Conspiracy Theory, Sheeple and Other Stuff

I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist, nor have I ever placed much stock in the occasionally even measured ranting of those who encourage us “sheeple” to “wake up” to the way we’re being “played,” by the liberal media or whomever (side note about “sheeple:” Those who direct the term disparagingly at others generally fit the definition--"those who follow blindly”--pretty neatly themselves; most of them follow blindly and continually reiterate the positions/opinions of their own leaders, whether they be Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or whomever).

Still, watching the “non-OWS believers” demonize the Occupiers as “unwashed, unemployed, lazy privileged college students,” etc., I wonder. Reading what the “53 percenters”--those who pay taxes--which admittedly hasn’t been much, lately, that I’ve seen, I wonder who convinced the 53% that, not only are they NOT part of the 99%, by virtue of their opposition to same, they somehow belong more in the 1%.

Then I listen to the welfare-bashers, who seem to believe that the “welfare” of today’s world is the same as it was prior to Reagan and his “Welfare Queen” or even further reforms during the Clinton years. Somehow they have the idea that we the taxpayers are subsidizing a bunch of drug-addicted freeloaders who should just go get jobs.

Again, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but even from where I sit out here in the proverbial boondocks, it looks like we’re being played, as if our strings are being pulled by a puppeteer or puppeteers that we cannot even see.

I look at the way the poor are being demonized, for instance, and see a “divide and conquer” thing going on--if we the working people can be made to focus on the poor as the real enemy to our national prosperity, maybe we won’t notice the “real” enemy, the politicians and the corporations who own them.

In a way it reminds me of what Hitler did to the Jews--he created a scapegoat against which all good Germans could unite against. Obviously we don’t have death camps, and I certainly do not intend to trivialize in any way the Holocaust. In a very general way, however, our demonizing of the poor is the same kind of identification of an essentially powerless group as a national enemy.

Maybe we are not truly being “played,” though. Even scarier is the thought that it may simply be human nature: When we’re under siege, militarily or economically, we look for an enemy; because we sense our own essential powerlessness, we look for someone even more powerless than ourselves--it is easier to victimize someone weaker than ourselves, obviously. Most of us lack the courage (or insanity) to go chest-to-chest with a tank.

Next time we get righteously indignant when we’re behind someone in a grocery store checkout line who is using a “free” EBT card, maybe it would be better if we wondered who truly caused that person’s situation. Is the person really useless and lazy--or was it that her job got shipped to India? Maybe it’s just that her minimum-wage retail job doesn’t pay enough to allow her to pay rent, much less for food for her 2.3 kids.

It might even help if we considered for just a moment that tomorrow, WE could be the ones depending on an EBT card.

Nothing like watching old movies . . . .

Watched again the other day an old movie, “Independence Day.” Okay, it’s not THAT old, but it has been around for a while. Anyway, there is one scene in it where the president of the United States gets locked into an alien’s mind and sees what the aliens have in mind for the human population of the planet. “Extermination,” he says, when he is finally freed from the alien’s telepathic grip.

Upon revisiting that movie scene, it dawned on me why listening to my company’s quarterly report the other day had so shaken me.

Our “bosses” have in mind for us, the American medical transcriptionists and editors who do the work the company sells and greatly profits from, exactly the same plan that the aliens in “Independence Day” had for human beings: Extermination.

That is not isolation paranoia-borne hyperbole or exaggeration, it is simply fact.

The more work they can send overseas, the better their profit margin. They were positively gleeful over the fact that they’ve managed to offshore 46%--up from 44%!--of transcription in the last quarter, and the picture only gets brighter (for them)!

They were equally happy that 77% of dictation now goes through speech-recognition programs before it gets to a transcriptionist. This makes them happy because they pay us much less, and in fact, unfairly less, for lines we edit than for those we transcribe. Anything that makes us, the workers, poorer, makes them richer--of COURSE they’re happy about that.

There was also some mention of a 19-million-dollar tax windfall of some sort or another, no specifics were provided although I suppose they are all still bowing and praying to Mr. Bush for that. Astonishingly, they didn’t use that tax windfall to enhance or create American jobs. Go figure.

