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From Obamacare to don’t care

What must the world think of Americans now since reneging on expanded public healthcare—and once again going alone from what works in every modern nation on earth?  They can think what I’ve come to know: Americans do not like taking care of other people—and by that I mean they only want to take care of themselves and their own families.  In fairness, I may be too hard on my countrymen.  After all, the rest of the world really can’t think of Americans as the unkindest people on earth.  Americans are usually first to donate to world catastrophes like typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and famines.  We probably raise more money and send more tax dollars than any other country in that regard.  Didn’t we practically rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II?  What about all the global goodwill from our Peace Corps volunteers?  Isn’t that the kind of altruism for which the world knows us, holding Americans in the highest esteem, the very best of humanity?

Chaps and spurs

Where did Americans get the idea that everyone should just take care of his own?  Well, from wearing blinders for one thing and never seeing how nonwhite people are treated in our own country and have been mistreated here for centuries: Africans, Native Americans, Asians, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Muslims, Mexicans, etc.  But mostly, I have a hutch, this ideal of proud American self sufficiency evolved during the late 20th century … from watching TV shows like “The Rifleman,” “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Big Valley” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

America is the only country with a cowboy heritage.  And we’ve romanticized our pioneering Western spirit to the point that fiction has become reality in our minds.  None of us, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents really know how life was lived way back when, how men treated women, how parents treated children, how communities of mostly one race and religion treated others who did not fit in physically or socially.  We don’t know why Wyatt Earp hung up his guns in public places.

One thing we can assume is within the hundreds of small rural communities that cropped up across the American Western frontier post Civil War, people cared for one another.  If one family lost their home to a fire, the community probably helped rebuild and donated clothing, food and furniture.  Seems like our kin would have done that.  Seems like that’s what the Good Book tells us to do, to help our fellow man especially in time of need.

Modern times

There are a few reasons why Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost.  One was Obamacare.  Democrats liked it; Republicans hated it.  Universal healthcare, like any policy President Obama tried to create, was blocked by Republicans.  President Obama had to take his healthcare policy all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Court found that health insurance was a right of every American citizen, not just for the gainfully employed.  So, expanded Medicaid was crammed down the throats of every American.  Americans don’t like being told what to do now.

From small business owners to young single adults, millions of Americans did not like Obamacare and its punitive clause to collect money from anyone not insured one way or another.  It did not matter that every single doctor, hospital, pharmaceutical and insurance company, and the entire medical profession supported the new law because it meant healthier people through immediate diagnoses and treatment—and maybe assured salary and career future.

Typical of Americans, the good ol’ days was romanticized as the better situation: when anyone who could afford insurance had it and the rest could just rely on Medicaid—which we all have to pay into anyway.  Self reliance and rugged individualism, that’s what built this country!

T’ain’t true!  What built our country was Americans working together, multicultural Americans working together, being allowed to work together.  Having strong charismatic leaders, more father than friend, and one goal at a time built this nation, made America the greatest place on earth.

The world probably still thinks America is great, probably believes in America more than Americans do themselves these days.  Our history is unique, yes built on self sufficiency and reliability and determination and total liberty.  But our nation was not built on mass disdain toward the down-trodden and underprivileged—the poorest, weakest and sickest among us.  Whatever their demographic number—10 percent, 25 percent, half the nation and more if we include the over-50 crowd—a nation is known for how it treats its own people.  That’s certainly how America judges all the other countries—often why we get involved overseas, to make things right, make a difference, improve the lives of our fellow man.  It’s the American way.

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Marijuana: all together now

Quietly—with little notice or even controversy—Dallas passed a new marijuana law.  Called ‘cite and release,’ the ordinance allows citizens to possess up to four ounces of weed without having to go to jail.  Like, wow.  This blows my mind.  Finally the Man gives a wink/wink to all the people, young and old, who smoke pot … who are never ever going to stop smoking pot … for the past fifty years or so … whether it’s legal or not.

