Reps/Cons are Right. Except When They're Wrong.

I went out this morning apple- and pear-picking with my daughter and grandchildren.  My son-in-law is a sports writer, his beat is the New England Patriots, they had their first home game today, and that's where he was.

My daughter drove us to a town called Stow, about an hour from where she lives.  We drove through some magnificent towns, and we took a lot of back roads.  It was very common in some towns to see solar panels, in small or large arrays.  (My daughter told me her mother, who lives in a different part of Massachusetts, is getting 30 solar panels.  She wants to convert her home heating to electric, and not to have to pay for the heat.)

As I've said before, the deal in Massachusetts is very different from the deal in Florida.  In Massachusetts, you get credit for all the solar power you produce, and my daughter's electric bills are $0 every month.  And she gets a small check from the electric company.  I have more solar panels than do my daughter and son-in-law, I create more electricity than I use every day, FPL calculates that I somehow still owe them about $0.36 a day, and they charge me twice that.  They keep manipulating their minimum bill, so that at a certain level, the less you use. the more you pay.

Reps/cons claim to favor free enterprise and business, because business, according to them, results in progress and innovation.  One of the factors that fuels progress and innovation is competition.  And I certainly get it.  I can see how this makes complete sense.  You reward someone for their innovative efforts, and they'll come up with innovations.

So Dem/lib Massachusetts is a perfect example of supporting free enterprise and business, and rewarding progress and innovation.  But Rep/con Florida somehow is not.  Rep/con Florida, which should, according to its political theory, be leading the way to innovation, and welcoming competition, does exactly the opposite.  (Unless you count all the scams in Florida as examples of innovation.  Somehow, a lot of them come from Palm Beach County.)

Florida and its legislature, with the pressure they exert on the PSC, manage to punish innovation and competition, which is precisely the antithesis of what you would expect a red state to do.  But the method to this seeming madness is that red Rep/con Florida is more devoted to big businesses, like FPL, than it is to the actual, you know, people who live in Florida.  They'll sell us down the river in a heartbeat to keep a company like FPL awash in Floridians' money, so FPL won't have to modernize and innovate, which is just what Reps/cons say is the intended result of the Rep/con agenda.  It's not hard to understand, though, since legislators get more money, in campaign donations, from big companies like FPL than they do from the rest of us, or from their salaries.  So they know who are their real constituents, and we're not it.

But perhaps crazy and unexpected enough, this is not true in blue Dem/lib Massachusetts, which I'm sure plenty of red Reps/cons dismiss as "socialist."  But they're a lot more capitalist, in the purest sense of the word, than are the red Reps/cons in Florida.

Go figure.

Are We Going to Realize We're Destroying the Whole System? Or Are We Just Going to Find Out One Day That It's Destroyed?

There were always bits of things that just represented people's individual personal philosophies, like Leonardo da Vinci's vegetarianism.  At a seemingly more substantive and systematic level, there were the practices of Native Americans, which kept in mind what we would now call ecological balance (honoring animals, not killing more than you needed, using every part of the animal, etc)

But the study of ecology got much more scientific and systematic over time.  The book I happen to be reading now is Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg.  The writing is a little torturous (and between the font and my glasses...), but Stolzenburg tracks ecologists certainly back to the 1960s and 1970s, and he even references observers and students of ecology from the 1800s.  The discussions about ecologists from the mid XXth C, and toward the end of that century, make very clear that damage -- lots of damage -- is being done, because people who are not ecologists are unaware, and probably don't care, that they are throwing the balance of fauna and flora way off with activities that are directed at a single and usually narrow goal: grow certain types of food, make as much money as possible, or whatever else.

