#77 THE MIDDLE CLASS TAX TRAP IS THIS - THE MIDDLE CLASS PAYS FOR THE SERVICES AND THE UPPER CLASS (A SCANT 2% OF THE POPULATION AT BEST) AND CORPORATIONS REAP THE MAJOR BENEFITS

The Middle-Class Tax Trap

By ROSS DOUTHAT

“Let’s tell the truth,” Walter Mondale said, accepting the Democratic nomination in 1984. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Three months later, Mondale lost 49 states, and liberal politicians learned a valuable lesson. In the decades since, national Democrats have often promised to raise taxes — but only for the rich, and never for the middle class.

Bill Clinton wrote the playbook: “We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans,” he pledged in 1992, “by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share.” In 2008, Barack Obama imitated Clinton, campaigning on a promise to raise taxes for the richest 5 percent while cutting them for everybody else.

Last week, in his address on deficit reduction, the president followed the playbook once again. In the throat-clearing section of the speech, Obama promised “tough choices” that put “everything on the table.” But his tax proposals were aptly summarized by The Atlantic’s Clive Crook: “The rich can pay for it all.”

As it happens, they can’t. Squeezing the wealthy buys some short-term deficit reduction: over the next decade, President Obama’s plan could trim (almost) as much off the deficit as Paul Ryan’s controversial Republican budget — $4 trillion, give or take.

But that $4 trillion is just a fraction of America’s projected long-term debt. The whole point of the Ryan plan is that the real deficit reduction starts at year 10, when his Medicare reforms are phased in.

Under the president’s plan, we soak the rich in the short term, and then just keep going deeper into the red.

Does a plan to cut the deficit with middle-class tax increases exist? In a sense, it does. It’s called the “current law baseline,” a Congressional Budget Office projection in which the Bush-era tax rates aren’t renewed in 2012, the Alternative Minimum Tax (which is supposed to hit only the rich but increasingly bites into middle-class paychecks) isn’t indexed for inflation, and Medicare payments to doctors are slashed by 20 percent.

With these policies, the deficit drops away in the next 10 years, and more important, it stays manageably low for the decades after that.

This projection has become a touchstone for liberal wonks — “the graph that all budget discussions should start with,” The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote last week. It does not represent their ideal policy vision by any means, but it is frequently cited as proof that we do not need to radically reform entitlements to keep the country

solvent.

All we need to do instead is let taxes rise and keep on rising. This is how the “current law baseline” cuts the deficit: Thanks to inflation and bracket creep, its tax code gradually subjects more and more Americans to rates that now fall only on the wealthy.

Today, for instance, a family of four making the median income — $94,900 — pays 15 percent in federal taxes. By 2035, under the C.B.O. projection, payroll and income taxes would claim 25 percent of that family’s paycheck. The marginal tax rate on labor income would rise from 29 percent to 38 percent. Federal tax revenue, which has averaged 18 percent of G.D.P. since World War II, would hit 23 percent by the 2030s and climb even higher after that.

Such unprecedented levels of taxation would throw up hurdles to entrepreneurship, family formation and upward mobility. (Or as the C.B.O. puts it, in its understated way, they would “tend to discourage some economic activity,” and “harm the economy through the impact on people’s decisions about how much to work and save.”)

They could have ugly political consequences as well. Historically, the most successful welfare states (think Scandinavia) have depended on ethnic solidarity to sustain their tax-and-transfer programs. But the working-age America of the future will be far more diverse than the retired cohort it’s laboring to support. Asking a population that’s increasingly brown and beige to accept punishing tax rates while white seniors receive roughly $3 in Medicare benefits for every dollar they paid in (the projected ratio in the 2030s) promises to polarize the country along racial as well as generational lines.

The Republican vision for entitlement reform, President Obama said last week, would lead to “a fundamentally different America” than the one we inhabit today. He’s right: asking the elderly to pay more for their health care, as Paul Ryan proposes to do, would transform the American social contract, and cause no small amount of pain.

But what Obama didn’t acknowledge is that the alternative path could lead to a different country as well — a more stagnant and balkanized society, in which our promise to the elderly crowds out the fundamental promise of America itself.

#76 as always happens when Democrats take a stand, the civility police came out in force. The president, we were told, was being too partisan; he needs to treat his opponents with respect; he should have lunch with them, and work out a consensus. That’s a bad idea. Equally important, it’s an undemocratic idea.

Let’s Not Be Civil

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week, President Obama offered a spirited defense of his party’s values — in effect, of the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. Immediately thereafter, as always happens when Democrats take a stand, the civility police came out in force. The president, we were told, was being too partisan; he needs to treat his opponents with respect; he should have lunch with them, and work out a consensus.

That’s a bad idea. Equally important, it’s an undemocratic idea.

Let’s review the story so far.

Two weeks ago, House Republicans released their big budget proposal, selling it to credulous pundits as a statement of necessity, not ideology — a document telling America What Must Be Done.

But it was, in fact, a deeply partisan document, which you might have guessed from the opening sentence: “Where the president has failed, House Republicans will lead.” It hyped the danger of deficits, yet even on its own (not at all credible) accounting, spending cuts were used mainly to pay for tax cuts rather than deficit reduction. The transparent and obvious goal was to use deficit fears to impose a vision of small government and low taxes, especially on the wealthy.

So the House budget proposal revealed a yawning gap between the two parties’ priorities. And it revealed a deep difference in views about how the world works.

When the proposal was released, it was praised as a “wonk-approved” plan that had been run by the experts. But the “experts” in question, it turned out, were at the Heritage Foundation, and few people outside the hard right found their conclusions credible. In the words of the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers — which makes its living telling businesses what they need to know, not telling politicians what they want to hear — the Heritage analysis was “both flawed and contrived.” Basically, Heritage went all in on the much-refuted claim that cutting taxes on the wealthy produces miraculous economic results, including a surge in revenue that actually reduces the deficit.

