The Man Who Calls Obamacare Fascism

Do you have to go off the deep end to become a multimillionaire in this country or does the process do it to you or are normal people simply unlikely to become millionaires, because they are , you know, normal?

So I'm listening to this interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, a store I like a lot, and cannot find in New Hampshire and he observes, without vehemence,  the strains any business like his has to face. He says this matter of fact, just to enumerate what every corporate CEO has to balance and face:  "Customers want lower prices and higher quality. Employees want better benefits, and higher wages and better working conditions. Suppliers want to give you fewer discounts and want you to pick up more of their products. Communities want more donations. Governments want higher taxes. Investors want higher dividends and higher stock prices. Every one of these stake holders wants more. They always want more."

From that rather dispassionate appraisal, he then launches into his opinion that Obamacare is fascism, whereas he had formerly called it socialism. But, he informs us,  in socialism the government owns the means of  production, in fascism it does not , it just controls the products produced by private means.  This strikes Mad Dog as an opinion bereft of real understanding--but like so many libertarians, Mr. Mackey is not encumbered by  much formal education--he is (like Bill Gates) a college drop out.

He considers unions a herpes on the genitals of capitalism.

He has read Milton Friedman, who advocated allowing the free market to control drugs  by lawsuits, after they had done their damage, who advocated abolishing the FDA and allowing the drug company  which produces the next thalidomide to simply be sued out of existence, after  the babies with no arms get born. Who needs an FDA, when you've got personal liability lawyers? Who needs prevention when you have lawsuits?

He also believes climate change is a hoax and there is too much hysteria about global warming. 

On the other hand, he has instituted caps on executive pay, advocated for the humane treatment of the animals whose meat he sells in his stores and he has moved his stores away from selling endangered species of fish.

And why do we care what this confused white man thinks? Because he is rich, possesses $100 million dollars and is still the CEO of a chain of very nice food stores and he employs a lot of (non unionized) people. The same can be said of Donald Trump, another rich man who says things people listen to, no matter how bizarre. After all, he is rich. He must be smart.

For Mad Dog, the intriguing thing is how beguiled one can be listening to someone who sounds so reasonable, who, when you question him long enough, about enough topics,  you find yourself  backing out of the room, keeping a path to the door well cleared.

Which is probably how people get elected to Congress and other deeply disturbed people look and sound pretty normal, until they open up with their AR-15's.

School Shooters

If we use this threat assessment model judiciously--and we

must, because the risk of unfairly labeling and stigmatizing

children is great--then we will be able to fight, and win, the

war on two fronts. We will be in a position to help those

children who show a propensity for violence, before they scar

themselves (and others) forever. And we will be in a position to

protect innocent school children before they become senseless

victims.

--Janet Reno, Attorney General

And all the King's horses and all the King's men,

Could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The Columbine High School shootings occurred in 1999, almost 14 years ago.

The Attorney General of the United States, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, various Presidents, virtually every senator and congressman have made statements, issued authoritative reports, consulted experts, exhorted the public to place faith in PhD's and MD's and Doctor Phil and we are no closer to preventing a maniac with a gun from shooting the next batch of children in their schools, on a playground, in a swimming pool, at an amusement park, anywhere children or, for that matter, adults gather.

The National Rifle Association has not saved us. The Federal Government has been clueless.

What is wrong with this picture?

Perhaps we ought to consider the concept of "expert" when it comes to destructive human behavior. Perhaps we ought to, in humility, admit we do not know what to do and then do what seems to make sense at the time.

The Sort of Democrats Who Give Government a Bad Name

Full Disclosure: Mad Dog does not drink alcohol much. He prefers O'Douls and Kaliber, which are non alcoholic, but on a trip to Ireland he did learn to drink Guinness without adverse effects, although his intake seems to be limited by some unforgiving gene.  And, beer had something, indirectly, to do with bringing Mad Dog to the Seacoast.  Having been lured to Portsmouth by the promise of a job, Mad Dog wandered the streets with his wife, on a snowy February night in 2008,  and they happened to take refuge in the Portsmouth Brewery, where people were happy, lively, engaged in conversation. 

