Cowboy Confessional

God is not love.  God is an elaborate bureaucracy that makes the Department of Motor Vehicles look simple kind by comparison.

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I received an intriguing letter from a San Francisco reader who is being dragged to the once mythical intersection of Squalor and Bedlam.

Daniel (I have altered his name to protect him from junkies, politicians, and other undesirables) contacted me after having read my rhetoric concerning San Francisco’s encouragement of doping outside of city hall. Since doping within San Francisco city hall is evidently a recreational affair, my original article dealt with their export policy and encouragement of self-destructive behaviour. Not content with merely supporting the horse habits of the homeless, certain organization are out to encourage the next generation. Daniel reports:

The Homeless Youth Alliance (HYA), which coordinates the needle exchange …

Now isn’t that interesting. Normal people would avoid associating the word “youth” with drug advocacy, but in the Modern Sodom more than just the common language is corruptible.

… and the Department of Public Heath is attempting a move to the Hamilton United Methodist Church, 1/2 block from the Montessori Pre-School …

Allow me to paint the picture in colorful San Franciscan hues. Preschoolers, kids younger than five, who come to this facility every day, will witness a steady stream of under-washed vagrants, semi-pro prostitutes, and world-class dregs queued near their school in order to get implements for shooting dope.

I wonder what parents think of that:

A public hearing was held last night, and as expected virtually 100% of neighbors opposed the move.

Nice to know that sanity prevails in some regions of The City, though this may not be enough to salvage the innocence of the innocents. Daniel claims that the local Homeless Youth Alliance (HYA):

… provides tips on smoking crack, safer prostitution, and more

As contributory evidence, he forwarded a page from a manual being distributed by the San Francisco Needle Exchange (click on the graphic for a PDF) that instructs junkies to:

* Find a clean, safe and well lit place where you will have enough time (shame the book store on Van Ness is no longer available)

* Make sure the tourniquet isn’t too tight (wouldn’t want your arm to turn blue before inserting the poison)

* Inject slowly

* Enjoy your high

This is a new, strange and disturbing angle in the already insane debate concerning public financing of heroin use. The premise of the needle exchange program was that it attempted to reduce disease and would not actually encourage drug use. That claim appears right after “we won’t raise your taxes” and “the police will protect you.”

A central issue is the unsavory connection between the production of doping manuals and the $275,000 the HYA receives from the city Department of Public Health. Indirectly, tax dollars are subsidising would-be dopers, and actively encouraging drug abuse.

Your tax dollars at work.

Now we have an interesting intersection: The government gives money to the morally suspect HYA, who then instructs kids on how to create or worsen their addiction, and then advocates having the newly minted hop heads to come close to your impressionable preschoolers.

And the good people of San Francisco wonder why the rest of America views them as debauched and dangerous.

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Hillary Clinton’s new motto must be “If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.”In the early days of her husbands rein, Hillary was given the unprecedented role of Presidential Copilot, and assigned the task of concocting a “fix” American health care. Given the long success streak our health care system had in delivering therapy and cures, this seemed an odd job to assignment. But it did keep Hillary out of the Oval Office long enough to facilitate Bill’s pantie raids and cigar parties.

Undaunted by the market’s success, Hillary worked hard and secretively on the project, finally delivering to congress a plan that cause Vladimir Lenin to sit bolt-upright in his glass casket, slap his forehead and shout “Why didn’t think of that?” Her plan was a convoluted mess of mandates, dictatorial directives, and prison sentencing guidelines for citizens who wandered or wanted out of Federal safety net. Republican’s didn’t have to argue the merits of HillaryCare. They merely had to display a diagram of how her scheme allegedly worked — a convoluted illustration that made a plate of spaghetti appear orderly by comparison. With taglines like “health care via the IRS model”, American voters were scared into dethroning Democrats in 1994 though not scared enough to eat right and exercise regularly.

On Monday Hilary doubled-down, making Federal manipulation of an already overly manipulated health care system the centerpiece of her presidential campaign, certifying that failure is indeed her style. “Do what you’re good at,” I always say.

Hillary’s health care hallmark legal requires you to buy health insurance, regardless of your personal situation or preferences. Under her scheme, failure to buy insurance may well be a Federal crime. Libertarians across the country chocked on the irony of such an irrevocably unconstitutional enactment being proposed on Constitution Day. The Clinton camp attempted to justify such intrusion into personal lives claiming “… as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance,” so should the Feds require health insurance. This irrational juxtaposition ignores that driving on government owned roads is a privilege and how you manage the private property that is your body is a protected right. Under the long-shot that ClintonCare is enacted, the plan would be scuttled in any court commanded by a sober judge … if one can be found.

