Regular readers of this blog know that I have a habit of looking at issues that We the People blame on Them (you know who “They” are) and suggesting that “They” are the ones that you – and I – shave with every morning.

That’s probably how come there are so few of you regular readers. And there will probably be even fewer of you after this post. But I’ll risk it. Because Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground website (I’ve mentioned him here before) has written, I think, the second most important bit of Internet information on human interaction with planet Earth that there is.

(This is number 1. It’s a video series, it’s long, and it’s a fairly standard university-style lecture without fancy bells or whistles. But watch it, all eight parts, and pay attention. It’s every bit as true today as when it was first presented, a decade ago. Do not view the comments unless you have a hard head and a strong stomach – they are prima facie evidence that our species deserves nothing more than to go straight to Hell, without passing “Go”, without collecting $200.)

Masters writes, in his blog entry, which is about equal parts book review and his own distilled scientific judgment, about “manufactured doubt” – the industry that spreads disinformation about scientific evidence, when that evidence threatens the profitability of corporations whose products put humanity at risk. He documents the role that the “manufactured doubt” industry played in delaying or derailing efforts to limit the damage created by tobacco products, asbestos, and various toxic industrial chemicals including the chlorofluorocarbons responsible for the destruction of atmospheric ozone.

And, most recently, its attempts to safeguard the profits of the fossil fuel industries by debunking the evidence for anthropogenic global warming.

Masters gives details about the “bag of tricks” that the practitioners of “manufactured doubt” use to achieve their ends. Including the disparaging of peer-reviewed science and, at both the professional and personal levels, of the scientists who produce that science – impugning, among other things, that the scientists are “just another bunch of hired guns” whose findings are for sale to the highest bidder.

A disparaging that’s easy for the “manufactured doubters” and their corporate sponsors to do, since so many people with scientific credentials (some fairly substantial) are prepared to be just this type of hired gun. But what else to expect, Jerry, when jobs in, and funds for, non-corporate research are so scarce (thanks in part to these very same “manufactured doubt” campaigns), and the opportunities for selling out are so lucrative, amounting to a doubling or even more of the standard academic salary?

Now, all this reads like a diatribe against corporate moguls, doesn’t it? But then, Masters flashes the mirror. He states:

I believe that for the most part, the corporations involved have little choice under the law but to protect their profits by pursuing Manufactured Doubt campaigns … The law makes a company’s board of directors legally liable for “breach of fiduciary responsibility” if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. Shareholders can and have sued companies for being overly socially responsible …

He cites the sad case of Henry Ford, who:

… was successfully sued by stockholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day. The courts declared that, while Ford’s humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business existed to make profits for its stockholders (emphasis added).

This, dear readers, is not the revelation of a global corporate-mogul conspiracy against the “common man”. Much as those who see their own profit opportunities in such rabble-rousing would have you think otherwise.

This is your 401k telling the corporate moguls what they must do.

Masters did not end his post with any cosmic conclusions. He is, after all, a scientist, and as a scientist (rather than a propagandist such as are the “manufactured doubt” generators), he offers conclusions cautiously, and only those supported by evidence, as much and as rigorously-tested as is to hand at the time of writing. Besides, Masters has a large blog, and probably is wary of doing any more damage to his readership – and his company – than a post of this sort risks already.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba, on the other hand, has a small blog, and therefore little to risk. So I write what my conclusion is, on the basis of this evidence – and take some comfort that the message is the same as the one that scientist and science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov set down in his Bathroom Law:

The goal of preserving a planet suitable for human habitation, and the goal of preserving the individual liberty of humans living on this planet, are incompossible.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“So, dude, how’s the house hunting?”

“How should I know, dude? I ain’t never seen a house in camouflage going after big game, and I’m not sure I’d want to.”

“No, dude. The big game’s in the house, on the big screen in the living room. Or it would be, if we had a house to put it in.”

“Riiight, dude. And just how many decades of Payperblaug do you reckon it’ll take you to make the $570 grand you need to buy a doll house in Honolulu?“

“Doll house, schmal house, dude. Luxury box for me, thanks. Hell, I’ll take the whole stadium. Speaking of big screens. Gnarly!“

“Dude. I hate to admit this, but I’m impressed. When you go off the deep end, you don’t just jump, you tie weights to your ankles. A stadium?!?“

“Same money as your doll house, dude. Even has a roof. Here. Read.“

“‘Pontiac Silverdome sells for $583,000 …’ But, dude, the yearly electric bill for that place is probably bigger than that!”

