The Way We Were

Remember how we're when we're kids....until that age we didn't know what worry is and what it means. Everything is taken care of by parents and grandparents, we just grew up, get used to parents, home, surroundings and don't need to do anything else.

(I can only speak for myself and friends who grew up along with me in a middle class upbringing. Anybody born into poverty or a broken home, might've experienced hunger or abusive parent very early.)

As we grow up slowly we wouldn't be worried ...but we come to know what money is and that few posses it more than us and few less than us. That might be one of the important things which we discover ourselves in our lifetime. It wouldn't be an epiphany, but a slow process.

Then we would be worried about homework, exams and movies which we couldn't go even though all our friends are going. As we get into teens, it's all about impressing the opposite sex. Then for the chosen few (from Indian perspective) girlfriend or boyfriend issues. Then study abroad / job search..

Few just cruised through, few worked hard and few struggled, but I didn't experience phenomenon by name frustration. That helpless feeling that sinks in when there's so many things in this world which're unjust and we can't do anything about it.

For me I guess the first thing (apart from personal things) which got me all worked up and frustrated was Iraq war. I couldn't get my head around thought that we can go to war with less powered nation for made up reason with clever media management and a bumper sticker 'war against terrorism'.

It took me years but I made peace with it, then the financial crisis, my immigration hassles and related issues. Then right wing group, their thinly veiled racism and their aversion to science, gender equality, social safety net and rise of batshit crazy people like sarah palin, michele bachmann, allen west et al. I've grievances with liberals also.

This frustration might vary from person to person, I can see why these bother me so much. The amount of time I spend reading the news, columns, listening and sometimes writing. I've been interested in reading since I was kid, but when you're 9 year old your focus will be about how things work. My initial interests were stories, astronomy, then slowly progressed into how things work, politics, movies, technology. I was interested about politics in India also, but that never caused frustration. What was missing then...which exists right now? I guess until I came to US, I only read how things're and how things work. I might not've read why is system flawed and who is benefiting from it.

I was never frustrated about any singular thing as I'm about gun control now. Even Visa hassles which gave me so much pain, didn't make me this frustrated. I already read and heard so much about guns  and culture even before the rampage of all these shootings. So nothing is really surprising to me. But after Sandy Hook there's scrutiny of NRA's process, which was missing before. The travesty in the name of second amendment protection is sickening.

How much NRA bullied politicians, influenced Gun regulation or lack thereof is mind boggling.

Tiahrt Amendment

Ban on CDC research on Gun Violence

Restrictions on ATF

No centralized database of guns

When you walk through an airport security, a shampoo bottle bigger than 3oz or grandma's medicine is a security risk. In the same country, in almost all the cities you can walk with concealed weapon or automatic weapon with minimal restrictions. It's like we live in two parallel worlds. Any form of gun control is considered as infringement of second amendment.

After Sandy Hook, I'd a breakdown on social networks, donated money to Gun Control advocacy groups, will donate again,  But I can't go to rallies cause of work. In the past, no matter what we did, NRA got the upper hand. Because they've a product to sell...and we oppose the product. They've a monetary cause, ours is safety/survival cause. That could be the reason they're winning. Same with Arizona and other states immigration laws. Private prison lobbied for AZ law as this law will keep the inmates coming to these prisons. As a bonus conservatives can rally the extreme right voters.

That feeling of loss isn't boding well with me and I really look back at days of those blissful innocence. The more we know, the more cynical we become. Information or facts are only useful when you can use them for our advancement or society upliftment. Information might be power, but ignorance is a bliss.

Is there any reason to be optimistic? So much money poured into last election to defeat Obama. Koch brothers had spent almost 400 Million USD, Adelson spent another 100 Million and all those SuperPACs. But Obama prevailed. I'm not saying he's messiah or anything...he's just another politician. But money can't buy all the elections, that's one of the takeaways from last general election.

I hope common sense will prevail over money in Gun Control fight also. The stake are high, it's our next generation lives.

Come for the overpriced produce, stay for the ugly rhetoric

On Wednesday 01/16th, Whole Paycheck CEO John Mackey called the ObamaCare as Fascist law  while promoting his book on npr's morning edition. And then, shitstorm ensued.

Let's get a few things out of our way. Mackey is entitled to his opinion and he can voice it. I understand the frustration of providing health insurance because of a government mandate as his primary duty is to increase the shareholder equity. ;)

But the paradox here is, you run a store where a gallon of milk costs double or triple the price in a regular grocery store. That's because you sell food with organic ingredients and you've some policies about procuring produce locally, not to sell foods with certain kind of ingredients and all. And who're the typical patrons of whole foods? Hipsters who live beyond their means and Liberal Ladies who drive LandRovers. OK that's stereotyping, but you get the picture. Most of the whole foods customer base which includes above stereotypes and people who fall in between these two extremes voted for Obama and supported his healthcare law.

