Turkey shoot

Yeah, my bloods so mad, it feels like coagulatin.’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin.’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation.
And marches alone won’t bring integration.
When human respect is disintegratin.’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin.’

The cartoonish vocal by Barry McGuire on his hit “Eve of Destruction” is likely to bring as many cringe-inducements as that by Zager and Evans on “In the Year 2525,” but that doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the song’s message out-of-hand. The problem with today’s music (originating with the “me” generation of the 1980s), is that it expresses narcissism and a bit of indifference to current issues and a wider worldview. That reminds me of another 60’s song, “Easy to be Hard,” from the musical “Hair” and a hit for Three Dog Night:

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Easy to be cold

And people want to know what is wrong with this country today.

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On November 8th, the Seattle Times reported that the state Secretary of State announced that it was likely that 21,000 voters had not received their mail-in ballots. It was suggested that voters who had not received their ballots should take a stroll on down to their local election office and request a provisional ballot. The problem, unfortunately, was that November 8 just happened to be Election Day, and those voters who had not noticed that they had not received a ballot might not be newspaper readers either. Well, thanks for letting us know, anyways. The problem seemed to have originated with the implementation of the “Motor-Voter” registration procedure; the Department of Licensing allowed people to update their addresses for voting purposes, but the State office supposedly had not received these updates until two days before the election.

Now, I’m not saying the Republicans are behind this, although I wouldn’t put it past them. The concern, however, should be the incompetence of bureaucrats and the lackadaisical attitude of public officials and the media. This WAS a big deal, not a “Heah, guess what happened today,” and then forget like it never happened. If this was a down-to-the-wire presidential or senatorial election, this “mistake” would hardly be treated like a joke or simple but forgivable mistake, nor should it.

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Speaking of local media (i.e. the Seattle Times) another confounding failure to adequately break down issues logically is a story last week in the Times in regard to the 20 percent decrease in enrollment of in-state students at the University of Washington since 2006, while over the same period the number of foreign nationals entering as freshmen increased from 133 to 1,036—rising from 2 percent to 18 percent of the total. The university claims that it is not actively recruiting foreign students, but it is hard to believe that it isn’t greasing the path to make it easier for them, given officials comments about how they like the extra money they get from them. The story, written by Katherine Long, is overly fawning over Asian students, particularly Chinese—especially nauseating given the thinly-disguised racial animosity by the newspaper toward Latinos, especially those who are threatening the high-paying jobs of the “natives.” Or is that low-paying, I forget which. According to the story, there is an “upside” for Washington students in all of this, but it was difficult to ascertain what that is. Sure, they are “studious,” as if they have anything else to do being unfamiliar with the local after hour activities. They are praised for having an “entrepreneurial spirit,” which I don’t doubt, but hearing it from UW professors makes one wonder why they are failing to instill that in the “natives.” How there is an “upside” if all they do is go back to their own countries to start businesses that negatively affect the U.S. economy through job and trade loss is a question naturally not asked. All UW is doing is training another generation of Chinese businesspeople who have no desire to show their “appreciation” toward America for the education they received at the expense of American students.

And of course there is the issue of why the state education has devolved to this point. Tax revenue has continued to fall, and it seems it is an annual ritual to cut education funding across the board. Instead of celebrating the slow demise of UW as a state university serving state residents, the state should be making clear that without revenue adjustments to improve education funding, it is mortgaging the future of its own residents while making our foreign competitors even stronger.


Ok, so I don’t like reading locally-produced stories in the Seattle Times, because the reporting is so amateurish and superficial. There was a story recently about how the courts are striking down laws such as those that deny subsidized health care based on immigration status. Of course the reason why such laws are passed is to pretend that the state legislators are doing something and creating scapegoats. The story claims that $17 million would have been saved with this health care law. The problem is, this figure is nothing more than a top-level guesstimate based on the estimated number of immigrants of questionable status and the assumed amount of money spent on them based on the average for everyone; although public officials have no idea how much the actual amount, a “worst case scenario” amount makes it appear that more money is being saved than is the reality. And the reality is that people of questionable legal status prefer not to draw attention to themselves by seeking assistance from public aid services (Hell, the only time I tried to get “public assistance” in this state I was told I was “ineligible” because I was an “able-bodied single male”). Of course, such statistics come from the same people who would have you believe that there is a special exemption from paying sales, gas, cigarette and property taxes based on immigration status.