We are seeing nationwide a huge shift in the marijuana debate.  There is no debate anymore.  NORML is normal.  Just breathe, breathe in the air …

It was bound to happen, though I figured it would be rather late in my lifetime.  I remember when Ann Richards was given a hard time by the mass media for not answering the drug question as she ran for Texas governor.  George W. Bush never had to answer the drug question either.  Barack Obama answered and still was elected president twice.  So our nation has changed.  The majority of Americans do not care about this particular drug being illegal anymore.

The ’70s show

You will not believe this but … back at my old suburban high school, there were two outdoor smoking lounges for the students.  Before my arrival, the campus had conducted a big debate and vote to allow a student smoking lounge so kids would stop smoking in the restrooms.  And it worked really well.  Yeah, in my day, the kids who smoked—and they were the cool kids even with subtle coughs and throat clearing and that awful smell on their clothes—would come to class, lay their pack of smokes on top of their desks, and pay attention to whatever subject was being taught.  I’m not kidding.

Of course, along with the leniency toward smoking cigarettes, which were somehow legal for kids to get in those days, (I forget this point; seems like only age 18 and older could buy them, so how were we allowing kids to smoke cigarettes anyway?) came a pushing of the envelope.  On occasion the sweet aroma of marijuana wafted from the teen smoke lounge and intermingled with the Camels and Virginia Slims.  Society forgot that kids push boundaries.  That’s what they do.  That’s what childhood is for.  Society also had forgotten that teen-agers are kids, albeit really big and immature kids.

I guess adults in those days were not going to see past the smoke and mirrors.  Cocaine and heroin were the big drugs that worried parents.  As the kids themselves would say, marijuana is like an aspirin compared to hard drugs.  Then some kids did get hooked, searching for that elusive high and rush from harder drugs.  But overall few who tried marijuana became drug addicts for any lengthy period.

The dance continued until the mid 1980s when the student smoking lounges—did I mention there were two, one for the new freshmen campus—were closed down.  The times had changed dramatically with a full-fledged, alleged war on drugs in America.  Youth were being programmed to just say no to drugs.  But teen life and modern childhood come with a lot of baggage, more so if the kids come from parents who themselves do drugs.  And that scenario was played out in a major anti-drug TV commercial: the one where the father walks into his adolescent boy’s bedroom and confronts him about a shoe box of pot, demanding to know where he learned to do this sort of thing.  “You!” the kid retorts, “I learned it from watching you!”  The father hangs his head and turns sadly in defeat.

Half baked idea

From Woodstock when Jerry Garcia held up a joint and proclaimed “Exhibit A,” police departments cutting out marijuana questions on recruit applications, to all the free-wheeling, pot-smoking, drug-toking movies and rock lyrics and concerts of the past half century, finally the figurative smoke has cleared.  The debate is OVER.  Pot won.  My generation of former high school cigarette and pot smokers must be dancing in the streets.  That is, if we can get off our hind ends without a walking cane.

Medical marijuana is becoming legalized throughout the nation and is recreational in Colorado.  For the past few years, the Texas Legislature has some young elected official who tries to open the marijuana laws only to be shut down by the Old Gray Guard.  But it’s just a matter of time before Texas sees the light, like Dallas.  The majority of the voting public—democrat and republican—do not care about marijuana remaining illegal and especially with a prison sentence.  And our prisons are mostly full of people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

The reason for Dallas City Council’s change of heart to permit a small amount of marijuana without a trip to jail came from listening to minority communities.  A black ministerial alliance had asked for a cite-and-release solution for up to four ounces of weed, explaining how rare it is for black youth—but really many, many people of all ethnicities and ages—to get a break if caught by police for low-level offenses related to, say, driving, no license, no insurance, no registration, and then a bag of weed, too.  If someone’s in jail, that person often loses a job, and many other financial problems follow.  It’s a hole the individual can never escape financially.