By the way, Heritage is always like this. Whenever there’s something the G.O.P. doesn’t like — say, environmental protection — Heritage can be counted on to produce a report, based on no economic model anyone else recognizes, claiming that this policy would cause huge job losses. Correspondingly, whenever there’s something Republicans want, like tax cuts for the wealthy or for corporations, Heritage can be counted on to claim that this policy would yield immense economic benefits.

The point is that the two parties don’t just live in different moral universes, they also live in different intellectual universes, with Republicans in particular having a stable of supposed experts who reliably endorse whatever they propose.

So when pundits call on the parties to sit down together and talk, the obvious question is, what are they supposed to talk about? Where’s the common ground?

Eventually, of course, America must choose between these differing visions. And we have a way of doing that. It’s called democracy.

Now, Republicans claim that last year’s midterms gave them a mandate for the vision embodied in their budget. But last year the G.O.P. ran against what it called the “massive Medicare cuts” contained in the health reform law. How, then, can the election have provided a mandate for a plan that not only would preserve all of those cuts, but would go on, over time, to dismantle Medicare completely?

For what it’s worth, polls suggest that the public’s priorities are nothing like those embodied in the Republican budget. Large majorities support higher, not lower, taxes on the wealthy. Large majorities — including a majority of Republicans — also oppose major changes to Medicare. Of course, the poll that matters is the one on Election Day. But that’s all the more reason to make the 2012 election a clear choice between visions.

Which brings me to those calls for a bipartisan solution. Sorry to be cynical, but right now “bipartisan” is usually code for assembling some conservative Democrats and ultraconservative Republicans — all of them with close ties to the wealthy, and many who are wealthy themselves — and having them proclaim that low taxes on high incomes and drastic cuts in social insurance are the only possible solution.

This would be a corrupt, undemocratic way to make decisions about the shape of our society even if those involved really were wise men with a deep grasp of the issues. It’s much worse when many of those at the table are the sort of people who solicit and believe the kind of policy analyses that the Heritage Foundation supplies.

So let’s not be civil. Instead, let’s have a frank discussion of our differences. In particular, if Democrats believe that Republicans are talking cruel nonsense, they should say so — and take their case to the voters.

#75 WE ARE FORCES OF CHAOS AND ANARCY, AND WE ARE VERY PROUD OF OURSELVES

The New Republican Landscape

Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.

At first it seemed that only a few freshmen and noisy followers of the Tea Party would support the new extremism. But on Friday, nearly unanimous House Republicans showed just how far their mainstream has been dragged to the right. They approved on strict party lines the most regressive social legislation in many decades, embodied in a blueprint by the budget chairman, Paul Ryan. The vote, from which only four Republicans (and all Democrats) dissented, would have been unimaginable just eight years ago to a Republican Party that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Mr. Ryan called the vote “our generation’s defining moment,” and indeed, nothing could more clearly define the choice that will face voters next year.

His bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor, which has been provided by the federal government with society’s clear assent since 1965. The elderly, in particular, would be cut adrift by Mr. Ryan. People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Fully two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs.

In addition to making “entitlement” a dirty word, the Ryan bulldozer would go much further in knocking down government programs to achieve its goals. It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next 10 years, almost certainly increasing hunger among the poor. It would cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether. It would remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start, and slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills.

And it would do all that while preserving the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and even expanding them. Regulation of business and the environment would be sharply reduced.

The mania for blindly cutting has also spread to statehouses, many with new Republican governors and legislatures. Several states have cut their unemployment benefits below the standard 26 weeks. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has proposed removing 138,000 people from Medicaid. Many recession-battered states, including some led by Democrats, have been forced to cut other services because Republicans have made it so politically difficult to raise taxes. Education, mental health and juvenile justice funds have been particular targets.

In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Florida, Republican governors have used the smokescreen of a poor economy to pursue a long-held conservative goal of destroying public and private unions. This has nothing to do with creating jobs, of course, and it has shocked many blue-collar voters who are suddenly second-guessing their support for Republicans last November. Several states are also adopting Arizona-style anti-immigrant laws.

President Obama, after staying in the shadows too long, is starting to illuminate the serious damage that Republicans are doing. Their vision, he said last week, “is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.” Other Democrats are also beginning to stand up and reject these ideas, having been cowed for months by the electoral wave. Their newfound confidence will give voters a clearer view of this bare and pessimistic landscape.

#74 PLAYBOY MAGAZINE WAS WRITING ABOUT THIS IN THE LATE 1970'S - IT'S AN INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUE

Scrutiny Lags as Jetliners Show the Effects of Age

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

In April 1988, when the cabin roof ripped off an Aloha Airlines 737 and swept a flight attendant to her death, it sent a startling signal to the airline industry about the dangers of metal fatigue. Airlines immediately stepped up inspections of aging jets. Federal regulators cut up old planes to look for the spots under the most stress. And Boeing redesigned the joints that hold its 737s together.

They thought they had solved the problems.

But the five-foot hole in the roof of a Southwest Airlines 737 this month and other recent incidents indicated that they had not. In fact, a stream of safety directives from the Federal Aviation Administration in the years since the Aloha incident shows that structural cracks from metal fatigue remain a persistent problem on older planes.

Chillingly, the agency said in one directive that the discovery of some of the most serious damage had been “a purely random occurrence.”

Safety experts say that the industry and regulators rely far too much on a patchwork of rules that are largely reactive: each time a problem in one part of the plane is found, inspectors add that area to their checklists. Late last year, the F.A.A. itself acknowledged the seriousness of the issue when, for the first time, it issued a rule to set flying limits for aging aircraft. “The potential for catastrophic structural failure,” it said, “is very significant.”

