A Fucking Liar? (Updated Again)

Almost four weeks after the alleged episode, no evidence has surfaced that anyone called any member of the Congressional Black Caucus a “nigger” on Obamacare Sunday. None will surface although any visual and auditory evidence would be worth hundreds of thousands to the media. I watch the media and listen to it carefully, including NPR. No one has pointed out the lack of validation of the allegation, I think. The main media are dishonest to the core, the New York Times first of all.  Please, tell me if I missed something. (4/16/10)

To Representative John Lewis of Georgia:

Dear Mr Congressman:

This letter is more about the “L” word than it is about the “N”word. Over ten days ago, you claimed that a health bill protester called you a “nigger.” You can be completely sure I will not call you that hurtful name nor any of its derivatives or synonyms. In fact, now and in the future, I will call you whatever your want. I believe that calling people what they wish to be called is matter of courtesy, be it “pink rabbits” or whatever.

Your report, of course, took its place in a preemptive concert of stern media warnings about right-wing extremism immediately following the signing of the so-called “health care” bill into law. The concert was intended to give some backbone to media liberals who dimly understand how much disgust the law has created and who are frightened of what they have wrought. It was intended also, preemptively and childishly, to intimidate the majority of the American people who want to resist a law that will increase the cost of health care, decrease its quality, put their children in debt for a lifetime, and mandate that government agencies meddle in their most private affairs.

The fact that the dire warnings about extremism referred to a handful of episodes, some of them imaginary, did not escape the attention of well-informed, alert, mature people. I can’t say the same about the young, fed from childhood on the theme that America is an incurably racist country that ought to take itself to the woodshed frequently. You are not just anyone, you are an elected representative of the people. You have stared real racism in the eye. You should know better. Your accusation gave the silly chorus of scared liberals the measure of gravitas it lacked, almost some credibility.

In the long lapse of time since your reported the alleged abuse, not a single item of evidence has surfaced to support your claim. Zero evidence has been produced although there must have been dozens of television mikes around the demonstrators, and thousands of cell-phone cameras. No evidence, although the ineffable and terminally-ill New York Times chose to place the alleged racial insult on its front page the day following your report!

It does not help that Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for such evidence, to go to the United Negro College Fund, and that no one, not one person, not a counter-demonstrator, not a cop, no one in your entourage stepped forward to accomplish this double good deed. (It would be a double good deed because it would contribute to sullying the honor of all opponents of the so-called “health care” law while benefiting a worthy cause.)

You personally confirmed my worst suspicions by continuing to decline the open invitation from Bill O’Reilly to repeat the charge on his nightly show. I believe you don’t want to to go there because O’Reilly, with all his limitations, is a bulldog when it comes to exposing dissembling, beating around the bush, and simple lying.

Speaking of the O’Reilly show, on the March 29^th, self-styled black activist and self-styled “Reverend” Sharpton whom he was hosting, asserted that he had “heard the tape” with the racial insult against you. Bill O’Reilly lit into Sharpton who retreated with his tails between his legs. No one came to the good Reverend’s defense, it seems. Incidentally, this is not some rumor I picked up on the Internet but something I saw on television with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, together with millions of others. Sharpton was straightforwardly lying about a non-existent tape. Anyway, you are not responsible for current black activists’ irresponsibility. And anyway, strangely, I don’t dislike Sharpton, most of the time. There is something attractively candid about him again, most of the time.

You had a good, constructive life, Mr Congressman. You were once a brave young fighter against segregation, a shame on this country that the white majority was not remedying quickly enough. You occupied many useful and honorable positions. For 26 years, you had a normal if ordinary career in Congress, like many elected by nearly automatic vote from safe districts.

You have been an honorable man. This forces me to ask if you have become delusional. I have to ask: Has senility crept in? Are you confusing in your mind, Washington 2010, with its affirmative action but fairly elected, supposedly “black” President, and Tennessee’s segregated lunch counters, 1960? If you do, it’s time to go, to let other men or women wrestle over the seat you held for so long. (Personally, I would like to see another African-American win your seat, a black female conservative, for example.)

And, referring again to the allegation that a health law protester called you a “nigger,” if you are not delusional:

Are you a fucking liar?