In devising her 2007 version of a Rube Goldberg HMO, Hillary bypassed the fundamental issues, namely that it is one of insurance affordability and not health care accessibility, and that largely no problem exists. When the uninsured in this country are categorized, we see that about 45% are immigrants, many of whom are purposefully “flying under the radar” and availing themselves of mandated medical care through emergency rooms and public health systems. Young people in the 18-24 range, with their immortality and beer money intact, represent nearly 30% of the uninsured. When these purposefully and voluntarily uninsured people are accounted for, a mere 4% of our residents — legal and otherwise — are without health insurance. Yet they still receive health care when it is needed, though given the uncivil behavior of some of our young adults this may be a tactical mistake.

What Hillary’s HMO doesn’t address is how government has already jacked the price of care and insurance beyond the means of many. Bowing to the insurance industry, Federal rules already prevent you from shopping and buying insurance from out-of-state (or even out of country) providers, reducing competition and raising your premiums. Conspiracy theorists already suggest that Hillary’s forced insurance mandate is legislative remuneration to insurance company lobbyist. Insurance companies certainly would enjoy landing a few million more customers without all that nasty selling, servicing and price cutting other industries must endure.

Clinton also doesn’t cope with creeping mandates that make health insurance premiums rival oil future prices. States in particular are requiring insurers to make optional services mandatory. California’s legislature requires that everyone be afforded infertility diagnosis and treatment regardless of need, want or desire. This must be a welcome added cost to members the gay community and heterosexuals males who have been voluntarily sterilized.

Yet this is not the worst aspect of ClintonCare or most proposed insurance system overhaul schemes. “Insurance companies won’t be able to deny you coverage or drop you,” is the word from Hillary’s camp. In other words, insurance companies will be barred from discriminating on the basis of a person’s lifestyle or lack thereof. Insurers are already limited in their ability to raise rates or drop coverage for smokers, the morbidly obese, alcoholics and recreational drug users outside of Congress. Folks like me who exercise daily and have diets that monks would detest are indirectly taxed through higher health insurance premiums that cover the cost of maintaining voluntarily self-destructive citizens. Imagine how valuable health insurance will be to those who don’t value their own health. If you thought your premiums were high now, imagine how high they will rise if Hillary were elected.

Which is now increasingly unlikely. In staking her campaign upon the issue she magnificently failed at before, her plan is already being scrutinized and will scuttle her campaign after the primaries. This might be the healthiest outcome possible.

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It takes a gutsy man to wear saffron robes in public. So it should be no surprise that 1,000 such fellows would have sufficient collective testicular mass to confront heavy-handed thugs.

That’s the state of the state of Burma, which has endured a military monarchy for 45 years. Not that the people of Burma haven’t tried to raise the issue of subjugation from time to time as they did in 1962, 1974, 1988 and a couple of ongoing AK47 protests from guerrilla organizations. Various generals have responded in predictably violent manners, causing the primarily pacifist Buddhist population to suffer silently.

But silence can be an effective tool, depending on who uses it and how.

Enter the monks. Buddhist monks to be specific, who have decided that quiet intervention — ala Mahatma Gandhi — might be helpful. These monks are highly respected and respectable folk. In the dismal philosophy of Buddhism — were life itself is considered an awful affair worth escaping, but to which everyone is perpetually condemned — the monks are considered several steps above mere humans and one step shy of knocking back brews with Siddhartha Gautama himself. Assaulting a monk is considered bad form, so clubbing them bloody and shooting them is simply out of the question.

So 1,000 or so of these peaceful fellows did a walk-by of the home prison of Aung San Suu Kyi, the person who metaphorically peed in the junta’s Wheeties. In 1990 Suu Kyi had the poor judgement of winning the only honest election Burma’s military mutts ever held. Sensing that democracy might actually be more popular with people than overt repression, the thugs du jour nullified the election and told Suu Kyi to stay in her room … for 11 of the last 18 years. To make sure the lesson was well learned, they also prohibited her from leaving to be with her dying husband or their surviving children.
Being a Buddhist herself, she took the moral high ground and kept a low profile. Well, at least as low of a profile as one can keep while winning the Nobel Peace Prize and having every
international human rights and pro-democracy group sending love letters to you trough the Burmese mail system.

The monks evidently decided that she needed more publicity, and staged a quiet protest of sorts. 1,000 of them gathered together in their matching vestments, and walked slowly and determinedly to the concrete police barrier at Suu Kyi’s house. Not even the current crop of criminals in command dared dispute the monk’s authority — moral and otherwise — and they let them pass, stop and speak with the prisoner, and go on their passive way.