The flip side, the law-and-order side, is Don’t Do Drugs.  It’s that simple.  But a society is not at all simple.  There has never been in the course of human history a simple place, a simple time, a simple era.  And societies evolve and change slowly yet radically … especially in the span of fifty to sixty years.

Marijuana may be nothing to go to jail over.  It obviously does not create a violent streak.  The effects of marijuana are not the same as legal alcohol consumption or manufactured illegal narcotics, even prescription drugs.  Some pot smokers may feel the need to try harder drugs and will even spiral into addiction and criminal activity.  But like the old hippies have been trying to tell us since the ’60s: Marijuana grows on God’s green earth for some reason.  What could it be?

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The O’Reilly factor. Figures.

When I was a newspaper reporter, I used to watch Bill O’Reilly every night.  I figured I needed to stay in the know, and his show did present several sides of an issue, at least two sides.  My liberal friends cringed at the thought and asked how I could stand him.  “I don’t like watching him,” I replied. “I like to watch the sparring.”

In the late 1990s, O’Reilly did seem to cover important topics, inviting many liberals to come on his show to debate.  He also had many show biz types like Suzanne Somers who was writing books about nontraditional and holistic cancer treatment.  Being a man, he fawned over her, smiling while discussing her monumental stardom after just one year on “Three’s Company.”  Keeping her hair white blonde didn’t hurt.  Besides, her eyes sparkled, too.

O’Reilly kept his show cool bringing in Republicans from heavy metal bands to Hollywood actors and actresses.  The question always came up about people of their stature turning conservative, usually a quality their fans did not realize or assume.  The answer was the same:  They had traveled the world and seen dire poverty and social injustice.  Their minds were opened to the benefits of capitalism especially in nondemocratic and socialist nations.  O’Reilly smiled, his eyes sparkled in agreement.

Then something happened that turned me off “The O’Reilly Factor.”  George W. Bush was running for president, and O’Reilly appeared to be his number one fan.  Bush would come on the show and unpretentiously say things like, “Why do I need to go talk to Al Sharpton?”  O’Reilly gushed: finally a political candidate unconcerned about political correctness.  O’Reilly had lost his objectivity.

I stopped watching “O’Reilly” every night, catching it occasionally while flipping the channels to see a topic of interest.  What I started noticing especially on Thursday nights was the ‘babes’ he had on to ‘spar’ with him.  These professional women usually were educated attorneys well respected in their fields with specific details on topical and controversial court cases or arrests and could provide insight and maybe a counter to O’Reilly’s societal cynicism.

But I couldn’t get past the visual: the lips, the makeup, the hair, the tight dress, the full bosom, the cleavage.  What’s up with that?  The FOX network came along with shows like “Married with Children” and “The Simpsons” to cater to America’s love of the bawdy and OK maybe the body, the female body.  Somehow this in-your-face sex appeal crossed over into the FOX News division, too.  No other female network newscasters and reporters look or dress like the FOX girls.  There’s a reason.

Oh and somehow FOX News becomes the leader in conservative news.  How can this be?  Just put two and two together.  Or just two.  For all the sizzling hot female correspondents sparring on “the no spin zone,” O’Reilly remained aged and aging, turkey neck in check.  Never a face lift or jowl tightening.  Good thing for him there’s a double standard.

So what I’m saying is a professional woman cannot be taken seriously by men, white or blue collar, when she’s showing her cleavage.  It just isn’t possible.  My God, men are only human!  As much as I would like to blame O’Reilly for sexist jerk comments and boorish behavior—to the tune of millions of dollars in she-said-he-said pay offs—the women have to accept some part.  Sexy is a game we can never win in the real work world.  To my younger sisters who think they can portray themselves as overtly sexy and still be respected for brains and beauty … you can’t fool Mother Nature.

 

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Texas public schools need 21st century spending

I stand corrected: The Texas Legislature IS making a top priority of fixing public school finance.

