A playground for the rich

Once again, as the mayoral election draws near, the hand-wringing begins.  Rents in NYC are just too damn high.  Our current mayor has done very little to alleviate this issue.  The "housing lottery" system is a joke, and most units in the lottery are too costly for anyone making less than $60,000 per year.  The solution, for many people, is simple.  "If you can't afford NYC, just leave!"
Challenge accepted.
Let's set the bar for minimum income at $70,000 for a single earner.  On this salary, a basic apartment, transportation, food, clothing, and a few luxuries are attainable.  Anyone who can't meet that threshold has to find a cheaper city to live in.
Great plan.  New York is now a city without waiters.  There are no busing staff to clear your table, nor are there many cooks below the rank of head chef.  There are no housekeepers or custodians.  Certainly no store clerks.  That's going to put a damper on all the hotels, restaurants and stores so crucial to NYC's bustling tourism industry.  Continuing on to the performing arts scene, that would let out most theater staff and box office staff, as well as every performer and member of the crew of every show not on Broadway or at Lincoln Center.  So I guess nobody will want to see a show.
OK, so you don't really need restaurants, theaters or hotels.  And with online shopping, do we really need stores anymore?  Well, let's look at the things people actually need to survive in a city.  There are no new teachers, social workers, firefighters or police officers, and no EMTs period.  No traffic cops or 911 dispatchers.  No nurses below the rank of RN.  And that custodial shortage extends to the places we actually use, including hospitals and schools.  Speaking of schools, we've just gotten rid of all the para-educators who work with disabled students, as well as specialty instructors.  At the collegiate level, getting classes will be even harder because there are no adjunct professors anymore (as in the people who teach the bulk of college classes while scraping by on poverty-level wages).  There are no cabdrivers or maintenance workers.  And I hope that you weren't planning a remodel, because your contractor doesn't have a construction crew anymore.  Your nanny has also quit on you, as has your gardener and cleaning lady.  And if you hired a home health aide for your aging parent, that person has just left the city as well.
Going into the office, all of the financial industry will grind to a halt because the administrative staff has gone.  No receptionists.  No assistants scheduling meetings and drafting contracts.  No bookkeeping staff.  Sure, technology could handle most of it, but does a stockbroker handling billions in trade every week even have the time to manage his own calendar?
In our court system, there would be no legal aid attorneys.  No new hires in the district attorney's office either.  Clerks at every level of government would be gone, from the sanitation department to the DMV.  Gone would be paralegals and legal researchers.  And I hope you don't plan on spending the day in a city park, because the groundskeepers aren't there either.
You can't build a city solely for people of means.  It's the working people who not only keep the city running, but make it what it is.  They not only need a decent home, they deserve it.

So, what does 2/3 of a kid look like?

Recently, an article came out decrying the rates of women in poverty.  The article quoted the statistic that 42 million women and 28 million children live in poverty.  This, of course, leads to the inevitable comments about welfare queens with multiple baby-daddies having kids they can't take care of.
I know, after all, if you do the math, 28 million kids distributed among 42 million women works out to--about 2/3 of a kid per woman.
Less than one.
I would love to meet the baby-daddies performing this feat of nature.  Seriously, which two-thirds?  Is it divided from the feet up or the head down?  Or is it laterally?  Those poor children hopping around with only a vestigial second leg.  I have never seen a 2/3 kid, but I feel sorry for them.
Now of course, this does not mean that we have a rise in partial children.  Statistically speaking, it means that at least one-third of the women living in poverty HAVE NO CHILDREN AT ALL!  Yeah, so much for blaming the welfare moms.  Also, since this is not China, women can have multiple kids.  Therefore, this means that every woman in poverty with more than one child, means another woman with none. 
So much for "can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em."  So much for the multiple baby-daddies. 
So, what is the problem? 
Wage price inequities.  Henry Ford famously paid his employees enough to afford the cars they produced.  Today, the minimum wage barely covers rent.  When I was single and worked full-time (with a college degree and no children), my salary barely covered an illegal converted shed that I called home.  My car was falling apart (and this was in California--you don't have a car, you're nowhere), and I once considered not using it because it needed repairs that I couldn't afford until payday three days later.  Fish and cheese were luxuries--forget meat.  I was in that statistic--and I had done the "responsible" thing by going to college and not having kids.
Plenty of people do the "responsible" thing and get burned.  Remember that.  And before you cry foul, do the math.