Several years ago, I read Michael Polan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and one or two others of his books.  He looks at the same problem, but from a different angle.  Just before Stolzenburg's book, I read Philip Lymbery's Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were (yes, both titles are take-offs on Maurice Sendak's children's book Where the Wild Things Are), and his angle was much like Polan's.  Polan is a writer, and he's now gone off the rails, writing about why ketamine or LSD or something is good treatment for depression.  Stolzenburg is a journalist whose beat, about which he keeps himself extremely knowledgeable, is ecology.  Lymbery is an actual ecologist.  His first book, which I haven't yet read, is Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat.  Lymbery and Polan, when the latter was sane, were telling the same story: agriculture is distorted in the interest of feeding animals, so people can eat the animals.  And the result is backwards: this approach is less, not more, productive, setting aside the cruelty of it.   Stolzenburg's angle, which is a recapitulation of the real scientific work of actual ecologists, is the critical importance of "superpredators" to keep ecological balance.  The absence or loss of superpredators results in an overprofusion of their prey, which not only throws off balance, but it also drastically narrows ecological variety, leading to things like dramatically accelerated extinction of species.

If you look broadly at all the things these books communicate, you find extreme distortion of the land, what plants grow on it, what animals eat those plants or each other, loss of diversity and species through extinction that is essentially man-made, general ecological imbalance, and what we now call global warming and the other problems that result from it.  (Helluva hurricane season this year, right?). Stolzenburg recapitulates the story of sea otters up around Alaska.  There were always loads of them, until people started wiping them out to get their luxurious fur for fashion and warmth.  But then, they were declared endangered, and they rebounded.  Until suddenly, they started to disappear again.  The question was why the sea otter population was suddenly crashing (late XXth C).  It turned out that killer whales (orcas) were suddenly and unnaturally decimating them.  But why had orcas suddenly decided to prey on sea otters, of which they would need many every day to support their metabolism?  (Orcas are the most dominant superpredators on earth.)  There were two prevailing theories.  One was factory fishing, which was pulling way too many fish out of the (Pacific) ocean, causing orcas to have to find something less customary to eat.  The other was that the whaling industry did the same thing, since orcas prey in schools, and can dispatch even a whale much larger than an orca, and get lots of nutrition out of it.  So again, they had to find what was not their normal food.

And it's completely unnecessary.  Lymbery points out that there are about four billion people on earth, and enough plant food right now to feed about seven billion people.  We use most of the plant food to feed animals a diet which is abnormal for them (and we keep them in conditions that are convenient for us, but torturous for the animals -- which is why most antibiotics are used to try to suppress infection on feedlots, instead of treating infections in people), and which requires many more calories to feed the animals than the animal meat produces.  There are lots of ways we waste food, and that's one of them.  Polan and Lymbery come to one of the same conclusions: eat less meat, or eat meat less often.  Ecologists and medical doctors know that a plant-based diet is healthier than a meat-based diet, and that many people eat too much of whatever they eat.  My daughter, who is a fitness trainer with special concentration in the work of Paul Chek, talks about the "white devils:" sugar, salt, flour, and dairy.  Maybe that's just Paul Chek's shtick, but parts of it are clearly unhealthy, especially when consumed other than sparingly.

In the meantime, while I was writing this post, I got one of my hundred or so e-mails today, asking me to sign a petition.  This one was to complain to the Spanish government about bull-fighting.  Yeah, I signed it.  Have you ever been to a bull fight?  I went to one in Mexico when I was a kid.  That was enough for me.  But I added a comment, as I commonly do when these petitions request it: "What's wrong with humans?  They just like torment for the sake of torment.  Bull fights, dog fights, cock fights, the availability of guns in civilian hands, leading to various levels of murder.  [Of course, the same thing happens too often even when the guns are carried by supposedly trained law enforcers.]. We seem to be a failed species.  We just don't know it, because we're powerful enough and crafty enough to go on being failures."  But the question is the title of this post.

So, probably back to a mostly vegan diet for me.  I go in and out of it. I don't like encouraging this kind of behavior, and (mis)management of the environment, not to mention torturing non-human animals.

If You're Not Busy Friday, September 30

An event called "Coming Together for Change: A Call to Action on Gun Violence in Our Community" is being sponsored by Fantasy Theatre Factory, and held at the Sandrell Rivers Theater at 6103 NW 7th Ave at 6:00 PM.

The description of this event is as follows:

"In August of 2022, Officer Cesar Echaverry was shot and killed just steps from the Sandrell Rivers Theater.  In the one month since that tragic death, we've seen more shootings and deaths in our community, including 85 year old Elizabeth Level, known in the community as Ms Liz.

