Puritanism - still alive and well in Massachusetts

I was reading an article this morning in the Boston Globe magazine from Tom Keane regarding Massachusetts' efforts to control alcohol.  Among the interesting snippets:

Alcoholic beverages sold for off-premise consumption can only be sold in licensed package stores. No one is allowed to own more than three stores that sell alcohol. State law puts sharp quotas on the number of liquor stores, bars, and restaurants permitted in every town, a formula carefully based on population. Holiday and Sunday sales are limited. In fact, we’re not even permitted to have happy hours. Free drinks and discounted prices are flatly illegal.

This is because of the former Blue Laws that the Puritans put down in the 1620's because most of the Puritans were supposed to have their eyes and ears with God at all times, and not engage in frivolity such as liquor consumption.  Many of the Blue Laws have been struck down, but only since the mid 1980s.  Liquor stores have only been allowed to open on Sundays since 2005 or so.

This brings me to the debate of the soon-to-be-dead gambling bill.  I've been wavering between being for it and being against it, but now I'm solidly against it.  Governor Deval Patrick should not only veto the bill, he should be commended for it at the risk of losing his support from unions and others.

This is because Puritanism is still alive and well in Massachusetts.

We have way too many finger waggers, nags, wrist wringers and such who feel that any kind of fun should be eliminated or strictly controlled in the wake of some kind of fake moral enlightenment.  Liquor and alcohol is a great example: keeping such a "vice" away through high price and scarcity makes the ones who are disturbed by its effects (even when people drink responsibly) soothes whatever guilt and bias they might have towards this vice.  The same is true with cigarettes, food, and gasoline - self-styled moralists figure that the unwashed masses are not "enlightened" enough and must have these items made difficult to procure for "the greater good."

(In my honest opinion, the greater good would love to give these self-styled moralists a nice hard slap in the face, followed by a nice hard boot to where God split ya.)

If the Legislature were a more honest, less self-interested group, they would have expanded the bill to include as many resort casinos and slot parlors as they would allow without the worry of some group screaming that Massachusetts' moral fiber would decay at a ridiculous rate.  There would be no scare tactics of prostitution or people wasting their entire paychecks on slots or children being abandoned in their cars.  The Legislators would have no problem with the money coming in and distribute it evenly, rather than try to corner the money for their own town, city or ward.

Even if the casino bill passed, I can imagine the kind of "gambling" we'd get if it went through - it would be regulated just as tightly and stiffly as alcohol is today, along with a mix of gimmicks such as environmental standards, limits on play, money and alcohol consumption, no ATM machines or ATM machines with very high access fees, and bans on any kind of comps, credit and the like.

When Puritanism dances with Curley-style parochialism, what you get are political hacks, self-styled moral activists, and others killing something that may or may not have had promise, but no one dared to try because they were afraid they'd offend the wrong people.   The writer of the article sums everything up nicely, and you can easily substitute "gambling" for "alcohol":

What we really need is a culture that celebrates the wise use of alcohol rather than a body of laws whose aim is to make us feel guilty.

It would certainly prove that we cut all the laws of Puritanism but six, who were forced into service as pallbearers.

...and my father was allergic to shellfish, believe it or not...

Suldog reminisces about his father, who died 16 years ago.

 My father, Bernie, retired from a job he had worked at for over 30 years in 2002.  He was 60, but even with the white hair, he looked about ten years younger.  When he started working for RCA and Sperry-Rand in 1972, his year's salary could buy three automobiles (indexed for inflation, it would be around $35,000) and computers back then were not the 1TB monsters they are now; in fact, back in '72, 8K was tops.

In 2004, we began to notice changes - not frightening changes, but ones that started to give us concern.  My dad began complaining about his leg hurting around August 2004, and by September 2004 he could barely walk on it.  One night, the doctor wanted to bring him in for an MRI, because by then we knew it wasn't a rheumatoid problem.  While waiting for the call for the doctor, my father reached for the TV remote.

The next thing I knew, my youngest brother, Sean, came upstairs with his cell phone - and usually when the sentence that comes out is "We have a 62 year old man in pain, we suspect he broke his leg..." that ain't good.  We weren't panicking, but this was very, very strange and upsetting, as my brother was about to introduce his first child into the world - in Beverly.  My father, mother and others were ready to cheer my sister-in-law when this happened.

The next morning, after they brought him to the Brigham and Women's Hospital, we visited him.  Of course, he was high on morphine, but he was in good spirits.  A lab tech came into the room with a little metal case and told us it was nuclear medicine.  My mother, brother and myself decided to retire to the cafeteria for lunch, but eight hours later, our worlds would be turned upside down.

It was lung cancer.  Stage IV.  That was why my father's tibia had broken - it had already spread to his bones.  Tearful phonecalls ensued.  I broke down sometime later because getting whacked with the news your father has cancer is pretty hefty.