Taking our seats on the upstairs balcony, we looked down to the brick wall facing us and noted the framed, iconic poster of Mr. Obama, the Ferry poster, hanging quietly on the wall, just as the 2008 campaign was beginning to percolate up, making a quiet, courageous statement about the sympathies of the Portsmouth Brewery, saying something about the value its owner placed on his deeply held political and social convictions,  as opposed to what might be best for business   And Mad Dog looked at his wife and she at him, and they both looked at that poster on the wall and they said, almost in unison, "We could live here."

Now we learn Mr. Peter Egelston, owner of the Portsmouth Brewery, and owner of the Smuttynose Brewing Company which is building a new place in Hampton, employer of waitresses and brewmasters, purveyor of good pub food and general all around good citizen, is facing a 10 cent per gallon hike on beer, a bill put forward by Democrats, a Mr. Charles "Chuck" Weed (D-Keene) and Richard Eaton of Greenville.  

But get this, these two members of the legislature are saying the dollars collected will be used for "alcohol treatment programs."

Now Mad Dog is not an expert in alcoholism, drug addiction or taxation. Nor has he read widely in the pathways to ruined lives followed by alcoholics, but he does remember taking care of alcoholics on the wards of big city hospitals. When they talked about their friends, sitting around the ward with their failing livers, their bleeding esophageal varices, their bouts of pancreatitis, their hypogonadism and their rapidly progressing dementia, they would say, "Oh, Jim, he liked his Chivas," or "Sally, VAT-69 Sally, when she could afford it."  They knew each other by what they drank and I cannot recall anyone ever referring to a fellow drunk as a "Bud Johnny" or "Coors Sammy." Real drinkers did not, at least in those days, waste their time on beer.

Over the years, Mad Dog has know people who drank a 6 pack a night and likely were harmed by that, but the real alcoholics, if they drank beer usually used that as an appetizer and moved quickly on to harder stuff.

So the idea of beer as a sort of crack cocaine to any significant part of the population strikes Mad Dog as a rather odd expression of concern--rather like trying to launch an attack on prostitution by outlawing Victoria's Secret franchises in New Hampshire.

And the idea devoting the income from this new tax to alcohol treatment programs is even more revealing--as if the whole idea is not to punish the beer maker but to rescue the victims of this dreadful thing called beer. As if such programs actually work. 

Talk about sanctimonious. Let us put a picture of Mr. Weed and Mr. Eaton next to that word in the dictionary.

Mad Dog wonders: What are these men thinking? 

It surely can have nothing to do with a burning desire to fund alcohol treatment programs.

If the state of New Hampshire needs to raise money, and the people of New Hampshire like beer and spend lots of money on it and beer seems like an attractive target, as opposed to say, gasoline, well, okay let's just say we need the money.

Actually, If Mr. Weed and Mr. Eaton had real guts they would place that 10 cent tax on gasoline and then we'd see some real money, and maybe less driving or a shift to more fuel efficient cars. Or maybe we could put the money into twelve step programs for drivers who are addicted to unnecessary or overly long car trips.

Personally, Mad Dog would prefer the legislature to legalize marijuana and tax that at a very high rate and we'd all be happier.

If you really wanted to get progressive, Mad Dog would vote for legalizing and  licensing prostitution.  That way we could do monthly HIV and sexual transmitted disease testing, and we could protect the sex workers from violence with more efficacy, and we might do the public health some good. Mad Dog realizes with this paragraph he has lost most of his readership, but that's what a blog is for--float new ideas and see what comes back. So, Maud, pick yourself up off the floor, and fire away. Mad Dog can take it. His love for you will never die--certainly not over this.

Mad Dog is ready for the slings and arrows.

But leave Mr. Egelston alone.  He runs good businesses, employs a lot of people, and does the state of New Hampshire a lot more good than harm. How many of us can say that?

He was, eventually, moved to replace the Obama poster with a parody, using the Smutty nose seal in place of Mr. Obama, but we still remember Mr. Egelson's courage when it really counted.

