How Many Other Things Do We Not Know?

Last Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was too young to really remember much about it. I was in first grade. I remember getting a day off from school and watching a parade and not understanding why it was making my mom cry. I don't recall much else about it.

It was 1968 before I got how crazy the world had become in the 1960s. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the riots throughout our major cities, the Chicago assault on protesters at the Democratic Convention. I remember believing the world might come to an end at any time. All that coupled with growing up under the shadow of the nuclear bomb (my Junior High School, built in Florida in 1962 was lead lined in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis and I remember duck and cover exercises from elementary school in Indiana), made for a rather paranoid feeling growing up. It is probably the root of my cynicism.

When I teach about governance in my sociology classes, we discuss charismatic leadership. JFK stands out as one of the few charismatic leaders who actually held a position in government. Most are leaders of movements to change the system, not part of the establishment. Almost all charismatic leaders will either be killed or be discredited. Sometimes, such as the case of JFK, maybe both. The sociological reason for this is simple. The group that forms around charismatic leaders is highly unstable. "Group Stability" is a sociological term referring to the ability of a group identity to outlive its members or the decisions of it members. Since the leadership of this group is through the inspiration of a central figure, getting rid of the central figure either directly via assassination or indirectly via smear campaigns, essentially breaks up the group. The movement cannot survive the loss.

I do have a conspiracy theory regarding JFK. Not so much a "who" theory as to a "why" theory, though "why" points to some specific "who"s.

I believe this speech sealed the deal for JFK's inevitable fate:

(text for this speech can be found here)

Following up on a speech he gave two years earlier on September 25, 1963, Kennedy was advocating peace over war. He was threatening the military-industrial complex, which by this time had rose to considerable power in the United States. I have no doubt that this threat was the motivation behind his assassination.

Kennedy was not perfect and his being put on a pedestal was problematic, as it is when anyone is put there. But I believe the world would have been a different place if he had lived and continued to lead.

My husband and I often have debates about when United States started going downhill. I usually argue that we were never as good as our rhetoric and that the democratic facade has always been with us, since we were built upon lies about equality and theft of land and labor. But if I had to choose a moment in time that changed any possibility of the United States living up to her declared values, it was the assassination of John Kennedy.

I don't know who actually pulled the trigger and I doubt the answer will ever be definitive. But I do know who benefitted from that trigger being pulled. In fact, the lack of knowledge about the assassination is indicative of how the world changed that day. I have no doubt that it was a conspiracy. Some people killed a president and some other people bought the story that it was a lone gunman and it is 50 years later and no one knows the truth.

As I contemplate this anniversary, I cannot help but ask: How many other things do we not know? 

I don't have answers. I don't know where things might head from here. But I remain cynical and that cynicism was born of the 60s and 70s when I learned not to trust power. I do believe this. The world changed that day and not for the better. I also believe that our hope must rely upon something other than a charismatic leader emerging. If we want change, we must find another way than business as usual.

My cynicism should not be mistaken for pessimism. I do have some hope. I have come to believe that a sociological imagination is the key to addressing these changes and that is why sociology remains suppressed through economic means.

Never before has there been a greater need for public sociology and never before has there been a greater call for the sociologist. I am discouraged with our discipline, but I remain hopeful that we have something to offer and that many more are starting to get their voices heard.


As the quote at the top of this blog states, the "sociological imagination [is] our most needed quality of mind." We must do what we can to develop that quality and we must not be silent.

Some Thoughts on Labor, Work and a Job

Two weeks ago, on August 19, I started the first full-time job I've had in 19 years. So the post I am about to make here is a little ironic. But there is a difference between what could/should be and what is. Today, Labor Day, I want to talk about what needs to change.

First, I'm going to cheat and offer you a crash course in US economic history in the form of two episodes of Crashcourse, American History (I know, it is a bit like homework, but I really think these two videos set the stage better than I can):

And...

=================
 What strikes me most about this history is that it did cost us a lot of freedom.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I am a consumer of goods and services that are made possible by this history. I would never have made a good farmer as I killed every plant in my possession. I would never have made a rugged individual on the frontier as I don't know how to cook or sew and every serious attempt I've made has resulted in failure. I am, in a word, a city girl (okay, three words). As an urban dweller, I am inextricably dependent upon these goods and services and while I don't sport the largest footprint on the planet and never would (I hate shopping as well), I don't see myself heading for the mountains and living off the land in some Jeffersonian ideal any time soon.

 On the other hand, it seems patently obvious to me that the time for "jobs" has passed. Politicians keep promising "more jobs" but a job has become one of the most insecure thing in the world for most people, especially low-skilled people. The old narratives of "job-makers" and "job-killers" and "unionized labor" are falling short and they are falling short for a reason that no one on either side of the political aisle seems to want to discuss. A "job" is an industrialization concept and we no longer live in an industrial economy.

 What is the evidence for post-industrialization?

1. Most manufactured goods created in the United States from highly mechanized and robotic factories that employ mostly high tech workers who oversee these electronic gadgets. Even companies that employ factory workers have them working side-by-side with robots. The heyday of the factory job is over, even if some factories provide some jobs for a few skilled workers, we will not see 40% of the labor force employed by factories again. It just isn't necessary and it is too expensive.
   