Post-election wrap-up--immigration, moderates, and rape babies

With the exception of Floridum (and since I used to live there, I can call it that), all the votes are counted.  Barack Obama is president.  The Senate is majority-Democrat.  Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock are not Senators.  Gay marriage and medical marijuana are now the law in several states.  And the MSM just got caught up with the rest of the world in discovering that the GOP--particularly the Tea Party--is very out of touch.
Mitt Romney was very popular--with older, white males.  However, with younger voters, women, and minorities, he had little support.  And there are now more of us than the older Americans.  (It didn't help that he teamed up with Paul Ryan, who wanted to gut Medicare for everyone under 55.)  Our family was proof of that divide.  Builder voted for Romney, but I voted for Obama.
Herein lies the problem.  The GOP has ostensibly been taken over by a bat-guano crazy group known as the Tea Party.  Ostensibly started as a revolt against higher taxes and a "spread of socialism," the agenda has been co-opted by religious fundamentalists, Quiverfull X-tians, and the John Birch Society.  Now, their platform is as follows--Abortion: Bad, under all circumstances, including rape and incest.  Contraception: Bad--too similar to abortion.  Immigration: Bad--they steal jobs.  Separation of church and state: Bad--must fight for "Jaee-sus!"  Gay marriage: Bad--"cause the Bible tells me so!"  Social safety net: Bad--everyone must be self-sufficient, and I'll be DAMNED if you raise MY taxes to pay for these parasites!
Herein lies the problem--thanks to the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments, women and minorities have the vote.  Women don't like having the government cutting social programs while worrying about what's in their uterus--whether it be a baby or an IUD (and don't kid yourself--most of the women using contraceptives are married).  People whose skin isn't lily-white (particularly Hispanics) worry about discrimination and false arrest from those who can't be bothered to differentiate between illegals (who can be as white as Romney) and people of Hispanic origin (who may have lived here longer than Washington).
And then there's the pro-life crowd.
As divided as the rest of the GOP, the pro-life crowd has gone from "abortion is wrong" to "anything that MIGHT prevent a fertilized zygote from growing into a baby is wrong under all circumstances."  In other words, they went into what was once sacred territory--rape babies and contraception.  There are those who are personally opposed to abortion but they are pro-birth-control (can't have an abortion if you're not pregnant).  And as for rape babies, there is a certain level of sociopathy in demanding that a rape victim carry a reminder of the assault to term.  However, both Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock (as well as Paul Ryan) wanted to outlaw abortion in cases of rape.  And we don't need to look that far back in this campaign to remember Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke for lobbying to have her insurance cover her contraceptives.
Meanwhile, GOP candidates have another problem--campaign positions have a longer life span.  Remember John Kerry?  Within the span of 2004, he went from Vietnam War Hero to "Flip-Flop Kerry."  His inconsistencies lost him the election.  Similarly, Mitt Romney decided to be as pro-self-sufficiency, pro-rich-people, and pro-life as possible to get the Tea Party nutcase Republican nomination.  Then, he had to backpedal to appeal to the nation, which is far more moderate.  However, since soundbytes live forever as social network memes (and travel faster than the speed of sound), he came off as meaning nothing he said.  His choice of running mate did not help.  Thus was the Massachusetts Moderate turned into the Tea Party Talking Head.

Social programs for the job creators

During the debates, I heard a lot about "job creators."  According to Former Governor Romney (I refuse to address anyone by an honorific they no longer hold), the job creators are the small businesses, since these employ the most people.  (For the record, the three biggest private-sector employers in America are Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Burger King--hardly small businesses.  But I digress.)  We need to give these "job creators" tax cuts.
Let me say this.
Builder is, by Romney's definition, a "job creator."  However, our taxes are low enough.  What we need is an incentive to stay open--and it does not come in the form of a tax break.  It comes in the form of those evil social programs.  For example, here in NY State, there is a program called Healthy NY that provides relatively low-cost health insurance to small businesses and the self-employed.  People like us.  If Builder had to buy private health insurance (since it doesn't come from a job), he'd have a hard time.  He's 62.  He's had five hernia surgeries.  He has tracheal stenosis, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, and a torn meniscus.  Even if we could find a company that would insure him, we'd have to pay about $5,000 a month.  That buys us about seven months of coverage under Healthy NY. 
This is what our job creators truly need.  We need ways of staying profitable and competitive.  We need to ensure that our bills are low enough that we don't have to pillage our customers to stay open.  And we need it now.