It would be a relief to me personally if you simply stated that the media, and Associated Press, in particular, misquoted you. It’ would also be easy to accept. AP is guilty of daily misrepresentation. If you do, I will immediately put up your denial on this modest blog, announce it on my local radio show, and otherwise do anything in my power to propagate the good news. If you don’t say anything along these lines, my question stands

Let me sign this letter:

Of course, I am an angry white man, and armed. I also drive a pick-up truck (to tow my sailboat). But I live on the Left Coast, not in Alabama. I never go to church and I never open the Bible, except to locate some erudite citation to confound others. I am an immigrant. I am married to a “woman of color” to use the grotesque jargon in favor among your white liberal allies. We have two grown children, also “of color.” My doctorate is from a good university and I enjoyed a pretty good academic career. My scholarly production was in the social sciences. In fact, I am a good enough social scientist that I recognize the warning signs of fascism when I see them: “Big lies….” (Google “Joseph Goebbels” for an exact quote.)

PS : In one of the next Tea Party demonstrations, there will almost certainly be a progressive plant shouting “nigger!” and worse.

04/0510. Here is the best audiovisual evidence of the relevant short period. It shows members of the Congressional Black Caucus walking through a hostile crowd. It’s difficult to understand how one could confuse the many “boo” and “kill that bill,” with the word “nigger.” Again, there is a fortune to be made showing the media that this video was edited or cut to take out the offensive word. (The video link is off my friend Nadir’s Facebook. I thank him.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCs6pSE8

Feminine Logic

“Why are you so mean?” I ask my wife of many years.

“Am I beautiful?” she say by way of reply.

“You are exceptionally beautiful.” (I mean it. I am not just talking.)

“Am I creative?” she asks further.

“You are one of the most creative people I know.” (She is a talented, vigorous, imaginative painter.)

“Am I a good cook?” (Her cooking used to be downright awful, sickening, literally. Now, nearly everything she cooks is delicious.)

“A very good cook, by any standard.”

“So, why should I be nice too?”

I stand mute, defeated. Yet, there is one thing that gets to her, one pathway to her self-indulgent, self-centered brain:

“Too bad you have such a tiny bottom.”

My wife is obsessed with that small issue. While it’s obvious that 80 % of American women labor to reduce their buttock size, or wish they did, my wife is deeply saddened by the thought, the assessment, the judgment that Nature endowed her modestly in that area. It makes her inconsolable, practically desolate!

Now, I have her full, pleading attention

Reason does not do any good with her. Fortunately, unreason works it magic. She might even consider becoming nicer in the future, just in the hope that I might overlook her small ass.

(By the way, it looks just right to me. It’s her obsession, not mine but what do I know? I am only a man.)

The Health Disaster: What’s Next. What to do.

The magnitude and the complexity of the disaster of Obamacare are such that the normal thinking person has trouble keeping them all in mind, much less, thinking rationally about them. For me, it’s been like herding cats. I have decided to focus on the essentials with respect to the main next stage for health care in this country and with respect to what we can do about it as individuals. What I describe below is modest enough to understand, remember, and act on, I think.

The road to single-payer destination

I still don’t know how much duplicity exists in Pres. Obama’s heart and I don’t know how capable of scheming Nancy Pelosi is. (He has limited understanding of anything, I keep saying. I think she is on happy pills all the time.) However, the miracle they wrought had predictable consequences irrespective of intent.

On the one hand, as I have said before, I can’t imagine any American jury punishing Americans for refusing to purchase something. On the other hand, overall, the automatic fines for not purchasing health insurance are overall, smaller than the cost of purchasing health insurance. That’s true for companies and for individuals. The rational course of action is to pay the fine and see what happens. For individuals, there will be no personal risk beyond the fine in refraining from carrying health insurance. Insurance companies will not be able to refuse anyone with a re-existing condition: As soon as the doctor informs me I have any serious illness, I will purchase insurance. I will also leave a check with someone close to me to do the same on my behalf in case I have an accident and I am unable to do it for myself.

There are two solutions to this problem, both very unpleasant. First, the authorities, aided by court decisions, can admit that forced purchase of insurance cannot be implemented and then, turn to taxation. A tax on everyone would abolish the dual obstacle of superficial voluntariness and of unconstitutionality of the dispositions now in the law.