   
2. The rise of e-commuting and the "on-call" nature of many jobs has blurred the lines of the "where" and "when" of a job. Factories were based on time and place. Workers arrived at specific times and they gathered in specific places to accomplish their work. This is less and less true. The "time" is always and the "place" is everywhere.
   
   
3. The original factory workers, as John Green notes in the first video, were mostly women and mostly temporary workers who expected to leave that employment within a few years. This was a good thing because if you worked too long you would probably die or become disabled as conditions were dismal. But with the rise of unions came job security and for a couple of generations, mostly men, who worked for a large corporation, expected to be there for life and to have a small, but secure, pension available in old age. The day of The Organization Man has long since passed. So called "job-hopping" is on the rise, with some estimates that so-called "Gen-Yers" will have 15 to 20 jobs in their lifetime. The concept of loyalty on both sides of the employment equation is gone.
   
   
4. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle-classes are disappearing or surviving only via debt. This trend is worldwide, but it is of particular concern in the United States. Such inequalities in the distribution of wealth resembles feudalism more than it does democracy or free markets. In fact, more than a few analysts are talking about our current political economy as "neofeudalism." 

"Our passivity has resulted... in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics."--Chris Hedges, Journalist, quoted by John W. Whitehead in The Age of Neo-feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by theRich and for the Corporations. 

I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past few years, especially living in the margins of the current economy, holding multiple part-time jobs and/or contracting for services and running a small micro-enterprise. I am coming to the belief that the sociological imagination could be applied to this history and its seemingly inevitable outcomes (note that the current situation is not the first time such inequalities in wealth distribution have occurred in our short history of both democracy and capitalism.) What is emerging in my thinking is a long project (either a book or a documentary, or both) that will sociologically examine several things at once and how they interplay with each other to create our current situation:

• the influence of the tax code on culture and culture on the tax code;
• our understandings of "work" including Weber's Protestant Work Ethic and how it continues to play into the wealth inequalities that exist and are growing;
• the long history of central banks as the new feudal lords under which we labor;
• and how organizational theory, group dynamics and specifically, a better understanding of the nature of group stability would be key to changing things for the better without resorting to outdated dichotomies like "socialism v. capitalism" or "democracy v. totalitarianism." 

In short, I think the time has come to think outside the box and I hope to find a way to do that. 

I leave you with a quote from Muhammad Yunis, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work on microlending, asset development and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. This radical approach to addressing poverty through wealth development rather than "jobs" is an excellent place to start:

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see

His big idea: "Poverty is unnecessary." 

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Number 7: Everything is Sociological!

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers context to almost any human endeavor.

I jokingly tell people that I got my degree in sociology because I am interested in everything.

Joking or not, this is true. Anything that involves two or more humans is fair game for sociological analysis. This is the key to the sociological imagination concept that is found in almost every single sociology text book in the world (or at least in English).

But this brings us back to where we started: an informed citizenry. The more we understand how humans interact, the most adept we become at living together in every way, including everything from our intimate lives to our civil lives. I ran across an interesting video last night that I felt summed up how an understanding of organization has consequences:



While Grey is speaking from history and politics, he is also making an organizational argument based upon the understanding of human interaction. The rules of engagement have influence over the actions individuals make and these rise to collective, unintended consequences. This little video is an elegant explanation for the current federal budget sequester, the log-jamming of gridlock in our law-making, the negativity of our campaigns and why I feel like I've picked the least bad politician since I voted for Carter (1976 was the first year I could vote), and why some of the smartest people I know no longer bother to vote (including me a couple of times).

A sociologist could also add to this video by explaining group stability and why this will not change from the inside. The argument (when one is made beyond "America is #1") is made in support of our two-party system and first past the post voting practices, is that the United States has been in existence for over two centuries, so we must be doing something right. We have a "stable" system of government.

Sociologists, however, have noted that group stability (defined as a group identity that outlives the original members and the decisions made by the members of the group) has some serious drawbacks. To wit, this same argument could have been and probably was made about slavery. After all, slavery had a longer history since Columbus than our constitution has had.

Group stability reduces the power of the individual members of a group. We sacrifice our power under these systems and, by the way, that was by design.



There was great fear among the gentry in early American history of giving too much power to common people. They also fear too large a government. In an attempt to have cake and eat it too we now have a someone antiquated idea of the "republic" and "representative democracy" that has led to an unintended consequence of create divisive stalemates that are easily manipulated by people with money and power, instead of the well-balanced government intended.

I have come to have as much disdain for a strong central government as I have for oligopolistic businesses (and I will save my central bank rant for another day) so I don't totally agree with all of John Green's conclusions in the video. I don't have definitive answers to the mess we call American politics (and let's not forget the messy economy either), but I do know that without sociologists at the table, we will not find a way out.

But, of course, this is SOCIOLOGY in all caps -- big questions and big answers. But if that's not your brand of social action, you might enjoy this:

First Person, Plural Radio (2003)
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Number 6: Epigenetics

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology helps hard sciences understand human beings and our ecological settings more fully.