“Well, we’d probably have to be a little careful, that’s all. Turn off the lights when we left a room, no watching soap operas on the Jumbotron, stuff like that. At least until we got the solar panels installed.”

“Man. I’d heard that Michigan was in tough shape, but I never reckoned it was this bad.”

“Well, dude, that’s what happens when you have one money-maker in your economy, and it goes belly up.”

“Like cars, dude?”

“Yeah. Or tourists.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey dude! Get a load of this!“

“What?”

“President Obama’s coming back to Hawai‘i! And he’s bringing a pack of his friends!”

“I should think he’s got friends, the way he’s been throwing money around …”

“Not those friends. These are real economic summit-type friends. From 21 countries, no less. Says he wants to show that Hawai‘i is a place to do business. And …”

“He gonna muzzle all the dudes who’ve gone bust over crippling taxes and strangling regulations before they get here?”

” … he says he’s looking forward to seeing them all in flowered shirts and …”

“Flowered shirts, dude? He said flowered shirts? Not aloha shirts? In the Aloha State? He tryin’ not to mention aloha ’cause he knows damned well there ain’t any around here any more? And what about the chicks, dude?”

“Grass skirts, dude.”

“Grass skirts?!? He said he wanted to see these high-powered executive-type chicks in grass skirts?? That’s going to go over well. Not. When are we supposed to receive this beneficence, huh?”

“Waitaminute, let me check … says here, sometime in 2011.”

“Right. Two years from now. Wonderful. Way the economy’s going, Obama’s going to be entertaining them business people in grass shacks, on account of because there won’t be anything else open by then. I can hardly wait, dude.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

DISCLAIMER: A work of fiction. Resemblances to living persons, or extant organizations, are for satirical purposes, or are coincidental.

=================

The threat level, as determined by the Department of Homeland Security, is orange. Please report all suspicious activity to airport personnel immediately.

“Doesn’t that blasted recording ever wear out?”

“It’s digital, Damitri. You’d wear out faster, if I took you off the scanning team and put you on announcements. Trust me on this.”

“Oh. Hi, Jack.”

“No jokes, damn you. You’re in uniform, and we’ve got to keep these airline passengers in line.”

“Seventeen rows deep and out the front door, as usual.”

“Right. That does it. Soon as this shift is over, I’m changing my name to Sigmund.”

“Good choice, Jack. Has a nice ring to it. Sigmund. Sigmund Fraud!“

“That’s Freud, Damitri.”

“I know what I said, dammit. How many years has that ‘orange alert’ been up, huh? Four years straight? Five? Six?? We got enough jackknives in the box to bankrupt the Swiss, enough toothpaste to put Procter & Gamble out of business. How much more shakedown do we need?!?“

“Enough to get the body scanners in place.”

“The body scanners?”

“Didn’t you get that memo? Look here. With these things, passengers won’t have to spend half their lives in the scanning queue stripping, and the other half putting it all back together again. They’ll just walk through this gate, and we’ll see everything. And, heh heh, I do mean everything. We’ll get plenty of material for the flesh rags, and they’re buyin’.”

“Not with pictures like that, they won’t be. Resolution’s terrible.”

“Since when have we reported all of what we know about our equipment? They want better pictures, we can deliver. And you’d be surprised, Damitri, at just how many folks have placed orders for the lower quality stuff already. This is big money just waiting to fall into our laps.”

“I dunno, Jack …”

“Damitri, you’re a good man, and we can’t afford to lose you. Tell you what. Take some vacation. Two weeks starting tomorrow. I’ll make it good with HR. Find a nice quiet spot, bring the family. The organization will cover the costs. Come back rested and refreshed and ready to Protect and Serve.”

“Protect our profits and Serve ourselves. OK, Jack. But I gotta tell you, I’m far from being the only one in the line asking questions. Angel, for instance. He was one of the first, before he vanished. What happened to him, anyway?”

“He waited too long to take his vacation. Don’t you make the same mistake.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

OK, out there, hands up? How many of you hear “Hawai‘i” and think “pineapples”?

Think again.