It’s possible to convict people and companies for not paying a tax, especially a nearly universal tax. It happens all the time. If he is still President, Barack Obama will say: “Very sorry, I tried to keep my campaign promise that no one earning less than $250,000 would see a tax increase. The lack of civic spirit of too many of our citizens and companies forced me to do it.” Keep in mind that he did much worse recently as far as betraying solemn promises is concerned.

But there is another solution that is even more palatable to the leftists who have taken over this country. They can simply preside over a massive die-off of private (non-government) insurance companies. Such an event would be precipitated by a broader coverage mandate accompanied by a loss of clients as many, or most, turn to fines as the better option. Leftists could thus passively create a new situation with government, single-payer coverage as the only solution left. Single-payer, in turn, would be financed with a combination of obligatory payroll taxes, co-payments, and other miscellaneous taxes as is the case in most of Europe today. Faced with the prospect of no coverage for most of the population even a conservative majority in both houses would probably cave in.

Apologists for single-payer health coverage delude themselves that if it works in Finland and in France, it would work here too. I have written before about this, based on experience and study. I think they are dreaming. I see no prospect that the US can do as well as France in that area. It’s a long story; let me summarize it: French trains are fast, comfortable and they run on time, all the time. Think Amtrack!

What is to be done?

The airwaves are currently full of speculation about whether or not it is possible to reverse or even to limit the damage of Obamacare. Much of the speculation is above my pay grade. Even if it were not, it would leave me deeply dissatisfied because I need to act now, or at least, to have a plan for action immediately. The implementation of the plan has to depend entirely or mostly on factors under my control. At the very least, I want to be able to make a resolution for my behavior right tomorrow that I will be able to keep. Here are two in one.

1 I will vote punitively in every election. In federal elections, I will find out who voted for the Obamacare and who said anything positive about it. I will vote against any candidate that did either. I will do so even if the alternative candidate is a yellow dog. (That’s where the term comes from, incidentally.) In primaries, I will vote for the candidate who will say the worst things about Obamacare. Lacking such information, I will chose the candidate most opposed to government enlargement. In other elections, I will ferret out candidates’ position with respect to Obamacare and about public intervention in health care and in the economy in general. I will vote for the candidate who sounds most opposed even if he is running for dog-catcher. I will not miss an opportunity to trumpet my electoral choices and the reasons for my choices.

2 I will make it my foremost goal to draw one another person to this viewpoint and I will make sure this person vote in November. My conquest, my single conquest, may be an independent, a comparatively easy achievement. Secondly, there are millions of young people who don’t register to vote or who don’t vote. Many abstain because they think they don’t know enough to do any good. It’s fairly easy to capture the attention of one of those abstainers and to hold his hand until he registers and votes (the right way). But I may even be able to cause a Democrat to vote against his party just this one time. It’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Many registered Democrats are disgusted by the process through with Obamacare was voted and signed into law. They are repelled for much the same reasons I am: It was obscene. You don’t have to be a Republican or a conservative to recognize obscenity. Second, Democrats in rising numbers are going to discover that the law does not accomplish many of the things they were promised and that it deprives them of some of what they have.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t know what the immediate future holds for the legal and practical status of Obamacare. However, I can’t think of any future where a larger number of non-Democrat elected officials would not help repair or compensate for the ravage.

This two-pronged strategy will meet with uneven success, depending on locale. In my district, there is scant chance of preventing the re-election of silly Congressman Sam Farr. Yet, it’s worth doing for two reasons. First good behavior is no less contagious than bad behavior. Your good behaviors might, in the aggregate, move to action voters in districts where a change of representation is possible. Just remember that a majority is half plus one (unity, un, uno). Second, at the very least, pursuing this strategy is going to make me feel better.

One last thing: I am contemplating designing a flag for the “Party of  No.” I am thinking of the silhouette of a shapely woman with a beehive hairdo and a hunting rifle across her back. What do you think?

PLEASE, TRY TO CIRCULATE THIS PEACEFUL CALL TO ARMS. (I have to emphasize “peaceful” because I don’t trust our Executive anymore.)

Aggressive Swimming Rabbits: Conservative Violence, Abortion

When he was President, Jimmy Carter reported that while he was hunting in some swamp, armed to the teeth of course, a rabbit had swam toward him and acted threateningly. (Would I make this up?) The current orchestrated media reports about violence and threats of all kinds against Democrats remind me of this glory moment in American liberal history.