Duck Hunting in New Hampshire: The Killing Fields

On New Year's day, I took my dog for a walk in a lovely strip of woods hard by a body of water which extends out from Route 1 and runs perhaps 3/10 mile along Elwyn Road called "The Urban Forest." It's the Portsmouth,  New Hampshire version of New York City's Central Park, but only 1/100 as large; but it's a refuge from the roads and noise of the city, as the name implies.  
We were quickly greeted by gunshots coming from the direction of the water, and were met by streams of hikers, dog walkers, all streaming out of the woods, in a great, somewhat breathless hurry to get back to the parking lot and be gone. "Somebody's shooting," a woman told us. "I saw a man with a gun on the shore."

It turns out, it was two hunters, firing from the shore and from an island in the water,presumably at ducks, not school children or dogs. They were standing less than 100 yards from the busy traffic of Route 1, and as the crow flies, I imagine, less than mile from the North Church at Market Square, Portsmouth. It was a cold, quiet day and I can imagine their rifle fire may have been heard along Market Street.

The city is powerless to prevent the discharge of fire arms within its limits if such a law violates state law permitting it.  The court case most relevant, from June, 1960 is Fred v Jenkins, in which a law passed by the town of Durham, prohibiting hunting or the discharge of firearms within town limits unless the owner of land gave permission for such firing, was struck down.

New Hampshire state law says you can shoot your gun within 15 feet of a road, and within 300 feet of an occupied building, and you can walk on "improved land of another" without permission and discharged your firearm, unless the owner has posted no hunting signs. 

So, here we have an interesting resolution of the tension between what it means to own private property in New Hampshire, to wit, land, and the rights of hunters to roam freely and shoot things dead.  In New Hampshire, Mad Dog's back yard, which extends to one acre and is wild woodland, home to wild turkeys and who knows what else, can be used by anyone with a gun, as long as he is hunting.  Mad Dog's neighbor's children do not walk on his lawn without asking permission, but a hunter is protected by the state and allowed to trespass without permission, as long as he has a gun. As you can imagine, Mad Dog has made a quick trip to the hardware store and will nail signs on trees, "No Hunting."  

But if Mad Dog is tardy in doing this, a hunter can stand 100 yards from Mad Dog's house and shot at a turkey or duck or squirrel and put a bullet through the back window of Mad Dog's kitchen, or, for that matter, Mad Dog's head.

This is something only the state legislature can change. The towns are powerless. 

I wonder what the laws of other states are.

It is curious, however, how important protecting the rights of hunters is, as this is reflected in the laws of the state. 

In New Hampshire there are 9 roads specifically mentioned in New Hampshire law which are roads a hunter cannot shoot across: These include Rout 95, Route 93, Route 101, all of which are 6-8 lane highways with median strips and speed limits of 65 miles an hour. The legislature felt it had to tell hunters they could not shoot across these highways to hit a deer on the other side of the road, as special exceptions to the laws of the state, which, by implication, are fair game.  That is, you can be driving down Route 111 or Route 1  and a hunter can shoot from one side of the road, across the road at a deer on the other side of the road, perfectly legally.

Wow! 

You can hunt in the salt marshes, pictured above, in front of the Seabrook Nuclear Power plant, and on the Hampton side of the marshes are houses, right down to the boggy shoreline. You can shoot your rifle 100 yards from the people watching the Patriots game inside.

Golly!

We are sending a new group of legislators to Concord this year.

Do you think they will be willing to face down the NRA and who knows what other groups in this state to make this state less of a free fire zone?

The Cold Dead Fingers of the NRA

I should say, at the outset, I am not one of those who is convinced that banning the sales of assault rifles will prevent any of the many sorts of gun violence we have in this country, either the garden variety ghetto hand gun murders of drug dealers and patrons or the schoolyard/movie theater massacres. 

But as a confused white man, I am struck by the vehemence with which gun owners (some gun owners) meet any suggestion they may have to register/license their guns or be unable to buy new guns.