One word to look up to make this case: epigenetics.


If we know now that the expression of our genetics are, in part, determined by our ancestors' social histories, we need Sociology to help us understand not only our own world, but the social worlds of times past if we are to utilize the vast knowledge we have obtained about the human genome. Otherwise, we will only half a partial picture (see #1).

Sociology offers context to almost any human endeavor. (Published March 31, 2013, 6:00am PDT)

Number 5: Knowing Organizations Saves Lives

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology helps us design better social organizations.

Any MBA worth her salt will tell you that how a business is organized matters. Complex organizations with multi-layers of bureaucratic systems lead to inefficiencies and poor communication. Flatter organizations are less controllable but offer better flow of communication within the organization and with the outsiders the organization serves.

First Person Plural radio (2003) 
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After the Challenger tragedy in 1986, Sociologist Diane Vaughan started looking at NASA's social structure and culture (including what she called a "culture of risk"), and ended up writing a book,The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, about how the bureaucratic structure of NASA contributed to the accident. It was virtually ignored by NASA until after the 2003 loss of the Colombia.

Redesigning the organization is something that sociologists do well. It is also an area where sociologists are vastly underused.

Sociology helps hard sciences understand human beings and our ecological settings more fully. (Published March 30, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 4: Commonality in Diversity

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers a way for people from diverse countries, cultures and languages to find common ground.

In my home county alone, the population has shifted to more diversity between 2000 and 2010 census. This shift is being seen almost everywhere in the United States.

But we are interacting globally at a much higher rates as well. This means there are lots of ways we can screw up inter-cultural relationships. Such screw-ups can have lots of fun, unintended consequences like war, trade barriers and extreme wealth imbalances.



Being able to place oneself in the position of the "other," what sociologists call "social empathy," is becoming a more important skill no matter where you live in the contemporary world. Sociology helps find common ground. While there is great diversity in the world, there are also commonalities.

Sociologist Georg Simmel first noted (over 100 years ago) how the mechanisms of stranger relationships work: we keep our distance from people we perceive as different and we welcome people we perceive as similar. The more commonality we find with others, the more likely we are to welcome them into our lives and our social circles. Thus, we have the potential not only of keeping worthwhile people out of our lives because we perceive them as different on some arbitrary factor, we also have the potential of inviting destructive people into our lives because we perceive them as similar. Every successful con artist knows this even if they don't know how to talk about it like this.



A good understanding of differences and commonalities plus a healthy dose of critical thinking and social empathy serves an individual well in choosing whom to let into one's social circles and whom to avoid. It also serves the collective well because it teaches us that we should be paying attention to how people act, not in which category we place them.

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World. (Published March 29, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 3: Improving Our Personal Lives

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers an understanding of our collective nature that improves our personal lives.

There is some controversy in sociology as a discipline as to the extent to which we control our own destinies. But even in the most functionalist, deterministic applications of social theory, which asserts we have little control, a basic understanding exists that we need each other to survive. I bend more towards a constructionist point-of-view and believe we have a lot of control over our daily lives. But this does not mean we have full control.

As I tell my students, the good news is that you are helping to shape the social world. The bad news is that so is everyone else. What we call "society" is the sum total of all that we do in our human interactions: what we say, how we say it, what we assume, and with whom we interact.

If you think "personal responsibility" is important and that somehow understanding social structures is in opposition to such a concept, then you don't understand the nature of responsibility. Responsibility includes "response ability," how well we will respond to the world around us. If you don't understand group dynamics, social empathy or human interaction, your responses will not be on target. If you do understand how these things work, you will do better in all your endeavors in life, even if you face barriers, including your relationships, your education, your careers, and your citizenship.

Sociology offers a way for people from diverse countries, cultures and languages to find common ground. (Published on March 28, 2013 at 6am PDT)

Number 2: Measuring Success

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers some of the best ways to measure our successes.

If we do take the time to ask what does the data tell us and what solutions make sense given that data, we still need sociology to help us see if some solution is working or not. Social data is always difficult to obtain because we are fish studying fish in a fishbowl. But that doesn't mean it gives us no information. Properly funded, well-designed research can, in fact, track change and give us data on improving our lives.



However, I think the most important aspect of learning sociological methods is not what we can produce or evaluate ourselves, but rather how our ability to detect other people's bullshit will become easier. Hard sciences help with this, of course. Knowing the scientific method is the first step. Sociological methods, however, go beyond predictions, theories and cause/effect proofs to rounding out context to these things. Bias exists in all scientific studies and must be sought out and accounted for in order to do good research, no matter what is being researched. Sociology gives us tools to identify those biases on both the macro level and the micro level.

In a society that has made the words "studies have shown" into a magic incantation in which any words that follow in the sentence are instantly and irrefutably "true," understanding the context to research and media is more important than ever.

We live in what has been called "the information age" and yet we rarely take the time to evaluate that information. Sociology is one of the best ways to fully understand what we are being told and how good the information really is.

Sociology offers an understanding or our collective nature that improves our personal lives. (Published March 27, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 1: A Fuller Picture

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers a fuller picture of our condition as human beings.