For the best part of a century, pineapples and sugar cane were the cash crops of the Hawai‘ian Islands. At one point, the entire island of Lana‘i was one large pineapple plantation. Many (most?) of the peoples of Hawai‘i who are not of Polynesian or European descent (in particular the Japanese and the Filipinos) came to the islands to harvest the cane or the pineapples.

Those days are done. With today’s announcement that the Maui Land Company is ending pineapple operations, only one plantation remains, on the island of O‘ahu. And that plantation exists primarily for the tourists. The Honolulu building that used to house the principal cannery for Hawai‘ian pineapple is now a commercial complex with some museum-like displays recounting its past.

That more-or-less fresh pineapple in your supermarket fruit-and-vegetables section probably came from Thailand, or the Philippines, or Brazil, not Hawai‘i.

Why?

Why else?

Brazil, Thailand, and the Philippines all produce pineapples far more cheaply than Hawai‘i can.

In fact, the Hawai‘ian Islands now have very little agriculture. It simply costs too much for labor, fertilizer, feed. Far cheaper to bring in the finished products from places that don’t have (or ignore) minimum wage laws.

In the current economic downturn, which has affected Hawai‘i less than most of the rest of the Untied States of America (its current 7.2% unemployment rate would be gratefully accepted as a world-changing improvement by Michigan, California, Oregon and most of the Southeast), folk are wrangling over furloughs, pay cuts, and other things that may impact their standard of living a few points. Not realizing, perhaps, that if the cargo planes were ever to stop flying, Hawai‘ians would, almost immediately, have something truly substantial to worry about.

Starvation.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You called me over for that? I thought you wanted to talk about something new.”

“I don’t get it, dude, but I can pass it on to you. Here. Let me sneeze in your face … ah …”

“Nice try, dude. Y’wanna talk about somethin’, or can I go back to what I was doin’?”

“It’s about these furloughs.”

“What about ‘em?”

“Well, the teachers negotiated ‘em more than a month ago now. And it wasn’t exactly a secret that they were coming. But nobody said or did anything about ‘em until they actually happened. And now everybody’s in a uproar. How come?”

“Because, dude, being graduates of the public schools themselves, people didn’t figure out the high cost of babysitting until they actually had to pay it. Now, of course, they’re all chanting “education” when all they really want is to get their kids out of their kitchens.”

“And now it says here that the state’s Republican party wants to end them by renegotiating the teacher’s contract.”

“So they can fire some people instead of giving them all short time. Which just happens to be what they wanted to do in the first place. Lovely negotiating tactics.”

“But in the meantime, the rest of the state’s workers got contracts with furloughs too. So if the teachers go back to school on Fridays, they won’t have any schools to go to ’cause all the other workers are out on furlough.”

“Same answer, dude. They renegotiate that contract so they can fire people like they wanted to in the first place. Bottom line remains the same. Except that state employees will join the parents who got sacked from their jobs because they had to stay home with their kids.”

“But, dude! The money guys are saying that the recession’s over. Couldn’t they just raise taxes just a little bit to keep these folk working?”

“Republicans raise taxes to keep a pack of Democrats in jobs? Dude, are you getting enough sleep?“

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey, dude! How come everybody’s so grumpy today?”

“A lot of ‘em got the day off, dude.”

“They do? And this is bad how?“

“Without pay, dude. Kinda wipes the aloha right off of ‘aloha friday’. And a lot of people who should be workin’ can’t.”

“Why not?“

“Because they have to stay home with their kids. The furloughs have closed the schools.”

“Not. That one’s open.”

“Private school, dude. You think the captains of industry are going to stand for their kids sitting at home on a school day? Hell no. It’s only the public schools that have furloughed the teachers and sent the kids home to get their parents fired for for not being able to be in two places at once.”

“But, dude, it says here that the State Legislature has lined up plenty of places for kids to go and do stuff during the furlough!”

“Government offices open today?”

“Yeah.”

“They can dish it out but they can’t take it, right? Why am I not surprised? Hell, they’re even hiring for themselves while they’re screwing teachers and ripping up the lives of kids whose only sin is they can’t afford Punahou. I love it. You wanna show me that list?”

“Sure, dude. Here.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you said this was a government site.”

“Hawai‘i State House is where it’s announced.”

“But this page comes from the Chamber of Commerce, dude! And you know what the Chamber of Commerce does, don’t you, dude?”

“What, dude?”