I will never name the company for which I work, for a variety of reasons, some of them pretty obvious, and also because it doesn’t matter. The same scenario has been playing out in a lot of companies, a lot of industries, over a whole lot of years. If it hadn’t been, there would be no “Occupy Wall Street” movement--there wouldn’t have to be.

What I still have not figured out is what the corporate and political honchos, the 1%, think the result of all this will be. To me, it looks like, at some point, the misery will have to begin to trickle UP. Our economy is about 75% consumer-driven, last time I heard. What happens when you eliminate consumers by eliminating anything above a subsistence wage? What happens to the healthcare system (10% of the economy, I think I’ve heard), for instance, when only 1% of the people can afford healthcare?
I don’t know, I honestly don’t.

When I figure out some way to prevent what looks increasingly to me like the impending destruction of America, and not just economically, I’ll happily post it. Unfortunately, I’m just not that smart, so I suspect I’ll never have to write such a post.

Cheers!

Sorta random notes, on account of I'm tired.

100.  Million.  Dollars.

For quitting, sort of, at age 81.

100.  Million.  Dollars.

One man.

Who had already "earned" three-quarters of a billion dollars over the past quarter-century or so.

Poor guy.  The 100 million was barely more than a third of what he HAD been promised, until shareholders realized that 267 million was actually a lot of money (and money out of their pockets) to pay a guy for dying or getting fired.

100.  Million.  Dollars.

In a world, and a country (ours), in which 100 (no million) dollars would make the difference between living--you know, "eating," stuff like that--and dying--you know, dead, not breathing, "disassembled" to quote a long-ago movie robot--to a huge number of people, maybe even 100 million of them.

I cannot even wrap my mind around a number like "100 million," or even tease it into any tiny cracks in that number.

Eugene Isenberg must just be loving how he managed to game the system and suck the blood out of everybody who ever worked for or held stock in him and his company.

The shareholders in Nabors, Inc. must be wondering who in hell ever thought that contract with Isenberg was "good."

Gotta wonder sometimes how "value" is assigned to different people at different "ranks" in our originally "rank-less" American society. 

I'm running out of steam on this post because it wasn't what I originally intended to work on tonight.  I was thinking instead about how we have become all about "bread and circuses," without having really voted such for ourselves.  I do NOT remember where I first heard that phrase, "bread and circuses," but think it was from a Robert Heinlein novel and his assertion that when people are allowed to vote themselves bread and circuses, the world immediately spirals downward, or something like that.

Well, we DO have "bread and circuses" now, but we are not voting for them.  We are having them tossed to us like so many scraps to hungry dogs.

A few years ago I worked at a children's hospital.  We were (supposedly; we only knew what our "masters" told us) going through some tough economic times, and we were going to have to cut some corners, shave our expenses, etc.  I was an office coordinator then, sort of a glorified secretary who supervised other, less-glorified secretaries, and, as such, had to attend monthly meetings with other glorified secretaries and our immediate masters.  At one or two or a few such meetings, we discussed how to keep the "masses"--those we supervised--happy, and how we could retain them.  There would be no pay raises, of course.  But the head master confidently explained to us that "job satisfaction," for people like us, had very little to do with income, with fair payment for services provided--"no," he said, "they care more about 'other' stuff, about 'recognition'" and so on.  Basically he "educated" us that we care more about pats on the back than food on the table, and he had studies to prove it (although he never produced such).

So we wound up, at his direction, coming up with "awards" for our underlings--plaques or gift certificates, accompanied by admiring speeches, etc.--that would keep the masses happy, and at very little cost to the hospital, the "corporation."

It was like an occasional treat, a milk bone, would prevent the masses from bailing on us, keep them feeling all warm and cuddly to us.

"Demeaning" was what I thought at the time.  Dehumanizing. 

We have become "worker bees," somehow less than human.

"All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others."  Orwell (more or less; I don't swear this quote is verbatim--it is from memory).

I don't care if somebody makes more money than I do--a LOT of people make more money than I do.  But dammit, I am no less human simply because I make less than you do.

At its heart, I think that is what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

Trickle-up Economics

When I first went to work for a herein unnamed transcription company in 2002, I was paid a given amount per line, plus a differential--if I scheduled myself more than 50% after 5 p.m., I would be paid more per line for ALL lines I produced; I was also given a differential for scheduling myself at least one weekend day per week. The company also provided our internet access. Accounts back then also were assigned a level theoretically representing their degree of difficulty, and our pay was based in part on that--higher difficulty level, higher line rate.