No amount of closing our eyes and ears and singing "na-na-na-na" evoking the name of Ayn Rand three times a day, will change the fact that we share our world with each other. What we do and what other people do creates a collective reality that needs to be understood in order to be improved.

If we ignore this data, we will be scratching our collective heads about why we can't solve problems. And nowadays we are scratching our collective heads wondering why war, famine, poverty, violence and other collective factors still exist. One of the main reasons is that political solutions often ignore the hard stuff that require people to change. A politician will never ask his constituents to change and so any "solution" found in that realm will be lacking.


If we were more interested in truth than politics, we would see change. We know this because the few times we have done this. it has worked out quite well, at least until we let money and politics corrupt it.

Next: Sociology offers some of the best ways to measure our successes. (Published March 26, 2013, 6am PDT)

Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World: Introduction

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I love Sociology so much and why the rest of the world does not.

An article in the Huffington Post by Scott Atran called The Folly of Defunding Social Sciences raised some important points. The last sentence caught my eye:

There is more to being a citizen than voting!

The Founding Fathers envisioned a Republic with an enlightened citizenry educated in "all philosophical Experiments that Light into the Nature of Things ... and multiply the Conveniences or Pleasures of Life" -- not just technical training for jobs that pay well.

I have come to believe that it is an "enlightened  citizenry" that our government fears the most. And I've come to believe (or rather, have strong evidence suggesting) that Sociology is a key to enlightenment.

So over the next week I will be posting daily my Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Stay tuned!

Next: Sociology offers a fuller picture of our condition as human beings. (Published March 25, 2013, 6am PDT)

Sociology and the Space Shuttle

As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.


Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.

Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.

We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.

As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.

Enjoy!

(note, depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a few minutes to load)

The American Ruling Class: View of the Power Elite

Last week I showed two of my classes a delightful film called The American Ruling Class, which bills itself as a "documentary, drama, musical." It lives up to the billing.

The drama part is the storyline of two recent Yale graduates who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives now that they are ready for the "real world." Other fictional parts include classmates, workers, a Pentagon press corps, and musical entertainers, including some wonderful kids.

The documentary part involves the film's creator, Lewis Lampham, long-time editor of Harper's Magaine and self-identified member of America's Ruling Class. Lampham coaches the fictional Yalees by introducing them to a wide range of real life members of various sectors of media, literary, Hollywood and political elites. There is little indication of how many of these well-known persons are "in" on the fictional aspects. In this way, the film reminds me of Sacha Baron Cohen's work where the lines between fiction and reality are blurred. Highlights include Walter Kronkite, Kurt Vonnegut, Barbara Ehrenreich, James Baker, Hodding Carter, and Bill Bradley.

The musical part involves several times in the film when the point is driven by workers, press corps and kids breaking out in song. Of course, there is also a magical bus ride with Howard Zinn, who conducts a tour of an alternative American history that sought to set up a ruling class and suppress dissent, accompanied by a Phillip Glass composition from Koyaanisqatsi. And rounding out the musical aspects of the film, is a wonderful encounter with Pete Seeger, who is strumming a banjo on a country road and providing sage wisdom about social change.

If you are looking for cut and dry answers to the questions of whether the ruling class controls the rest of us, whether holding power means the opportunity to do great good or whether power corrupts absolutely, you will be dissatisfied with this film. It is highly ambiguous, reflecting, I believe Lampham's own mixed feelings about the privileges that he has enjoyed.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the obvious role that two prominent private organizations play in providing a gateway to becoming a part of the class: the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

One of the graduates is introduced to the Council on Foreign Relations as the doorway he must pass through in order to become part of The American Ruling Class. The other graduate, a little more reluctant to become a member, is sent to a wide range of political, military and philanthropic leaders, each of whom is a member of one or both of these organizations.

When I teach about C. Wright Mills's Power Elite, I point out that one of the features of an elite is that they are simply acting within their social circles, no evil cartel needed. Because these powerful persons share social spaces, they often make decisions like most of us, thinking of their own interests and those of their social circles, acting along the norms that they have been taught and viewing the world in ways they have been socialized. The difference is that when these elites act, other people's lives outside their circles are affected. The effects can be unintentional, but they are real, nonetheless.

Only after watching this film did I learn more about the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. I was amazed. These organizations are the centers of power on both sides of the political spectrum. These are where the elite meet and do business. These are where power is brokered, expanded and solidified.

When I teach about Mills's point that no evil cartel is necessary, I also point out that doesn't rule out conspiracies. Conspiracies are not necessary, but they certainly are more efficient. After learning more about these two organizations, I am now worried that I was more right about this than I want to be.

Add to this, another aspect of world elitism of which I've only recently become aware, the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum. While the news media loves to show G-fill-in-the-number-this-year summits of political leaders and financial advisors supposedly setting trade policy, little media coverage is given to Davos outside of business news. Yet this is where elites from around the world meet to set policy not only for governments, but for developing countries, social agendas, multi-national corporations, academic grants and media production.