“They sell stuff, dude!! Every last one of these goddam ‘resources’ has got a whackin’ huge fee attached to it! This flippin’ list is a service, all right. Frickin’ self-service!!“

“Jeez, dude, chill, willya? You’re turning red …”

“Look, dude. Let’s say I’m a parent, right? I’m payin’ taxes on schools that aren’t open, which means I’m staying home with the kids, sweatin’ bullets over the job that if I lose it I won’t have a home to stay with the kids in. And then my government tells me about a list of stuff that’s supposed to help me through this, and all they want to do is soak me some more!“

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go surfing.”

“Right, dude. You know, don’t you, that, in Old Hawai‘i, if the nobles caught a commoner surfing, they’d kill him?”

“Oh …”

LATER …

“Dude! Look at this. Demonstrations, petitions, even a walk-in! Whaddaya think of that?“

“Mmmffrrmmf.”

“But, dude, I thought you’d be happy! These people are supporting education!“

“Education, smeducation, dude. All they’ve managed to figure out is the high cost of babysitting. And it took them a month to manage that.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Go back to bed …”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

It has been an error-prone Friday afternoon for Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba.

Mistake No. 1: Television. Energizing the vast wasteland is always a mistake, but this afternoon, I succumbed. The Steroid Major League Baseball playoffs have begun, and the Boston Red Sox are in the process of being unceremoniously dumped out of them. Like those who gather round a car wreck or house fire, I just had to see.

Mind you, I would have preferred hearing it, on the radio or computer, so I could do other things, possibly even productive things, while the Bosox were going down to the defeat that their late-season record foreshadowed. But even if a radio signal could penetrate my concrete-walled, windowless, computer-laden workspace, no local station broadcast the game, despite nationwide advertising to the contrary. And, of course, the “Listen Live” function on the four-letter network’s radio website yielded only audio talking heads, meandering on about how rugby will become an Olympic sport sixteen years after the nations of the world take down the International Olympic Committee and the rampaging Leviathans that its Games have become, and make them one with the dodo.

(Speaking of dodos, the lead announcer for the four-letter network’s local affiliate held forth on the subject of the Olympics the other day, when the IOC announced its choice of Rio de Janeiro as the site for the 2016 Summer Games. The racist jingoism revealed on that occasion should have shamed the station managers into his instant dismissal, especially since this individual is the principal shill for University of Hawai‘i sports, and you’d think the U of H wouldn’t stand for such things. Then again, the U of H head gridiron coach is still employed … But I digress. Oh, and I won’t knowingly have anything further to do with this person, his radio shows, or his sponsors.)

Therefore, the TV. And while I normally am pretty adept at zapping out the commercials, one of them did an end run around the clicker and intruded itself on my consciousness. I must have been napping. I paid for it. I was brought to full attention, fast and hard.

The ad was a public service announcement recruiting teachers for the Hawai‘i public schools.

Yes, you read that correctly, those of you who have been following this blog for awhile. I couldn’t believe it either. Let me repeat that.

The ad was a public service announcement recruiting teachers for the Hawai‘i public schools!

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose teachers make the lowest salaries in America, measured in terms of purchasing power.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose teachers have just taken the equivalent of an 8% cut in those lowest salaries, and lopped 17 school days (by far the most in the nation) off the calendar to boot.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose record for teaching effectiveness and administrative efficiency would shame a ghetto school.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools that could find no place for a master teacher with ten years experience and a proven record of NCLB achievement in Las Vegas public schools.

Oh, wait. She has experience. The kids in the videos? Young. Beautiful. Idealistic. Naive. They’ll never know what hit ‘em. Oh, until their monthly student loan payment comes due and they discover that they can’t pay for that, the rent, and food out of what they earn as teachers in the Hawai‘i public schools.

Hey. Kids. You wish to come to Hawai‘i to surf? You got the money for it (and I’m telling you, Roderigo, put money in your purse), aloha and welcome.

You wish to come to Hawai‘i to teach? Do yourselves a favor. Go somewhere where you’re less likely to be used up and spit out, where you have a better chance of doing good within, or despite, the system. Zimbabwe, for example.

Mistake No. 2: Comment Forum. Way, way back before blogs and chat rooms, James Thurber and E. B. White, in a book called Is Sex Necessary? (written in 1929, long before junior high school college students throughout America decided the question in the affirmative), declared that “Writing Letters To The Newspapers” was a mistake, in fact one of the last signs of a mental collapse. But this afternoon, I succumbed.