CEO of an upscale Organic Store which sells $10 soaps and 100 types of cheses and gourmet salts (wtf?) should tread carefully on political issues. Calling healthcare law as fascism is like Zuckerburg making fun of moms who facebook their baby pictures for the lack of productivity or Instagram founder ridiculing people who lounge in Starbucks during working hours and instagram pics of their sugary drinks and sunsets. Those analogies are little far fetched, but what I'm trying to say is why would anybody alienate their customer base, particularly when you're running a business which solely relies on the concept of customer paying high for the greater good of society and sustainability of earth.

And Mackey chose the best platform to reach out to customer base and then blew it. You don't go on Morning Edition and talk ill about healthcare law. No self respecting liberal driving a volvo / sipping her chai latte / eating his granola would miss that. This shit would've flied, if this's Cracker Barrel CEO complaining on Fox news. It could've brought more old people into those restaurants as a freedom appreciation day or some BS name to it. I said cracker barrel as it's the exact opposite of whole foods. And the existence of this restaurant or shop gives you a rough idea whether you're in blue or red area.

Once this shit had hit the fan, Mackey forced to give a pseudo-apology, he likes a Swiss model here in USA.

I believe that, if the goal is universal health care, our country would be far better served by combining free enterprise capitalism with a strong governmental safety net for our poorest citizens and those with preexisting conditions, helping everyone to be able to buy insurance. This is what Switzerland does and I think we would be much better off copying that system than where we are currently headed in the United States.

Government helping poor people buy insurance, isn't that socialism? Or whatever thing which Republicans call as wealth redistribution? Healthcare is screwed up in USA, there's no denial about it. That's how insurance companies make profit. And this whole government take over is utter nonsense. Obama gave a gift to insurance companies, which keeps on giving in the form of healthcare mandate which was first proposed by Heritage foundation in 1989, not a liberal group by any measure. Once a self-responsibility idea supported by Bob Dole (1996 Republican candidate for President) became a government takeover in 2010. I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure that Black man in White House now is just a coincidence.

I don't run any business, so I might be misinformed about many things. But as an employee, I pay my health insurance, and when the rates went up I took the brunt, not my employer. And if whole foods is already paying health insurance, why is he bothered about ObamaCare. Wait, I know ..libertarians don't want government to tell them anything. In that Utopian land, there wouldn't be FDA, FAA, clean air/water act or any law of the land.

 

For Mackey, this isn't a moment he got carried away and said something which he didn't mean. He wrote an op-ed in WSJ in summer of '09 calling it socialism even before the bill was presented in Congress. This is the same genius who was caught bashing Wild Oats in 2005 with a pseudonym on yahoo finance, at that time Whole Foods was trying to take over Wild Oats

My Question here is, is this just the Mackey's Cognitive dissonance where his ideology contradicts their company mission statement and operating model. Or is it just bad PR training which he gets.

Talking about PR, who're the hacks training this guy and that Chick-fil-A CEO. Or all those Republican politicians who just can't resist talking about rape. I feel that I can run a better shop than these clueless numbnuts who're training/advising these CEOs and politicians.  Only if my rich friends are reading this..

Thanks in advance for your seed money fellas.

Greatest Country in the World

Beginning scene of the new HBO series The Newsroom.
This video pretty much sums up most of the rants from my previous posts here.



Created by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote screenplay of Social Network and co-wrote Moneyball.

Is there a correlation..

Today, after work I went to one of my usual food joints to pick up my meal. (Location and names withheld for obvious reasons). Employee behind the counter was giving me hard time for not going there frequently. After the regular banter, he mentioned the he lost his regular job and that fast food job is his only job now. I felt sorry, just before I paid I asked him whether he have a family. "Three beautiful kids and wife, and fortunately she's working". I left the place on a good note.

So it came to one of the topics which we heatedly discuss at work, among close friends. The topic is, If you're poor, is it a wise move to have more kids? Or in other words, why poor people end up with more kids while rich have far too less. I understand that reproductive rights are fundamental and you can't control or mandate couples (married or unmarried) to have kids based on how much money you've at that point of time. (This doesn't apply in China though)

Look around, look beyond our usual suburban life. You can see that most of the people who depend on welfare or food stamps have more than 2 or 3 kids. The poverty in these inner city/urban areas is gut wrenching It's like watching a horror movie in a loop. You can see this at your neighboring Wal-Mart location also. It's tough to say what caused that poverty and which preceded what? The childbirths or the downfall into poverty.

In India it's even worse. There's so much societal pressure to bear more children when you're in right age. No matter how flimsy you income source is and how costly it became to raise a child and educate him or her. "Leave it to the Almighty, he'll take care of all of them."

Meanwhile you see that Upper middle class and rich couples who keep delaying the children. Reasons could be many...careers, timing, uncertainties. So even if they're well educated, nice job to rely on, they consider so many variables before they take that step.

The question I've is, why is this fear not part of reproduction cycles of very poor people. Is it the lack of education, contraceptives, foresight or the overabundance of passion killing the caution. How exactly do you plan to provide for your kids and send'em to school. And is there a correlation between poverty and number of children.

New york Times published a though provoking article Richer People Want Fewer Children in July. The background for that is another freakonomics article The Rich vs Poor Debate: Are Kids Normal or Inferior Goods? I usually take any freakonomics article with pinch of salt.
But data wouldn't lie.

