from Obamacare because my income is just below the threshold and allows me to receive premium assistance. Even though I personally benefit I still think the system is way messed up. As an example when the law went into effect my insurance premium (that I only pay a fraction of) doubled in cost from the year before when I was paying the full amount. Why did that happen, it’s not like healthcare costs doubled in a year.

            Anyway for the sake of argument let’s say that the American healthcare system is broken and that any new proposals from Congress are probably just going to make it worse. So what’s the answer? Well I’m glad you asked because I think I’ve got a workable solution. No, really, listen to me.

            Before I reveal my plan let me give you some background on where my thinking comes from. Someone I know is a huge fan of the late economist Milton Friedman and has got me reading some of his theories on “Free Market” economics. In very basic terms, if the government stays out of the way and doesn’t over regulate, the consumer driven markets (and society) will do what’s best for the greater good.

            Another thing of note is that my father was a physician who sold his practice because he was tired of dealing with the insurance companies. This was back in the late Seventies so I can only imagine how much worse it’s gotten. The other thing that caused him to want to quit was the increase in malpractice lawsuits that were prevalent in the seventies. Malpractice insurance is one of the reasons that American healthcare is higher than in other countries.

            Before I go any further let me state that I think the real long term solution is Socialized Medicine but that would make us Socialist and isn’t that the same as Communists? So, since that’s off the table let’s try a compromise solution that I think everyone can live with.

            Now obviously I’m just a regular layperson, not an economist, academic, or medical professional for that matter. I can’t foresee all the ramifications or small details of my plan but I can see the problem from the consumer’s side and I think I have a simple workable solution. The other thing I want to clarify is that the solution I’m proposing is to replace the government subsidized program, not anyone’s private plans. So here goes, drum roll please.

             What I think we need is SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE! Say whaaat, isn’t that kind of boring? No, I’m talking about SPHC with a free market twist. First twist, the SP doesn’t have to be the government. The insurance companies can compete to be the sole provider but they have to agree to certain criteria. These “regulations” would include covering pre-existing conditions, tying premium increases to inflation, and most importantly, limiting their profits to a certain percentage.

            Another twist is that anyone signing up for the insurance would have to agree to “binding arbitration” instead of being able to sue the medical practitioner. This would reduce the cost of malpractice insurance and in turn reduce healthcare costs.

            And my last big twist, in the spirit of free market capitalism and globalization allows the SP to outsource the patient’s services if the local provider can’t match the price. If it’s less expensive to transport and give equal quality care to the patient in Mexico, Canada, or even the EU then so be it. If we can fill prescriptions for less out of the country then we can do that as well.

            All in all I don’t think it’s a bad plan considering it came from my twisted mind. So if you see any merit in it, send a copy to your legislator, tell your friends and family or post it on social media. Because we the consumers are what drives the free market and we should get what we pay for.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 7/20/17

The human drive to evolve.

            Living and working in Winters I don’t get an opportunity to drive much, I usually only get in the car once a week and the extent of that drive is often just down to Vacaville. I’ve always loved driving and I’m good at it too (if I do say so myself). I started drivers training shortly after turning 15 and got my license the day I turned 16. I’ve never been in an accident and my one and only speeding ticket was when I was 18 during the Carter years when the maximum speed limit was 55 and I was doing 80 in my dad’s Mercedes. To me Driving feels natural, like the car becomes an extension of my body even to the point where a lot of my actions are “unconscious”, kind of like being on autopilot.

            I know I’m not unique when it comes to being one with the car and that’s what I want to reflect on today. Recently on one of my drives I was deep in thought as I cruised up the 505 and was thinking about human evolution. In particular I was thinking about the question of how over our million plus years of evolution we humans developed the physical and mental skills to do something like drive a car, something that’s only become possible over the last hundred years.

            How is it that my brain and body can react to an action that is happening at over 10 times the speed that I could normally run at? Where does the coordination come from to make a decision based on something that’s happening a mile ahead? Why can I make a split second decision without even thinking about it when something happens right in front of me?

                And that’s just me, an average human, driving an average car. What about racecar drivers who are doing everything even faster? Or for that matter what about flying? That takes the concept of driving to a whole other level, it’s like going from two dimensions to three dimensions by having to not only think about front and back but also up and down. How did we develop that skill set? It’s not like our ancestors were riding around on birds instead of horses.

