Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
While the production of my Lowdown commentaries is high-tech, I confess that I’m antiquated.
I still write each piece in longhand, applying my ballpoint to paper. This has caused bewildered glances from some who see me scribbling away in local coffee shops and bars. Recently, one fellow sidled up and whispered: “Watch out! If they see you doin’ this, they’ll haul you off to the Smithsonian.”
But we hand writers might not be as obsolete as the key-tappers assume. A fast-spreading grassroots movement is calling for schools to reemphasize the value of writing and printing by hand, instead of being wholly dependent on machines. Already, 24 states — as varied as Mississippi and California — now require public schools to teach cursive handwriting in third through fifth grades.
This squares with a new understanding of how brains absorb information. While keyboards are faster, the slower, more tactile act of handwriting creates longer lasting comprehension of letters — and better retention of the thoughts they convey. Neuroscientists find that rote keystrokes on a computer require little mental engagement, while physically drawing out words and ideas takes coordination of multiple areas of the brain to focus memory, eyes and fingers on creating a written product.
Just writing this piece conjured up a fond remembrance of my early childhood: Sitting on the floor of our home, learning to draw the ABCs, both print and cursive, on those lined practice pads. It was both an artistic exercise and the development of a foundational tool for a life of learning.
Yes, computer literacy is an indispensable element of today’s childhood curriculum — but so is the richer development of human thinking through putting pen to paper. So let’s teach both!
There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco — that persistently do rotten things.
Then there is the nursing home industry — where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us. Good nursing homes help to make this time better. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: Profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.
The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an “industry” reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70% of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who are guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand “efficiencies” from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness ... and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, “It’s criminal.”
But it’s not against the law, since the industry’s lobbying front — a major donor to congressional campaigns — effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. A humane nurse-staffing requirement has been proposed, but the profiteering “industry” furiously opposes it. Congress is dutifully bowing to industry profits. After all, granny doesn’t make campaign donations.
To help push for sanity and humanity, contact TheConsumerVoice.org.
The U.S. military has long been an easy mark — for our own avaricious corporate contractors, that is.
During the Civil War, for example, J.P. Morgan sold rifles to the Union army, which cost him only $3.50 each, but he charged the military $22 each. Worse, his rifles were defective, blowing off the thumbs of soldiers who fired them. Still, a Congressional committee ruled that Morgan had a “legal” contract and had to be paid in full.
Which brings us to the screwball contracts the Pentagon routinely signs these days with multibillion-dollar corporate con artists hawking weaponry. These gougers, though, have streamlined their taxpayer thievery by automatically inserting a corporate gotcha in nearly every Pentagon contract. It makes it illegal for the military to repair the weapons and systems they have bought!
A drone won’t fly? An AI system goes haywire? Anti-aircraft rockets fail? DON’T touch the systems! No — you must call a corporate-approved tech repair person or take the malfunctioning gizmo to the manufacturer.
Yes, this is insane, unworkable, immoral ... and the very definition of “snafu.” But corporate profiteers have made it the law. At last, though, soldiers, battleground commanders and common-sense members of both parties are rebelling, supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Warrior Right to Repair Act.” Pathetically, Congress and avaricious contractor lobbyists recently defeated this bill, wailing that contractor property rights are more important than authorizing soldiers to make lifesaving repairs in the field.
The fight goes on, though, and you can help. Two lawmakers who engineered this travesty are Mike Rogers of Alabama and Adam Smith of Washington State, both of whom take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the war profiteers. To fight their insanity, go to pirg.org/repair.
If you’re ever asked to define the word oxymoron, just say, “Congressional ethics.” People instinctively burst out guffawing at the absurdity of linking Congress to upright behavior.
But surprisingly, Republican congressional leaders say they’re now taking a bold stand for a little less corruption among their own members, targeting lawmakers who’ve been secretly enriching themselves through “insider stock trading.” Actually, the leaders were forced to support this bit of reform because of public outrage over the dirty dealing of Rep. Rob Bresnahan. This multimillionaire Republican was caught using his insider position last year to profit from the GOP’s gutting of Medicaid benefits for poor people.
So, in January, the party’s designated ethics watchdog, Bryan Steil, rose on his hind legs to introduce the Stop Insider Trading Act. “If you want to trade stocks,” Steil howled in operatic outrage, “go to Wall Street.”
Bravissimo! Except it was a fraud. Far from stopping the self-enriching stock scams of lawmakers like Bresnahan, Steil’s bill basically legalizes their corrupt transactions. For example, members could keep trading stocks in corporations they supposedly oversee. And, in the loopiest of loopholes, sneaky lawmakers are authorized to have their spouses buy and sell stocks on the member’s behalf.
Then, showing his party’s true colors, Steil exclaimed that we outsiders should not even push Congress to pass an honest, outright ban on insider trading — because that would discourage wealthy business executives from choosing to enter “public service.”
Hello, that gives us two reasons to demand a ban. First, to impose a minimal ethical standard on lawmakers, and second, to shoo off self-serving monopolists and plutocrats from controlling the public’s agenda.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