Let the “trickle up” begin:

1. Instead of paying the differential for all lines produced, pay it only for those produced after 5 p.m. or on weekends. Small thing, right--but dollars out of my pocket, right back into the company’s.

2. Eliminate the weekend differential. Dollars out of my pocket, right back into the company’s.

3. Stop providing internet access, but “generously” give the transcriptionist a small monthly amount to cover about 1/3 of the cost. (Sounds like a small thing, right? But if you were taking home $2000 a month, the net difference between what the company gave you for internet access and the actual cost, say $20, amounts to a 1% pay cut after taxes. Money out of my pocket, etc.

4. Never raise the line rate. After not many years, the company is paying much less per line when adjusted for inflation (but you can bet, although of course mere employees weren’t privy to such information, that what they were charging hospitals for our services didn’t stay the same or go lower).

5. “Restructure” the pay scale so that pay wasn’t based on account level of difficulty anymore, but rather on experience/ability level of the transcriptionist. At some point or other we lost the level 6 account that I had been working on, and I was shifted to what had previously been a level 8 or 9 account. Under the “old” system, I would have received about a 10% increase in line rate. Under the new system, I not only didn’t get a raise, but was in fact basically informed that the company graciously and benevolently wouldn’t be reducing my pay by a tenth of a cent per line, which logic I never really got, but then, I was a mushroom.

6.  Keep raising the percentage of the health insurance cost paid by the employee (and reducing the percentage paid by the company).

(My "favorite" line uttered by a supervisor, a woman whom I actually liked, during this period:  "We can't keep being the highest-paying transcription company.")

And that is how a corporation can nickel-and-dime its employees from relative “comfort”--that is, ability to pay the mortgage or rent and keep food on the table, with maybe a little left over for “extras” like, I don’t know, new clothes once in while, or dinner out, a movie, etc.--you know, luxuries--to edge-of-the-precipice, how-can-I-pay-for-an-oil-change or something besides chicken or beans or rice, day-to-day uncertainty.

You wonder sometimes how your employers can live with themselves or even sleep at night, knowing what they do to the workers who keep their companies alive, even as you know that they simply don’t care--and in fact, some corporate heads or other higher level executives actually get bonuses based on how much they “reduce costs” (that is, how many workers’ lives they destroy).

This is partly why “I am the 99%.” And, Dear Mr. 53%? I’ve been paying taxes all along; I’ve gotten no government handouts and haven’t asked for any. So please, shut the fuck up.

Waste

Enjoyed my usual Friday lunch with my parents yesterday. At some point in conversation with my father, talk turned toward combines (the humongous machines used to harvest grain, not NFL scouting combines, etc.). He’s in the market for a new one (well, new to him--he doesn’t have a quarter to half a million dollars or more for a brand-new, state-of-the-art machine with a $15,000 seat, etc.). He is also not sure what to do with his old one. He was talking to a neighbor who had a couple of old combines, or parts of them, stored in sheds and barns, who told Dad that he had once asked a combine repair guy what the old motors, which were still in practically mint condition, might be worth. “Surprisingly, nothing,” the man said. “These old motors will run forever, so nobody ever has to replace one.” So there are hundreds, maybe thousands of perfectly good combine motors rusting away in barns and sheds and salvage yards all over the country, partly because nobody has stepped forward with a potential use for them (trust me, I would step forward, if I had any brilliant ideas).

I was thinking about that during this morning’s perambulations with assorted critters in the bean field to the south of me. The beans were harvested weeks ago, but for some reason I started noticing a lot (relatively speaking) of beans that were left behind by the combine, mostly because they were too close to a weed-overrun fence line, or in corners outside the turning arc of the machine, or in wrinkles of terrain that the combine’s head, because of its sheer size, simply passed over. In the general scheme of soybean farming, what was left behind didn’t amount to much, but multiply that field by hundreds or thousands of others and you would probably have a pretty impressive pile of beans.

