They Want You To Fight

So you want a wall at the border? They had a wall in Berlin...
If I remember correctly, it kept people in, not out.
Just another thing to think about.

       For a moment, I’d like you to ponder a possibility: the fight about immigration going on in our country right now has nothing to do with immigrants. It’s about broken government, apathy, and racism. Whether or not you are rolling your eyes at me right now, I ask some leeway and that you’ll continue reading – remember, we’re pondering a possibility.  The problem with illegal immigrants, as far as I’m concerned, has always been with their employers. They pay slave wages, and they practice tax evasion by not paying employment taxes for the workers they’re “not employing.” This stresses the system.
   

            There are laws in place against this kind of behavior. Yeah, would you believe it? We actually HAVE immigration laws and employment laws. I know, it’s a little bit like believing in the tooth fairy because OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN’T ENFORCE THEM. They are a bunch of SLOTHS. APATHETIC, LAZY, OVERPAID BLOBS. They go to work, when they feel like it. Their pay isn’t docked when they don’t show up to vote. And, they make tons and tons of laws that they don’t intend to enforce. “What’s the point?” you say? I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I was under the understanding that laws were supposed to be put in place to protect the people of the nation. As we have seen just this past weekend, that is no longer the case in this country.

            A young man in Florida, Mr. Zimmerman – you all know of him – was just left go free despite killing another man. It was a complete and utter media circus. It was played up to make you focus on race and gun control. The actual crime seems to me not much different than one acted out in cities every day. Young innocent black men (and probably some not so innocent) are shot on the streets of Boston and Chicago EVERY DAY and you don’t hear a word about it. Why? Is it because they aren’t shot by “white Hispanics?” Their lives are just as valuable no matter who shoots them (yet another case of hypocrisy in the media). What I saw was a failure of the laws, which have become obfuscated by the legislators. It should have been cut and dry. What should have happened was that the man who killed another man should have gone to court to be dealt his punishment for the crime NO ONE contested that he committed. Instead, he went to court so that Florida’s state prosecutors could (poorly) debate the label they would give the crime. Labeling the crime makes it look like they are showing their disdain, but does it actually require them to do anything?

             A mirror of the federal government. Think bigger. Let’s take a quick look at how things look from the people’s standpoint on this nonissue of immigration. There are plenty of immigrants living in this country illegally. I don’t believe too many of them are in danger of being deported. Why do I say that? If the powers that be were really interested in spending the money to send them back to their countries of citizenship or had the capabilities to send them all back, they would have done it already. Immigrants have access to medical care at hospitals, just like uninsured Americans. Anyone can go to a hospital and be treated. No one is refused care. If you don’t have money, you don’t have to pay. There are financial forgiveness programs in place to pick up the tab. (I have used these programs before!) The taxpayers pick up the tab. (Now I’m paying!) And in the case of non-emergent care and immigrants not in Massachusetts, they have access to the same shitty health care as everyone else and the same denial for coverage due to preexisting conditions as everyone else. 
           Illegal immigrants are on the roads driving – maybe not legally, but they are out there. How many people with rescinded licenses do you think are on the roads? Some of the immigrants are probably even voting. There are dead people voting, I don’t know why you would think some Mexican or Iranian citizens aren't showing up at the polls as well. (This is why some people think voter ID is a good idea, by the way). A quick review – there are laws in place that should keep all of these things from happening. OUR government is NOT ENFORCING THEM. That is my idea of apathy. It is also my idea of politicians who think they know better saying “We don’t like the laws, so we’ve decided we’re just going to do what we want.”

            If the new immigration bill passes, let me tell you what is going to change: Nothing. Illegal immigrants will no longer be “illegal” by label. These people will still live here, they will still have medical care paid for by taxpayers if they can’t afford it, they will drive, and they will vote. The only thing that will have changed is that the government officials won’t any longer be able to be held accountable for their apathy. Do you see? They want to change the law so that THEY DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. It’s not about making life better for the immigrants. Nothing will get better for the immigrants. If anything, they’ll lose their jobs. The people who hire them do so because they are cheap labor. Do you think these tax evaders are going to want to pay them a living wage? I don’t.