You can see the fertility difference between women in India and USA. The country with highest per capita fertility is Niger. And you see how less the per capita income is. Kids aren't the reason for poverty but people in poverty give birth to more babies.

This is an universal problem not just here in US. But I see this very closely here.

Two weeks back, 60 minutes broadcasted a report about new generation of kids growing up in cars. We just have a new level of poverty below homeless shelters. Two things caught my attention. As the above data proves, the poorer you get, the more kids you've. Family in this video is, single mom with 4 kids.

And then the second family in this video, you can see two kids living in a truck with their dad and their....dog! It's been two days since I watched this, I still can't comprehend why that family still have a dog.

My heart goes out to those kids who're homeless. Particularly that young girl and her brother cleaning up themselves in different gas station bathrooms every day disturbed me a lot. But I can't say the same about the parents. I understand, a single event can change a life and you might end up on a street. But why the pet? Can't you make a discretionary choice of getting rid of pet when you turn homeless.

I don't have a proper closure or conclusion for this post.
My thoughts are unclear and I'm on a thin line between absolute sorrow and anger.

Peace

(Disclaimer: I'm a single male with no kids and I don't intend to have kids in future also. So this post itself might lack that objectivity which you're looking for)

Here's the 60 minutes program link, Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars

My Christmas Wish

TIME magazine is famous for dumbing down the news coverage and there's no bigger contrarian indicator than their cover page.

Every new Warner Brothers movie gets a cover story, every apple device launch gets one, and if there's dearth of publicist driven stories...there's holy Mary, Jesus to fall back on.

Fine, every magazine does the same thing, wait....there's Housing bubble, what housing bubble?
There's no year-end media circus event which is more idiotic and unimportant than the TIME person of the year. (Excluding TIME 100, that's beyond my intellectual ability). Every President elect will be chosen as TIME person of the year, that's a default. Enemies of US, no matter how much they changed the course of our lives, wouldn't be the person of the year. Osama bin Laden wasn't the person of that year, Rudy Giuliani was. (Of course Stalin and Hitler were exceptions, not quite sure where we stand on Putin though). See the previous person gallery here

As God is my witness (intended to dramatize), here's the list of probable people I wrote for this year, before checking TIME website.

Arab Uprisings
Occupy Wall St
Anonymous
Navy seals
Barack Obama
Grover Norquist
Steve Jobs
Kim Kardashian
Rupert Murdoch

I checked TIME website and they didn't disappoint. Below are the few people who're nominated for this year, and I'm delighted to see Kim on the list

Usually TIME probables can be broadly categorized into these
Obvious picks
Barack Obama
Anonymous
Navy Seal Team 6
1%, 99%
Steve Jobs

Lame picks
Gabriel Giffords (I don't mean to diminish the Congress Woman's shooting, but she's only a victim of a deranged person's shooting)
Kate Middleton (A British woman married to a British prince, 2nd in line to throne)
Dominique Strauss-Kahn (accused of raping a hotel maid, but prosecution dropped the charges)
Charlie Sheen

"Who the F is this again" picks
Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey's PM)
Lionel Messi (Argentina's soccer player)
Ai Weiwei

"Intended to rage readers" picks
Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO, who have a knack for splitting companies and sending emails to all the subscribers after having too many drinks)
Casey Anthony
Michele Bachmann
Rupert Murdoch
Kim Kardashian

The last section is the reason why I love TIME. Just for the web hits, robo voting...they'll let people vote for their choice, even though Time's contributors pick the person. the panel for this year is very diversified(for the lack of better word)..Brian Williams, Mario Batali, Anita Hill, Jesse Eisenberg, Grover Norquist and Seth Meyers.

I'm appalled that heavy weights like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin aren't on list, I'm gonna weep to sleep tonight. Meh, my intellectual inspiration Rep. Michele Bachmann is here..I'll take it.

Folks I'll cut to the chase, I want Kim Kardashian to be the new Person of the year. Please TIME, please! She's the epitome of the moral bankruptcy of the American culture, that is putting very mildly. She got everything you're looking for. No real talent in whatsoever form, sex tape, reality show, perfume, overpriced clothing, paid appearances, discontinued charge card, dimwitted athlete husband. Wait there're spin off reality shows for her sisters and other family members also.

She divorced her second husband with in the span of 72 days and that tipped off the Public. They actually believed that the fairy tale wedding was real and they'll live together ever after. Now they all feet cheated, they're angered and outraged that she took' em all for a ride.

Please TIME, keep it real, and make this woman the Person of the year.
(Don't mind the 19220 haters who voted against her, haters gonna hate)

Peace.

P.S. For what it's worth, time predicted the next president right. It's a kinda bold move for 2006, as Spitzer/Obama was perceived as hot ticket at that time and then Eliot Spitzer got caught in a sex scandal.

Update 12/03/2011
There's one more media event, which is more trivial and idiotic than this. It's the year-end sex surveys in Indian news magazines. For some reason, they do it every year and each year it's shocking. India Today just released theirs and Outlook might send one our way pretty soon.
Here's BBC's Indian Correspondent's column about this topic.

images via TIME