"In Coming Together for Change, Sandrell Rivers Theater seeks to bring together the leaders of Not-for-Profits, the Police, Business Leaders, and others to create a system of change in our community--the violence must stop.  We must be the change we seek to see. [A paraphrase from Gandhi]

"We will be offering a space for leaders to share their solutions, and to network and work with other leaders as we all seek to effect change for the good of our community.  THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

"Join us, and be part of the solution as we seek to create large-scale system change in our community."

They then offer that you can contact them at 305-284-8872 for more information.  They would like you to reserve a seat.

I imagine you might be thinking that NW 61st St and 7th Ave is relatively far enough away that "their" community is not "your" community.  Don't kid yourself.  Gun violence is rampant, it's increasing, and it's way out of proportion and out of control in this country.

If you're interested, if you have thoughts and opinions, and if you're a "leader," consider participating in this conversation.  If I said it was a life and death matter, it would sound trite, but it's true.

"They Were Promised Jobs and a Better Life."

This sentence, or variations of it, were used to describe the experiences of "migrants" who were flown, unwittingly, from Florida to Massachusetts.  At the moment, they're suing Ron DeSantis.

I don't know exactly for what they're suing him, but if any other person had been induced, by a lie, to go somewhere he or she didn't want to go, the usual word for such a manipulation would be kidnapping.  "Come into the back of my truck, sonny (or little girl).  Your mom asked me to pick you up, and take you home.  I have some candy for you." Which ends in rape, murder, or being taken into the woods and left there.

But that's not the point.  The point is that the promise -- jobs and a better life -- is what all of us, except the Native Americans and the Africans, are doing here.  What these "migrants" wanted in coming here (which they did legally, and registered themselves properly, according to a report I heard) is what everyone, beginning with the Pilgrims, wanted when they came here.  (If the link works, look at the end of the "The legal action comes..." paragraph.)  https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1124160949/migrants-lawsuit-ron-desantis-marthas-vineyard

It's what the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews, the South and Central Americans, the Russians, the "Arabs" (middle easterners), the Cubans, the Venezuelans, and everyone else who came to this country wanted: a better life, or at least better than the lives they had in whatever was their "old country." And an opportunity to work.

The reflex of some is to portray these "migrants" as having come here to make trouble, or take advantage of benefits of the system.  But it's simply not true.  Ron DeSantis knew it wasn't true.  He offered them what he knew they wanted, which is what his forebears wanted, which is what everyone else (again, except for the Native Americans and the Africans) wanted: jobs and a better life.

And the problem with that is what?  Whatever anyone thinks it is, was it also that problem when the rest of our forebears came here?  To put it another way, who should go back home?  All of us?  Every immigration has been followed by a reaction just like this one.  Do you know that this country limited how many Jews could come here when they were escaping the Nazis?  There was a sizable enough contingent of "real Americans" that didn't want so many of "those" people here.

And all groups of immigrants initially, at least, huddle together, in Chinatowns, Gemantowns, Little Havanas, Little Haitis, and other such groupings.  It's not uncommon for it to take a generation until the products of those immigrations become fluent in English and fully functional in American society.  I once had a job as the Psychiatric Medical Director in a clinic in the North End of downtown Boston, which was, and still is, very Italian.  I took night school classes in Italian, because there were so many immigrants, some of whom had been in eastern Massachusetts for decades, but who had never learned English very well (and sometimes, the people who could translate were busy).  And some of them didn't even live in Boston or the North End any more.  They and their close families had moved to towns not far away, but they still liked frequenting the North End.  Maybe it was because it was where there were other people who could talk to them.  I was actually proud of myself one day, when I was in a grocery store checkout line somewhere else in eastern Massachusetts, and the people in front of me were speaking Italian.  I said something to them in Italian, and they asked me from what part of Italy I came.