Several black Representatives affirmed that they had be called “nigger” on Sunday. Today, as I write, almost four days later, I have been looking in vain for visual or audio evidence of this alleged episode. Let’s think things through: Tea party activists are demonstrating outside Congress in their thousands against a bill that enrages much or most of the population. There is no hostile press, there are no mikes, there are no television cameras to record the historic event and the precious “n” moment? Among the thousands of counter-demonstrators, in the Congress men’s entourage, there is no one with the presence of mind to whip out his cell-phone camera and recorder to catch the insults? What is this, 1958?

With each passing hour without evidence, I become more persuaded that the insults story was fabricated and disseminated by a supine and complicit media.

It’s like Pres. Carter’s rabbit story: It probably did not happen; if it did, it’s regrettable but insignificant. Somewhere between 50 and 70 million Americans are angry because of the contents of the law (those small parts of it they know), and even more angry because of the way it was passed. Under the circumstances, if only two, twenty, or two hundred of them allow themselves intemperate language, it’s a cause for celebrating our collective reasonableness.

More recently: big brouhaha about alleged telephoned threats to Democrat members of Congress. It might have happened, and see above. Or maybe I did not happen, at least, not from the people the liberal media point to. Do I suspect that the allegedly targeted members of Congress arranged directly for such calls to be left on their answering machines? Probably not. Would I put it past them to have given tacit approval to excited and sneaky junior members of their staff to do it? No, I don’t. What better, quick, economical way to create enough sympathy to avoid the electoral consequences of their voting for the hated so-called health bill? All it takes is a lack of scruples.

As recently as two years ago, I would not have engaged in such speculations. The climate around political discourse in this country has changed drastically. There were the Chicago-style intimidation tactics during both the primary and the presidential campaign. There was ACORN’s documented sixty-plus registrations of the same nineteen year-old voter. There was the dropping of charges against two leather-clad young, big black men who showed up at a voting poll with truncheons. There was the Democrat Governor of Illinois caught trying to sell a Senatorial seat. And then, there were the gangsterish methods used to pass a bill and sign into a law a package of fake reforms vomited by a big majority of the American people.

What has changed also is that many of us are counting on most of the press to cover up and misinterpret the misdeeds of Democrat leaders and sometimes, to engage in blatant lies in their service.

Barack Obama has succeeded in giving intellectual extremism a good name.

Incidentally, someone did yell “baby-killer” at the turncoat Democrat Representative. I believe it because I heard it. This too is an object of much pious outrage on the Left. But why? Here is how I see it, very personally:

I don’t think a human egg fertilized an hour ago is a baby. Do I think a fetus forcefully removed alive from a womb in the eight month is a baby? Absolutely! I don’t know at what point of the fetal development I would begin to use the word “baby.” I am not guided by any religious doctrine. I think it would depend much on the appearance of the fetus. It’s obvious that there are subjective assessments involved. It follows from this simple fact that many may legitimately regard abortion as baby murder. This is not a small deal. The shouter was concerned about the use of his money to murder millions of humans. Why wouldn’t he say so aloud? Is it politically incorrect to protest loudly what one thinks is a plan for mass assassination of babies in cold blood? (Even if one is utterly wrong from a factual standpoint?) Have we all taken leave of ours senses, many conservative included? The fact that this issue has to be laid out carefully gives the answer.

Conservatives of all stripes, including those who are not of my particular stripe (libertarian-leaning), have been slowly poisoned into an obscene form of discretion. The disastrous health care law may be a wake-up call to induce us to speak clearly and vocally, for once. It’s better to be moral, honest and effective than to be liked by those you don’t like, who don’t like you, and who insult you repeatedly.

As a modest beginning, let’s stop using our adversaries’ dishonest vocabulary. Let’s stop referring to health care reform.” From now on, I propose:”HCD,” for “health care disaster.”

PS At this point in my life, I support restricted legal abortion as the lesser of several evils. My position is nearly identical with that expressed by Bill Clinton when he was President. The idea that abortion on demand is a “right” would make me guffaw if it were not so sad.

Leçon d’Anglais #11

“I have to come clean with my wife.”

Malgré une fausse traduction malheureusement encore répandue, cette phrase ne signifie pas:

“Il faut que je me fasse propre (que je me lave) pour avoir un orgasme avec ma femme” mais plutôt:

“Il faut que je dise la vérité entière, sans détours, à ma femme.”