Even so, the F.A.A. took more than four years to write the rule, as airlines objected that it would reduce the value of their planes and force them to ground some they thought could still fly. In response, the F.A.A. toned down the rule, extending a deadline for plane makers to come up with the lifetime limits.

John J. Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents, says the F.A.A. needs to do more than wait for the industry to set plane-retirement deadlines and rely on the airlines to do piecemeal inspections. The Southwest incident showed, he said, that the agency should order thorough inspections of a couple of the older and most heavily used 737s, using the latest technologies, to determine where cracks might develop.

Right now, he said, “it looks like you’re putting Band-Aids on the airplane.”

Referring to both the Southwest incident and an earlier one in 2009, in which an 18-inch hole appeared in another Southwest 737, he said, “Here’s a case where we have a small hole, a big hole and if we’re not going to do something serious about the entire airplane, we’re going to end up with a smoking hole.”

F.A.A. and industry officials say they are reviewing their policies on aging planes. But they note that fatigue problems have not caused any deaths on jetliners since the Aloha accident, even with millions of flights a year in the United States.

J. Randolph Babbitt, the head of the F.A.A., and Boeing officials said last week that it was too early to conclude that the latest Southwest incident stemmed from metal fatigue. He said investigators were also examining Boeing’s manufacturing processes and other possible causes.

But whatever the outcome of the investigation, the older 737s have provided an early warning about the kinds of fatigue damage that other planes could eventually face. They have been sold since 1968, although the Southwest planes that have had problems are part of the series that was redesigned after Aloha, built from 1993 to 2000.

The 737 has been an industry workhorse because it is economical for both short and long trips. These planes tend to accumulate the highest number of flights. And given the weak financial state of the industry, some airlines have held on to them longer.

But engineers have long known that metal fatigue can develop as a plane’s cabin is pressurized then depressurized over tens of thousands of takeoffs and landings. Crucial parts of the fuselage can develop cracks, much like a paper clip that snaps after being bent back and forth. It is when many small cracks link up that they pose a danger.

The Aloha plane had flown nearly 90,000 flights. Boeing had pleaded with the carrier to ground its most-used planes and fix corrosion problems. Federal investigators faulted Aloha’s poor maintenance practices for the accident.

But this also led Boeing to redesign, twice, the glued and riveted joints that hold the overlapping pieces of skin connecting the top of the plane to its sides. Boeing figured that this design would last for at least 75,000 flights and would not need to be inspected for cracks until about 60,000 flights. (Designs of the 737 after 2000 eliminated the need for these lap joints.)

The damage on the roof of the Southwest plane, which suddenly appeared midflight on April 1 and forced an emergency landing in Yuma, Ariz., baffled safety experts because the jet, at 15 years old, had logged only about 40,000 takeoffs and landings. The F.A.A. ordered more frequent inspections of those joints starting at 30,000 flights.

Southwest checked 78 similar planes in its fleet and found five others that had developed single small cracks in various spots at just over 40,000 flights.

Boeing said on Sunday that inspections on several dozen other planes, mostly owned by foreign carriers, had not found any cracks. It said it was premature to say whether the cracks on the other Southwest jets were related to the problems that caused the hole on the April 1 flight.

Since 1988, the F.A.A. has issued nearly 100 directives tied to widespread fatigue, requiring airlines to look for cracks in various locations on a variety of airplane models. A quarter were described as urgent. The agency has listed about a dozen serious incidents over the past 16 years, including cracks that were found by people painting planes.

It said, for example, that airline inspectors had found substantial cracks in a bulkhead on a midsize Boeing 767 in 2003, and in fuselage frames of an Airbus A300 in 2002 and a jumbo Boeing 747 in 2005. The most recent incidents, since 2007, have involved the single-aisle 737s and 757s. At least nine have involved areas of the fuselage where overlapping sheets of metal are thinned out to help decrease weight.

In November, an American Airlines 757 depressurized after a two-foot hole opened over a door, forcing the crew and 154 passengers to put on oxygen masks. The plane quickly returned to Miami. Boeing had recommended inspections in that area by 25,000 flights; the plane had 22,000.

Most experts agree that huge progress has been made since the Aloha incident in 1988. Still, in 2007, an F.A.A. inspector allowed Southwest to operate 1,450 flights even though 46 of its planes had not been inspected for cracks in nine months. Southwest was fined $7.5 million for violating federal safety mandates.

The Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General reported last December that the F.A.A. had failed to make 576 safety inspections from 2005 to 2009. Even though the F.A.A. had cut the number of planned inspections in half over the last 10 years, the report noted, some were eight years late.

The F.A.A. says that it seeks to prevent fatigue through rules governing things like aircraft design and maintenance and that pilots are also trained to handle emergencies that could be caused by fatigue.

In the rule issued late last year, the F.A.A. sought to determine the time before widespread metal fatigue could affect the entire aircraft. F.A.A. officials said the agency was still considering a separate rule on some of the objections raised by the airlines. The agency is still awaiting more testing from the manufacturers to determine what the lifetime flying limits of planes should be.

But ultimately, the answer to combating metal fatigue on older planes may simply come down to economics, aviation experts say. An improving economy, combined with concerns about fuel efficiency given high oil prices, is once more prompting airlines to buy new planes. Southwest, for one, plans to phase out its older 737-300s with bigger planes that are more affordable to fly.

9-Hour Breaks Mandated

The transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said that required rest time for air traffic controllers would be increased to nine hours to help prevent workers from falling asleep on the job.

“We’re going to make sure that controllers are well rested,” Mr. LaHood said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “We cannot allow controllers to fall asleep.”

The F.A.A. suspended an air traffic controller on Saturday “for falling asleep while on duty” at night at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center.

New scheduling rules have been put in place and will be fully in effect by the end of the week, according to a statement posted on the F.A.A. Web site on Sunday.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting.