Take their sons from them with a draft, and send them around the world to bleed and die--no problem. Take away the Medicare they've paid for for years, well, we need to do something to balance the budget.  Drag their neighbor's son or daughter into the local police station and strip search them for having rolled through a stop sign--well, only criminals are ever arrested.  Tell them they cannot form a union, or break the union they have at work, well unions are for losers, who needs 'em? Pay their wives half of what their male co workers make? Well, women are lucky to get out of the house and have any job. Tell your wife and daughter they should not have contraception or abortion--well, that's just morality.

But as soon as you mention any sort of gun control: Explosion. It's as if you have struck the deepest blow against the integrity of the human being you can strike. 

In Arizona, a gun buy back program was set for a parking lot near where Congresswoman Giffords was shot, on the anniversary of her shooting and local NRA members launched a lawsuit to prevent it. The idea was to reduce the number of guns floating around--a fool's errand, I suspect, but a symbolic gesture--and the symbolism struck home in the NRA heart. The law says if you seize property, you have to put it up for public sale, so the guns would have to be marketed back to the public once the police acquired them, NRA members argued. 

It's the old, "You will take my gun away from me when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers." 

What is it about gun owners that this object is so vehemently defended? Why is the response some form of verbal violence? You will start a revolution, you ever try that! There will be blood in the streets, you try that!  You come for my gun, you better dig two graves, first, buddy! I'm going down blazing! 

One gets the feeling you could take their newborn babes from their arms with less complaint than you'd get than if you try to take away their Glocks, Sig Sauers, AR-15's and AK-47's.

Drag my wife and daughters off to human traffickers; burn down my house; drive my pick up truck off a cliff, I can forgive you and I can live with that, but just don't even think about taking my gun or I will slit the throats of your entire family, blow up your home, set fire to your body and desecrate your family tombstones. 

Is this violent verbal response a marker for an underlying pathology?  Are the individuals who brandish the threat the very people who should never be allowed to lay hands on weapons of significant destruction?

Tea Party Scalawags and Swabs

Consider a pack of jackasses. Now, consider the United States Congress. But then, I repeat myself.

--Variously attributed, Mark Twain, Sam Rayburn,  Hampton Mad Dog Democrat, 

Mad Dog admits defeat. He had intended to patiently read through the biographies of each of the 50 Tea Party members of the current 113th Congress's House of Representatives, in an effort to understand these people, from whence they come, what they think, how they have come to their beliefs. 

But, after the first ten, he has been laid low. They are just so boring. Their lives follow a pattern of early defeat, usually in the setting of failure to distinguish themselves in school, but undaunted, they seek out whatever school will accept them, and usually find comfort in a religious college, only to be drawn to a strong, evangelical teacher, who tells them they are not unworthy; they are merely mistreated and disrespected by arrogant elitists, for no reason other than the elitists are atheistic, narrow minded, left leaning snobs. They find a salaried job, often after failing in the free market economy, but though they have sucked at the government or big corporate teat, they rail against big government. 

They love guns, and consider the right to own an AK-47 one of the most important rights an American citizen can claim; they own guns and the guns make them feel big and powerful. They loathe abortion, think it's murder, plain and simple. They don't like foreigners much, and see in them only evil possibilities. They believe global warming is a liberal lie, as is evolution, and the teaching of evolution in our godless schools is a  sin against God, who created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. They are fine with strip searching the low life who get arrested on the streets--until their own daughters gets hauled off to the station house for rolling through a stop sign. They are very offended by homosexuality, same sex marriage, which they consider a threat and affront to heterosexual marriage, and they like the idea of stuffing a transducer up the vaginas of women seeking abortions to do a fetal sonogram. They want government out of every place but, apparently, they are willing to make an exception for vaginas. They love the idea of drilling, baby drilling, off the coasts and in wildlife habitats, and in Alaska and anywhere where the bufallo roam. They like burning good black American coal, and they hate the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education. (They have a pretty deep problem with education, as will be seen. They like it local, small, religious and preferably orthodox.)