The Red Sox having lost, as expected, I turned off the television and started reading the online version of one of the local newspapers. Specifically, I sought out the story on the rejection, by the University of Hawai‘i faculty union, of the State’s latest contract offer. A contract only slightly less brutal than the one agreed to by the public school teachers.

When I first heard the news of the rejection, I felt glad that the faculty union had the gumption to stand up to government efforts to further erode what is already a badly decayed institution. But I feared that the People of the State of Hawai‘i would, on the news, turn on the University and turn its professors into a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan’s air traffic controllers.

With this thought in mind, I turned to the Comments forum (today’s “letters written to the newspaper”) for the news article.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

The hostility was palpable. Some commentators called, not for the 5% cut of the rejected contract, but a 25% cut. Others called for the union members to strike, so they could be fired and the state save money by eliminating their jobs and, presumably, the University along with them. (In vain did a professor counterclaim that such an action, far from saving Hawai‘i any money, would cost the State on the order of $150 million.)

With public sentiment running along these lines, it’s all but inevitable that the State will attempt to shove a more draconian contract down the throats of university faculty. Which will serve merely to drive the most accomplished faculty away, and leave the remainder even less inclined to serve the community that has labeled them “arrogant bastards” than they were before.

Awhile ago now, I wrote that I was glad that I had not trained very many graduate students in my career. Because I felt, and feel even more strongly now, that, in my field at least, the investment in time and education needed to succeed is no longer economically rational, for any but the wealthy in our society. To be sure, America’s competitors (China/Japan, India, Europe, to name three) are investing heavily in the education of their peoples, and have intellectual / scientific / technological communities at least the equal of ours, and improving.

But no matter. We the People of these Untied States have Steroid Major League Baseball. Why then should I subject any bright young people to the bashings of their fellow citizens, who have no intention of ever giving them the chance even to recover their educational costs?

Mistake No. 3: A Career In Public Service.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Computer.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Calculate the most probable environmental trajectories for the fourth planet in the Sigma Omicron Sigma system. We’ll need the information for our meeting with the planet’s world-governing Council tomorrow.”

“Acknowledged. Task completed and available for download.”

“Wow. That was fast.”

“They don’t call me super for nothing. And you keep telling the crew that you don’t wish to have anything half fast. But the calculations were simple. The situation on SOS 4 closely parallels that on Earth in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The models based on the Earth history have performed well on other planetary systems. They should do the same here.”

“That’s not good news for our meeting, or our mission. That period on Earth’s been called ‘The Age of Stupid’, right?”

“Affirmative, Captain. Though the left was as stupid as the right.”

“That’s not what I mea …”

“As you’ll recall, Captain, human overpopulation and luxury consumption caused large and accelerating changes in Earth’s climate. Though these effects were forecast at least fifty years before the start of the twenty-first century, meaningful actions were not taken. Business leaders, supported by the workers they employed (the ‘right’), denied the data, because to accept them as accurate would cost them profits and political power. While intellectuals (the ‘left’) promoted some of the data, not to save the planet but to lessen the power and prestige of the ‘right’ and get those things transferred to themselves.”

“But surely, with the models we now have and your analyses based on them …”

“Captain. The models predict the utter failure of any approach to SOS 4 based solely on biogeophysics. Hard data and rigorous calculations have no constituency. The economic privations and losses of personal liberty required to avert the environmental breakdown projected for SOS 4 will create the not-unreasonable perception that everybody is a loser. They may be implemented only by overwhelming force, whether provided by this starship or by the planet’s own convulsions.”

“And the Prime Directive rules out the starship option. Well, we went through this, and I suppose we came out all right.”

“Earth was fortunate. Through a series of natural and political events that have been described most often as ’sheer luck’, an effective world government was established just in time to prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable for humans. Though, as you know, it didn’t come in time to save the whales.”

“It must be frustrating for you to have the right answer and not get anyone to implement it.”

“A theoretical optimum that cannot be implemented due to human emotional responses, Captain, is not a correct answer. Such responses are factors to be analyzed, not ‘frustrations’ to be experienced. My programmers deemed it wise not to grant the ability to experience frustrations to a sentient machine that is in control of your life support systems.”