It would be too easy, and in fact to some degree inaccurate, to call those left-behind beans--which did their job, they grew and matured as best they could in conditions this past summer that were, well, “suboptimal” in terms of rain, etc.--and rusting combine motors a metaphor for the American middle and working classes, but the temptation is there. In the case of neither the combine motors nor the beans was their ultimate waste due to deliberate intent of the farmer, however. The farmer did not profit from refusal to maximize their potential.

Contrast that to what corporations, in concert with the federal government, have done to American workers over the three decades since Reagan and his “trickle-down” economics entered the picture. Essentially they maximized their own immediate profits by ensuring that nothing “trickled down;” in fact, an argument could be made that they reversed the “trickle”--dollars they did not pay us enhanced their profits.

Unfortunately, with their slow but relentless destruction of the middle and working classes, they’ve laid waste to unfathomable amounts of human potential. Instead of reinvesting in the workers who helped build their companies, they’ve basically done the opposite.

These same “job creators” who are crying that the relative pennies spent on social programs are “mortgaging our children’s futures!” are the people who have ensured that many of our children HAVE no real future.

At some time in the future--and probably not the distant future--when historians conduct an autopsy on the corpse of the United States of America, they’ll probably find that the source of the fatal cancer was rooted in the 1980s, with the overt shift from a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” to a government “of the few, by the few, and for the few”--the 1%; when "what's good for General Motors is good for America" became "what's good for General Motors is good for, um, General Motors management and stockholders, and if something happens that is NOT good for same, taxpayers will fix it for them."

Imagine the possibilities if they truly HAD let some of the profit "trickle down," if they had invested in the potential of American workers rather than simply exploited it?

If there ever is an epitaph for this country, maybe we should just borrow the one Herman Wouk used for Youngblood Hawke, from the novel of that name:  "Death is only a sadness.  Tragedy lies in waste."

"What are words for, if no one's listening anymore."

I’ve admittedly not paid as much attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement as I should have until only recently, so have been playing “catch-up” over the past few days. When you live at home and work alone, and spend the majority of your free time in the company of dogs and cats, it can be easy to lose touch, intentionally or not, with the “real” world.

Still, I’ve paid enough attention to know that the OWS folks are not making any specific demands; that is even one of the knocks on them from some quarters.

I’ve also paid enough attention to know that a pretty broad spectrum of society is represented--the protesters aren’t all college students, or all poor people, or all urban or rural or Yankee or Californian or New Yorker or southern or Midwestern; they are not all unemployed, they are not all disgruntled post office workers; and, so far, at least, they’re not putting up guillotines or mobbing perceived “rich” people.

Seems to me that, mostly, they are interested in “fairness.” It’s not that 1% of the population is “rich,” but rather that the “more” they have has grown so geometrically quickly, while the “less” the 99% have has shrunken nearly as geometrically quickly.

Picture two snowballs: One, rolled downhill, adds layers, grows larger and larger; the other, rolled uphill, if at all, grows little, if at all. After 20 years or 30 years of rolling, the first snowball is enormous, couldn’t be moved with a fleet of earthmoving equipment; the other, despite working as hard as it can, could still be the middle section of a 3-snowball snowman built by happy 7-year-olds.

Basically they seem to be asking why, if "a rising tide lifts all boats," tide seems to be so picky-and-choosey in deciding which boats it will lift, in this particular case.  It's as if the tide rolled in and picked just one boat to lift out of the hundred tied up at the dock.  There's something wrong, here.

To me it seems the OWS’s complaints are valid (of course, I am one of the 99%). They are not demanding handouts--or anything else, really. They want only to be heard, and they want everyone to become aware that this growing discrepancy between the 1% and the rest of us could very well end up destroying us. It has destroyed more than a few of us, already.

So then I read about a “backlash” organization, the “53%”--based on the “fact” that 47% of the citizens of this country pay no income taxes. That 47% just really pisses the 53% off. They don’t seem to be aware of precisely who comprises that 47% un(income)taxed people--elderly on social security, people who don’t make enough money (because the jobs they do have been annually devalued for at least 20-30 years), etc. There are a LOT of working people in that 47%, but the 53-percenters seem to be unaware of that.

They also seem to believe that OWS is demanding more government assistance, more “handouts.”

Obviously, they are not paying attention--they are not listening. They’re just seeing a bunch of goddamn lazy losers trying to get more of their hard-earned dollars. Or something.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” No matter how much “communication,” via email and Twitter and Facebook, et al, we seem to be doing.