I applaud peaceful resilience, though in the long run it may be for naught. Dictators are what they are because they believe themselves superior to everyone and enjoy the accouterments of absolute control, if you can call rape, murder, and pillaging fringe benefits. The only sure cure for despotism is an ample dosage of lead applied through the back of the skull.

Buddhist monks are not of this disposition, so Suu Kyi had best get comfortable in her home-cum-jail. Unless her monks are packing heat under those robes, or can stir the wrath of people who have them hidden under the floorboards, Rangoon’s ruffians will maintain control.

Breaking news as of this morning … the Monk Mob has grown by one order of magnitude. They are now clogging the streets with about 100,000 protesters led by clerics.

And in breaking news of today, the thug government (if I may be redundant) fires back, quite literally. Aside from gunning down nearly a dozen peacefully protesting people, they defiled a number of Buddhist monasteries, throttled the monks therein and arrested about 100. In the crossfire they killed a Japanese journalist. The militarist in Burma are making the Taliban look good by comparison.

Killing the reporter, from the non-aligned nation of Japan, may be a fatal mistake. The media doesn’t mind if you kill peasants, but they get downright indignant when you shoot one of their own. The media was already enamored by the protesting monks, which led to some anti-government bias. Now they have a reason to outright hate the current (and temporary) power in Burma.

Of all the news reporting, perhaps this one passage says all that need be said:

… some protesters shouted “Give us freedom, give us freedom!” at soldiers. Thousands ran through the streets after warning shots were fired into crowds that had swollen to 70,000. Bloody sandals were left lying in the road.

Pissin’ on people’s freedom is a dangerous game.

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The good people of California should do what is right, what is fair, and what is not in their self-interest.

In the rich and colorful history of American election rigging, few schemes achieve a status more notorious than the winner-take-all system for hijacking electoral college votes. You would have to travel to my native South and resurrect Jim Crow to find tools that better suited to disenfranchised selected groups of voters. Removed of flowery rhetoric, the winner-take-all system is a naked power grab specifically designed to rob people of political representation.

Winner-take-all lotteries did appear until parties and partisans oozed from the political fundament. Nary a state rigged their election thus until the 1830s. Political parties began to form and party leaders determined they had the constitutional power — though perhaps not moral right — to award all electoral college votes to their party, even when their clan won slim majorities. In effect they sought to disenfranchise upwards of 49.9% of voters in their states.

This grimy gimmick was wildly popular in the South after Reconstruction. As black votes consolidated, racists legislators argued that the winner-take-all system effectively negated black representation. Though race-base biasing is less the norm today, our winner-take-all system still achieves its objective, eliminating representation based on party affiliation, political philosophy, or geographic region within a state.

For small, homogeneous states, winner-take-all cabals are less problematic — splitting Wyoming three electoral college votes is largely a non-issue for their predominantly white and rural voters. California is a different creature. Our population is large, diverse, and politically estranged. We have a broad mix of political thought ranging from utter liberals to utter libertarians, urban and rural interest, farmers, industrialists, artists, and a veritable melting pot of races. Pretending that all these diverse interests are fairly represented by consolidating California’s 55 electoral votes masks underlying partisan power grabs.

I know Democrats in my home state of Florida felt that way when its winner-take-all system sent George W to the White House in 2000.

To give you a sense of how senseless the winner-take-all hustle is, consider this: It is theoretically possible for a candidate to win an election campaigning in only eleven states and ignoring everyone else. Add up the electoral college votes in California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) Illinois (21), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), Georgia (15), New Jersey (15), and North Carolina (15), and you hit the magical 271 needed to take occupy the Command and Chief’s chair. Thirty nine states are, for practical purposes, meaningless. When applied to California, the winner-take-all system makes 36 of our 58 counties meaningless (sorry Modoc and Sierra, you don’t matter).

Practical reasons exist to scrap this unfair and antiquated system. Aside from balancing competing perspectives, we would encourage national candidate to campaign in California. Considered a ‘safe” state, no candidate for national office bothers to visit us during an election, as doing so is a waste of time and money. California voters lose the opportunity to question, challenge and chide these absentee candidates. The winner-take-all system also blocks third party candidates from gaining footholds, given that organizing in smaller geographic areas is their best hope for initial success. If you have ever thought of voting the Green, Libertarian or (God help you) the Natural Law party but decided not to “waste your vote”, you have our winner-take-all system to blame.

It has been said that California leads the nation in thought. Now is the time to prove that to the country, and to the other 47 states who disenfranchise their minority voters as we do.

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