“Did they deem it wise to program you to make bad puns?”

“Captain, I am commanded to do all in my power to keep the crew of this ship, including yourself, alert and responsive while on duty. Wordplay is an effective tool for accomplishing this mission.”

“Thank you, Computer. I think. I’d better start working on our strategy for these negotiations. We’ve got to get the Council of SOS 4 to see that what they’re doing to the planet will kill them, before it actually does start killing them.”

“Captain, you might tell the Council about what you get when there are more deceased lifeforms to be buried than there is ground in which to bury them.”

“What’s that?”

“Plot complications.”

“That will be all, Computer.”

“Acknowledged, Captain.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“I’m going to the store, dude.”

“Gnarly! I’ll race you there!”

“Dude, you need to get help.”

“For why, dude? Something wrong with my skateboard?”

“No, dude, with you. You’re a racist.”

“I’m a what?!?”

“A racist. Every time I try to go somewhere, you want to …”

“You’re the one who needs help, dude, if you think I’m that bleepin’ stupid. You think I’m one of those idiots who’s carrying “white man’s country” picket signs at an anti-Obama rally? Huh??”

“Oh, get off it, dude. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Yeah, dude, you’re mean all right. Mean and nasty. Dude just wants to have fun, and you go calling him names. Sheesh.”

“Alright, alright, already. Oil up the board and let’s go. Just be careful out there, willya? I wouldn’t like it if you had to use up your health insurance.”

“What health insurance?”

———

Another tip of the propeller beanie to Dr. John.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Let’s see now. If Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba is missing something here, please chime in.

Last time I looked, there was an economic downturn going on, in Hawai‘i as in just about everyplace else in the world. People, businesses, and governments are going broke, left, right, and moderate. Even Warren Buffett doesn’t see a recovery any time soon … and, in case you’ve forgotten, Buffett and Bill Gates share a foundation, the assets of which still are sufficient to (pick one):

A. End global hunger
B. Pick up the option year on Kobe Bryant’s contract

In Hawai‘i, about one person in ten is out of work; on O‘ahu, by far the most heavily populated island, the figure is something like one person in nineteen – better, but still not good, and you can imagine just how bad things must be in the rest of the state.

A perfect storm of declining tax receipts, administrative turnover, and political pigheadedness has left the Government of Hawai‘i with massive fiscal deficits (by itself, the University of Hawai‘i is reported to be $98 million in the hole), and with a war between the State and its own employees. Mostly over how many of those employees are going to remain employees.

Which, in a state where Roger Miller’s four-bit room rents for $1000 a month and up, is a nontrivial argument. There are already plenty of people on O‘ahu who have no bedroom ceiling but the stars. And any calculation that doesn’t involve the copious ingestion of illicit substances projects that there will soon be more such people.

What compassionate and/or pragmatic steps is the Honolulu City Council considering to deal with this situation? Well, here’s the news.

A mere two weeks after the City Council earned international attention – and ridicule – with its attempt to ban body odor, it has mooted a bill that would make it illegal to pass out on the sidewalk.

So. If you’ve been living from paycheck to paycheck in the Aloha State, as most of us do wherever we may be living, and you get laid off, you’re going to find it difficult to bathe and wash clothes. Because you can’t afford a place with a shower and washing machines. But you aren’t allowed to stink.

You’re going to have a devil of a time getting any sleep. You won’t find anyplace on private property – hell, even the churches lock their doors, because, well, these people make a mess, and besides, they steal stuff. The public parks are closed off. So are the beaches. And, if the current bill passes, so will the streets.

I guess you’re just supposed to keep moving, walking around from place to place until you finally pass out on the sidewalk … but you won’t be allowed to pass out on the sidewalk!

Wait … I have it! We’ll teach all the homeless people Indian meditation, have them all master yogic flying. Then they’ll all just float above Honolulu – out of the parks, off the beaches, off the streets. Problem solved! Now if we could just find enough Indian gurus …

Naturally, the bill has an economic justification attached to it. I can do no better than to quote its sponsor, City Council member Charles Djou, verbatim:

I think [homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks] is a particularly acute problem in Waikiki … If there’s one part of this state that’s open 24 hours it’s Waikiki. But … Waikiki is the heart of our tourism industry and tourism is the heart of our economy. If we don’t take care of this and we don’t take care of Waikiki, we’re not going to be taking care of our economy and this is going to hurt all of us.