As a prototype of this ilk, Michele Bachmann sets the mold. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the wily Joe Barton, of Texas.

Like many Tea Party acolytes, Ms. Bachmann comes from a large family, raised with 9 children, a melded family following a divorce. She has, in her adult life, done foster care for 23 children in addition to her own five children.  Barton also likes family large--with four children and two step children.  Big families. Go figure.

They also like local schools. Typically, they do not seek out a college far from home, where competition may be stiff and ideas new. Bachman went to Winona State U, Barton to Texas A&M, where a lot of students dress in soldier uniforms and the biggest project on campus every year is the building of a huge bonfire of logs which can be seen from outer space and possibly, from the great wall of China.

There is often a little quirk in the personal history which gives one pause, makes you say, "What was that all about?" In Bachmann's case, it was that year after she graduated from Anoka High and hopped a plane for Israel and worked on a kibbutz.
Dream on that one. She must have looked fetching in those khaki shorts, but she came back and went to college, like a more or less normal Midwestern girl.

Mr. Barton's little quirk has to do with his outrage about light bulbs. Seems he is against the new light bulbs. Considers this effort at energy conservation emblematic of government over reaching. "People don't want Congress dictating what light fixtures they can use." Apparently, this is the 21st century version of fluoridated water. Don't let the government put something in your body which might fight cavities, and don't let them in your home with funky light bulbs.

Then there is the mentor thing: Bachmann's was John Eidsmoe, who wrote, Christianity and the Constitution, an inspirational history which shows these United States were founded as a Christian theocracy and should return to its Christian roots.
In Barton's case, it was James B. Edwards, Secretary of Energy, from whom Barton learned about oil companies and how much money you could make by learning to love them.

Bachmann, like many of her Tea Party colleagues, did not stop with a college degree, but sought higher degrees at really sketchy places, in her case, the O.W. School of Law, of the Oral Roberts University.  She was a member of its first graduating class and it was there she received the truth about the Christian nature of the Constitution. She then married and moved to Minnesota, where with her husband she ran a Christian counseling center. (Mad Dog can only imagine the conversations in this center. Probably a lot of What Would Jesus Do endings.)

Then there is the wheeler-dealer aspect of the personality: Bachmann's husband became a Swiss citizen which afforded automatic citizenship for Michele. This is another one of those things, like the year on the kibbutz, which just sets your imagination soaring. What could they be thinking? When the black helicopters swoop in, the Bachmanns are off to the happy valleys and soaring mountain passes. Or, is it more about Swiss bank accounts?  After a long career as an oil company consultant, Barton accused President Obama of trying to "shakedown" British Petroleum over the Gulf Oil spill. Although Mad Dog is not privy to the details, he was impressed Mr. Barton made Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)'s Most Corrupt list. Now, there's a distinction. This resulted, at least in part, from Mr. Barton's failure to disclose his interest in a gas company, which was purchased for him by a fan. The $100,000 which came Mr. Barton's way apparently had nothing to do with his chairmanship of the House's Energy Subcommittee. As a good family man, he has hired his wife, daughter and mother and paid them, using campaign funds, salaries totaling almost $80,000. So, perhaps, Mr. Barton earned his position on the CREW list, fair and square.

But, for Mad Dog's money, the best story of all, occurred after a candidate's debate, when Ms. Bachmann averred the HPV vaccine causes  mental retardation. She knew this, she said, because a woman outside the auditorium had stopped her and told her so.

There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine,” Bachmann said on Fox News. “She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences.”

Bachmann repeated the allegation on the “Today Show” this morning, adding, “It’s very clear that crony capitalism could have likely been the cause, because the governor's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company.”