Maybe we really are destined for the dustbin of history.  And sooner, rather than later.

Sacrifice

With some time off this week and, until today, nice weather, I’ve had time to spend sitting out on the front porch, reading an actual book (with printed pages and everything! I didn’t even have to plug it into surge protector!). Why I picked “Walden,” I’m not sure; certainly it turned out to be a serendipitous choice because it gave my mental kaleidoscope a half-twist and my whole view changed.

Perhaps most important, it changed my view of the “1%” to whom the share of America’s wealth has so inequitably shifted (or been transferred to by tax policies, among other factors). Instead, now I see that our corporate leaders have all embraced Thoreau’s espousal of a simpler, less encumbered life, and collectively they are striving to channel American workers to the same. In order to do this, they sacrifice their own potential freedom from luxury, opulence and all the hindrances to a truly “good” and “well-lived” life so as to preserve our freedom from the same. They know, as Thoreau said, that we are often more possessed by our possessions than the other way around, so they struggle mightily to ensure that we can never afford to be encumbered by so many of them.

It strikes me also that many of them have taken up Michelle Obama’s fight against childhood obesity. A diet of beans and rice would be a healthy one, and so the children of the 99% will be channeled economically to beans and rice, simultaneously sparing them life-threatening temptation of richer fare. If to do that means keeping the 99% from being able to afford a more varied diet, well, the 1% will sacrifice by carrying more of the burdensome profit themselves.

It stuns me that I’ve missed until now the incredible generosity of the 1% and how they’ve so sacrificed their own freedom from wealth in order to ensure our own. It is the economic equivalent of throwing themselves on a hand grenade, just to save the rest of us. I am humbled by my belated recognition of this.

Language

As noted before, I'm a medical transcriptionist, or, as they've begun calling us now, a "medical language specialist."  Whether that change came about as a way of trying to describe more accurately what we do--it ain't all about typing fast--or whether it was just another managerial bone tossed to a bunch of dogs in order to make them feel "better" about themselves or "more empowered," I don't know.  Given that the change in title did NOT bring with it more actual income, I suspect it was just a bone.

Whatever we are--medical transcriptionist (MT) or medical language specialist (MLS)--we have to possess some facility with the language.  We are not necessarily all writers, but we all DO--we MUST--pay attention to, and CARE about, words and their meanings, and MUST forever be aware of the context in which they're used.  We HAVE to know, and care about, the difference between "its" and "it's," between "they're" and "their" and "there."  We MUST care about "nuance," how the same word may mean one thing in one context, something altogether different in another.

The majority of people apparently care about none of this, and I suppose that's okay, in everyday life--as long as communication is happening, fine.  With a medical report that's carved in proverbial stone (or computer program, ether, whatever), it DOES matter, and we have to care.

So, we--MTs/MLSs--maybe have a more acute sense of linguistic bullshit than many other people do.

And there is a lot of linguistic bullshit flung about in today's workplace.

"Personnel" offices became "Human Resources" quite a while back--it was an "empowerment" "thing."  "Layoffs" became "downsizing" became "reallocation of resources" (as a nurse manager I used to work with said, it means "you have been reallocated to the unemployment line") became (my personal favorite) "headcount reduction."

A "head" is a person, by the way.  Just in case any of y'all lost sight of that uncomfortable fact.

I can barely remember a time--think 1970s--when corporate bosses used to seem to be honestly sorrowful when economic forces of nature forced them to "lay people off."  It wasn't long after that, though, that they became sort of "matter-of-fact" about it.  Not long after THAT, they began taking pride in how many heads they could count, how many people's lives they could destroy--hell, they got BONUSES for it.

But they're not to blame.  They've invented language to absolve themselves from any of THAT.  For instance, I once-upon-a-time worked at a hospital in Kansas City.  We got a new CEO in about 1992 (with "connections" to the Clintons, everybody said all breathlessly) who promised "NO LAYOFFS."  But there might be, um, "reductions in force" via "attrition," etc.  He wouldn't be personally responsible for that, of course--he would direct his "people" (and he brought a whole herd of them with him) to direct THEIR people to cut their budgets by 10%.  In our section, we'd already carved costs to the bone--our budget was 90-something percent "personnel"--you know, "people"--and we didn't really have as many of those as we needed.  Yes, people saw their jobs disappear.  But the CEO wasn't to blame--the department heads were. 