            The laws change and the politicians convince the “illegal” immigrants that they’ve done them a favor. I keep hearing that the goal is to increase their voter base. I’m concerned by this concept. Why are politicians eager to have so many more voters behind them? What is this push to stay in office for eternity? It’s like there’s some sort of larger scheme being planned that we don’t know about. There’s one other benefit the politicians get out of this whole immigration war – the ability to use racism as a political tool. It’s easy for them to make it a partisan blame game. The Republicans want to do this! The Democrats want to do this! They make you hate the other party. Talking about immigration turns people on their peers. Either you’re an immigrant or in favor of the immigrants and welcoming of other nationalities, or you’re that jerk who wants all of the people to get out. Or even worse, you’re a racist! You hate immigrants! You want every one to leave! Git im out! Tell all dem immgrants to go back down to mehico! Speak English! We’re in ‘Murica! It’s disgusting. (By the way, there are several countries out there where the citizens speak multiple languages – Switzerland, Canada, China, South Africa – it’s considered intelligent). Rather than being a nation united, you’ve become a nation divided. People who are divided and fighting amongst themselves are easy to control and completely unaware of what their government is doing. The politicians are keeping racism alive, and making you think they have your best interests at heart, and the best part for them – they can just sit back and watch.   

One Reason the Media Loves It When You Suck At Math

Graph of Elliptic Integrals - why? why not?

           As a musician, I can’t say that I have much call to use calculus in my daily activities. I would wager to say that most people who don’t work as physicists, engineers, or mathematicians do not find themselves using advanced level mathematics as much as their math teachers tried to make them believe they would. Sorry, math teachers, your subject just isn’t as useful as you scared us into believing. That being said, I am CONVINCED that the media and government are targeting the masses lacking an understanding of basic calculus. It’s no surprise that the government prefers a stunted constituency. Stupid people are easier to control. The media shares the same preference.

            My theory centers about this election period buzzword “cut.” No word seems to incense people more than this one. People become as crazed as rabid possum babies when they think someone is going to cut funding to something they support (or fund something they don’t support). It’s almost gotten to the point where what’s being cut doesn’t even have to be mentioned, just say the word and people lose their minds. What I find to be blood-boiling, is that the campaigns and media rarely (more like never) specify whether what’s being cut is the actual dollar amount going to a fund or the rate of change of the amount going into a fund (and yes, they do that on purpose). And here comes my dapper friend Mr. Calculus walking down the sidewalk.

            You don’t need to be a math wizard to understand what we’re about to discuss. While the mathematics can be complicated (I recall being close to vomiting after my calc. 2 final of first semester, freshman year of college: which, by the way, was mostly devoid of actual numbers), the concept is surprisingly simple. Calculus allows you to measure how quickly something changes. So, say you are cooking a yam (that seems to be the arbitrary math textbook vegetable of choice) in an oven and want to know what the temperature of the yam will be after 20 minutes of being in the oven at 350 degrees – calculus will allow you to calculate that temperature. Now what does this have to do with politics?

            Government budgets have monetary allotments planned out for multiple years at a time. Like many multi-year salary contracts, funds for certain programs are often planned out with set increases by percentage. So, rather than saying Suzie will make $3000 in year one, $3500 in year two, and $3700 in year three, the contract might say Suzie will make $3000 in year one, her salary will increase by 16.7% in year two, and her salary will increase by 5.7% in year three. Believe it or not, the media (and others) will often take these numbers and think it is okay to tell you that Suzie’s boss is cutting Suzie’s salary. Are you confused? You should be. Suzie is making more money every year.

