Obamacare Derangement Syndrome

 

Can we all at least agree that not having access to affordable health care is a bad thing, or does the Tea Party hold a screeching "Up is Down!" position on that, as well?

Let's say not having health insurance, thus not having access to affordable health care, is a thing to be feared. One would be up at nights worrying about the health of ones family, putting off routine tests that could uncover a major issue, use expensive emergency rooms for easily treatable conditions, and risk bankruptcy to pay for it.

And let's say the President, along with health care professionals and other knowledgeable people, comes up with a plan for helping people without insurance. First, some 3 million people aged 21-26 are allowed to stay on their parents' plan. Then the legislation says insurance companies cannot deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions (which could be as irrelevant as an adolescent appendectomy). And also more millions have access when the legislation does away lifetime caps - potentially important for everyone but definitely important to parents of children with chronic conditions who could hit that cap at any time.

The concern for the economic impact of the ACA is pretty rich coming from supporters of both the sequester and the Iraq war. (And anyway, if people weren't spending hundreds a month for health insurance maybe they'd be spending more, maybe consumer confidence might uptick a notch.)

Ah, but listen to me. I'm using logic against Obamacare Derangement Syndrome, a condition that doesn't respond to logic and has no countenance for facts. The whole point of the opposition isn't to create a healthcare system that serves their constituents. That would involve actually sitting down and coming up with a better plan. No, the point of all of the theatre and lies and nonsense is to make PBO look bad. If they have to abort the entire U.S. economy to do so, so be it, because those ignorant, foaming at the mouth Tea Baggers must be catered to. (Funny how that senator overlooked the true "appeasement" taking place when he was waxing lyrical about Chamberlain and Churchchill.)

Either you have a better plan for people getting healthcare insurance or you don't. Hate PBO all you want but at least he has a plan, and isn't cowering behind the apron tails of The Market to fix inefficiencies and chasms the market created in the first place.

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But why all of the animosity, why the sizzling, white hot hatred? PBO won the 2012 handily over an opponent who pledged the repeal the ACA on "Day One." The Tea Partyers and the billionaires behind the scene have had nearly a year to go through their stages of post-election grief, so why the 11th hour drama, why the extortion, why now the pathetic "Push it back a year!" nonsense?

My theory is this: (Almost) Universal access to healthcare fills a certain cohort in this country, a certain demographic, with dread because health, life, and death underscore our common humanity. If you've been raised to believe in differences - racial, gender, religious, orientation, economic - and all of a sudden everyone is getting a benefit - even those people - it will be a blow to your self-image. You might not want to "pool" your health, your life, with people you've kind of looked down upon. " But...but...but, I'm special!" Indeed you are, and if you heaven forbid lose your job or have a preexisting condition you can pool up up with other such people and get an affordable health insurance plan.

As for the billionaires, one can almost see their logic in throwing millions in deceptive ads. If people see government successfully solving a problem, then their "Let's Privatize Everything!" Campaign loses a lot of steam. Maybe we don't need to pimp out our prisons, or education system, our environment to the highest bidder.

Worse of all, if it turns out that people like affordable health care, they might remember the party that tried to stop it with less than kindly favor.

 

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Group Ride with CICLE

The good folks at CICLE (one above, pumping up Carmella) led about a hundred riders on a groovy romp through Cypress Park Saturday morning. The theme - besides fun - was "Made in L.A." I went to the starting point on the Metro Gold Line, easy-peasy. After warming up on some streets and a lovely stretch along the L.A. River we stopped at Grain, a place that makes sort of artisanal, handcrafted surfboards. Even non-surfers could appreciate the quality of their boards, could feel the love that was poured into them.

Then we were off again. The CICLE leader's bike had a boom box attached so we made a lovely racket as we cruised along the neighborhoods. Cypress Park seemed a bit tough, but I'm just going by the number of huge dogs barking angrily behind fences.

Next stop was Kruegermann's pickle factory. The guy was a fourth generation pickle maker, his father having fled East Germany to come to the States. Tough going, according no the son, but the old man managed to hand make the various machines needed to cure the pickles here as they were made in Germany. Free samples and - God bless him - free bottled waters.