#73 COMMUNITY HAS BEEN WRIT LARGE ON MY HEART FOR SOME TIME NOW

My little town - merit pay & Horses

Looked at suicides in Greenland and Barrington, Illinois in my last post.

Some more about Barrington, ILL: 7th wealthiest zip code in the country among areas with populations of 20,000 or more.

Got a flavor of that back when my folks were doing house-hunting up here back in the summer of 1964. Dad had accepted a job in the math department working for Grace Wandke, the math department head, with whom he had met while doing post-graduate work at Purdue. At that time, Barrington (a unit school district - which means the high school and the grade school teacher salaries were on the same scale) had a merit pay system. Dad came here for the same base salary he was making at Streator Community High School. Very shortly he learned what "merit pay" meant, back in the day. "Merit pay" meant that when his department head told him to take lunch supervision duty, he had to do. "Merit pay" meant that when told to take study hall, he had to. In Streator, where he had been involved in unionizing the teachers back in the early 50's, lunch supervision and study hall had been negotiated to be extra duties, above and beyond teaching, and therefore, duties for which compensation was paid. But the teachers here did not have a union then. And they had all been admonished to not talk amongst each other about what salaries they made.

Mom returned from one of the house-hunting adventures and related this story to us. They had been driving deliberately around Barrington looking at houses for sale, when one of the local children called out, "Get a horse." Mom that it was the funniest thing. I didn't, for in that moment of her story-telling, I realized we were going to be poor. Because the point of most things is not lost on children. Mom tells the story of how, after we bought a house and got settled, when our family used to go out in the car to drive somewhere, I would hide on the floor in the back seat. The shame of it, oh, the shame.

One day after we'd lived here more than a year, I asked my friend, fellow caddie, and freshman basketball teammate George Harris, "What's wrong with the way I dress?" Clearly, he must have said something to make me ask. I had been talking with Becky Harlan, one of the only girls shorter than I was when I posed the question. George, bless him, answered honestly. "Ganzer, look at you. You wear tie hush puppies shoes, white socks, you button your top shirt button, your shirt collars don't have buttons, and your pants are funny."

George is the only high school friend I've had any regular contact with over the years. And I really did appreciate his honesty, because a quick survey of the situation revealed that the "dress code" amongst the cool guys consisted of: burgundy penny loafers, dark colored wool socks, tight-fitting Levi jeans -black, burgundy or light blue, that ended about six inches above the ankle, and button down collar shirts always of a single color - pink, light blue or yellow. Yes, I saw it all, and knew that I had to go to my savings account and make a big withdrawal, in order that I should be able to dress the part.

Here's the thing about high school, at least the high school I went to, or maybe it's just about high school kids. In that moment of atomic insight, I made a vow to myself, that one day, when I was done with high school, I would dress however I wanted, I would not let myself be ruled by the fashion dictates of "the in crowd."

But, of course, that was not a decision I was neither strong enough nor brave enough to make in the face of my peers and contemporaries. And if there is one thing that THIS high school kid wanted to do, it was to fit in. To fit in here. In Barrington.

Get a horse.

Hell, we GOT a horse. My sister has dreamed horses since she was in the womb. And my father tried to do one pretty nice "big thing" for all of his children. For me, it was the gift of his time. First born sons have that advantage. He'd walk me around the block talking mathematics to me, he'd talk about positive numbers, and negative numbers. At least this is the story he told me. And then the day I asked him, "But dad, isn't zero a number too?" he decided we didn't need to talk about numbers any more.

But when we moved here, to horse country, my folks decided that my sister Gay should be able to have a horse, PROVIDED ... that dad could ride it. She was so excited. Dad tells the story that, had it been Gay's decision, they would have bought ever horse they looked at, on the spot. Nope. Dad made her wait, he had his principles, and he was not going to back down here. Besides, he well knew that horses could be dangerous animals. Then they found Sputnik. That was the horse for Gay, and for dad too, because Sputnik was smart enough to know how much my sister would love him, and care for him, and how important it was that he make the decision as easy as possible. I think Sputnik was 8 when we bought him, and 32 when he had to be put down. I swear, the last five years of his life were lived on my sister's love alone.

Sometimes, love alone is enough.

And then, other times, not even love can get through.

The first Barrington High School suicide I remember might not count, because the young man had graduated and gone to college. He returned, early to the front lawn of the high school in the fall and shot himself there. He had been the president of the National Honor Society and Captain of the Golf team, and was a very attractive young man. Heather W., my then girl friend told me about it. She and he had been classmates. I didn't know enough then. I asked myself, "What kind of statement is that?" I didn't understand how the fog of depression can surround you, overtake you, overpower you, to do its ultimate bidding.

Another suicide I became aware of involved the son of one of the members I sometimes caddied for at the Jack Nicklaus gated community & private country club. The man always seemed distant, barely bearing the loss a few years later. It was a hanging. The family sold the house, and bought another one, some gated community, same private country club.

I'm 59 years old now. Have attended none of my high school reunions. Didn't even attend the 10th when I had for all outward appearances a very successful career. Nor the 25th for which I had let my hair grow long for about two years, because dammit, I might not have then had a job, or money, or a wife, or home, but by God, I had my hair. Well, at least I considered that one. But I didn't go. Because there is something, something that makes me either afraid or ashamed, or both.

These demons too must one day be faced.

Or not.

After our first year here, dad got an offer to teach mathematics and coach wrestling at Waukegan High School. The story is told that I was the only one to say, "No. Please. I don't want to move again." And this sealed the deal. We would stay. Other times, perhaps kids go from the specific to the general in the blink of an eye. And maybe that is why they seemed trapped, with only one way out.

Sometimes, not even love can get through.