Once when I was running for office in BP, I encountered an older woman who was Cuban, and she made some comment about "illegal aliens."  I asked her if she knew why Cubans weren't illegal aliens.  It was because we said so.  They were having trouble with Castro, and we told them that if they could get here, we would welcome them in.  We didn't ask if they could speak English, if they could get jobs, or if they had health problems.  We just opened the doors.  And there is no reason in the world why we can't do that for anyone else who wants a life in this country.  The vast majority of people don't, but some do.  So come on in.

There's no reason to treat immigrants any differently than we treat each other.  We're here, they're here (or want to come here), and it's always for the same reason.  Ask Ron DeSantis.  He knows what immigrants want.  He could have offered them welfare and free medical care, but he knew that's not what they came here to achieve.

PS: There's a movie -- I haven't seen it -- called "A Day Without a Mexican."  As I understand it, it's about what would happen if there were suddenly no Mexicans (in California, I think) to do all the things workers like them do, which no one else wants to do.  One review was as follows: "Such a great idea for a movie, but pretty poorly executed.  I would like to have seen better acting, and more of the extensive impact losing Mexicans (or any immigrants for that matter) would have on our daily life."

Also, several years ago, the state of Alabama suddenly took a hard line on illegal immigrants, as exemplified by migrant agricultural workers (the people Ron DeSantis kidnapped were not illegal immigrants).  There was suddenly no one willing to do the agricultural work, so that industry crashed, and the policy had to be rescinded.

We Can Chew Gum and Walk at the Same Time

This post is about two things that sort of have nothing to do with each other.  But the title unites them.

Last night, I got an e-mail from Art Gonzalez.  He highlighted part of a comment I made, in response to someone else's comment, in the immediately preceding post.  The part of my response he highlighted was about the "four losers" on the current Commission.  Art (correctly) assumed I meant he was one of the four losers.  He then went on, as any elementary school kid would, to tell me I'm the biggest loser in the Village, and that no one reads this blog.  ("I'm rubber, and you're glue, and whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."  That kind of level.)  He went on to remind me that he had requested months ago that I remove him from the new post circulation, but that I apparently didn't do it, or didn't do it successfully, and he was still getting the notices.  He tells me that now, months after he requested to be removed.  He added that I shouldn't have said he was a loser on the Commission.  He says I should have said that he contributes nothing, and he would have respected this as my opinion (with which he did not, by the way, disagree, even though I told him that if he thinks I'm wrong, he should remind me of his contributions.  He did not respond.)

The thing is that if Art isn't interested in what I say, then why does he read it?  And he had to do more than that.  He had to read the post, the comments, and the replies to the comments.  I pointed all of that out to Art -- whom I personally like -- and I pointed out that in asking me to remove him from the new post announcement circulation (which I have now successfully done), he was asking me to save him from himself, since if he becomes aware of a new post he doesn't want to read, he will be compelled to read it, and the comments, and the replies to comments, essentially against his own will.  The only way I can prevent Art from doing what he says he doesn't want to do is to be sure he doesn't know there's a new post.  I'm not sure that's my job.  But, as I said, it's also not my intention to be in anyone's face, and if he doesn't want to know there's a new post -- if ignorance is bliss for Art -- then I oblige.  Although I also pointed out to Art that his being a loser on the Commission -- having run for a job he didn't want to do -- is his choice.  I said Art was a loser, but I didn't make him one.  The fact is that Art's failings took me completely by surprise, and as I reminded Art, when I ran at the same time he did, I strongly encouraged voters to vote for him, Mac, and me.  And I put myself last on the list.

The point is that Art should be able to delete e-mails that are not of interest to him, or, if they somehow are of interest to him, he shouldn't blame me for the fact that he delves into them.  He ought to be more independently capable of running his own life and functioning.