The last stop was SWRVE, a bike clothing store that's a cycling hipster's Nirvana. I was all set to splurge there, to shell out $25 or even $30 on a super-cool bicycle graphic tee. Alas, there was nonesuch to be found, at least in the small shop. (I should check their site.) They did have soft fabric blend tees for $40 (solid color, no graphics) and long-sleeved thermal-like shirts for $60. Knee-length bicycling pants went for $125, so skinny I'd be lucky to get my arm in the legs. I slunk out, but upon hearing a woman - let's call her Norma Rae - make an earnest speech bout how the prices only seemed high because we're not used to garment workers being paid a living wage, I slunk back in.

There were some neat bike journals and issues of peloton. There was also a copy of the photography book Paris: Women & Bicycles, which I had just received from mail order the day before. (The photographer is Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles district attorney and father of the new mayor of Los Angeles. Hope the son is pro-bike, too!)

I was kinda grumbling to myself about how s-l-o-w the group was riding, about people half my age getting off their bikes and walking them up slight inclines. Yet when I got home I didn't even get up off the couch or the rest of the day.

Which means it was a good ride, indeed!

 

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Good Cause, with Reservations

This is the review I wrote for Amazon of Salman Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton:

Clever Idea for a "Novel"

What a brilliant premise for a work of fiction! Have a protagonist write a score-settling memoir after having written a novel that gravely offended fundamentalists in a semi-literate, terrorist breeding-ground country. (Man, don't you hate when that happens?) The protagonist valiantly fights the good fight for a righteous cause - in this case, freedom of speech; heck, his right to life - but as the layers are pulled back it's revealed that the protagonist is so vain and clueless and tone-deaf that whole swaths of people who hate censorship as much as he does are turned off. This incenses him almost as much as the religious fanatics' threats. Publishers who chose not to risk their, their family's, or their employees' lives on publishing the (frigging) PAPERBACK edition of the book are never forgiven. Having the Her Majesty's Government giving him round the clock protection is a grave insult. (It was shameful how these [professional, yet probably culturally illiterate, working-class] people talked to him!) No one, he moans, understands LIT-tra-chure, no one realizes the super-duper ultra-important role of the writer. (If occupations could be granted a Pass on douchiness I'd just as soon give it to brain surgeons or pastry chefs, but that's just me.) It's exhausting but fascinating to read, like would be a novel about a Dalai Lama who in private life is an insufferable diva.

But I want to say more. I want to get at why the book was so exhausting-fascinating, Readable-excruciating. I'm against censorship. I'm certainly against death threats. What should it matter if the victim wasn't a sterling character? Why wasn't I sympathetic?

I think I disliked the author for making me ashamed to be a bookworm. For enjoying writing myself.

For him, the world of books isn't just a nice place to visit; it seems a righteous, sacred perch from which to sling stones (a drunken father, not unlike his own, appears in an early novel) and look down upon people. Every time he declares himself to be a Writer he makes the occupation seem less noble, not more. Being a writer seems to be a "license to ill", and not in a good way.

Sometimes he refers to him as a "scribbler", implying a degree of humility that doesn't line up with the pettiness exhibited elsewhere. When his protection team tells him what to do (and really, do they have any choice but to err on the side of caution?) he howls at being spoken to that way. Being under protection meant he didn't have an official, public address in London and therefore couldn't vote. But he read that "even homeless people had been given a special dispensation that allowed them to cast their ballots; but there was no special dispensation for him." (Lovely, that "even".)

But what really makes the smoke come out of his ears is when he asks for and is denied permission for his girlfriend to attend a friend's funeral. Other principals have been allowed such, he countered. The officer told him yes, "but every other principal is performing or has performed a service to the nation. You, in my opinion, have not." Bam! And this from a lowly, unlettered officer who probably doesn't even know about Falalalajin and the the 12th century Hindu poet-mystic tradition or some such!

The treating of women as Kleenex; grumbling when one ex - the mother of his first-born son - asks for money for a house; the index finger circling his ear motion while speaking of the second ex-wife (who has some of the best lines in the book); the summer-long mooch-fests in the States; the la-di-dah dinners with writers one would normally be happy to read about but in the memoir turn into guests you can't wait to leave; the going anywhere to accept every literary prize he's offered (one suspects some awards still have a smear of peanut butter from the kindergarten class that offered them); the name-dropping and schmoozing; no awareness that the notoriety of the book is getting him all of this attention, not nececessarily the book's merits; the leaving wife and two-year old for a greedy model.... No, no, no. That awful whiff of entitlement comes through often in this memoir, and it's no more appealing in a self-proclaimed Serious Writer than it is in a derivatives zillionaire in NYC.