Health Care Reform: Paradise Lost

I have been struggling for three days to swim back to the surface and breathe again. Since the monstrous health care bill reform passed on Sunday, furor and something approaching despair have made me numb and mute. As people begin actually reading the 2700 pages, bad news cascade after bad news. I have been looking for the silver lining and found only one: It looks like the portability of health insurance will become a fact. That’s good. It was intolerable that people stayed in jobs they hated and refrained from entrepreneurship because they were too afraid to lose their health coverage. I think that’s all.

The rest of it is a disaster for our future. Note that every other political defeat does not make me feel the way I do now. Alternance in power is a good thing. When the other guys get their way with something I don’t want, I figure it’s the price I pay for stable and peaceful government. Certainly, I don’t want to live in a country where the losers routinely stage coups or start revolutions.

I don’t like most of what I know is in the law. I fear what else is in there that I will only discover later. I am sure the cost of the programs the law creates will undermine severely our future economic development. I suspect hardly anyone one will benefit. Instead, the overall quality of health care will decline. Most of all, I am aggrieved by the process by which the law became law, against clearly expressed majorities of opinion. The process smells of fascism and of the twisted parliamentary (ostensibly legal) methods by which the Communist Party gained control of Czechoslovakia in 1948.

My near-despair is rooted in two stream of personal experience: First, I saw it coming because I have inside track information, not secret information, mind you. President Obama is a second-rate academic. I know such people well. I have known them for more than thirty years. Improvements in our national health care delivery system based on market mechanisms were never in the cards. Few academics except economists know much about the market. Hardly a handful has read Adam Smith. They learn early in their careers that the idea of a market is a tricky myth designed to deceive the great unwashed masses. Then, they never give is another thought.

Academics in general are both intellectually limited and presumptuous. They know what they know and they don’t know what they don’t know. Successful academics, the minority who play the scholarship game, often become cured in time of heir presumptuousness. Anonymous scholarly peer review takes care of it. There is nothing like seeing the work of several years trashed from three different sides by strangers, and realizing that they are mostly right, to teach you humility. Barack Obama never had this salutatory experience. He never published anything scholarly, even when he was superbly placed to do so. Barack Obama had never accomplished anything in his life until last Sunday. He knows less about markets than a good undergraduate with three economics courses under his belt. Naturally, he and his ilk can only think of bureaucratic, and therefore, coercive and wasteful solutions.

The second root of my near-despair is the also the deepest: I have been there before. In 1981, Francois Mitterand, the head of the Socialist Party was elected President of France. His election inaugurated fifteen years of French decline and missed growth. After a decade of brisk economic development under conservative leadership, the country slowed down to very little. Nothing increased except government employment. The country went from one kind of decline to another. Unemployment remained around 10% , much of it long term and very long term unemployment. A whole generation of young French people grew up without the notion that work is normal. The bulk of the French educational system dropped from fairly good to quite bad. (Nearly everyone agree it’s bad now.)

The most interesting aspects of French decline under socialist administration are almost intangible, difficult to describe. Fortunately, I can depict them a little, even if in subjective terms because I knew the country well before and after. (I was born and reared in France. I know the language perfectly. I have spent much time in my native country before and after the Mitterrand regnum. )The public mood and the mood of ordinary people in the street became universally sullen. Socialist rulers claimed they gave he French more security but they killed their joie de vivre. Even more curiously, the advent of Socialist Party rule coincided with a massive dying-off of French cultural creativity. Things have improved some in the Sarkozy years but if you had visited France ten years ago, you would have found a cultural desert. There was no painting except hackneyed, inferior copies of 100-year old Impressionists. There was little fiction and it comprised mostly thin dry near-stories, stuff I had to force myself to read because it was boring. During the period, the French motion pictures industry went from one of the most productive in the world (though behind the American and the Indian) to one that turned out one or two good movies in five years at best. Most strikingly, there was no music of any interest produced in France except that of immigrants from North Africa, rai. (Of course, I joked that the French had become so lazy that they let immigrant workers do not only the menial work and the manufacturing work but even their popular music work!) In the socialist period, the French acquired many so-called “rights” and they lost their taste for living.

What we are facing in this country is worse than anything the Socialists were able to dish out in France. Mitterand had to govern most of the time without a majority in parliament. He had to compose and compromise with political coalitions opposed to his programs. Also, the powers of a French Presidents are somewhat less broad than those of an American President.