Fast forward one year later.  After six regimens of cancer treatment and several radiation treatments for the glioma that was discovered in his brain in May 2005, we knew that his time on earth would not be long.  This time, he was at the Brigham and Women's for a hematoma that grew in his shoulders and burst, and he remarked with absolute clarity to my mother that "this had gone full circle."

The hematoma would mark the last time he would ever see a hospital, but the weird thing about this, though, was that he seemed to be getting back to normal.  He was eating heartily and was still lucid.  But radiation and chemotherapy, while we think eliminated the lung cancer, had stolen his laughter, his functions, and he transgressed from cane, to walker, to wheelchair, and then to bed.

My father's functions began their decline on the weekend after my 34th birthday.  My father, who had celebrated his 63rd birthday at a rehab center in August 2005 after receiving more radiation in his bones, looked at least 20 years older.  We had already had a 35th wedding anniversary celebration at home (and again, Dad wasn't a slouch in eating - he even cracked a few jokes and lent out a huge smile), but a few days later he began to descend into hallucinations.  By Friday, he was in the full throes of decline.  He would extend his hands out and knit with invisible yarn.  He would ask for dead people, like his father, who had died in 2000; his mother, who had died in 2004; and other people.  By Saturday morning, my father lapsed into a coma; our mother then told us to go buy suits because we would be needing them soon for the wake and the funeral.

Monday night, we had an Irish wake for my dad.  It was the most fun I had, even though I had finally told my supervisor that my father was ill and he might not last long.  The next morning, November 22, 2005, my brother woke me up.  We came downstairs and I looked at my father for the last time.  No sound.  He peacefully passed away in his sleep, exactly 14 months to the day he was diagnosed.  My mother was weeping and hysterical,   Everyone was called to alert people of the news.  Then, my brothers, mother and I we gathered around to bade him farewell before the funeral directors took him to be prepared for the wake and the funeral. 

Of course, while dumping out the drugs that made my father comfortable in his last days, my mother scolded me (well, introducing him as the "guest of honor" to the hospice nurse at 6:30 in the morning will cause a newly-anointed widow to do that) for not expressing my emotions correctly and told me I shouldn't be stoic.  She didn't realize that from the moment he was diagnosed until the moment he died, fourteen months of pure torture culminated in a peace I never felt before.  I finally felt relieved that the long battle my father endured was over - he didn't win the battle, but he was free from the torture that cancer had allayed him with.

The saving grace is that a representative of the Big Deity Upstairs was already present.  My aunt, Sister Genevieve Kozlowski, nicknamed Aunt Kay (she was actually my grandmother's adopted sister) was going to go back to her convent outside Buffalo and was visiting us for Thanksgiving.   When she learned my dad was about to die, she stayed until that Sunday.  She read at the wake a passage from John 14:2, which reads: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."  She also helped assemble the memory board with various pictures of my father in his youth, middle age, and towards the end.  

I contributed his timeline and added the following poem on there - "Say Yes!" which was written by a confederate soldier and is the title of Rick Wakeman's autobiography (organ and keyboards from the prog-rock group Yes).  I will leave you with that thought for now.


Say Yes!

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

...I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I had asked for;
But everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered;
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

- Unknown Confederate soldier.

"No Sesame Street, please...we're British"

Of all the exports Britain has brought to America, there is one American import that hasn't caught on - Sesame Street.

The BBC flatly rejected Sesame Street in 1971 because they thought the programming was "authoritarian."  (How can Big Bird be authoritarian?)  So it went to another network in England (HTV) before Sesame Street was cancelled.

And like today, the BBC still won't tell British children how to get to Sesame Street - unless you live in Northern Ireland.  The reason: there are already other children's programmes out there, including the "talk down to children's" Blue Peter and other shows.

Which leads me to believe one thing and one thing only: the BBC doesn't want Elmo or any of his friends running the Beeb, because you know Stadtler and Waldorf will have their own rollicking politics show, and that the Count will be a financial advisor, and that Bert and Ernie will surpass the popularity of the two women from Absolutely Fabulous.

No President is above reproach

Criticizing the President of the United States, no matter how unwarranted or wildly bizarre it may seem, is not sedition, even if the President is your close friend.

No President is above reproach.  In fact, we're fortunate enough to criticize, mock, cajole, protest and needle the President of the United States without getting thrown into jail, tortured, murdered, disappeared, or fined into poverty because their leader is seen as a God who must not be challenged.  (Viz: North Korea, the former East Germany, Cuba, etc.)

If the Governor feels that the opposing party is being too harsh on the President, perhaps it's because there's a legitimate reason for the agita that resides beyond the Beltway, i.e. the President is not the Emperor, the United States isn't the Roman empire, and people don't like to be ruled.