Today on the radio, I heard stories about Joe Biden's having said the coronavirus/COVID pandemic is over.  That's what the announcers and discussants said Biden said, but that's not what he said.  They invented Biden's position about the pandemic.  What he said -- they played the recording of it -- was that the pandemic is over, but we still have problems with COVID.  (And I heard this on the local NPR station, not some right wing functionary network.)  Now I have to admit that what Biden said, assuming that's all he said, didn't make entire sense. How is the pandemic over if we still have problems with COVID?  What did he mean by putting it this way?  But no one asked him that.  They just reported, and then savaged, half of his comment.  There were then discussants, including some doctor named Robert Wachter, who said the rate of coronavirus infection has come down greatly, and Dr Wachter said -- I'm just quoting here -- the pandemic is over when we think it's over.  It was unclear what, exactly, that meant, either, but people were saying there are now 400-500 COVID deaths a day, instead of many more than that, as was true previously.  So maybe Dr Wachter, who also wasn't asked, meant that it would not be rational to conclude that the pandemic is over when there are zero deaths per day, so someone has to choose at what level of morbidity and mortality it would be fair to say the pandemic is over.  It was in this extended report that someone said, regarding how to gauge progress against the coronavirus, that "we can chew gum and walk at the same time."

Chewing gum and walking at the same time sounds easy, but maybe Art Gonzalez, and people who deal with what other people say, and have to conceptualize conclusions from it, have to be a little more open-minded, or tolerant, or even just inquisitive.  Short cuts and sound bites are tempting, but they're so often wrong.

It Would Be Funny If It Wasn't So...Infuriating.

I got my water bill today.  It's for the past three months.

I haven't been home for the past three months.  Two people, both plumbers, gave me some friendly advice to turn off the water supply to the house, so I wouldn't come home to a burst or leaking pipe or faucet or toilet.  So I turned it off.  No one is in the house, the water is turned off just before the meter, and there has been zero usage.

My bill was for $64.92.  The residential consumption (which is zero) was charged at $4.18.  There's a County Service Fee of $3.42.  And a BP Utility Tax of $4.56.  The second to largest invented fee is CNM's "Outside Water and/or Sewer Surcharge:" $11.39.   CNM doesn't provide sewer service to my street, and if you think the "Outside Water Surcharge" should mean they'd fix broken or clogged pipes they own outside CNM, you'd be wrong.  The largest add-on is for the "Residential 3/4 inch Water Base Charge," whatever that is.  $41.37, or almost 10 times the alleged, but completely wrong, consumption.

Well, the good news is that this totally made-up bill is less than the previous one of $79.14.  At least I was home for part of that one, so there were some showers and glasses of water.

It seems the utilities -- electricity and water -- just take whatever they want, based on nothing, and no one challenges them.  "Nice work, if you can get it."

Well, At Least We All Agree About One Thing.

In the last post, I was talking about the pleas I get by e-mail (etc).  Your preferred candidate is losing in advance polls, so you should donate money.  Your preferred candidate is winning in advance polls, so you should donate money.  The other side is assaulting what's important to you, so you should donate money.  Your side is prevailing in protecting what's important to you, so you should donate money.

And what's the money for?  Advertising.  Or to "lobby" (bribe, pay off, underwrite) electeds.  And why is this important?  Because people are inclined to vote for whoever is most visible (yard signs, mailings, radio or television ads).  And electeds can be induced to take positions, or duck conflicting positions, if someone pays them off.

So, what we all agree about is that most people are either stupid, or they just can't be bothered to think through, and maybe even study, issues.  A shiny object is good enough for most people.  And people who have access to getting money are more interested in getting the money than they are in anything else.

We see a version of that in BP.  (Not the money part, because there is no money -- to speak of -- for electeds/Commissioners.)  But we see people who are entirely out of the loop, having shown not the slightest interest in BP's workings, deciding they should be Commissioners.  And we see BP residents voting for them.  On the basis of nothing.  And in the upcoming election, two of the candidates are incumbents, who have essentially assaulted the Village with emptiness, disinterest, and incompetence.  But they'll get votes, too, if for no reason than that they're already incumbents.  The last time I ran for Commission, in 2020, Judi Hamelburg was running.  I encountered a number of people who said they intended to vote for her because they personally like her, or because she's their friend.  Yeah, I personally like several of my neighbors, and I consider them friends, too.  But I wouldn't ask them to treat me for a medical problem, or to fix my car, or the plumbing in my house.  Of course, it's easy to bypass even friends and people you like for things like that, because you have to have formal training, confirmed expertise, and a license to do those things.  But you don't need anything -- not anything at all -- to propose to be a Commissioner.  And there are plenty of people who will take that bait.  Sometimes, all you need is not to be so-and-so, or to be thought of as an outsider, so you're thought not to be what some imagine is an unthinking, or corrupted, part of the system.  It's sort of like the less you know, the more confidence someone might have in you.