Vouchers--a solution that causes problems

In Brooklyn, a major issue is vouchers.  "We pay property taxes, but that money goes to public schools we don't use!  Why can't we get it for our yeshivas?" is the rallying cry.  As someone who attended six public and two private schools in four different states between the ages of four and sixteen, I wouldn't push too hard for it.
1. Yes, private prep schools invariably show better test results than public schools.  But why?  Is it because they have resources provided by wealthy donors?  Is it because they can cherry-pick students based upon test scores, grades, and recommendations?  How many private schools can exclude learning-disabled, developmentally-delayed, or autistic students who don't test well?  Public schools have to take anyone who walks in the door.  No exceptions.  Even if the school is full to bursting, they must take every child.
2. The per-student funding cited by the pro-voucher crowd not only goes for textbooks and teacher's salaries, but for library books, physical plant, school nurses, administrators, office equipment and maintenance (someone's got to keep the Xerox machine running for all those lovely forms), security, resource room instructors, gym equipment, art supplies and other miscellaneous expenses.  Each child given a voucher represents a loss of funding to the school as a whole, and will result in an even more unequal distribution of resources than already exists.  Those parents most likely to obtain vouchers are those who are more aggressive, wealthier, or more politically connected--and whose children are groomed to be successful in school.  Meanwhile, everyone else is left in decaying buildings with broken windows, inexperienced teachers and out-of-date textbooks because of a perpetual lack of funds.  (I went to a school like this--it was the tail end of inter-district busing to enforce Brown v. Board of Education in Tampa, FL.)
3. IN NYC, a city that regulates the size of a soda, no government official is going to hand over money to a school without a lot of regulations.  If money for private schools come from the same kitty as public school funding, why would anyone think that the same rules wouldn't apply?  Particularly for yeshivas where teachers are not certified and secular subjects are disdained or outright ignored, this regulation could lead to a Hobson's choice--intense restructuring including replacing the entire teaching staff with certified non-Jews, or giving up badly needed funds.
In my life, I have attended schools that ran the gamut from beautiful, loaded with amenities and well-funded (Las Vegas--your gambling dollars go to public schools and libraries), to schools which had broken windows, geography textbooks that were a decade old (and this was in 1993--think recent breakup of the Soviet Union), a music program without instruments or songbooks (we had to provide our own), and more students than desks in some classes.  I attended a private prep school that had the same read-the-chapter-answer-the-questions-none-of-your-lip teaching style that I thought I'd left in public school.  There is no guarantee that an expensive education is necessarily better.  However, there is a near certainty that pulling out both money and successful students from public school cannot be good for education as a whole.

Capitalism and healthcare--a match NOT made in Heaven

Recently, there's been a lot of talk about how each candidate will handle healthcare.  Mitt Romney's plan is to let the market dictate healthcare costs.  This is not a good idea.
1. Unlike cars, timeshares, or even the Adam Smith standby of eggs, people do not buy increasing amounts of healthcare simply because there's a drop in price.  When was the last time a hospital offered a sale on casts and splints?  Or penicillin?  No facility would do it because IT DOESN'T WORK!  No one will line up to take advantage of such a discount.  People only buy healthcare as needed.  The only time affordability becomes an issue is when consumers delay or avoid buying necessary treatments because they can't afford it.  These non-consumers then face either a reduced quality of life, or they die.
2. Unlike food, clothing or housing, substituting cheaper forms of healthcare doesn't always work.  Can't afford a house?  Rent a smaller apartment.  It serves the same purpose.  Same thing with groceries.  If chicken is on sale this week, you'll buy it instead of beef.  Or, you'll buy eggs or beans.  However, there are few alternatives to open-heart surgery.  Even certain medications must be given in their brand-name form, as patients can be sensitive or allergic to an additive in the generic.
3. Market forces dictate that companies produce that which is the most profitable, not always the most necessary.  This explains why there are constantly new medications for acid-reflux disease, while cancer (less common but far more deadly) is still being treated with the same radiation and chemotherapy which have been used for decades despite their horrific and well-documented side effects.
4. Any market that exists outside of an economics textbook has a fair amount of collusion.  This can take many forms when it comes to healthcare, such as all health insurance companies fixing premiums while denying care for pre-existing conditions, to pharmaceutical companies paying their competitors to keep generic versions of newly off-patent medications off the market.  It's reprehensible, but it's all legal.
For a long time, we've let the market dictate healthcare, and the results are a mess.  It's time to investigate alternatives.

What did I sign up for--Bigotry

Two months after Builder and I got married, we took a trip to Cleveland to visit his extended family.  While there, I got the shock of my life--the "n-word" crossing Jewish lips.
Now I'm not shocked.  I'm just appalled.
I've become accustomed to the all-too-frequent use of the word "schvartza" (a Yiddish version of the n-word).  However, my completely secular parents, the ones who supposedly had no values, never used racial slurs, and taught me never to use them.  All the ones I'd heard of, I picked up from TV--but I hate them all.
The truth is, there is only ONE race.  No group is superior to another.  And those most likely to apply the N-Word are just as likely to drop the K-Word.  We do ourselves no favors by trying to emulate them.  They will always see us as "children of the Devil" or whatever slur they wish to use.  We win ourselves no friends, and gain no respect.  All we do is alienate those elements of the world who might sympathize with our plight.

Parks, zoos, museums and libraries

Last week, I found out that the Midwood branch of the public library has a weekly story time for kids up to age 5.  So, this morning, I corralled the Things, and we went over.  Turns out it was a sort of "Mommy and Me" group with not just stories, but songs and playtime as well.  It also turns out that even Thing 2 was on the older end of the spectrum--most of the kids in attendance were babies and toddlers.
After the story time ended, I took the Things into the main area to check out books.  As we were leaving, I commented to the librarian, "Zoos, parks, museums and libraries--they add so much to a kid's life!"
She remarked snidely, "Yeah.  They're also the first things that get cut."
How depressing.  Parks provide necessary green space in the middle of the steel and concrete of the city.  Kids need time to run around in nature.  Zoos (and I'm including aquariums) provide kids with access to animals they might never see up close.  Museums can open a kid's world to art, history, science, and exploration at a decent price.  And as for libraries--what can be better than free books?
Support your zoos, parks, museums, and libraries.  The kid you aid could be your own.
(Gets off soapbox.)