896 million reasons why cigarette smoking will never be banned in Massachusetts

With cigarette excise taxes $2.51 per pack and $562 million taken in as tax revenue, plus $315 million from the tobacco settlement, you would figure that half of that money goes to smoking cessation programs, right?

Wrongo.  According to WBZ's David Wade, out of nearly $900 million, only one half of one percent - $4.5 million - is earmarked for programs that help people quit smoking.

The other $895.5 million heads right to the General Fund.  You buy a $7.50 pack of cigs in a poor section of Boston, you buy a firehouse for a well-to-do tony village in the Berkshires.  Your dirt-cheap $5.75 pack of below-generic cigs purchased in Springfield may show up as a perdiem for a representative in North Andover, a dedication for a library of a state senator in Taunton, or even a re-election campaign push for the governor.  Redistribution and super-easy cash at its best.

Put another way - if the state ever banned cigarettes, the tax revenues from cigarettes at both the state and federal level (which was raised to $1.01 in 2009) would mean billions of dollars lost per year.  Now we know why the state will never ban cigarettes, at least until the federal government determines that all cigarettes are a health hazard and must be pulled off the shelves immediately.  Once the Federal government is willing to give up their money habit, the state will be forced to follow suit.

Russet Morrow Breslau, head of Tobacco Free Mass, makes this astute judgement: ""You can't balance the budget on the backs of smokers[.]" 

Who are those smokers, who are shelling out an effective tax rate of 45-60% to the general fund?  The poor and middle class.

Kind of makes me wonder about biases too

Hub Blog highlights today's Tea Party Rally at the Boston Common and how it's a double standard for the media to ignore the anti-Iraq War protests while covering the Tea Party rally like the minutiae of the Bay City Rollers ca. 1978.

I'll give Hub Blog my answer to his question.  It's a long one, so bear with me.

Dubya was President in 2003.  Most on the left thought that the reason for the Iraq War was because he wanted to avenge his father's Gulf War Invasion of 1991 - the one Bush Sr. didn't finish and let Saddam Hussein and his sons continue their bloodthirsty rule.  There were also rumors that Saddam tried to kill Bush Sr. - which motivated Dubya even more.  The press dared not name-check the anti-war movement's principals (some of whom were pretty hard-left outfits who supported Saddam - a Stalinist cult of personality that the hard left adored with a passion) because it would mean limited access to interviews and giving free publicity to leftist hardliners in America would cause serious repercussions from more conservative corners - including curtailing circulation and cramping ratings.  So the media barely touched on the rigid dogma of the people sponsoring these anti-war rallies for fear that broadcasting who they really were would garner threats and shut off access.

Now the inverse is occuring.  Obama is now president, and although he's nowhere near a Stalinist, the left adores him to the point of fanatical zeal, i.e. the king shall not be smeared, he is infalliable, and his word is gospel; anyone who challenges it is a heretic and must be silenced.  Enter Sarah Palin, who not only mentions the Emperor wears no clothes, but takes pure glee in mentioning that Obama wants to turn America into Europe - long the American left's dream - and it must be stopped.  The left has always been jealous of American exceptionalism - that instead of the world twirling around European and Asian axes, Americans manage to do quite well without a huge nanny state or VAT taxes and the corrupt politicians that fawn over them.

Not only that, Sarah Palin is very much plain spoken.  She is astringent and much like the light that vampires don't want to see when the sun rises.  Sarah Palin is not one you want to mess with and it would be better to put your bare hands on a 12.5kV Amtrak catenary wire than try to .  The critics know this and fear that she will put them in her sights and destroy their dreams.  Fear begets irrational reaction, and the air fills with shouts of "teabagger" and references to Hitler.  Hence, this is also why the press is looking over the Tea Party movement with a fine tooth comb and why she's the target of their ridicule and scorn.  Anyone who is fully and rigidly invested in the plan to transform America into Europe West fears Sarah Palin, her charisma and her ability to persuade - and for her to win means a long-standing defeat.

Albert Einstein had this wonderful quote that's pertinent to this day: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."  It would be wise for both parties to take heed of it and understand what it means - maybe even the Tea Party movement.

A bonus is a bonus is a bonus...

Eeka of One Smoot Short puts her thoughts in the Big Bank Bonus Bingo. Even a token amount of money in a gift card goes a long way to say thanks.

We don't get bonuses at work per se.  (Definitely not the $400,000 Bank of America execs get.)  Whenever we've had a good year, the company shares the profits by depositing the monies into our 401(k) plans, usually at a rate of 3-6% of our salary, depending on our performance as a whole.

Pro: not a single dollar gets taxed, so we don't get whacked with income taxes if they cut a check instead.

Con: if the market ever goes down, like last year, it will take a long time to get that money back; and even if we've save all those nice bonuses they've given us, the money gets taxed as soon as we retire.