I'm still a bookworm and I still have ideas for writing but I don't want to be a raging, megalomaniacal ass about it. If I ever start to look down on people because I've read a book and they haven't I hope I have enough sense to jump on my bike and let myself be humbled by a few tough inclines.

Actually, a good ride might be a cure for having no sympathy for someone who was in a helluva jam for over ten years.

"Bad Mother" by Ayelet Waldman

"Bad Mother" has many intelligent things to say about the joys and challenges of raising children, of the labor required (and hopeful prayers offered) to see that they become happy, healthy, and whole adults. Also good was the discussion of how society continually presents evil "bogeymamas" (often women who have postpartum depression or a mental illness). We can read of such an unnatural creature and feel nicely smug, totally uninterested in the way that people who supposedly have all of their marbles, like members of congress, do nothing for the benefit and well-being of all the nation's children. Worse still, Waldman says, is the fact that women are the first-formed and loudest chorus of attackers to other women who fall off the ridiculously high Good Mother pedestal.

The tone - the "voice" of the writing was a bit hard, maybe even somewhat annoying, despite Waldman holding the same opinions I have on a number of issues. She pays lip service to realizing how extraordinarily privileged she is, but doesn't take the next logical step of doing something to help mothers who aren't so lucky. It's as if looking down on people who look down on troubled moms and families is the same as affirmatively helping them.

Well, caring for four kids wouldn't leave her time or energy for anything else. And it would never occur to anyone to ask a dad what was he doing for less happy families.

 

 

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Ruby Thursday - The Ojai Valley Trail

 

The bike rental employee had to take my credit card information in case, God forbid, the bike got stolen or banged up, or if I decided to just walk away with it. She had to show me the value of the bike so I could sign off on it. The Specialized "Ruby" road bike, was valued at $2,200. (I've since confirmed the figure online; the upper end of the same line goes for $8,000,)

$2,200. That, of course, would have been the point when a sensible, middle-aged Baptist-raised, now Presbyterian lady would have declined, saying, "You know what? It wouldn't be worth the risk of losing it or mangling it to have to pony up that kind of money, so just give me a beat up, clunky, heavy beach cruiser."

Again, that's what a sensible person would have said. Me? I said, Lets do it.

The bike was a work of art. Gorgeous, two-fingers light, and so anxious to hit the road she was twitching. Just sexy beyond words.

Friends, there's a narrow path, a bikes-only trail from Ventura to Ojai, 15 miles each way. I made a short "let me make sure I know how to brake" loop in front of the shop, made a left off Main Street, another left off Rex, and entered the trail.

Ruby and I were practically airborne.

How rare and wonderful to have the sense of being completely enclosed in nature, far away from the city and its irritations and assaults on ones sensibilities. Here's a glimpse of what it was like here:

 

There were parts of the trail with no one about, but before one succumbed to Dateline-induced fears, you'd see a nice family of riders just ahead, or a sleek group of MAMILS (middle-aged men in lycra, i.e., kitted out serious riders) heading towards you.

Being a bike commuter, I associate riding with dodging cars and trucks and buses, I'm hyper-aware of the chance some idiot thinks zooming along in a thousand pounds of encased steel makes for an excellent time to text or apply mascara or munch a burrito.

Riding along a bikes-only trail is a whole 'neither kettle of fish. Or the absence of fish. The only thing to think about is the ride; everything petty and worrisome just sort of peels off.

I made it to Ojai in about 90 minutes only a tiny bit tired towards the end, had a quick bite to eat (outside table so I could keep an eye on Ruby), and made it back to the bike shop in an hour. I've been collaring strangers telling them about this ride, and Mr. Cockatoo has floated the idea of a ride along the coast. I had never done 30 miles in a day before but it certainly was with the effort.

 

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George Washington - Very Fashionable

The authors of the wonderful book "George Washington's Mount Vernon - A Revolutionary Life" are teaching me more about our country's first president than I ever imagined wanting to know. They paint him as a young man in a hurry, someone quite anxious to become one of Virginia's leading citizens. Washington's order to his tradesman in London for his first military uniform reads like Sargent Pepper meets Michael Jackson, circa Thriller:

...a gold shoulder knot, gold lace, twenty-four inches of "rich gold Embroidd Loops," a "Rich Crimson Ingr[ained] silk Sash," four dozen gilt coat buttons, a hat with gold lace, three and a half yards of scarlet cloth....