And what replaces knowledge, experience, and proven commitment is exposure.

So here we go again.  We're in a no-win situation.  We might re-elect two incumbents who have shown us some of the depths of disinterest and incompetence.  And even if we do make that idiotic mistake, we're still going to get one other person with minimal experience and connection to the Village and how it runs. The best we can do, which is not great, is Jonathan Groth, who at least has participated in the Foundation for a year.  And he's not a particularly active participant.  The rest of them?  Excuse my French (I know it's not French), but who the fuck knows?  If they campaign, which they might or might not, you'll at least find out what they look like, and hear what they say.  But there's still nothing behind it.  Did I call them pigs in pokes?  Yup.

On another, and tangentially related, note, I just finished one book, I've just started another, and I read stuff on my homepage.  It turns out we humans are mindlessly and foolishly destroying this planet, and everything that lives on it (except maybe cockroaches and palmetto bugs, which are amazingly resilient).  We distract ourselves with cheap and processed food, and to get it to be cheap and processed, we wipe out forests, which wipes out various kinds of plants and animals (including, perhaps most importantly, the top level predators, as well as balance), and we flood the environment with pesticides, fertilizers, and monocultures.  But according at least to Philip Lymbery's Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were and other sources, this approach makes the land less, not more, productive, and it causes horrible mistreatment of non-human animals, which are decreasingly healthy themselves, and which are what we want to...eat.  It also causes the soil to be of poor quality (some of this material was discussed several years ago by Michael Polan in places like The Omnivore's Dilemma), and the poor soil plus the run-off of excess pesticides and fertilizers gets into streams, rivers, and oceans, and destroys animals and plants there, too.  (Yeah, I know, discarded stuff, including plastics, and oil spills, do plenty of damage, too.  You're right.  You do take reusable bags into the grocery store, right?)

But the overarching idea is the same: people can't be bothered to investigate and think through matters, which is why visibility, exposure, other shiny objects, and novelty almost just for the sake of novelty, are so effective.  It's why we damage our broader and narrower environments (the earth, and BP) for the benefit of people who don't know what they're doing, and aren't interested beyond their own personal and time-limited (no one lives forever) interests.

So I hope our neighbors who want to be Commissioners (whatever it is they think they want out of that) campaign, and if there's wheat and chaff, I hope you're effective in separating them.  The easiest choice you can make, because you don't even have to guess, is not to re-elect the incumbents.

Right for the Wrong Reasons?

Raise your hand if you don't get petitions to sign, and requests for political donations, all day, every day.  Yeah, that's what I thought.  Most of the petitions make sense, but some don't.  The requests for money are infuriating, because no matter what happens, and no matter what anyone says or does, someone wants you to make a donation.  It's usually urgent, and the amounts aren't in themselves much.  But, as I always say, if I gave the minimum requested donation to every person and every organization I thought was worthy, I'd go broke fast.  So I more or less arbitrarily choose certain ones, I give them a donation once a month or once a year, and I don't add to it every time something happens or someone says something, or every time they come up with an emergency, which they always do.

The stuff some people get is about how terrible Democrats are.  The stuff I get is about how terrible Republicans are.  Today, I got something from some organization called the "Crazy Eight PAC," and it was about something said by a guy named Mark Bishofsky, who's running for Congress from Minnesota.  (I'm going to set aside why I never, ever give money to candidates or PACs, because it's antithetical to the democratic system we supposedly have in this country, but which we've replaced with a plutocracy.)

Anyway, Bishofsky said "I want to make it clear that if we were to implement and legislate all of our conservative values onto people, there will be people that (sic) will suffer.  Like, I think we give too much welfare to people."  This was presented by Crazy Eight PAC as a "confession" and a "truthful moment of clarity" by a Republican.  They distorted Bishofsky's comment into an admission that the goal of Reps/cons is to make people suffer.