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A current local story that seems to have some traction concerns the disappearance of a two-year-old toddler named Sky Metalwala. It seems that his mother, Julia Biryukova, “lost” him in Bellevue after abandoning him alone in a car that allegedly run out of gas. It turns out that Biryukova was trying to renege on a custody agreement between her and her former husband, Solomon Metalwala, that granted her custody rights and him visitation. Sounds reasonable to me—unless, of course you are talking about an unreasonable woman. Accusations of mental derangement, child endangerment, dreams of strangulation and mutual protection orders have curdled this strange story. Even the car was found to be not as “disabled” as the mother claimed. The toddler remains missing, apparently seen by no one the previous two weeks, with Biryukova being largely uncooperative. While the sympathy dial bends a few degrees in the father’s direction, as expected you will find opinions like the following, which I discovered on the Huffington Post:

“As missing toddler's mother was originally was from Russia, could it be possible she was a mail order bride that you see in many ads. If so, her husband's trying to teach her "his" ways may have been so controllin¬g that she felt nothing she did was good enough which caused her behavior. These men quite often pick these women so they can dominate them. Maybe nothing was good enough in his eyes. Basically, in the divorce papers, it was only he the court heard about how unfit she was. She may have been so far gone emotionall¬y by the time her psych evaulation (sic) was done the her diagnose may have been incorrect. As having had a husband like that I can relate to her and feel more attention needs to be done on the husband.”

Some people might remember the Tim Burton movie “Mars Attacks!” where the aliens’ heads exploded inside their transparent helmets with the sound of country singer Slim Whitman’s yodeling. That’s what this typical female-as-victim banter sounds like to me, with a touch of stereotypical racial assumptions. Biryukova wasn’t a “mail order” bride, but given the fact that she is a not unattractive blond who married a man that people of her “culture” would normally feel superior to, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that she was using him to gain permanent legal status in the country—which may be why she was unreasonable about who has “rights” to the U.S.-born children. Not helping the above mentioned case was the fact that Biryukova was also an “involuntary” inmate at a state mental hospital on at least one occasion; although an assessment indicated that she was a danger to herself and others, she was nonetheless released into the public domain. This begs the question of how she got into the country in the first place; not all Russians are poets and nuclear scientists.

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Egads, another Times story that makes my head explode. A young white (and presumably eye-candy) female is working 16-hours a day at the mall—one eight-hour job, and two part-time positions. If she had a “full-time” job, she wouldn’t have to work so hard. Yeah, but what about the unemployed adults (or teenagers) who could have used those eight extra hours? That’s why unemployment rates are so much higher for the non-white female demographic. In this increasingly service-oriented economy, someone standing behind the counter who is “fetching” attracts customers, or so employers think. Me, the only thing I find “attractive” are low prices; show me a low price and I don’t care if the Creature from the Black Lagoon is behind the cash register.

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Traffic Alert: Kent police have a new unmarked “cruiser”: a large white SUVish vehicle that has a deliberately drab, unremarkable appearance. I noted that it has a small strip of red and blue lights showing through a back window. I’m glad I don’t drive; police have to work harder to invent excuses to harass me when I’m just walking down the sidewalk.

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On my day off (a Monday) I was in the Kent public library in the “quiet” study area. The place was soon inundated with kids with school district-issued laptop computers, making a racket playing video games, watching music videos and laughing at items on Facebook pages. Now, assuming that these kids are issued these laptops for educational purposes and not for fun and games, my suggestion would be to disable these machines from unauthorized internet access, instead using some kind of proprietary software that only works in school. At least this way, the laptops would be good only for activities, like, say, educational advancement and homework.