This determination to make himself stand out extended to making Mount Vernon, Washington's house on the Potomac, Architectural Digest worthy.  The constant tinkering and overhauls make it seem like Washington was somewhat obsessed with the house which, at most had to fit him, Martha Washington, and Martha's two children from her previous marriage.  The London contact - Colonial America's Amzaon.com - got orders for chairs, for dishes, furniture and so forth, with Washington indicating the items should be of the latest fashion.

While the book does not give the reader a good insight as to what Washington thought about besides homemaking (Gore Vidal once remarked that, unlike Thomas Jefferson, Washington's mind was untroubled by books), we do get an idea of what the first president thought of himself.  When his London tradesman gently mentioned that Washington was carrying a bit of debt he got an epistlatory earfull from the Virginian gentleman:

"[Washington] was surprised someone 'so steady, & so constant as I have provd' would be reminded 'how necessary it was for him to be expeditious in his payments.'"  Then, later, "it is but an irksome thing to a free mind to be any ways hampered in Debt."

One can see Washington standing up to his full height and raising his chin after having written this.

Even before the revolution there was always tension between the colonists and the British.  While fighting with the British militia regiment leader against the French Washington chafed at being outranked by British soldiers.  And later, when the British crown starting imposing taxes and overstepped its authority with the colonists, an aggrieved Washington said the colonists were compelled to assert themselves lest they became

...as tame & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.

So fascinating, this social blindness!  Remember, Washington represented the highest echelon of society in the colonies in general and Virginia in particular.  He had extensive fields for tobacco, the enormous house on the banks of the Potomac, and as bright a future as one could imagine.  But the tax, the nibbling away of his pride by the British, was enough for Washington to cry that such treatment would lead to his enslavement.  Which would be intolerable.

Well, historians have been pondering this stupendous duality in the founding fathers for two hundred years.  Did these altogether intelligent men truly not see that whatever the crown threw at them would be a rainbow of daffodils compared to what the slaves - their slaves- were enduring?

And Washington was by no means a monster.  He kept his word to not sell slaves in a way that would break up families.  Maybe it was merely his own pride, his sense of self, that made him do that but of course many other slave owners had no such hesitation.

As upsetting as it is, as cruelly ironic as it is, the fact remains that the men who fought off British oppression held on fiercely to the notion of slavery being acceptable.

All of which leaves us with the question, What is acceptable today - what is fashionable today - that will make people flinch and recoil two-hundred years from now?

George Washington's Mount Vernon:  At Home in Revolutionary America by Robert F. Dalzell and Lee Baldwin Dalzell

CicLAvia on Wilshire Boulevard - Success!

The mighty Wilshire Boulevard was a no-car zone for the better part of the day Sunday.  Six lanes of bliss, it started from One Wilshire Blvd. downtown and stretched all the way out to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).  Along the way - the DWP handed out free water (maybe an effort at PR - there's been some grumblings about the department's financials), and every cafe, sandwich shop, and eatery was crammed with customers who'se bikes were inelegantly piled outside.

We've had several CicLAvia's now and the consensus is (1) people love them and (2) they give small businesses along the routes their biggest one-day revenues of the year.  Grumpy car people complain about the street closures (just as Cockatoo, a non-runner, complained about the marathon route disrupting the part of the city with the fewest runners), but they can be consoled by it only being one day.  Also, maybe their co-workers will be a little less hard to deal with Monday after a lovely Saturday on their bikes.

On a side note, during my normal bike-commute home we've noticed that at least west of Vermont, the lane next to the curb has been painted BUS LANE.  I looked up at the street sign and saw that during rush hour it's reserve for buses but BIKES OK.  Hello!  A nice, safe lane without malevolent car people trying to pass you and missing you by inches.  Now, we can just glance back once in a while to make sure no buses are coming and pedal on home.  So much better than the sidewalk.  (Which is legal here, if not preferable.)

A win-win.  And was it my imagination that there were more bike-commuters Monday?  Did CicLAvia open a few eyes as to what's possible, even in Los Angeles?