I think I have lost the country to which I emigrated forty years ago. I am in mourning for the vigorous, creative, free America I loved. I have never hoped to be wrong more than I am today. I hope someone will write and point out the errors of my analogy.

Watch this blog for more analysis and for calls to action.

Whining Instead of Sex and the Better Use of Health Insurance: A Testimony. (Think again.)

This piece was posted before. I am recycling it (with light editing) because it’s the most constructive thing I know how to do after the disaster of the so-called health care reform bill passed yesterday. The bill is utterly dishonest; the way it was passed threatens the existence of constitutional government in his country; it’s ruinous.

I know how detestable it is for older men to speak about their health. First, the odds that they are going to come out of all this alive are not good. Second, it’s true that many old geezers replace sexual pleasure with the joys of whining. I am not one of those. I have a legitimate, didactic reason to speak about my health, at least, briefly. It has to do indirectly with the underpinning of the on-going debate on and disgust with health care reform.

About five months ago, I started suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. In a way, CTS is a happy illness. It’s the illness of writers who actually write. It come from spending too much time intensively using the keyboard. Yet, the pain was intense enough to wake me up at night. The neurologist prescribed Aleve. Then, at my insistence, he described the appropriate surgical intervention. It’s a routine operation; it does not require anesthesia; it works almost all the time. Having little patience, in my mind, I was immediately sold on the procedure.

Then, I started looking at cost. I am on one of the Bush-era, smart versions of Medicare. It’s one of the versions the bill passes by the House on 3/2110 will abolish. It’s designed to give me all that I need but not much more. It’s also intended to give me a little freedom of choice. I knew all this in an abstract way but I had not thought it through because, frankly, who does not have something more exciting to do than reading insurance companies fine print and wooden language? So, I was shocked that my share of the cost for this simple, small operation would come to almost $2,000. I put off the decision because putting of the decision rather than making lemonade, is often the most rational thing you can do when life serves you lemons.

On my next doctor visit, I listened for the first time to the issues of how much Aleve I can afford to take daily and also of how to use the brace, I had purchased distractedly. He said not to wear it only at night, as I had done, but as often as I could, day or night. Fast-forward three months. I still have not had the operation. I take three Aleve a day of the four the doctor allowed. (Because, after all, it’s my liver, not his. Plus, he doesn’t know all the things I did to the self-same liver years ago.) I wear a brace fifteen hours a day on the average. I purchased for $38 the snazzy black variety that makes me look vaguely dangerous instead of the most common flesh-pink old-lady kind. The black looks good against my tanned, muscular, hairy forearm. (If I say so myself.)  I think of the brace as the brachial equivalent of a pirate’s eye-patch. The pain has not waken me for weeks. Most of the time, there is barely any pain although a tingle in the fingers remains. What pain there is is on the decline. Right now, I wouldn’t dream of having anyone cut deep into my hand to get to the offending nerve. I saved myself something like $2,000 and the nation several times this amount.

What’s important about this fairly boring story is what it does not say. I have not become a wiser person in the past few months. My propensity to think things through has not improved. My innate rationalism is pretty much where it was last year. I insist: I am not a better person. Instead, the structuring of my particular kind of health insurance gave me a good incentive to do nothing. While I was doing nothing, less obvious solutions than surgery had a chance to show their effectiveness. The problem solved itself to a sufficient extent. Resources were saved. Additional risks to my health were avoided.

Here is a fallacy you have to avoid when reading this story: Yes, in some other case, an operation might have proved necessary, or simply been the better option. But we are not reasoning on averages here. Evey dollar saved is a dollar saved, forever. It’s a dollar that can be spent on something someone really wants. Buying health services should obey the same rules as buying a suit, or a car. Ordinary prudence works well if you have reasons to use it. Most health insurance interposes itself between you and your good judgment, your reasons to use what ordinary prudence you possess. Health insurance makes you stupid and passive. Government health insurance is the worst of all in this respect. It rewards you for not thinking things through. It rewards the worst version of you (and me).

“Facts Matter” on Radio

My radio show can be heard on-line every Sunday 11 am to 1 pm, California time (Standard Pacific). It’s on KSCO Santa Cruz 1080 AM.