            Or maybe they were… what if somewhere back down humanities evolutionary path our DNA combined with humanoid visitors from another planet? That would probably give us the ability to do things we wouldn’t have naturally evolved to do. OK, OK, just kidding. With the modern science of DNA testing I think alien DNA would be a big red flag. I would also hope that if we had been visited by aliens they wouldn’t have just screwed us and left. But now that I think about it, that’s actually a fairly common human trait.

            But seriously, let’s get back to human evolution. Some people worry that modern technology is changing too fast for us to keep up or that children multi-tasking on computers and phones will affect their brain development. I’m not sure about the short term effect of our rapidly changing technology but I’m confident that humans will adapt. That’s the thing about our evolutionary journey; it’s made us a very adaptable species. It’s given us the ability to go from horse power to space flight in the blink of an evolutionary eye.

            Now I bet some of you are wondering why I’m talking about evolution as a given and not considering God’s roll in this. The simple answer for me is that the theory of evolution is backed by empirical evidence and God is a product of faith. I personally believe in facts not faith but that’s just me and I know I’m still in the minority.

I think that the reconciliation between fact and faith is the next major evolutionary hurdle that humans must face if we are going to advance and survive as a species. Especially since Faith is the driving force behind most of the violent conflicts we still see in the world today, the conflicts that could possibly cause our extinction. Also the science of Human history, anatomy, and psychology is becoming almost indisputable in its explanation of how and why we got here as a species.

My hope is that the more indisputable the science, the harder it will be for rational thinking people to still believe in an all mighty higher power and that the Human drive for knowledge and truth will win the race against religions need to prove that “my God is the one God, or else”.

Oops, almost missed my exit, I shouldn’t fantasize so much while I’m driving.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 11 of the following link. Winters Express 6/22/17

The Sixties and my age of awareness.

            Today, (if you’re reading this on the actual Express publishing day) is my 60^th birthday. Let’s pause on that thought for a moment because I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about this milestone. As most of you that know me or regularly read my columns can attest, I tend to lean towards a pessimistic view of life and getting older sure hasn’t swung the pendulum in the other direction.

            Thinking about sixty actually got me thinking about the “Sixties” and when I started to become self-aware. If you do the math, I was born in 1957 so I was just a pre-teen kid during the sixties. But isn’t that the age when you start to notice the world outside your family and to develop feelings and attitudes about life in that world.

            I’ve often wondered why I see the negative side of most things first. I think it’s because of my personal history, especially during those formative sixties. My very first recollect able memory is from 1961 when I was 3 ½ and it was the morning my baby sister died. The memory is fuzzy but I can still feel my mother’s anguish. My next major memory was 2 years later, while sitting in first grade class. An announcement came over the P.A. that we should all stop to bow our heads and pray because President Kennedy had just been killed. The main reason I remember it is because of the awkwardness I felt at not knowing how to pray.

            The sixties were also when TV news becoming more graphic. I saw images of the Vietnam War from afar and of racial suppression, murders and riots at home. There was the start of the “Cold War”, the six day war in the Middle East, and the almost war from the Cuban missile crisis. There was the evil of Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson, the Zodiac killer, and the My Lai Massacre. All that combined with the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction was enough to make me want to hide under my bed for the rest of my life.

            I did poke my head out long enough to go crazy for the Beatles, the Monkees, Star Trek, and an early fascination with Playboy pinups. I also watched live when the first human walked on the moon (if it wasn’t faked) so yes, the sixties weren’t all doom and gloom but still enough to lean me towards the dark side.

            Oh, did I mention that during the sixties my father uprooted our family 3 times to follow his bliss. Not a very stable environment for an already anxious kid but what the hell, we were just baggage anyway.

            So now we have to answer the question, how did I survive almost 5 more decades without totally succumbing to the darkness? I think the answer is simply “Naive Optimism” because that’s almost always been my actions verses my thoughts. In other words, even though I think the worst of the world and I know that we’re all going to die I still say, “Today this will be OK” and go ahead anyway.

            A few examples are:   Not going to college and instead going to the school of hard knocks by becoming a door to door meat salesman.

·         Becoming a forklift driver then moving into management just because someone asked me to.

·         Getting married even though I saw my parents fail at it and I had no desire to start a family.

·         Buying a bagel shop with $2000 barrowed from credit cards because heigh, how hard can it be?