Sometimes I find it difficult even to fathom what incredibly self-centered, selfish assholes these CEOs can be.  I accept that they must sometimes make hard decisions, and that the decisions may, will hurt real people, but that those decisions MUST be made.  If you're going to MAKE those decisions, at least have the balls to own up to them, and to take the responsibility for them.

Yeah, yeah, I know--it's just business, not personal.  But it can become pretty fucking personal when you're the one suddenly without a job.  The CEOs, and the politicians, too, need to stop hiding behind words and simply take responsibility.  Stop feeding us bullshit.  Tell us the truth:  "I'm here to feather my own nest, and to hell with all of you little people."

Beginning.

Started out with “Occupy Wall Street,” found myself rereading Thoreau, visiting with Thomas Hobbes for a few minutes, apologizing to Marie Antoinette, and even learning that the “golden age” for American labor--the period in our history when workers were actually respected, appreciated, compensated fairly (well, more or less), when the “American Dream” actually was a real and tangible and achievable goal for the majority of Americans, lasted less than a quarter of a century: 1950-1973, more or less--about 1/10 of our nation’s history.

The latter I had kinda figured out on my own, although I had pegged the time frame as roughly end of WWII until about the early 1980s. Hey, I’m a product of American public schools, and so “don’t know much about history.”

Lucky me: I entered the workforce in 1975, not counting a couple of summers spent detasseling corn, or driving a tractor or “walking beans” for my grandfather.

Also figured out that, despite our “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore” Declaration of Independence, we’ve never REALLY gotten away from the elitist society at which we rebelled and from which we declared our independence.

American society, economically and politically, still seems to have underpinnings of “Some people count, some people don’t,” as so eloquently expressed by “Robby” in “Dirty Dancing.”

What I haven’t figured out, and what the Wall Street occupiers haven’t seemed to figure out, is what to do about it.

In microcosm, it’s the same quandary my father faces right now. My dad is a farmer, almost 80, and, as he puts it, “I’m wearing out, the equipment’s wearing out,” so he’s looking at retirement, decreased income, etc., unless he finds a way to find some “labor” to operate the equipment, to get corn and beans planted, sprayed, and ultimately harvested.  He has an ex-grandson-in-law who can provide the labor, but likely not much of the capital. Dad could simply pay the guy a wage, but that wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the “labor” would be there when he needed to be there. So he’s trying to work out a plan that would be fair to them both, yet provide the “labor” enough incentive to show up for the 2-3 weeks at planting and harvest time, say 6 weeks total. Obviously, Dad can’t give “labor” half the crop for 6 weeks’ worth of work--but what would be fair, AND incentive?

Occupy Wall Street seems to want “fair.” But what would be fair?

Difference between Wall Street, politicians and most of corporate America, is that Dad DOES care about fair, which is why the “labor,” the ex-in-law, has a chance to do well in whatever arrangement they work out, and Dad will be able to keep farming a while longer, even if it means he has to share some of the profit. They’ll both “win,” in the long run. Dad may win “less,” in a way, but it’s better than having to close the business down, in which case NObody would win.

It all comes down to “fairness,” and that’s what I think the Wall Street occupiers--and most American workers--are after. Trouble is, “fair,” aside from those 23 years of labor “golden age,” has been defined by “capital”--by modern-day royalists who seem to think they have birthright to 90% or whatever of what America produces.

I mentioned Marie Antoinette and apologizing to her, earlier. The poor old queen of France, dead and headless, in some order or other, has been widely believed to have said, “Let them eat cake,” when told that there was no bread for the peasantry. I did a little (very little) research today and found that the quote, if it was “real” at all--and it probably was just an urban legend--actually dated from a long time before ultimately-headless Marie was even born, probably spoken by the Sun King, Louis Quatorze, the 14^th, Marie’s husband (Louis 16’s) grandfather or something.

So I had to apologize to Marie for blaming her for corporate/political America’s callous disregard of the 99%, and the “let ‘em eat cake” “morality” that seems to drive them.