Reponses aux questions # 8 et #10

#8    :   “sweatshirt (Lire attentivement.)  Sweat=sueur.

#10   :   “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Racial Profiling at its Best

Here is a story and a sociological essay all rolled into one.

My son the recent college graduate only thinks about cooking. I encourage his inclination, of course. Compulsion does not work. Most people do well only what they like to do. Besides, I am an immigrant from France. Scabs of French pessimism stick to my brain. I don’t know how long the current economic crisis will last. In Japan, there were ten dead years, a full decade lost. I tell myself that cooks never go hungry and neither do those who are close to them. I adore my son’s girlfriend. I want her to have enough to eat, happen what may. I used to work in kitchens myself, around the 18^th century. I believe that even the leavings from the average restaurant kitchen will keep you pleasantly fat forever. Go for it, I tell him.

My son has been cooking part-time since he was a teen-ager and throughout the embarrassingly long years it took him to complete his political science major. He has experience in a variety of fairly humble kitchen positions. I also think he has some talent. I don’t say this because he is my son. I am a mean father by California standards, a stern figure more or less from the Old Testament, you might say. Not long ago, I thought my son was worse than worthless. I am not afraid to be “judgmental,” bet on it! But he has changed. His brain has caught up with his glands at last. Having finished college, he is naturally looking for a full-time position, or better. He is meeting with an obstacle we did not expect but that was expectable if we had thought about it: He is not Mexican.

In California, where I live, everywhere in California, I think, during the fat cow years, immigrants from Mexico took over nearly all the kitchen jobs, Those are mostly hard jobs, stressful jobs offering low pay. The native-born young shunned them in favor of retail “sales associates” positions that are easy and allow for a fair margin of laziness although they don’t pay any better. The Mexican take-over began with Taco Bells and private tamales stands, and, naturally, taco shops. But immigrants are predictable. Many went considerably further.

It does not matter where immigrants come from. They are a self-selected group and the selection is based neither on indolence nor on passivity. Every wave of immigrants comprises more than its share of hard workers, of ambitious, tenacious individuals with a vision. Yes, I do think that as far as these qualities are concerned, immigrants rank higher on the average than the native-born. That’s the case everywhere: in the US, in Canada, in the UK, in France. Accordingly, many immigrants make their way up within little-prized occupations. There are so many of them trying that some are bound to achieve high positions within these occupations. It’s the same at all levels of educational achievement. Immigrants are overrepresented in kitchens, in universities, and in innovative high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. I would bet they are under-represented in government jobs.

Courage, tenacity and vision often make up for initial linguistic incompetence, and even for continuing incompetence. The same qualities help immigrants overcome the reputed obstacle of culture. It’s much exaggerated anyway, as far as this country is concerned, at least. In the US, hardly anyone puts pressure on immigrants to assimilate beyond the strict requirements of their job. It’s even truer in Canada, and only a little less true in other open, tolerant, democratic, capitalist societies. (As I write, the French political class is arguing endlessly about forbidding the burqha, the complete, supposedly Islamic cover for women, in government offices. That’s in France!)

Note what I am not talking about: affirmative action, preferential hiring, or preferential promotion. If you invited yourself to the party, I say, you should not expect to be served first, or the best morsels. If your parents or grandparents had the good idea to come here, most likely uninvited (like me), congratulate them on their good sense but their inspired move does not give you any special right. It’s absurd to think that their immigration creates a debt for the society that took them in. It’s silly to think so even for a minute. But I digress. Back to the story of my son and of his search for a full-time cooking job. But first, a necessary personal digression.

Some of my friends take me for an inveterate food snob just because of my French accent. I am not; I am not even a foodie. I just know what I like and I have no tolerance for make-believe gastronomy, especially for presumptuous dishes. “Eyes-only” food is a plague all over this country. If that’s what you want, you are not a gourmet but an interior decorator, and probably gay, at least if you are a man. (If you are a woman, you are the chi-chi kind and almost certainly mediocre in bed.) Anyway, the occasions when I feel the urge to compliment a chef are rare. They are rare enough that I remember the last five with ease. On the last occasion, I enjoyed a quintessential traditional dish you never, ever find in so-called “French” restaurants in this country. (If I ever see another “French onion soup” slathered in cheap melted cheese, I will yell crudely!) Anyway, the dish is: “blanquette de veau.” I don’t want to sound brutal but frankly, if you have not had blanquette de veau at least ten times in your life, you have had a rude, bland, nasty existence, a life hardly worth living. On that occasion, I was so happy that I asked to talk to the chef of that otherwise unremarkable, small chain establishment. And yes, you guessed it right, the blanquette de veau artist, the masterful chef, was a Mexican immigrant, a man in his forties.