This is a story, sublime on so many levels, Mad Dog just cannot let go of it.  It warms the cold cockles of Mad Dog's black heart. He has looked for it on Youtube and elsewhere, but cannot find it.  It is just so, Michele.  Of course, Ms. Bachmann was scandalized on two accounts: 1. "The Human Tragedy"  account--think of that poor mother and her retarded child.  2. What this story tells us about the perfidy of Rick Perry, who as governor of Texas had a rare moment of moral clarity and decided protecting Texas girls and boys against the HPV virus, which causes cervical cancer and genital warts, is a worthy goal of government.  But, of course, as Ms. Bachmann immediately appreciated, he had no virtuous motivations at all--he was just trying to cash in with the company who made the vaccine.

What really was bothering Ms. Bachmann, is the titilation of the sexual undertones of this story. We are talking about a sexually transmitted disease here, and the connection between sex and mental retardation via a vaccine. I mean, Mr. Perry was just trying to vaccinate young boys and girls so they would start thinking about sex at a young age, and then, very possibly, start engaging in sex in the fields, on the prairies, in the kibbutzim of Texas.  Oh, it just gets Ms. Bachmann red in the face. 

Tea Party In Congress: Profiles from the Fringe

Mad Dog is trying to understand where the 50 members of the House of Representatives who will caucus with the Tea Party come from.  Who are these people? What are they like?

Picking from Roll Call's list of newly elected Republican likely Tea Party members, I landed on Kerry Bentivolio, first by alphabetical order.

Scanning through his official biography and what has been written about him on line, I think I got a sense of the man. 

This will be the first in a series of  "Get To Know Your Tea Party" presented by Mad Dog.

Mr. Bentivolio was elected from Michigan's 11th district. Like so many Tea Party acolytes, Mr. Bentivolio decries taxes, emphasizes the importance of cutting government spending and government programs.  He is staunch in his support for the idea the 2nd amendment guarantees any American citizen complete freedom to own and use guns. He is against abortion.

Born in 1951, he went to Vietnam rather than college, although he did later get an associate's degree from a community college, and eventually a BA in social studies and a M.A.  

According to remarks on line from a brother, Mr. Bentivolio's early life was marked by some dysfunction, including a proclivity for glue sniffing and he wound up in and out of many jobs, back and forth in and out of the military.
He remained in the National Guard and was served in the first Gulf War, rising to the rank of a Master Sergeant, in the military police.

Like so many of our elected leaders who extol the Ayn Randian notion of the independent man,  who creates his own business and asks nothing from government, Mr. Bentivolio's work history is one of being an employee, first in the military, then as a teacher and he worked as a "design engineer" in the "automotive industry," although exactly what that means, and for whom he worked is not clear. His education mentions nothing which suggests any engineering training. At any rate, he has been supported by large organizations and he has drawn a pay check for most of his life.

He did take a run at a construction business, but apparently did not pay his bills, and when he was scheduled to appear as Santa Claus at a White House function in the George H.W. Bush days, disgruntled creditors got wind of this from local newspaper reports and apparently they raised a howl, called the White House and he was disinvited. A newspaper reporter for a local Michigan paper writes that Mr. Bentivolio sued him and his paper for publishing a story Mr. Bentivolio considered slanderous. A settlement was reached, the reporter says, for nuisance money.

There are several references to Mr. Bentivolio's speckled career as a teacher: Apparently, there were some explosions of temper in the classroom, during which he slammed his fist  on his desk and after newspaper reports of his outbursts and his upsetting students, resulting in several kerfuffles he ultimately resigned his teaching positions.

During his service in the Gulf, Mr. Bentivolio injured his neck and was sent to recover at a facility in Kentucky, where, driving around in a rented car, he happened on a Tea Party rally, where Rand Paul was speaking and he was much impressed.

I'm not sure if a pattern will emerge here, but I do see some similarities in Mr. Bentivolio's profile and that of, say, Rush Limbaugh, in a desultory and sputtering  academic history, a failure at private enterprise, while extolling the superiority of the capitalist system. There is also the evidence of pugnacity and the story of being captivated by a political sales pitch rather than by rigorous debate and thoughtful analysis. 

One also gets the strong intimation being a Congressman is the best job this man could ever hope to land, the steady pay, the check, the level of pay.  


We'll see, as we look at other Tea Party types, what sort of patterns may emerge.