All right now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work here.  Everything’s on the table, that’s our motto (for now anyway).  Let’s get this thing fixed here and now.  After all, funding our public schools is pretty much required of the state.  Besides, how hard can it be?  It’s just numbers.

So a quick look-see across the internet reveals Texas ranks rather low in funding our public schools compared to big shots like New York and Connecticut and Oregon and Nebraska and dozens more of these United States.  The national average for per-pupil spending is somewhere around $10,700 to $11,841.  Texas ranks 38th as we spend $8,075 to $8,299 per student.  Dallas spends $9,559 per pupil while Brownsville spends $9,815, and out in Sulphur Springs each kiddo is allotted $9,262.

Seems all we need do is get the big picture.  The Texas education budget is $37.4 billion—a whoppin’ fourth of the state’s whole budget pie!  Now, the other thing we need to know is the number of public schools kids.  That’s close to five million, give or take.

Why don’t we just divide the school budget by the number of kids (still) going to our public schools?  No, this can’t be right?  That ends up being $7,480.  Blasted online calculator!  Let’s take these two enormous figures to paper and pencil: 5,000,000 into 37,400,000,000.  Owww, these zeros are making us see crazy!  Brain hurts!  Can’t think!  Let’s just condense this: 5 into 37.4.  We can tack on all those zeros later.  OK, this can’t be right neither: still near $7,000 per little Texan?

Time’s a-wastin’

Texas public school finance has been made up of lots of convoluted mathematical formulas, which for decades ensured kids living in wealthy districts got a better education than kids in poverty.  But that was supposed to have been fixed long ago by the Robin Hood plan to even out per-pupil spending in all Texas school districts.  (Remember the rich districts were to give to the poor, until the biggest cities in the state ended up being on the list of the state’s poorest districts?)  While figuring the figure, federal and local tax dollars kick in, and that might explain how our per-pupil spending is more than $7,000 allotted by our state education budget.  Maybe we’re going about this all the wrong way.  Instead of starting with a pile of money, maybe we should analyze exactly how much it costs to provide a quality education to a kid nowadays—ahem, these days being the 21st century and not the 1900s.

A kid needs highly-educated teachers, and in Texas we are proud to proclaim we still insist our public school teachers be college educated and degreed.  A kid needs to learn reading, writing, math, science, history, computers, health and physical education, and it would be nice to give ’em some arts like music, art, drama, and dance.  A kid needs to eat while spending all day in school, but breakfast and lunch should be covered by federal programs, right?  A kid needs textbooks [as we continue to witness the transformation to online texts, meaning eventually laptops with internet access for every Texas student] for at least twelve years.  And a kid needs quality equipment in science and computer labs as well as gyms and sports and art and music rooms.  And a kid needs a comfortable schoolhouse with heat and air within a consistently maintained and modernized building.

A kid learns best in a clean decent size classroom with subdued wall colors, more blues and off whites, no reds or orange.  Kids learn best in small groups; the Texas elementary school standard of 20 per class is just too many kids.  Kids need to see a nurse about assorted childhood scrapes and illnesses.  Many kids need counseling.  Yes, they do.  Kids need recess or a couple of breaks during the day like any employee in the workforce.  They need clean restrooms with toilet paper, soap and hot water to wash their hands, and operable water fountains.  They need coats in the winter.  They need parents who ensure their kids are at school on time and promptly picked up at the end of the day.  Many kids need tutoring after or before school; they need one-on-one instruction to fully master each lesson less they fall behind.

Kids in school need to learn at their own pace, so that means more staff and teachers instead of less.  They need to have their eyes and ears examined every year as well as checks on their emotional health and physical development.  More health care assistants, nurses and counselors are needed.