·         Giving up friends and comfort to move to California and then soon after buying a house I couldn’t afford here in Winters.

·         Giving up an easy, stable, and decent paying job to open a coffee house because there wasn’t a good place in Winters to get a cappuccino and again, how hard could it be?

·         Selling the coffee house after the economy tanked to become executive director of the dysfunctional chamber of commerce.

·         Last but not least (but hopefully last) going to work for a startup winery in an undeveloped wine region and without a sure tourism/customer draw.

            Like I said, I’m not sure how I feel about turning sixty other than not liking the real aches and pains by body feels, especially after manhandling a few cases of wine. The reality is that even though I never contemplated or imagined being sixty years old, I am, and I’m naively optimist that I will continue for another decade and I really can’t wait because if you think the Sixties were rough, wait until I tell you about the Seventies.

To view the column in it's original form go page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 6/8/17

For all the Mums out there on this special day.

            This Sunday is Mother’s Day and I was wondering why this isn’t the biggest holiday of the year. Aren’t mothers more important than dead Presidents or fallen warriors? Why do religious holidays take precedence over the ones who give us life? Shouldn’t the fireworks celebrations be for the woman who birthed us instead of the birth of our nation? Even a silly moment where we transition from one year to the next is taken more seriously than Mother’s Day.  What I’m saying is that Mothers should be the most important thing in the whole world, isn’t that why it’s called Mother Earth?

            I think the reason Mother’s Day isn’t a high priority is because just like many of our own mothers we take it for granted. That’s right, I said it, I take my mother for granted. But then again why wouldn’t I? For as far back as I can remember she’s always been there for me.

            In my columns, I’ve never really written about my mother, tending to focus on my father instead. I always thought that I took after him more than her, physically or genetically that may be true but I realize now that I’ve got a lot of my mother in me and it’s mainly in my head. Not like crazy in the head but more like in the calm steadiness of mind and a realistic view of life.

My mother is a straight shooter, not afraid to ask tough questions or voice her opinions. At 87 years old she’s politically, socially, & environmentally active. On any given day you’ll find her driving her Prius to the gym or a meeting of the local Democratic club or helping other seniors with social services needs. In her spare time when she’s not painting water colors she’s ushering at the theater or leading hikes for the Sierra Club or just spending time with her much younger boy friend.

I guess all that activity is part of the reason I take her for granted, meaning that I don’t really worry about her. If anything, she still worries about me. I just finished reading an article she sent me in the mail about adolescent Marijuana use and its effect on brain development, so yes mother I know, I shouldn’t have smoked so much pot in high school.

I was listening to NPR a few days ago and the commentator was saying about her own mother that as far as she was concerned her mother’s life didn’t exist before she was born. Of course my mother had a life before motherhood; I just don’t know that much about it. What I know is that she was born in the north of Argentina, across the river from Paraguay where her grandfather owned a Mate’ plantation. She grew up and went to school in Buenos Aires, after graduation she traveled to Europe with her mother, meets a guy and almost got married. Back in Argentina she met my father who was a friend of her brother’s and after a short courtship marries him. She got pregnant and had my older brother a couple of months after turning 25. My parents then immigrate to the U.S.A. and after a year or so I became the first American born Lis, THE END.

Like I said, as far as I’m concerned her non-mom life ended when mine began. It’s been all about me (and my siblings) for the last 60 years and I didn’t make it easy for her. It’s not that I was a troublesome child; it’s more about becoming emotionally distant as I got older. I remember as a kid something that in Spanish we called “mimos” where I would lay with my head in my mother’s lap and she would stroke my forehead, nothing since has ever felt so soothing. Unfortunately I became a teenager and started to rebel, then my parents divorced and my mother moved to California while I stayed in Michigan with my father.

For the next 20 years I just had a long distance relationship with my “Mums”. We would call each other on birthdays and holidays, I would fly out to visit every few years and that was it. That’s why I say that I get some of my emotional traits from her in that neither one of us felt the need for more contact than what we had. Even now that I live much closer we still don’t see each other all that much but that’s what’s great about our relationship in that we’re OK with it because we have unconditional love and that’s all that anybody needs.

           So on this most special of holidays, whether you’re with your mother or she’s with you at a distance or in memory, say thanks because none of us would be anything without our Mums.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 18 of the following link. Winters Express 5/11/17