In my little town
I grew up believ--ing
God keeps his eye on us all
And he used to lean upon me
As I pledged allegiance to the wall
Lord I recall
My little town

Coming home after school
Flying my bike past the gates
Of the factories
My mom doing the laundry
Hanging our shirts
In the dirty breeze

And after it rains
There's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there
It's just imagin-ation they lack
Everything's the same

Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town

In my little town
I never meant nothin'
I was just my fathers son
Saving my money
Dreaming of glory
Twitching like a finger
On the trigger of a gun
Leaving nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Repeat and fade:
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town

Suicides - in Greenland & in Barrington, Illiiois

This article about suicide in Greenland by Al-Jazeera blogger Nazanine Moshiri caught my eye

Greenland has the ignominious title of being the suicide capital of the world. On the largest island that isn't a continent, and the least densely populated dependent country in the world, the government says 1 in 5 people have tried to kill themselves, while other research claims 1 in 4.

The simple white wooden crosses that dot the landscape are a stark reminder that many of those people have succeeded.

...
Most of the victims are teenagers, more than half of them boys aged 15 to 19.

...
"It's difficult to verbalise how [the Inuit people] feel, they find it hard to explain why they are sad, or angry. They keep it inside them and carry it around for a long time. That's one of the explanations for the suicide.

"But also, that they aren't being offered therapy or psychological help...

Some also blame the rapid modernisation of this traditional Inuit community for what's happening. Greenland became a part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953.

Note: 89% of Greenland's population is Inuit Indian.

The Danes brought with them the infamous G60 policy – when many Inuit communities were resettled in soviet style apartment blocks. Fishing and hunting people who had lived off the land for thousands of years were plunged into a town life they could not adapt to. More than half a century on, the deep social problems created by that doomed policy still exist today.

Some connect the alcoholism that came in this period to the high suicide rate. The dark winters have been dismissed as a reason for suicide, as the rates actually seem to be higher during the summer, when you have the midnight sun and people can't sleep.

...
There is no doubt that there is more awareness of the issue, and more government campaigns as well as a special suicide prevention helpline. That is why experts are baffled and extremely concerned about a recent rise in suicides, 42 so far in 2010, which is around one death a week.

About a year ago, Slate published an article about Greenland's suicides:

Greenland is the country with the world's highest suicide rate. The rate here is 24 times that seen in the United States. Even Japan—a nation with a well-documented suicide epidemic—has an annual rate of only about 51 people per 100,000 inhabitants. Greenland's is 100 per 100,000.

... the majority of Greenlanders who kill themselves are teenagers and young adults. (In most other countries, the elderly dominate suicide statistics.) Young men here are especially prone to an early exit and account for more than half of all suicides, although the girls hold their own. In a 2008 survey, one in four young women in Greenland admitted to trying to kill herself.

Slate notes that suicide is a relatively recent phenomenon:

... for the first half of the 20th century, Greenlanders lived much as they had for the previous 4,000 years: They hunted and fished, clustering in small, remote villages that hug the rocky coastline. They also boasted a suicide rate among the world's lowest. One Danish analysis found that from 1900 to 1930, Greenland had an annual suicide rate of just 0.3 people per 100,000. And "as late as 1960 there was still the occasional year when there were no recorded suicides by Greenlanders," reports Jack Hicks, a Canadian expert on suicide in the arctic region.

...
One reason for Greenland's high suicide rate is that people are particularly proficient at the act, employing methods that leave little chance for survival. Shootings and hangings account for 91 percent of male suicides and 70 percent of female suicides. (Almost every Greenland home has at least one rifle for the annual caribou and musk-ox hunts. Of course, any rope, fishing net, or electric cord can be fashioned into a noose, which in the Greenlandic language is called "our Lord's lasso.")

...
Peter Bjerregaard from Denmark's National Institute of Public Health has noted that while Greenland's suicide problem began in 1970, almost all the deaths involved people born after 1950—the same year that Greenland began its transformation from remote colony to welfare state, as the Danes resettled residents to give them modern services and tuberculosis inoculations. Hicks, the Canadian researcher, said the correlation is present in other Inuit societies as well.

"It happened first in Alaska, then Greenland, and finally in Canada's Eastern Arctic," he told me. "It's not the people who were coerced into the communities as adults who began to exhibit elevated rates of suicidal behavior—it was their children, the first generation to grow up in the towns."

...

... most people kill themselves in summer, according to a trio of Scandinavian and U.S. scientists who analyzed Greenland's mortality data from 1968 to 2002.

The researchers theorize that the brief and bright summer sun disrupts winter sleep cycles, alters serotonin levels, and causes some Greenlanders to snap, especially those in the far north, where the sun stays above the horizon for weeks on end.

"It's sort of impulsive self-violence that is different from the melancholic winter suicides, which are more associated with [seasonal affective disorder] and depression," said Daniel F. Kripke of California's Scripps Clinic Sleep Center, one of the researchers.

Neither article speculated that this might have an impact on how these young people might view the future of their world, an a life that was stolen from them circa 1950, as incredibly bleak:

Scientists in Greenland have told Al Jazeera that an ice sheet that covers 80 per cent of the territory is shrinking much faster than expected.

In recent months, unusually large chunks of ice have broken off its glaciers - one of them four times the size of the US city of Manhattan. Some experts are worried this increasing rate of melting could raise sea levels across the globe.

So what does all this have to do with Barrington Illinois, the village where I live?

In the past three years, six Barrington Consolidated High School students have committed suicide. With an enrollment of about 3,000 students, that is the equivalent of about 67 suicides per 100,000 population. And that might very well be something the school board would want to take seriously.

Julianna, my dentist, chalked it up to a bunch of spoiled rich kids with too much time on their hands. I beg to differ.

One needs to be very depressed to contemplate suicide. Very depressed. Their life must appear hopeless, their future bleak, and this hopelessness and bleakness looms emminently on the horizon.