If you are concerned about the fact that 1% of the world's population now owns over 40% of the world's wealth, then these three organizations should be on your radar. If you are concerned about the growing poverty the world is experiencing the wake of the events of 2008 and the so-called financial meltdown, these three organizations should be on your radar. If you want to understand why political power is much more complex than the news channels want you to believe (like much more complex that what the current president is doing today and how are the two-sides of one coin political parties are dividing their time), then these three organizations should be on your radar.

This is the power elite and as predicted they are getting more powerful in many ways.

I have a lot more to say about power and I do not believe the power elite is the only power game. But I do think it is important to know about this if you want to give the correct context to media. Because, currently in the United States, the media are acting as smoke and mirrors.

Toto is looking behind the curtain. We should probably follow suit if we want to find our way to our brains, our hearts, our courage and our homes.

New York times Article about Banking Oversight

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives


Thought this might be of interest after watching Capitalism: A Love Story and discussing Power Elites.

My Critique of the New York Times Article on US as Banana Republic

My facebook friend and fellow Sociologist, Lesliegh Owens wrote on Facebook comments to my New York Times Blog entry:

"Pattie, I'm intrigued by your comments about cultural production and social infrastructure. Would you please expand a bit? Huge thanks!"

I could write a whole lot on this, but suffice it to say that ownership of production includes ownership of cultural production such as media, education and the arts. This means that, as Gramsci noted, the interests of a very few are being served up hegemonically as being "American" interests. Thus, what feels natural or normal by the vast majority of Americans is actually only good for a very small percentage of Americans.

As far as infrastructure goes, we saw in this last election a group on the right who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch along with puppetmaster, Karl Rove, and a group on the left who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire George Soros.

With the ridiculous Supreme Court ruling that corporations have freedom of speech, we now have a select few who are funding and influencing a chess game of politics using "common" folk as pawns. Everyone wonders why this midterm election seemed so visible when most midterm elections are usually dull with little turnout. Well what we are seeing is an election battle between two billionaire camps, that top 1%. It is interesting to consider the election in light of the NY Times article.

If you saw, Capitalism: A Love Story, you know about the Citigroup plutonomy memo which lamented the fact that we have voting rights. Well, I think we just witnessed in the past two years exactly how the rich are going to handle the voters -- fund them and get them riled up through media.

By concentrating so much on the personal aspects of these inequalities, I think Kristof missed some real structural and cultural changes that this inequality is creating and the very real ways it is changing our so-called democracy into something very undemocratic.

7 Ways Health Care Could Be Improved in the US

So after a year of debate that was full of backroom deals, posturing and ultimately the demise of anything resembling bipartisanship, we have a radical but weakly constructed Health Care Insurance reform law aptly and anemically named: The Affordable Care Act.

Okay, before I discuss what I hate about this bill, let me make some concessions to my liberal friends:

• Yes, this goes way further than anyone has gone before;
  
  
• Yes, it is good to do away with the discriminatory practices of the predatory health insurance industry such a pre-existing conditions and dropping insurance when one is sick;
  
  
• Yes, there are some immediate benefits that are helping some people; and
  
  
• Yes, this will most likely result in some improvements both in the cost and delivery of health care.

But this is a drop in the proverbial bucket and Michelle Obama's anti-childhood obesity campaign tells me all I need to know about how much this administration knows they have failed to produce real change. Just like the Clintons in 1994, blaming fat people is a great way to blow smoke and use mirrors to make the failure disappear.

So why am I profoundly disappointed in this bill?

• First, no public option other than some lame expansions of Medicaid and some temporary fixes like High Risk pools which will go away when the full non-existing condition prohibition goes in effect in 2014.
  
  
• Leaving these lame expansions in the hands of states and demanding that states provide matching funds. Nevada's a-hole of a governor (and my boss--I'm technically a state employee) Jim Gibbons had decided that it is better to sue the federal government than provide the extra medicaid and high risk pools. Thus, a beggar-thy-neighbor affect has already begun. And yes, he's acquiescing but it is really too little too late.
  
  
• No effort has been made to even begin to address social inequities inherent in medical relationships or to ask the hard questions about the money and power held by hospitals, pharmaceuticals, physicians, insurance companies and other big-time players in the system. (Like, I don't know, maybe a regulatory system that allows patient's complaints to be heard.)
  
  
• Health care coverage is still tied to work. This is a ridiculous idea and it belies the latent function of health care in America: keeping the working class compliant. This is not a natural fit at all and all the celebration of tax credits is a perfect example of politicians pretending they are doings something when they are not.
  
  
• In fact, the health care tax credits for personal income tax is essentially making school loan debt, tax debt and non-payment or being behind in child support payments a death sentence. If you don't have enough money to pay these things, you probably are not going to have enough money to buy insurance. If you get the tax credit to supposedly help pay for insurance, it goes to pay these other debts, which means you have no money to pay for the insurance the government requires. This in turn means you will owe more taxes because of the penalty and therefore you will be further in debt and the cycle continues.
  
  
• But the biggest reason I find this law to be distasteful is that millions of Americans who have been bullied and mistreated by the nation's health insurance industry are now going to be forced to buy insurance from that same group of people. You see the dirty little secret is that the insurance industry knew they were in a win-win situation.
  