As I said, my son the graduate is hard-working and intelligent. He is also full of initiative in the kitchen and at work in general. Moreover, he was brought up in a household where the most traditional French cooking interrupted the rhythm of two kinds of Indian cuisine, North Indian and Bengali. He has had the exposure at least. He is not narrow-tasted. (I made that word up, by analogy with narrow-minded.) I employ him frequently on various repair tasks around my sweet Victorian house. I prefer him to most casual laborers I have employed. I pay him better than the going local rate because he deserves it. Under my guidance, he has even learned to dress in a way that is not distracting to employers. (No skateboarding championship t-shirt and no “Fuck Communism” t-shirts either.) So, he looks neat most of the time.

With all these qualities, my son can hardly cross the threshold of a restaurant without suffering rejection. He says managers hardly take a second look at him. “No opening” they affirm. This cannot be always true. People are still eating out in spite of the current prolonged crisis and the restaurant business is notorious for personnel turnover. I think rather that restaurants owners and managers discriminate passively against my son. They profile him.

It’s easy to imagine how it happens. When José, the second cook decides to go visit his old mother in Mexico, he recommends his cousin Jesùs to take his place for a while. And why shouldn’t he? The cousin is more likely to give him back his job when he returns than a stranger, especially a stranger who is not even Mexican. When Antonio gets fired, the first cook, Miguel, is first to know and he immediately offers his brother-in-law, Luis. The system makes for smoothness of operations by minimizing disruptions. Besides, when you observe Mexicans in a kitchen, you quickly notice that they have their own cadence of work, their own tempo. The current mechanism works well. Why risk throwing sand in its gears by bringing in a new guy, an unknown quantity who will be comparatively unpredictable simply because he is not Mexican?

In this closed market, my son enjoys a slight advantage over the average Santa Cruz surfer, say. In California, currently, the probability of a blond, tanned surfer getting a job in a restaurant kitchen is about the same as that of my winning the lottery. And I rarely buy tickets. My son was adopted from India and has brown skin. An unobservant or distracted restaurant manager might fail to notice that neither his first name nor his last name sounds Spanish. I keep hoping my son will be taken for a Mexican, that he will be mistakenly profiled and be given a chance. I encourage him to learn more Spanish, to form complete sentences in that language so someone will think he is just a slightly mentally challenged young Mexican man.

Obviously, this profiling looks unfair. But why not? The Mexican de facto monopoly over kitchens succeeds for nearly everyone concerned. It’s good for the Mexican immigrants, of course. It works well for the owners, as I just explained. The patrons don’t complain, except me, and that, only seldom. I eat Mexican food frequently by choice (I am fond of tacos de lengua, and of menudo on Saturdays.) I just wish almost everything you eat in California did not taste like Mexican food. But I tell myself, virtuously, “If you don’t like it here just go home where you come from, you stupid foreigner!” That usually takes care of it for a while. In the meantime, our reasonably laissez-faire policies are pretty successful overall. Our unemployment rate at its worst, now (March 2010), looks like normal unemployment in much of Europe.

What ails my son is clearly discrimination. It’s racial profiling of the crudest kind. And so, what?

PS It’s not unethical to offer my son a try-out and it’s not embarrassing to me. If you have an interesting cooking slot, even a temporary one, let me know. You can contact me through a Comment on this blog or email me at : jdelacroixliberty@gmail.com

© Jacques Delacroix 20010 (3/14710)

IF YOU WANT  TO LEARN ABOUT MY VIEWS ABOUT ILLEGAL MEXICAN IMMIGRATION, SPECIFICALLY,  FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW. IT WILL TAKE YOU TO AN ARTICLE CO-AUTHORED WITH SERGEY NIKIFOROV  AND PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN THE INDEPENDENT  REVIEW. THE ARTICLE PRESENTS A REAL LIBERTARIAN VIEW OF THE ISSUE. IT WILL PROBABLY SURPRISE YOU SOME.

http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_14_01_6_delacroix.pdf