Now getting down to brass tacks, Texas students learning English need a lot more assistance especially seeing how we consider this a big problem in need of immediate solving.  Before any learning can take place, we all must agree that classroom discipline is a must.  Student discipline and self control must be the first priority and teachers supported instead of criticized and politicized.  And poor kids—who make up a great deal of our public school student population, if we’re being honest—will always need a leg up.  They need to start school earlier than age 4 or 5.  They need parents who know how to raise kids.  We’re talking even more social programs to gain parental support and trust.  Public schools should be run like private schools where there is no question about the final product: a well-educated student.

So given all it takes to educate a kid in Texas, in the 21st century, to ensure he and she have a chance for a viable future as a productive citizen and by age 18 are ready for college or the workforce, $7,000 or even $10,000 or $11,000 per pupil doesn’t seem near enough, now does it?  It’s an illogical equation in our fast-paced technological evolution where now the year is 2017.  When it comes to spending on a kid’s education, there’s no time to waste.

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So long Charles Manson, so very long

Charles Manson’s not feeling well these days.  Sniff, sniff.  The infamous lifer guilty of mass murder was moved from his prison cell to an undisclosed hospital.  At long, long last, maybe society will finally be rid of this notorious sociopath.

 

For almost fifty years, Charles Manson has remained so well known he’s like an uncle in prison.  Because of him, much has been debated on the nature-versus-nurture theory in child development: Would Charlie have turned out the same if he had come from a loving home, or is he indeed proof of a born sociopath?  With several books and autobiographies, TV movies and news magazine specials, interviews, articles, websites and perpetual interest, Charles Manson’s life and crimes are like a tattoo on our society—perhaps never to be removed.  Even his heroes the Beatles commented on him back in the day.  (John was more sympathetic; George was not.)

 

Did you know that Manson and the attorney who prosecuted him were born the same year, in 1934?  Prosecutor and defendant—clean-cut suit with college, unkempt hippie with prison smarts—were the same age during the trial.  Vincent Bugliosi was always available to comment on Manson through the decades until his own death a few years ago.  Sharon Tate’s mother, a physical presence at every parole hearing, also passed away.  Alas, Manson and his aging girls live on behind bars.  Originally after their collective trial, they had received the death penalty in California.  But that punishment was later deemed cruel and unusual in our society.  That was during the liberal ’70s when even the likes of heinous murderers, though never forgiven, were going to be treated in the manner of a loving society.  Life without parole was considered fair and just.

 

A lot more vicious crimes have occurred since 1969, back when some hippies on a hot August night went on a senseless rampage of carnage not once but twice, leaving blood-smeared taunts and warnings at the police and society.  More discreet mass murderers roamed free in the decades to follow—each news account a revelation that scared us, mostly women, out of our wits.  Nowadays no one sleeps with the windows open and doors unlocked, and those who can afford it place a premium on home safety by adding dogs and alarm systems.  Manson and his creepy crawlies had a lot to do with ushering in these commonsense changes in the American home.

 

Another decade or so after the Manson trial, the death penalty was restored as being perfectly sound in the case of certain kinds of murders.  These crimes had to meet criteria such as involving a child or police officer and taking place during another offense such as burglary or rape and being particularly gruesome.   In the past decade, Texas boasted the number one killer of capital offenders.  And more of the condemned were black than white.  Once upon a time, lethal injection was deemed a viable solution that lets the punishment fit the crime without offending society’s growing inclination against other forms of execution.  As the years rolled on, however, we became increasingly aware of many men in prison who were proven innocent through DNA.  So now, like the ’70s, society is questioning the death penalty, and many states already have banned it—because it stands to reason some who died in the death chamber were innocent.

 

I am against the death penalty and support life in prison.  A lifelong prison sentence is exactly how some murderers should pay for taking one or more human lives.  We have to pay more money to provide lifers with housing, food, health and education.  But doing so reflects a society’s clear conscience.  I am a product of the ’70s after all, having grown up knowing about Manson and the murders and his commuted sentence from death to life in prison.  So I shed no tears about Charlie or any mass murderer spending the rest of his life in prison—even if living to be 100.  We have all the time in the world.