This I know, for I once tried suicide, in those woods that I now so love to walk, with a knife to cut my jugular. The knife was dull, and more likely, there was enough of a spark, enough of a hope, that I couldn't go through with it. That was 1986. Later, and not all that long ago, really, I contemplated suicide by train - standing in the tracks to be run down. But I decided that was an unfair thing to do to the engineer.

Damn, but I've come a long way in the past three years, since I dropped off my manic-high chair like an anchor tossed from a ship.

Until you've been swallowed up in that suffocating black fog that works to convince you that the only solution is to end it all, you do not have the right to sit in judgment. Your are not part of the peer group. And you ought to get down on your knees and offer sincere prayers of thankfulness to the One who made you, and allowed you to find circumstances in your life that permitted you to ward off that evil that can permeate you mind, body, and soul.

Grant me compassion oh Lord, above all else
And humility, that I not dare to judge
That I not forget my own foibles
That I strive to give comfort at all times to those in discomfort
And thank You, for the many gifts you have given me
For drawing me back from the edge
When I looked into the abyss
And saw no other way out.

While you can, tell the people you love that you love them

Found out on Tuesday that my own life-saving in-sane asylum will be packing it up and moving on come the end of January, 2011. To be in-sane, as the The Last Hippie in America, the stand--up comic Jimmie Wiggins long ago told me, is to stand inside the circle of sanity.

I've spent hours at Rainbow Records here in town; hours spent venting, hours spent learning, hours spent talking and sharing with store-owner John Thominet, who coached my son, Adam James his first year in the major-minors little league system here.

At the store now, the Tuesday regulars always talk Chicago Bears football. They're all passionate about it. Me, I don't really get worked up about any sports any more. The grandest sports season of all for me was 1992, when I whiled the summer away watching Adam James play baseball for John; playing catch with him between innings of the games, practice pitching (badly) to him in the back yard.

Here's a Kodak moment from that 1992 season: I'm pitching to my 3' 10" son when out of the blue, I lose all control One pitch goes over his head. He blinks in shocked disbelief. The next pitch goes behind his back. Deliberately sets down the bat, turns to me, and says "nice" making an okay signal with his right hand, "pitch" making another okay signal with his left hand, his eyes opening wider in sarcastic sardonism. A greater put down than this, no man hath known. Yeah verily, in that moment, I fully understood, that my boy would grow to be a man; able to dish it out with delicious irony and wit, free form put down, stand-up improv, the kind of thing that guys just do -- fully cognizant on a gut level of all the not-so-nuanced subtleties that say, "Hey bozo, you messed up. Get some competence. Throw the damn ball across the plate already." But, unlike the father, the son can do it in two words, plus visuals. Hot damn! A succinct one.

But back to the record store. Corporate takeover. The wine store next door wanted to expand their operations, and knocking down the wall between the two businesses was their choice. The mall owner, seeing bigger bucks, offered to let John relocate down to what had formerly been the animal grooming shop. Jeez, Lew-eez! As if John was born a rube? No way, so John made a counter offer, and they compromised. John got an lease extension to the end of January, so the store will be in full operation for Christmas holidays. After that, John's going out to New Jersey, to be with his wife Jennifer.

I cannot begin to tell how much I will miss this man, who has put up with my nonsense, called me on my nonsense, endorsed me in some of my nonsense, and has never judged me, except to say, "I'm glad I don't have to carry that load that you've got on your shoulder."

His store is one of those treasures, a neighborhood enterprise that people of a certain persuasion find, and just keep coming back to, to linger, to listen, to browse, to be, to just kick it back, knowing that they are respected because they are part of that insane community of humanity that has compassion, that renders caring, kindness, snark and sarcasm, as the situation dictates -- he said Come on Come in I'll give you shelter from the storm.

I will miss you John. But I will always carry in my heart as treasure the hours you gave to me of your time, your honesty, your integrity, you.

I love you John. Thanks for all of it. Here's my prayer:

Oh Lord, please grant
That there be Karma on this earth
So that the good that Your good ones do
Shall feed them in their hour of hunger
Shall shelter them from the storms
Shall bind them safely unto their own
That they always know their own,
And their own shall know thee.

#72 LATE NIGHT WALKIN' SERIES

THE NEXT ITERATION IN MY POETIC DEVELOPMENT SPRANG FORTH AFTER I STARTED WALKING AGAIN AFTER 3 1/4 YEARS OF TOTAL SLOTH LYING AROUND THE HOUSE IN MY BATHROBE, THE ONLY EXERCISE I'D GET WOULD BE TO RAISE A SPOON OR FORK TO MY MOUTH.  BUT THEN DR. JIM PRIDE TOLD ME HE WANTED TO SEE ME AGAIN TO CHECK UP ON MY TYPE II DIABETES (FOR WHICH HE HAD PRESCRIBED MEDS I REFUSED TO TAKE; I WALKED IT OFF AND DIETED IT OFF INSTEAD - MY ONLY KNOCK ON JIM IS THAT HE IS WAY TO QUICK TO LOOK FOR THE MIRACLE PILL).  SO EMBARRASSED WAS I BY MY SUBSTANTIAL FRAME - WEIGHING IN AT 272, THAT I DECIDED TO START WALKING POST HASTE.  FROM THAT CONFLUENCE OF EVENTS FLOWED A RATHER REMARKABLE SERIES OF POEMS, INSPIRED BY LATE NIGHT WALKING AND THE MOON.

Went a'walkin' tonight

Went a'walkin' tonight
And the moon looked just like
A tangerine slice
Standing ripe and upright
on a phantom table top
above the house tops
and the tree line
in the Western sky 

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Walked again late tonight

(edited this on October 24)


Walked again, late tonight.
Up the road, northbound, past the elementary grade school
where Carnival weekend ended earlier, at 6 p.m.,
Except for the carnies, who must take it all down,
and pack it all up, before they can trek South.

