Disneyland Closes At 35

Unbelievable

My wife called Southwest Airlines this evening to book a flight. After answering agent, agent, agent about twelve times she was asked to provide her number and told the airline would call her back in 12 minutes.

How in the hell do they expect to do business in that fashion? Perhaps many of our major business corporations deserve to be bankrupt!

They did not call back in 12 minutes.

Things Fall Apart

I happened across one of my favorite poems this morning, by W.B. Yeats. It seemed very appropriate to the age in which we live.

"Things fall apart; the centre will not hold.

More anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity."

The drug cartels that threaten our southern border are intensely passionate about their efforts to turn the entirety of the Mexican government into a drug cartel and expand their empire into Texas, Arizona,New Mexico and California as a beginning while our Homeland Security forces shrug off the threat and while our Congress will not act to fill Federal Judicial benches that have been vacant for months and years.

The Iranian government is passionate about obtaining full nuclear capability so that they can irradiate and eradicate Israel. Who in our government has any passion for halting the Iranian movement?

The North Korean dictator is passionate about obtaining full nuclear capability as well. He is close to meeting his goal. Who will stand up to halt his progress?

Somalian pirates as well as Darfurian and Congolese murderers who rival the worst of the Khmer Rouge  ravage Africa. They are passionate about their piracy and genocide. Who has the conviction to halt their progress?

Closer to home, at least for the moment:

There are literally millions of Americans who have no means by which to take care of their own health. There are individuals who are experiencing major health problems, as I write these words, who have no place to turn for treatment. We have public health facilities that are completely inadequate to meet the needs of our young, our old and our infirm. These individuals are U.S. citizens and human beings. They are passionately in need of help. Who has any conviction to help them? I have nothing against providing best practice health care to all in need. I think we should; still, why can we not provide health care to U.S. citizens who are so desperately in need?

There are thousands of public schools that provide inadequate education. In fact they cannot even ensure the safety of their students. Most human beings, if given the opportunity and support, are passionate about learning. Perhaps not eveyone is thrilled by Algebra or American History, or Civics, but they are passionate about learning something. How to play the piano. How to write a short story. How to build a bridge or repair an automobile. Why is it that there is no will to provide the sort of training that our citizens want and need? Does everyone need a college education? No. But they need and deserve to be educated.

The list goes on.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

How Screwed Do You Want to Be?

This post ensues subsequent to a telephone conversation with my brother, a lawyer. I asked him why all the fuss with the credit card companies, a fuss that necessitated a meeting with the President of the United States, who asked the company presidents to cease being corporate despots and dictators.

My brother told me the following:

Let's say I am John Smith. I have a job. I have a good credit history, but I do not make very much money. I have a wife and two children and I make $60,000 per year. My wife does not work. I have a $10,000 credit limit with my card company at 9%. My credit card company needs to make more money and thus they raise my interest rate to 14.9% and they tell me only that they have reviewed my credit score and it has diminished, I have become a bigger risk to them and the interest rate has been adjusted for that purpose. I can do nothing whatsoever about their decision. Their option to increase the rate was contained somehwere in the fine print of the contract which I have with the company.

Let's say I am John Smith again. I have a job, good credit history, low debt, and make $200,000 per year. My rate is also raised. I call the credit card company, tell them I will pay off the bill entirely and cancel my account, or transfer to another company who has already made an offer to provide a much lower rate of interest, and they can go to hell. What is the response>

My brother tells me that the credit card company call centers are a high tech marvel. The moment my social security number is entered, the computer bolts into action and places my life story in front of the customer service rep. The computer even evaluates how much crap I will in fact take from the credit card company. The computer evaluates whether or not I can really get a lower rate from another company and transfer my balance. It tells the service rep what to do. In this case the computer confirms that I really will pay off my card or transfer the balance and thus my current company will lose my business. Thus, the rep decides to return my rate to its previous level.

Now I am John Smith, I have a job, higher debt, lower wages, and a good payment history. My rate has been raised to 24%. The customer service rep says they cannot help me at all, but refers me to a Consumer Finance or  Title Loan company to get a loan. Guess what. The credit card company, the bank, owns the Title Loan company and they are going to charge me 75% interest.

In short, every credit card consumer is evaluated in terms of how much they can be screwed without being able to fight back. How many of you have had your interest raised for no reason at all? Did you know that you can have a Great Big Bank Credit Card, pay your bill on time, and have your rate raised 15% simply because you paid your Big Department Store Credit Card one day late. The effect of raising your interest 15% means your payment each month will double in all likelihood.

These practices would have been against the law 20 years ago. They are in fact, at least from a moral sense, criminal. I want, I think we are want, individuals to pay their debts. Do we want them to be screwed by the same banks that we have bailed out of billions of dollars of debt? I think not. Isn't it great how grateful the banks are to the taxpayers who saved their butts and provided millions of dollars to their incompetent managers in exit compensation?

What say you?

No Socialism?