(I'm also going to set aside Bishofsky's phraseology of implementing and legislating an agenda "onto" people, as if he somehow recognized he was proposing to heartlessly impose a burden.)

As I said, I never, ever respond to communications like this by making the requested donation, and I usually just ignore them altogether.  But this time, I replied.

I asked Crazy Eight PAC to remember that there are 350M people in this country, that many of them are Reps/cons, and that their positions should not be dismissed as terrible any more than the positions of Dems/libs should be dismissed as terrible.  We don't have to agree, but we have to listen, and have the conversation.

I asked them to consider that the "we give them too much welfare" position could represent something other than just the anger, contempt, and selfishness we usually get from Reps/cons.  I reminded them of Bill Clinton's much more decent way of trying to thread that needle, proposing to offer "a hand up, not a hand out," and I asked them to think beyond anti-welfare Reps/cons, and beyond anyone's impulse to solve the problems of this country, of which there are very many, with welfare upon welfare.  Welfare doesn't address the underlying problems that lead people to need help.  We ought to address those problems.

Mark Bishofsky, as evidenced by his comment, phrased as it was, sounds boorish and simple-minded, and he does not strike me as suitable, adaptive, and workable legislative material.  But I'm not sure he was entirely wrong.  As I wrote to Crazy Eight PAC, it's likely he doesn't have the mental range or the disposition to consider more clearly and broadly what he said, and what he could have meant by it.  If some people are not self-sufficient because they can't earn, and if they can't earn (or make enough money at the jobs they can get) because of something like prejudice, and being placed at a disadvantage from birth, then we ought to use our resources to correct those problems, instead of just shrugging, and sending them a check.  (Or expecting them, against all odds, to find a way to swim, which they commonly don't, or sink, which they often do, since we make success so uniquely arduous for them.)  Bishofsky might have been right, but for the wrong reasons.

Red in More Ways Than One. About That FPL Bill.

I said I would come back to this topic.  If you're not up to speed, read several past posts.

I got my most recent FPL bill.  This time, they want over $52, for the past month (that I haven't been home, and have used next to no electricity).  Here's how they calculate it (as best I have been able to get anyone to acknowledge).  Their base rate used to be about $10. Maybe it was $9.99.  Then, they raised it a few cents, to $10.05.  There it sat for two years until early this year, when FPL, the Florida legislators they purchased, and the Public Service Commission all agreed that they could sort of double the base rate.  In part (this has been discussed in the Miami Herald and on the radio), this is because FPL is trying to make solar panels less valuable, and therefore less worth the expense, so FPL can maintain its monopoly.  (It turns out that in this red state of ours, where capitalism reigns, and the marketplace should control the economy, some people don't like one of the highest determinants of the economy: competition.)  

Then, I got a bill in the $30s, but I could lower it to $17-something if I agreed to be on some scheme called the "Budget Billing Plan."  So I did.  For one month.  Until that wasn't holding, either.  So I got myself off the meaningless "Budget Billing Plan," and I reverted to FPL's newest new plan, which involves raising the base rate again, and charging people $25 a month if they use less than $25 worth of electricity in a month.

So, I got my new bill.  The one for $52-something.  It had a carried over amount in the $20s, and a new monthly charge of $30.17.  You know, it's stupid, but you really have to continue to play the game, to see where it goes.  If you search around enough, you finally find a way to reach a person.  I've reached three people at this point, and two of them offered no rational or meaningful contribution.  I couldn't find out what the $20-something was about, and all I could find out about the $30.17 was that it contains the new and inflated $25 (what I have to pay for using less than $25 worth of electricity for the past month), plus all the taxes and other fees.

I then contacted lawyer #2.  Nobody wants to take this case.  I told them both they could create a class action suit, that would return very little to me, but make them millions of dollars.  But they weren't interested.  Or they didn't think they could challenge FPL, the PSC, and the Florida legislature.  Or they have conflicted interests.  I don't know.

All I know is that the bill keeps going up in this red state, this summer when I've been using about as little electricity as humanly possible (certainly less than any other summer), I resent it, and people who charge an arm and a leg for whatever they do don't want to do anything.