Could almost swear I heard the mysterious sounds
of the spirit voices of teenagers, too old now
to be seen at a carnival for "the little" kids.
But sensed that the spirit voices still had
a tiny longing to be there once again,
to experience the wonderment and joy that carnivals bring
to young boys maybe young girls too, when first they ride
those oh so big machines, not the least embarrassed
to be clutching very close to the side
of dad; probably even mom too would do.
Or maybe it's just me I heard - missing the days
when Adam was younger, and smaller, and I might loomed
large, like Homer Simpson, a pretty big presence in his life.

Farther north, farther beyond the school, things got
eerily quiet. No dogs barking, no cars driving by,
no skunks, no coyotes, no raccoons - to be seen,
nor to be heard. Lights out save for the occasional
home with a TV light glowing in an otherwise dark room.

Turned around to come back.
And I wondered why the Ferris Wheel is missing?
Can it really be a carnival with no Ferris Wheel?

Cloudy skies, didn't even glimmer the moon until
I got back to the school. No tangerine moon tonight,
no way no how. Chalk white moon, moon beams barely
peeking through but when they do, eerily slipping through
the darkness of cloud cover. Saw one star only.

Is it always like this when summer slips away? 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Tangerine-shaped moon again tonight

Tangerine-shaped moon again tonight, so white
Low riding in the pitch-black cloudless Eastern sky
Hovering, just hovering, not resting any any table-top
house-tops or tree-tops,
Looking more like it's being held ever so still
By some invisible puppeteer's strings

But how'd the moon move there tonight, midnight,
What arc did it travel?
What course did it take?

There is so much that I don't know,
That I still need to learn. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Portents of things to come

Went mid-morning walking today
And the sun shone so warm and bright
Above an infinitely blue sky
That it would have been possible
To miss the south-wind carrying
A chilling breeze, a portent of
The things that are to come.

October, mostly my favorite time,
And not merely because of Halloween,
Adam James' favorite holiday, and all
Those wonderful memories of Adam and Peter
Wearing grim reaper costumes
And the delightfully silly smiles
They wore too, smiles
That come so naturally to vaguely aware boys.

Nor because of the tree leaves transforming
Into their true colors, so grandly,
So vividly, so majestically, and then
So suddenly gone, save for the odd withered one or two
That hang on so valiantly (or so habitually)
Until the gusty winds of March
Finally persuade them to leave that to which they clung,
As attached as I am to this house,
To this neighborhood,
And to my memories.

October holds the promise of the greatest grandness
Of the trees; so grand that thoughts of winter's
Harshness are pushed somewhere deep into the recesses
Wherein dwell the hopes and dreams of a silly boy
Who once loved in a silly, hopeless, helpless way,
That comes so naturally to the vaguely aware.

Well, come, October, my old friend.
Welcome, October, my old dream.
Well, come, October, my desperate beginning.
welcome, October, my bitter end. 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

We need warm

We need warm, accepting, human beings
Who have learned life's most important lessons:
that life is not easy,
that we all stumble,
that we all fall,
that we cannot pull ourselves up all by ourselves,
(much less by our bootstraps)
that along the craggy, rocky way,
there have always been helping hands,
and guiding lights,
and guardian angels,
and that when we finally learn to forgive ourselves,
then, and only then,
do we learn to forgive others,
and become warm, accepting, human being

#71 ADAM CALLS TO ADVISE ME HE WILL NO LONGER BE TAKING PIANO LESSONS

ONE NIGHT ADAM CALLED, VOICE TREMBLING, TO ADVISE ME HE WOULD NO LONGER BE TAKING PIANO LESSONS.  HE WAS ALMOST IN TEARS.  I TOLD HIM FINE, AND THAT I WAS PROUD OF HIM FOR MAKING THIS DECISION ON HIS OWN, BECAUSE THE ONE THING PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO FOR THEIR CHILDREN IS TO TEACH THEM TO MAKE DECISIONS FOR THEMSELVES.

HE CAME OVER (AS ALWAYS) THAT WEEKEND, AND WE HAD A WONDERFUL TIME (AS ALWAYS) WITH NATHAN, SCOTT, AND GRAHMA, THE COUSINS, AS ALWAYS.

SUNDAY, AFTER THE BOYS LEFT, I WROTE THIS:

THE SOUND OF YOUR LAUGHTER
LINGERS LONG AFTER
LONG, AFTER YOU'RE GONE,
SUSTAINING ME TO CARRY ON.

THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES,
SHINES STRAIGHT THROUGH THE DARKEST NIGHT SURPRISE
AND, AND POINTS THE WAY
TO A BRIGHTER DAY.


THE SOUND OF YOUR LAUGHTER
LINGERS LONG AFTER
LONG, AFTER YOU'RE GONE,
SUSTAINING ME TO CARRY ON.


THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES,
SHINES STRAIGHT THROUGH THE DARKEST NIGHT SURPRISE
AND, AND POINTS THE WAY
TO A BRIGHTER DAY.

HAD I WRITTEN NOTHING ELSE IN MY LIFE, THESE TWO WOULD HAVE BEEN SIGNIFICANT, AND PROBABLY RECORDED AND MEMORALIZED IN THAT FASHION. I HAVE BEEN SOMEONE - A FATHER WHO LOVED HIS SON.  I HAVE BEEN A SUCCESS ON THIS EARTH; I CAN DIE WITH MY HEAD HELD HIGH; I CAN GO AND SEE MY LORD.