  OOH, if reform failed, their unbridled profiteering at the expense of our health and well-being would continue unimpeded. OTOH, if reform passed without a public option, then a whole new group of people would be forced to buy insurance. Not that wonderful group they hate -- the sick, but that wonderful group they love -- the young folk who rarely get sick.
  
  Now let me make this clear -- for a universal system to work, mandatory insurance has to be a part of it. The whole concept is that everyone buys in whether they are sick or not, then the cost for all is lowered and the protection for all is in place. But that is only valid IF everyone receives the same protection. This bill leaves in place all sorts of stratification, meaning that young people and their parents (till they are 26) are going to get the short end of the stick, or in other words, the stick is going to be stuck someplace where the sun don't shine.

If I believed that people in Washington really saw this as a first step towards true reform, I'd be more excited. But as near as I can tell they are all celebrating the victory or mouthing off about repeal and no one is discussing the next move.

The fact is no one has really faced some fundamental truths about for-profit health care systems, and as long as lobbying and corporate money flows unimpeded, they are probably not going to face those facts. As Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

So not ever wanting to be simply "anti" anything, I offer some specific Ways to Improve Health Care in the United States. Some of these are shifts in perspectives, while others are downright practical:

1. True reform must begin with understanding the collective nature of health care. Germs do not care which bodies they infect. The water, soil, air and environment surround us all. Our well-being is collective and pretending this is an individual's business only is costing us. All health care is public health care. This basic fact is radical because it is the crux of the whole debate. When other countries debated how to achieve universal health care they took this as a given and then discussed reform. Americans are still pretending that they are in total control of their lives and it is costing them their health, their well-being and their livelihoods. This paradigm shift has to happen or we will never achieve good health care that is sustainable.
   
   
2. We must eliminate the primacy and monopoly that allopathic medicine and the physicians who practice it have on our health. What little regulation through licensing and academic accreditation that we have gives a virtual monopoly on this form of medicine and it is to our peril. The reason chronic illnesses are on the rise in the United States is that practitioners who have methods to address these conditions are systematically pushed aside in favor of the "magic pill" form of medicine. I love what surgery and pharmaceuticals can do. I'm alive because of advances in these areas, but I am, along with millions of others, in daily pain and disabled because these are the only advances that have been encouraged. Any reform that does not get rid of the monopoly of the allopathic doctor and overblown reward that monopoly affords him or her is going to fail. We need multiple modalities and we need to be rewarding these modalities and allowing them flourish.
   
   
3. We need to allow more locally based systems in the practice of medicine while finding ways to use economies of scale in the acquisition of resources. In other words, local communities should have more control over their clinics and practitioners but acquisition and distribution of equipment and medicines should be organized in such a way that lowers costs. Such organizational schemes are not without precedent but they are often defeated by monied interests. There should be no reason we cannot have medical boards in a community that oversee the practices of health care providers locally and still have vaccinations, medical supplies and equipment bought on a national scale and distributed according to local needs.
   
   
4. We need to divorce health care from wage slavery. This is not a natural marriage. It has a specific and sordid history and if we really want to have health care for all, this marriage must die. As long as health care is connected to employment we are enslaved by both systems. It's just that simple.
   
   
5. We need to recognize that it IS NOT and it NEVER CAN BE a level playing field between health care provider and sick person. This means it should never be "for-profit." The provider is always going to have far more information than the sick person. The sick person is in desperate straights when ill and therefore does not have time or ability to seek out good information and shop for the best price, best service and so forth. Thus, the opportunity for price gouging and fraud is always present. It cannot help but be corrupted and therefore it can never be a free market. Pretending that the patient is a "client" is ridiculous. In our current system, we cannot trust our providers. How do we know they have our best interest at heart? We cannot truly know if a doctor is prescribing a drug because we need it or because he owns stock in the company that produces it. We cannot know if the procedure the doctor suggests is because it is the best thing for us or if he just needs to pay for his daughter's tuition this month. We think we trust our doctors, but how can we know the purity of their motives when they make more money when we are sick than when we are well?
   
   
6. We need to recognize that social ills create much of our personal ills. If we really wanted to lower our health care costs we would be working towards the end of poverty, we would be working towards a better ecological balance and we would be working towards the end of war and violence. Corruption, pollution, violence and lack of access to care are the leading causes of ill health. We will not be serious about improving our health and well-being until we are seriously trying to change these things.
   
   
7. Finally, related to #6, but not quite the same thing, is we need to end stigma and the medicalization of prejudices. Far from improving our collective well-being, the unintended consequences of many public health programs is to reinforce stereotypes, prop up bullying and paternalistic behaviors of bigots and mark people as less than human because of who they are or who they associate with. There is beginning to be ample evidence to support the notion that stigma leads to ill-health. Creating programs that continue to stigmatize, even if it is "unintended" will make true health care reform impossible.

Yeah, I know, if you made it this far, you are probably saying, "Yeah, but..." Well, reform is supposed to be change. Reform is supposed to be something radical. The so-called reform we have to date is just same ole, ahem, well you know. If we really want change, if we really want reform, we are going to change our core values. Right now we care more about profit than people, we care more about ideology than truth and we care more about getting our way and not having to make any sacrifices than we do about life and the future. There is a price to be paid for everything we believe that is not true. The price this time might be our lives, our children's lives, our civilization, and our planet. We cannot afford anything but reform.