            The RATE at which Suzie’s salary is increasing is “CUT” from 16.7% to 5.7%. That looks like a big difference right? 5.7% is indeed not as big of a raise as 16.7%, but it’s still a raise. This is my biggest beef with political campaigns (ALL PARTIES) and the media when they give you numbers and talk to you about “cuts.” They all use rates of change and actual cuts to funding INTERCHANGEABLY. And they are not interchangeable. They are apples and porcupines.

            The media and the campaigns manipulate the words and the numbers so that you believe what they want you to believe. They think you are lemmings. They’ve been doing it for longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s look at how this could work with some real numbers and a little bit of word twisting. I’ll give you some numbers – facts straight from government pages. We’ll look at some percentages. And we’ll look at some words from the ever so popular Huffington Post.

            The National Endowment for the Arts is a hot button for many of us. It’s funding has gone up and down and up again since its introduction in 1966. Its highest funding point was a whopping $175,954,680 during the first Bush (George Herbert Walker) administration in the 90’s. That’s also when the funding started its great decline. When President Obama took office at the start of 2008 the fund was at $144,706,800. In the next year, it increased by 7.1%. Now, in 2009 the fund was at $155,000,000. It increased by 8.06% in the next year to $167,500,000. Then President Obama enacted a cut to this fund of 7.6% taking it down to $154,690,000. The next year it took another cut of 5.6%. Quick analysis: fund increased and rate of growth increased when President Obama took office, then during his presidency the fund took two actual cuts. 

            According to the Huffington Post, Obama’s February budget includes a 5.5% increase to NEA funding bringing it back up to $154 million. The same article then goes to say “While this wouldn't fully mitigate the cuts to the NEA enacted under Obama last year, it reverses the trend of a declining NEA budget since its peak at $175 million in 1992, under George Bush Sr."

           Here’s a bit of a twist of the facts. This sentence would imply that the NEA funding has been declining since George Bush Sr. and Obama has just now turned it around with his small 5.5% increase. The fact is that NEA budget has increased every year since 2000, up until 2011, that is, when President Obama cut the budget by 7.6%. I don’t think I would call 11 years of increases a trend of declining, but that’s not the real media selective truth. Here’s what was COMPLETELY left out.  On December 27, 2007 the most hated G. W. Bush did something truly amazing and signed an appropriations bill giving the NEA it’s largest increase in funding in TWENTY-EIGHT years: $20.1 million. That is a 16.2% increase over $124,561,844. Now using the media’s favorite tactic of switching apples and porcupines…we could say President Obama CUT funding to the NEA, not just in 2011, but right when he took office, by cutting from 16.2% to 7.1% in 2009! But that’s not true is it? Notice how leaving out the words “rate of change” turns the statement into a bit of a falsehood? The NEA still received more money in 2009 than in 2008! Don’t be a lemming! Demand rates of change! Calculus for the masses!

All NEA numbers taken directly from the NEA appropriations history at http://www.arts.gov/about/Budget/AppropriationsHistory.html

Are Those Fireworks For ME?

Happy 4th of July!!!!! (photo
copyright S Botham 2011)

            There’s not much to do in Chelmsford - during the week or on the weekend. It is small town New England at its finest. I LOVED going to the liquor store when I was little. It was an overwhelmingly exciting place. Not only was it filled with beautiful glass bottles of colorful treats that I could only imagine tasted like various melted popsicles, there were kid friendly toys! When you turned to the right and walked towards the refrigerated walls at the back of the store you would find the wishing well. Can you believe it? A WISHING WELL! With an acetate thatched wooden roof and blue water on which was floating a smiley yellow rubber duck. Little did I know that this was actually just a wine cooler.

The real treat though is one that still returns every Christmas. Model trains. The largest display I’ve ever seen. It runs the entire depth of the liquor store (and this is NOT a tiny establishment). I can press the button to start the trains on their journey around the tracks and feel about 25 years shed from my pericardium. The joy and wonder spreads from ear to ear, like it did the first time I set foot inside the walls of Disneyland. And when I analyze it, I realize that a tiny piece of this spark is present every time I set foot in Harrington’s liquor store, and I am certain that many other children and adults feel the same way. Then I wonder if perhaps it isn’t normal to instill this association of joy with liquor stores in small children.