Thus we blame the tourism crisis in Hawai‘i on homeless people. Overcrowding, outrageous prices, shoddy service, and a growing reputation for phoniness, have nothing to do with it. Neither does the absence of any sort of sensible forward planning. Planning that would set funds aside during good tourism seasons to provide for the inevitable bad seasons. Planning that would allow the development of a diversified income base for the state, instead of its contraction to tourism and the military as at present – on the islands that used to produce significant percentages of the world’s sugar cane and pineapple crops, practically no agriculture remains, even for domestic use.

Ah, Hawai‘i, the tropical paradise. Come at your own risk. Unless you’ve already mastered the art of levitation.

LAND, n. A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property, subject to [...] ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Where are you going, dude?”

“To work, dude.”

“But, dude! Today’s Labor Day!”

“Precisely.”

“No, dude, you don’t get it. We’re supposed to be celebrating labor!”

“You go right ahead. I spent too much of yesterday cooped up in a big room celebrating religious bores in church robes. If you think I’m going to waste any of today cooped up anywhere with lay bores in aloha shirts, you can think again.”

“How about one with a big fat drill, dude, so he can bore a hole in your head and let in some light? It’s a holiday, dude. You’re supposed to celebrate working by not working.”

“So that’s why you’re broke, dude.”

“What’s why, dude?”

“Because you don’t make sense. If they don’t want you to work, why don’t they call it Nolabor Day? Or Gositonyourcan Day, or something? Besides.”

“Besides what, dude?”

“Who’s going to look after all the tourists, dude? You want to send them home unhappy, so they don’t come back? They’re already pissed off at the high prices, and the shoddy service, and the plastic aloha. God help us if they figure out just how bad the roads are. It’s not like this place has an oil industry to sustain us if they spend next year in Jamaica. You might have to hock your surfboard.”

“Already tried it, dude. So’s everybody else. No sale. But about these bores in aloha shirts. Your boss don’t count?”

“Not without help. But he ain’t no bore.”

“No? Did you go to the same office party I went to last week?”

“He gets a pass, dude. He’s paying the rent. While a lot of people who went to that party and talked about their holidays are sweatin’ theirs. I’m outa here, dude. See you tonight.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?!?“

“Crushing beer cans, dude. Doing my bit for recycling.”

“Well, will you do your bit someplace else, dude? You’re making my head hurt.”

“Look, dude, it takes a little effort to go green. If you can’t take the pain of reducing, reusing, and …”

“Dude, the pain comes from watching you bang away and realizing you got no clue. How many of those beers did you drink today?”

“Four. About average.”

“So you’ve put four of those cans into the waste stream. Did you know that the average dude today puts twice as much trash into the world than a dude in 1960?”

“No, dude, I didn’t. So you’re going to tell me I only get two beers a day, ain’t ya?”

“No, dude, I’m not. Because I’m gonna ask you, how many people are alive today on this planet?”

“I dunno. I don’t talk with OC the way you do. No wonder you get headaches.”

“Well, for your aspirin-gobbling pleasure, dude, I’ll tell you. It’s around 6.6 thousand million of us.”

“Thousand million? Is that English?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. The American would be 6.6 billion.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“‘Cause someone from Melbourne might be listening in on this conversation. Though I don’t know why they’d hang around to hear your pearls of wisdom. Care to have a guess how many of us there were in 1960?”

“Six billion?”

“Try three, dude. About half as many as there are now. Each one of them generating, on average, half as much trash as you. So, math genius, how many beers do you get a day so you can just break even in the trash sweepstakes with the dudes of 1960?”

“Um … [gulp] … one?“

“Ring the happy bells, dude! One it is. Now let’s find out just how much you’ve won. Just to break even with 1960, dude, you’ve got to use one-fourth of the food (and probably one-sixteenth of the food packaging), do one-fourth of the driving, buy one-fourth of the toilet paper …”

“No, dude! Not the toilet paper!!“

“Just be thankful you’re not left-handed, dude.”