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There were some interesting election results earlier this month. Washington voters approved initiative 1183, making it easier for bums, panhandlers and drunks to mingle outside the corner convenience store and generally be annoying pains-in-the-fundament. In Mississippi, voters rejected a law defining a fertilized egg as a “person,” but they did approve a law requiring a photo ID in order to vote; this is an example of using the illegal immigrant issue as a cover to disenfranchise black voters in the state. In Ohio, voters overturned Republican Gov. John Kasich and his legislative henchmen’s move to limit collective bargaining rights for state employees—which most likely passed because unlike Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s similar legislation, it did not leave out police and fire unions.

But for me, the election day story that was of greatest interest was one that didn’t receive much notice by CNN, or the Seattle Times at all: Arizona Republican state senator Russell Pearce was defeated in a recall election. Who is Russell Pearce? I’ve discussed him once or twice, this former county sheriff’s deputy whose chumminess with neo-Nazis like J.T. Ready helped explain his abnormal fixation on illegal immigrants, which many people took to be just an excuse to mask his racial attitudes about Latinos in general. Pearce was responsible for SB-1070, which required police officers to double as immigration agents; although that part of the law was blocked by a federal judge (although another federal judge allowed such a provision to stand in a similar Alabama law), Pearce had as many new “ideas” about what to do about the “Mexicans” that he made Tim Eyman look like only an occasional irritant. Boycotts by out-of-state businesses and organizations convinced local businessmen, however, that the whole thing was bad business for the state, and turned against him as did some of his Republican colleagues. People eventually tired of his brusque, arrogant manner, and one former supporter quoted in the New York Times said “I’m a sort of redneck conservative, but for me he just went way too far on immigration. I agree that we can’t have everyone from the third world coming here, but it began to feel like he hated these people, and I don’t. They go to our churches. I know some of them.” Despite outspending Republican challenger Jerry Lewis—who promised to be open to compromise on the issue of immigration—by a 3-1 margin, Pearce managed to ensure his defeat by angering voters by the unsubtle attempt to drain potential voters from Lewis by contriving to put the name of a Mexican immigrant who wasn’t even entitled to vote herself on the ballot.

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Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is now proposing a ½ cent increase in sales taxes, which is supposed to go mainly to education spending. That’s nice, except that it not only doesn’t promise much to close revenue gaps, it is also a regressive tax to begin with, affecting the low income bracket much harder than the wealthier classes. Of course, the state did try to pass a state income tax on the wealthiest residents—or rather a few wealthy residents like Bill Gates Sr. put one on the ballot, but other wealthy residents (like some of the people on the Seattle Times editorial board) manage to convince a lot of gullible residents that this tax would “trickle down.” Rep. John Fleming, Republican from Louisiana and millionaire businessman, put things in their proper perspective: "The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million (in gross revenue). So by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment." This left many people unimpressed; after all, if Fleming actually was going to use that money for the purposes he claimed, he could write them off as tax breaks; note he didn’t mention hiring new workers, which is the reason why Republicans claim they oppose tax increases. Instead, he just came-off as someone with too much money on his hands.

Not every millionaire feels like he needs to be miserly with his money. Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, some “grassroots” organization comprised of “right-thinking” millionaires and billionaires, wrote the following to the now defunct Super Committee on deficit reduction:

“We are writing to urge you to put our country ahead of politics.

For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you increase taxes on incomes over $1,000,000.

We make this request as loyal citizens who now or in the past earned an income of $1,000,000 per year or more.

Our country faces a choice – we can pay our debts and build for the future, or we can shirk our financial responsibilities and cripple our nation’s potential.

Our country has been good to us. It provided a foundation through which we could succeed. Now, we want to do our part to keep that foundation strong so that others can succeed as we have.

Please do the right thing for our country. Raise our taxes.”

This is the kind of thing that makes Republicans' heads explode, but I don't see how THAT could possibly hurt the country.