I must say, in response to a recent comment, that it seems logical to define Socialism prior to deciding that the country is not moving toward it. Simply put, the Libertarian Model of Government stresses negative rights. The libertarian supports individual freedom and as few constraints from government as is possible. The libertarian does not expect or require that the government provide anything other equal opportunity for all, protection from other countries or citizens who would attempt to take away our freedom to pursue life and happiness and basic infrastructure such as roads, schools, etc.

The Socialist Model of Government stresses positive rights to such things as universal health care, jobs, homes, etc. It is a model that advocates that government take a much larger role to ensure that the gap between the rich and the poor is bridged. Socialism does advocate the redistribution of wealth in order to bridge the gap.

That being said, it is up to each individual to decide which model would best serve their interest. It also makes it easier to answser the question. Is the U.S. moving closer to Socialism?

Perhaps we are moving closer to a middle ground best expressed by the Harvard Philosophy Professor John Rawls in his book Justice as Fairness. You might want to have a look at this work.

Why Today Might Possibly Suck

I heard several things today, which if true, most accurately define why this day sucks. I may not even be clear on the details and I do not have any real documentation that all the things I heard are true. If they are, they suck.

I heard that a beauty contestant, I believe she was from California, was asked for her opinion about homosexual marriage. She replied, in short, that she thought the institution of marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples. The report went on to say that she has been castigated in various ways for having made the comment and has been called a "dumb bitch" by the questioner. I can only guess the sexual preference of the questioner. If this report is true I would ask why in the world was such a question posed in the first place? Is strict adherence to political correctness one of the pageant's criteria for contestants? If so, who would compete? Secondly, to castigate the contestant for having exercised free speech is nuts.

My second frustration has to do with some credit card companies, in fact most if not all. I did not know that if a consumer misses one payment, for whatever reason, the card companies can raise the interest rate on the card up to 29.99%. You could be in a coma in the hospital after suffering a car crash, never having missed a payment in 20 years, and yet they will raise your rate from a rate as low as 7% to 29.99% immediately. That means that your monthly payment will more than double. I may be wrong, but this seems criminal to me. The taxpayers are paying a high price to bail out these banks and they repay the taxpayer by screwing them. That sucks and something needs to be done about it. What? I heard President Obama today and he is actually attempting to address the problem. I do not agree with most of his ideology, but I thank him for his position relevant to this issue. What do you think? Let me know.

Thirdly, I teach philosophy in college. In recent weeks ethics has been the area of study. During the course of explaining the difference between absolute ethics, utilitarian ethics, deontological or duty ethics, and on and on, I provided many scenarios and asked students how they would respond when faced with a moral dilemma. One scenario had to do with purchasing a term paper from an internet source and submitting it as your own. Over 75% of the students in 3 different classes thought that would be just fine and thoroughly justified by the fact that one needs a good grade no matter how that grade is aquired. More justification is provided by pointing to Congress. They, the students say, all cheat. Bill Clinton cheated. Everybody cheats. Cheating is the moral de jour. That sucks.

Lastly. I fully understand the controversy caused by the war in Iraq and am sympathetic to those who want the troops to come home. I want the troops to come home as well. I am a two time Vietnam Veteran. I know what happened when we left that country. Genocide. I do not know whether or not we should have engaged in that conflict in the first place. Perhaps not; still, we did. We made many promises as a country and we are not going to live up to them just as we did not do so in Vietnam. I think carnage will result, just as it did when we left Vietnam high and dry. My barber was a Vietnamese helicopter pilot, trained in the U.S. during the war. He graduated from flight school in Ft. Worth, Texas and then returned to fight in the war. He crashed his helo trying to get to a U.S. carrier and subsequently spent 10 years in a reeducation camp. We said, too damn bad. We are leaving. That too sucks and I fear the same thing will happen in Iraq.

Disneyland Out in Paperback

My novel, Disneyland Closes at 35, is out in paperback as well as the Kindle edition from Amazon.com I am working on the sequel and hope to have it completed by Christmas of this year.

I promised in an earlier blog to keep a record of my initial experience with teaching a college philosophy online. In order to teach the course I had to learn to use a rather complex softwared program, well complex for a non-techie like myself, and I also had to learn to teach over the web with no students in front of me and no face to face interaction.

Thus far I can say that I believe the courses are valuable to perhaps sixty percent of those that enroll. The student needs to be computer savvy, self-disciplined, well organized and dedicated. I have lost about forty percent of each class because, I think, they were none of the above. Those who are seem to be grasping the material and doing as well or better than they would in a lecture class. The online course requires that the student read the material. There are no ways to avoid doing the reading. In lecture classes my students often never read the text but rely solely on the notes they take during lectures and comprehensive reviews prior to tests.

More on online learning later.

I am wondering what others think about the first 100 days of Barack Obama? I taught a class tonight in political philosophy. I was lecturing about the difference between the socialist and libertarian thought as relates to the role of government. I cannot imagine that anyone could watch our President in action and not note the Socialist leanings. Is that all bad. I have my opinion but I could be wrong. Is he leaning in the direction of Socialism? Yes. I am not wrong about that.

What say you?