Grand Challenge of the 21st Century -- End Stigmatization

So I got a tweet from @whitehouse yesterday and again today regarding President Obama's call for submissions regarding Grand Challenges of the 21st Century. Aside from the grammatical error (I think it should read "Your Ideas Welcomed"), this is basically a call for ideas to aid Obama's White House in creating their highly touted "Strategy for American Innovation."

Okay, I'm pretty cynical, or at least, skeptical, when it comes to these things, but I decided to take them up on the challenge because it is a bad strategy in life to assume that nobody wants to hear your ideas ever.

So I submitted a grand idea: a comprehensive, well-funded program to end stigmatization. It is too long to post here (4 pages), so click on the link to read the .pdf.

When I taught about race and ethnicity, I have challenged my students to find ways to end stigmatization. My parameters for them were to come up with ideas that they can implement in their own daily lives, ie, no funding, no government support, no charity. They have done surprising well with great ideas about staging public events, posting youtube videos, selling tee-shirts and so forth.

This is a little different but it is in the spirit of the assignment. Most people who address stigma do so by telling stigmatized persons how to cope with the stigma. This is unacceptable and is essentially a losing strategy. It is saying that the bigot doesn't have to change, we do. But stigma originates from the bigoted idea, not the characteristic used as an excuse for the bigotry. It is not under the control of the stigmatized, it is under the control of those who stigmatize others. So if we want a tolerant society. If we want bigotry, xenophobia, discrimination, bullying as so forth to end, we should be starting with the source and not teach people to cope.

Let me know what you think of my idea. Or better yet, if you like it, you might send an email to challenge@ostp.gov and second the proposal.

7 Reasons Why UNIVERSAL Health Care does NOT EQUAL SUPPLEMENTING THE SICK

My outspoken stances on universal health care coupled with the size of my body, the disabilities I live with, and my unapologetic attitude have led to some flaming of me personally on the net. I'm not too worried about it and while the hatred saddens me somewhat, I generally ignore it and almost never respond to direct flames. I've been around the net long enough to know that arguing with such people basically just fans those flames and doesn't accomplish anything but an ashy mess.

I received one such flame this weekend, however, that I do want to address, though not directly. Basically I was told in not-so-nice terms that I was for healthcare reform so I could sponge off my  healthier peers. The belief that universal health care is some plot for sick people to lay back, do nothing at the cost of the healthy is, I believe, at the heart of the health care debate. It is a belief that has been exploited by insurance companies for decades.

The irony is that the basis of insurance is exactly the same basis of universal coverage: insurance is based on the principle that if everyone pays a little when they do not need whatever the insurance is covering, then when something happens and they do need it, the fund will be there to help. If the group is big enough and has enough diversity, the bet is that it will be unlikely that the fund will be depleted because only a small percentage of those paying will need help at any given time. Of course, there is a certain understanding that each member of the group has to pay enough to cover that expected collective need for a given time, but for the most part the amount paid to the fund is supposed to be significantly less than any individual's need if it arises (making it more appealing to pay into the fund rather than just save for a rainy day). 

Of course, one of the reasons for last years collapse in the credit market is that large companies offered "insurance" against default on debts without adhering to the basic principles of size and contribution and the system collapsed.  But the idea behind insurance is an old and tested one and when done soundly it is not a bad idea. It is, in fact, one of the benefits of collectivity.

So why has the idea that the public option would be something new and different been so easy to sell to a good percentage of the American public? I believe it is because of the fear of collectivity and the cult of individualism that pervades our culture. It is this knee-jerk reaction to anything that smacks of collectivity that has made it possible for this current system of cutting off the access to good care for as many people as possible to exist.  Because Americans accept the cult of individualism we are willing:

• to blame individuals for their illnesses;
• to understand when doctors get richer because we are ill (after all each person is obviously responsible for their own illness);
  
• to buy into the lifestyle myths that eating and exercise means we can live forever (thus leading us to buy billions of dollars in diet and exercise products);
• to stand by when insurance companies and HMOs discriminate against sick people by refusing to sell coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, by denying coverage to sick people, even when they have paid premiums, and by canceling their coverage when they get sick;
• to support pharmaceutical companies even though they continue to make obscene profits by selling their medications to Americans at extreme prices to make up for the reasonable limits on their profits in other countries;
  
• to yell "socialism" when any remedy to this racket is suggested.

The reason that these companies can do what they do is because the majority of people in the United States are sold on this idea that they are in control of their health and anyone who gets sick is "obviously" at fault. So why would it be shocking when someone takes advantage of the sick? It is not "my problem." Even more basic, most Americans believe they can control risk and that a risk-free environment is fundamentally their birthright.

So I propose another way to look at all this.  I suggest that life is risky and that any one of us could get sick, disabled or incapacitated just by living a normal, every day existence, no matter how "good" we are or how much "care" we take. Life is risky, but we can face these risks and these troubles better together than apart.