#70 MY NEXT ITERATION AS A WRITER FOCUSED ON MY SON - THERE WAS A DECADE WHEN I WROTE ALMOST NOTHING - BEING LOST TO THE WORLD OF ACTUARIAL MATHEMATICS WHERE HUMAN BEINGS ARE REDUCED TO QUANTIFIABLE ENTITIES - THIS WAS NOT A GOOD PLACE FOR ME TO BE

CHRISTMAS DAY, DECEMBER 25, 1985 FOUND OUR FAMILY INVITED TO VISIT MY IN-LAWS, THE GILBERT'S, AT THEIR LOVELY ESTATE IN BARRINGTON HILLS.  WHILE THE ADULTS SAT AROUND SIPPING COFFEE AND SPEAKING CIVILIZED, I LAY ON THE FLOOR, AS THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH CHAIR SPACE.  ALSO ON THE FLOOR CRAWLING AROUND ON ALL FOURS, WAS MY THEN ONE YEAR, ONE MONTH, TWO WEEKS, AND ONE DAY OLD SON, ADAM JAMES GANZER.

AS HE MADE HIS WAY ABOUT THE ROOM, HE CAME TO MY CARCASS (THE CARCASS OF MARKASS), PUT HIS HAND ON MY HIP, AND CRAWLED OVER.  IN THAT ELECTRIC MOMENT, THE THOUGHT CAME TO ME THAT THIS BEING A FATHER, THIS WAS NOT SO BAD.  THE NEXT DAY, WHILE ON "LUNCH" DURING THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT AT THE LITHOGRAPHY COMPANY IN BEVERLY, ILLINOIS, I PENNED THESE WORDS:

HE'S THE FAT ONE COMES ON SUNDAYS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE BY TWO.

AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT MY MAMA SAYS THE MACHINE HE FLIES IS BLUE.

SHE SAYS "CALL HIM DADDY," DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TO DO,

BECAUSE I CANNOT TALK JUST YET EVEN THOUGH I WOULD LIKE TO.

WHEN HE COMES UP TO THE DOOR RINGS THE BELL THE OLD DOG BARKS.

HIS EYES HALF-OPENED SAD AND RED, UNDERNEATH HALF CIRCLES DARK.

WHEN HE TALKS TO ME I CATCH THE WHIFF OF A SMELL I DO NOT KNOW.

BUT WHEN HE SAYS "I LOVE YOU" SEEMS HE'S HAPPY AND I GLOW.

(CHORUS: NOT ADDED UNTIL A YEAR LATER)

WHEN I WAS A CHILD
SO YOUNG AND SO WILD
I COULD SEE AS ONLY A CHILD DOES SEE BUT
NOW THAT I'VE GROWN 
TO KNOW ALL THAT I'VE KNOWN
I KNOW I'LL NEVER MORE
MORE CLEARLY SEE.

WE PLAY FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, HEAD DOWN HOLDING ON MY LEGS.

AND THEN WHEN HE STOPS TO CATCH HIS BREATH IT SEEMS TO ME HE BEGS.

BEGS MY PARDON FOR THE THINGS HE SAYS HE CANNOT DO.

BUT WHEN HE SAYS, "I LOVE YOU," I BELIEVE HIS WORDS ARE TRUE.

I DON'T KNOW WHY I SHOULD LOVE HIM, I DON'T KNOW WHY I SHOULD TRY.

BUT I FEEL THIS BOND BETWEEN US, I DON'T KNOW THE REASON WHY.

EXCEPTING THAT I'VE TOUCHED HIM AND I'VE SEEN HIM THROUGH HIS EYES.

YES. JUST THAT. EXCEPTING THAT I'VE TOUCHED HIM AND I'VE SEEN HIM THROUGH HIS EYES.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD
SO YOUNG AND SO WILD
I COULD SEE AS ONLY A CHILD DOES SEE BUT
NOW THAT I'VE GROWN 
TO KNOW ALL THAT I'VE KNOWN
I KNOW I'LL NEVER MORE
MORE CLEARLY SEE.

DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES AND I WILL PLEDGE WITH MINE.

#69 BACK IN THE DAY WHEN I READ EVERYTHING ABOUT LENNY BRUCE I COULD GET MY HANDS ON, I WROTE MAINLY ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE

This was the year my great Uncle Harold took my brother John and me on a the Great Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle, Washington.  We stopped for a few days to visit our relatives in Havre Montana.  These kin then were not entirely like us, as with the eyes of a poor white country kid from Central Illinois transplanted to the 7th highest mean household income zip code in the country (with populations over 20,000) and went transplanted from not thinking much about wealth and status into a strange new (and not always so friendly environment) where money, wealth, power, and the pursuit of material goods and services ranked quite a bit higher up on the values charts than Church, Faith, Hope, or Charity.

IN HAVRE MONTANA

Riding the Great Empire Builder sitting above the bare brown earth

Perched as high as the telephone lines and telephone poles

It was summer, 1967, when first I saw Montana.

This my brother John and I saw: First a cow drinking from a brook

and then sagebrush only for a hundred miles until in the distance

appeared what turned into a large grove of trees growing along

the Missouri River where the train soon would stop in Havre, Montana.

Havre people are friendly, lots of kin. They smile and say “hello”

their faces tired and dry because even though you sweat

it's so hot and dry that the sweat dries up before fully forming your face.

Only at night will the sweat beads cling to and rolls down your nose.

Morning brings biting mosquitoes and it hasn't rained

for sixty long dry days in Havre, Montana.

You see a farmer trying to scratch something

from the land, but he can't do it because

Nature's already sucked the life from it.

The family talks around the TV about how the Indians are movin' in,

from off the reservation to town, not that they are prejudiced,

but why would those Indians want to leave the hills and Beaver Creek

to come and live here, in Havre Montana.

It's so hot but you know that winter will bring twenty feet of snow

at twenty below all the time. It never never rains, it just snows and burns

here, in Havre Montana.

You can cross the Milk River and be in the badlands, a happy place if you watch out

for rattlers and like to hear the eternal silence of the sun beating down so

hard on Havre, Montana.

The hunting's good – bear, wildcat and fishing up North.

There's gold that way too. Every man and boy owns a gun

and you can still be hung right here, right in Havre, Montana.