            You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced small town New England patriotic celebrations. The first thing that must be realized is that the beginning of this country in this region is a matter of sick and twisted pride. There is a remembrance of bloodshed. After all, the Revolutionary War started HERE. People fight about whose town is more important, as if we were living in a bad Christopher Guest film (something similar to Waiting for Guffman). This is the place where people regularly dress up in costume from the 1700’s, and march around playing fife and drum and waving flags, and pretend that the British are coming. Naturally, these people need something to do so most towns have a 4^th of July parade. Chelmsford is no exception. We have a parade, a road race, and on the 3^rd of July there is a county fair-style mess (to us it’s “the booths”) on the town common where different groups from town either sell food or have raffles and silly games where kids can win things like glow in the dark bouncy balls (which they then take home and immediately test out in the closet with their little brother, and accidentally crush little brother’s fingers in hinge side of closet door, leading to a trip to the emergency room).

What does it mean to be an American? Is it something we should be proud of? There was a time when being an American stood as an association with those who saved the people of Normandy from the approaching doom of Hitler’s invasion. Being an American also matched you up with the painted caricatures of US government heads like Reagan and Bush and negative words on the sides of buildings in Havana. While the paintings are propaganda, it still remains true that the embargo made it near impossible for Cubans to access much-needed antibiotics and other medications produced by American pharma corporations. (Thankfully, now a lot of these medications are being produced overseas so I would hope that has changed).

I can call Barack Obama a f#$%$@#^ chucklehead many times a day (and I DO) and not have to sleep with a gun under my pillow, but for how long? How long until I’m no longer allowed to own a gun? Things are changing here, and some things I find worrisome. I applaud people’s right to worship or not as they choose. And I understand that people want the separation of church and state. I completely agree. I become concerned when people no longer want to be gracious to the country in which they live. And even WORSE, people are more worried about offending others by being gracious to their own country. THAT is offensive to me. To pledge allegiance to the flag, to me, is like saying thank you. Thank you; I’m lucky to live here; I’m glad I don’t live in Bhutan. When you’re in elementary school, and you are reciting the pledge of allegiance, you don’t yet know that you are glad you don’t live in Bhutan. But you are. And you will figure it out. Can we learn to appreciate the sentiment, and stop arguing about the dogma?

            As a musician, I am lucky to have an opportunity to play pops concerts for patriotic holidays. I am divulging a well kept secret right now: I LOVE playing patriotic pops concerts. I don’t mind playing off beats in Yankee Doodle and Sousa marches. It is unbelievably rewarding to play the Armed Forces Salute, which goes through the theme song for each branch of service, and the veterans and active members are generally invited to stand during their respective songs. I always think about my grandfathers during the Army and Navy tunes (they both served in WWII), and my friend Latoya who’s a Marine (Afghanistan). As select audience members stand I watch the pride beaming from their eyes, these noble people who let their guard down for a brief moment, just long enough to allow someone to acknowledge how much they have sacrificed. It brings tears to my eyes. At a recent concert, I had a similar reaction during God Bless America. It’s not one of my favorite songs (it’s growing on me), but it strikes a chord with many. During our performance, about halfway through, three men of my mother’s generation or a bit older (definitely old enough to be around during the War in Vietnam), rose up out of their chairs and loudly started to sing along. It wasn’t the kind of singing you get in a drunken show tunes bar party. They held their heads high and their shoulders back and opened their mouths wide. You could see and hear from their conviction that being American DID mean something to them. I fear for the day when these people are gone.

I think our government is filled with a bunch of rich buffoons who wouldn’t know what it was to struggle unless you threw them naked in a 20 feet deep, glass shard filled pit of starving lions. They’re out of touch, and they don’t care, including that dickhead of a president who has spent more tax dollars on vacations than I will make in a lifetime. They are not America. They are just a used up old Philippe Starck for Target fruit bowl. We are America. The struggling soulful people inside the fruitbowl. Fresh kumquats and tangelos.