The Queen is Dead: Long Live the King

Generally speaking, I don't much care what goes on "across the pond."  But it happens that Queen Elizabeth II died today.  That, too, in itself, isn't of much moment to me or to most Americans.  The glaring thing is that it means Charles will now be King.  And I'm not sure who thinks particularly highly of Charles.

But Elizabeth II was 96 years old when she died.  She was born in 1926.  (She's the longest reigning British -- or any? -- monarch ever.  Seventy years.)  She seemed like a nice, kindly, charming woman.   People who interacted with her spoke well of her.  And Philip always seemed like a lovely gent, too.  Both of them were encumbered by the rules and expectations of their station, but they seemed to do well enough with it.

Of course, there were those messes about her offspring, Charles most certainly included.  And Andrew.  And Elizabeth II's sort of botched response to Diana's death.  But generally speaking, she seemed like someone you might wish you knew.

The problem for me is that my mother was born in 1926, too.  And she was the most loved woman almost anyone who knew her ever knew.  But my mother's life fell apart in 2012, when she had her first stroke.  The second was in 2013.  My mother, as I knew her, was mostly gone after that.  And she didn't die until last year in July.  It was awful to watch her without any chance for the liveliness she always had.

So, I grieved the loss of my mother a long time ago, and I just watched her be extremely limited and unable to derive from her life the joy she always had.

I wouldn't have had much feeling about the death of Elizabeth II today, except it just reminded me of my mother.  I had to grieve the loss of her all over again today.  So it turned out to be a very sad day.  Over the death of...Queen Elizabeth II of Britain.

Better Late (to the Party) Than Never

I'm still up north, I still have too much time on my hands, and I'm still filling part of my time cruising Netflix.

As a frame of reference, in my opinion, the best TV comedy ever was "Barney Miller."  The second best was "Schitt's Creek."  The best TV drama ever was "Six Feet Under."  It's just my opinion, of course, but again, it's for a frame of reference.

I don't know how I found my idle way to "The Good Place."  It was one of many possibilities, and for who knows what reason, I thought I'd take a look.  To be fair to myself, I check out lots of shows.  Sometimes, I get through one episode, or less than an episode, before I decide it's not interesting.  That was overwhelmingly not true of "The Good Place."  This series aired from 2016 to 2020.

I sort of don't want to say too much about the series, because if anyone watches it, I want them to experience it with the same curiosity and surprise I had.  Suffice it to say that "The Good Place" is the alternative to "The Bad Place."  But they make clear this is not to be considered "Heaven" and "Hell," (although it's not clear why not), and there are no godheads.

"The Good Place" is a project of Michael Schur's, and he's been involved in various other shows.  He was even a writer for SNL for a stint.  The story-telling in "The Good Place" is wondrous. And what's better than that is the acting.  The top billed person is Kristen Bell (whose real life husband is Dax Shepard, who himself appears in one episode).  I didn't know anything about Kristen Bell, although she's been around in various things I don't watch.  The other main actors (William Jackson Harper, the shockingly gorgeous Jameela Jamil, and Manny Jacinto) are completely unknown to me, except for "and" Ted Danson.  I never knew Ted Danson from anything but "Cheers," and I never had any special feeling for him as an actor.  I sure do now.  D'Arcy Carden was also unflinchingly terrific.  And if anyone was as far off the charts as possible, it was Maya Rudolph, who appears in about seasons 3 and 4.

This series is magical (literally, and its genre is fantasy), and it's captivating.  William Jackson Harper's character had been a professor of moral philosophy, and this series is awash in that.

As a further frame of reference, I watched all four seasons (12-13 22-minute episodes -- 52 in total -- I assume they were 1/2 hour episodes on network TV, including commercials -- per season) in three days.  I couldn't stop.

This series was sometimes like "Groundhog Day," sometimes like "The Sixth Sense," sometimes like "Dogma," and D'Arcy Carden's versions of herself as different personae were reminiscent of "Orphan Black."

It's not my business to tell you how to use your time, but you'd do yourself a big favor...