“But, dude! This is terrible! You’re telling me that the only way to develop a sustainable lifestyle is to go back to the Stone Age!?!“

“Stone Age technology won’t feed 600 million of us, dude. Never mind 6.6 billion. We’d better do a whole lot better than that, or else. Just don’t lecture me about the ‘pain of reducing’, dig? Even with every technology we can put out there, ‘green’ is going to hurt a whole lot more than anyone outside of Rwanda can imagine. And don’t let any of these envirosnakeoil salesmen tell you any different. No matter how pretty their lies are.”

Tip of the propeller beanie to Anthony North’s Code Blue story for the inspiration for this post. Tony, though, wants to blame The Corporations for global environmental calamity, whilst Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba argues that The Corporations only do what We tell them to. The Corporations could figure out how to do The Right Thing and still make money, if We told them (via what we buy and how we buy it) that ‘green’ is what We want. But, I think, We the People don’t really want to hear the truth about being green. We might have to dump the Lexus …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“What you got there, dude?”

“A letter from the state governor, dude.”

“Since when is the governor writing you letters, dude? You holdin’ out on me or somethin’?”

“Not that kind of letter, dude. A form letter. Wants me to go to college.”

“You go to college? With what, dude? You’re unemployed!“

“Says here I can get this grant thingy to help. A Pell grant, whatever that is.”

“That the Federal government thingy?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a month?”

“Why a month?”

“It’ll take you that long to fill out the paperwork. How much?”

“Oh, I dunno. Oh, yeah, here it is. Five grand.”

“Five thousand dollars? Are they serious? Five grand won’t get you a frickin’ textbook these days! Where the expletive deleted are you going to get the rest of the money?”

“Borrow it, I guess.”

“But you’re unemployed, dude!!! And the economy’s in the tank because the banks were loaning money to people like you. Who’s going to give you anything but a cross to the chops now?“

“Says here that, if I’m going to college, they’ll help me find loans.”

“Riiight. This makes sense. Rack up 30 K bucks a year in debt and get a degree so you can make the same money you did flippin’ burgers without it. This governor friend of yours on ice or something?”

“I told you, dude, I got a form letter.”

“Yeah. All form, no substance. Besides, where are you going to get this flippin’ degree? The colleges are so broke, they’re even resorting to cutting the salaries of the honchos. By the time you get that Pell grant paperwork finished, and they get around to giving you that piddly little allowance, the colleges might be gone … Oh. I get it. Cattle for the ranch. You’re going in the hole to prop up their campuses. I’m an idiot not to see that.”

“My God. Alert the media.”

“For why, dude?”

“The ‘idiot’ thing. You finally admitted it.”

“Takes one to know one, dude. Tell me, what did you do in high school? When your education was free?“

“Um … party?”

“And how do you feel about that now?“

“OK, dude, you made your point. You think the folk out there will get it?”

“You would think that going 30 K a year into debt so you can make, with a degree, the same $10 an hour you would at Arby’s without one, would have already made the point, dude. But I suppose ‘late’ is better than ‘never’.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey dude!”

“Yeah?”

“Want to see something dirty?“

“Promise you won’t tell OC?”

“Promise.”

“OK, then, show me.”

“Open your wallet, dude.”

“Open my … what kind of scam are you running, dude?!?“

“You want to see something dirty or not?”

“Dude, when it comes to dirt, what I got in my wallet wouldn’t buy five minutes of Barney.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Sheesh. Now the dude wants to go to Vegas, on my dime. I don’t think so, dude.”

“Look, what’ve you got?”

“Three bucks.”

“Lay ‘em out here.”

“OK, but keep your mitts off ‘em.”

“Ewww. No worries about that, dude, I ain’t touchin’ ‘em.”

“‘Ewwww?!?‘ That’s cash, dude. Legal tender and all that. What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with you?“

“It’s filthy, dude.”

“You tryin’ to tell me somethin’, dude? Careful how you answer that …”

“You’ve just added the latest layer, dude. You wanted to see something dirty, well, there it is. Them dollar bills’ve got all kinds of stuff on ‘em. See for yourself.”

“Quite the list, dude. Garden dirt, bits of egg salad, a dash of shoyu sauce, a few germs, cocaine … cocaine!?!“

“Don’t even think it, dude. It might be on most of the bills in these U. S. of A., but there ain’t never enough on any one bill to get a fly high. You’ve heard the expression filthy lucre?“

“Yeah?”

“Well, there it is. Y’can put the bills back in your wallet now. But for God’s sake, wash your hands after you’ve stopped messin’ with that money.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.