            My next-door neighbor, who has since passed on from cancer, was Cambodian. He spent a large chunk of his life hiding in the jungle from the oppressive militia of Pol Pot to try and get here. He saw his own family shot down in front of him. He was the kind of person who would pick up hitchhikers and drive them anywhere they wanted to go. He felt it was his job to help other people because he was lucky to have made it here. I still can’t buy anything with a “Made in Cambodia” tag on it. His wife and daughters are still living next door. He has a beautiful granddaughter now. And thanks to his courage, none of them will ever have to worry about lions and tigers (or despots) again. That is something worth being proud of.

Congressional Cage Fighting: Coming to a Capitol Building Near You

While watching the extremely stressful series of “Celtics vs. Heat June 2012,” I kept seeing advertisements for the boxing match between Congressman Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley. I continuously chuckled at every ad, finding the idea of a boxing government official about as absurd as a vampire slaying Abe Lincoln. And then it hit me – wouldn’t it be amazing if any person could challenge any congressman to a nationally televised boxing match????? Imagine the implications! Screw holding these people responsible for their votes in reelection campaigns. Let’s get down and dirty and threaten to sucker punch them if they make stupid decisions.
             “I, Sarah Botham, challenge YOU, Senator McCain to a fist fight in Lowell – (hopefully with Micky Ward coming to watch or even referee) in regards to your threatening American civil liberties with that 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.” I’m not sure what the winner gets yet. I haven’t really thought it out that thoroughly. I think money would probably be the best prize, since a repeal of a law that affected an entire nation based on the outcome of a fight could probably be refought until every American had at least a black eye and a broken rib. And after all, I think our government representatives for the most part prize money over anything else. We should hit them where it hurts. In the nuts and their bank accounts.

I think next, “Deval Patrick, you idiot governor you, I’m going to give you a black eye for even SUGGESTING that the tax exemption on soda and candy be repealed.” I’m not fat. I’m in great shape. I shouldn’t be punished for wanting to drink Coca Cola and eat peanut M&Ms. That’s an average afternoon snack for me. I could take him! 145 pounds of wiry fury right in the kisser. He’d be down in two punches. Screw you, Massachusetts. Let’s knock it out in the ring. If I win, you can keep your proposed tax and give me the money to pay it!

Now I realize that this is not a revolutionary concept by any means. I see it as the modern day equivalent of jousting and dueling. Instead of fighting over the rights to a woman, we are throwing ourselves into the ring to prove a point. To say, “You know what? You’re supposed to represent me. And, you’re doing a shitty job.” Think of the money people would save on therapists and anger management if they could take it out on their government officials. I imagine we’d all get a lot stronger and leaner as well, boxing is a lot of work.

Potential for violent results really would bring accountability. It would be a bit like a mob rule. I’ve been fascinated with the mob for as long as I can remember. I think it comes from growing up in Massachusetts, where “Where’s Whitey?” was more popular than “Where’s Waldo?” On several occasions I have suggested to people, that we would be better served by a government run by organized crime. See the amazing thing about organized crime is that it’s “ORGANIZED.” If you’re not doing things you shouldn’t be doing, the mob is not going to come after you. And how is giving your local mob faction a cut of your profits any different than paying taxes? At least with the mob you know what you’re getting. They make no pretense about operating in a peaceful, truthful manner. It’s the complete opposite of today’s government - a collection of assholes who want you to believe that they have your interests at heart, while remaining pacifists, and always telling the truth. HA! Right. We all know better. At least, I hope you know better.

In reality, I lean closer and closer to becoming an anarchist every day. I am frightened by what is going on in the world, afar and at home. In general I would say that violence is never an appropriate answer, but you have to admit, watching your 85 year old next door neighbor Doris beat the shit out of Nancy Pelosi would be quite entertaining.