So here are seven reasons to consider why one should not view universal health care as supplementing the sick, but rather as a basic right that each individual should have guaranteed under our law, as our founding documents suggest:

1.  All people can get ill no matter how "healthy" their behavior.

Yes it is true that eating enough nutrients and moving often seems to help create a healthier life. But this does NOT equate to A GUARANTEE that one will never be sick. Health and illness is complex with genetics, environment, behavior and just plain germs all calculating into the mix.  Many of the illnesses that people experience have no apparent cause and have little understanding by the medical community at this point. So deciding that one "is healthy" means that one will "stay healthy" is a costly naivety.

2.  The Healthy/Sick Dichotomy Does NOT Exist.

Health is not a binary function where it is obvious that one is either healthy or sick. Health is a continuum at least and probably more like a web structure. One can have a chronic illness but live a fairly fulfilled and active life. One can have something affects one's body but leaves one's mind sharp or vice versa. One can believe they are healthy for months or even years before a symptom of problem shows up. The belief that the healthy would be supplementing the sick is based upon a false dichotomy that cannot be worked out in the real world. All of us are dying from the moment we were born. So in a sense, we are all sick.

3. Many diseases are contagious and germs do NOT discriminate.

A really fundamental reason to work towards collective health is that the less people carrying germs around, the less chance other people will carry germs around and the benefit grows exponentially. We have a public health system in the United States right now. Universal coverage will enhance this system by ensuring that it is not a matter of money that people get immunized.

4. The question of "health care costs" is complex.

The concept of supplementation is based upon all these "cost" figures bouncing around. Costs are basically arbitrary and negotiable since most of what is involved in health care is service not raw materials. Because of economies of scale and because early intervention will help prevent more involved treatments, coupled with the power of the collective to negotiate prices and simplify administration, the overall cost of health care will get lower. This lowering of costs has been shown to occur in every country that has adopted universal health care and it has not been taken into account by those who are estimating the costs of various programs because it is hard to predict when and how much such reductions will occur. Thus, as with good insurance practices, the size of the pool and the sufficiency of the contribution will help reduce the costs for every individual and be there for each of us when we need it.


5. Public Health approaches can lead to cures and preventative measures that individual health care misses.

One of the big advantages other countries have over the United States is the ability to see big pictures when it comes to health because there is a collective understanding of data collection and analysis. Understanding epidemics, environmental factors and other kinds of risk factors comes from big picture analysis. Thus, universal coverage will make it possible to know what the health of the population is and to see patterns and gain information that will lift up the health of us all.


6. All people have the potential to make contributions that will enrich our lives and illness does not discriminate among the best and worst.

By keeping people in sickness, we may be wasting human resources that would make our lives better. Equality of access is something that has been recognized as important to the strength of our country by many of our founders and leaders. Discrimination on the basis of illness is one more wasted result of xenophobia.


7. Justice demands it.

You may consider this trite but universal health care is JUST in the most fundamental sense of the term.  Rawl's basic principle of justice calls on us to imagine a world that we would want to exist if we had no idea who we would be when we were born into it. If we didn't know whether we'd be dark or light skin, a just world would treat people the same no matter what color their skin.  If we didn't know whether we would be male or female, a just world would not discriminate on the basis of gender. If we didn't know whether we'd be rich or poor, a just world would not discriminate against the "have-nots."  So, if you imagine yourself to be one of the "healthy" and do not want to "supplement the sick," I ask you to consider how such an attitude is any different than racism, sexism or classism.

Universal Health Care is a basic human right that has been recognized by others around the world for hundreds of years. It is time Americans join the free world and put an end to discrimination against the sick.

Exploring the Sociological Imagination: New Direction for Blog

Up until now, I've been using this blog mostly to stay in touch with my students while I worked out the kinks in using the student online system. Well, I've worked out the kinks and I won't be teaching again until Fall semester at the end of August, so I'm taking this time to head in a new direction for this blog.

Specifically, I want to explore the sociological imagination here.

The events over the past 2 years in the United States have led me to believe that our biggest challenge in this country is understanding the extent to which we are part of a world greater than ourselves. Americans have long been short-sighted in their vision of the future and short-memory-ed in their recall of their history. We often do not understand any other part of the planet except our own little bit of land. This lack of imagination, that is understand and empathy, is costing us greatly.

I've taught the "sociological imagination" in every sociology class I've ever taught (now around 10 semesters, I'm not going to take the time to count). Almost every sociology instructor/professor does this. It is a "course objective" for practically every sociology class taught at the high school and undergrad level. In all this time, I'm now only reading the entire book that inspired this discipline wide objective: The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills.

Sociology has done a great disservice to C. Wright Mills in my opinion. We have co-opted his concept without fully understanding the challenge he made. This challenge was needed in 1959 and it is needed even more today.

It is my privilege and my mission to explore this concept more fully, to understand and share Mills' challenges to sociology and to American society, and most importantly, my fervent hope to inspire the development of sociological imagination in others.

It truly is "our most needed quality of mind."

Military Industrial Complex Speech

As promised, click on title for whole text.

This is the part we discussed in class:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.