A Who Dunnit

--the elephant in the room, Bansky

 But I ain't losing sleep and I ain't counting sheep,
It's so funny how we don't talk anymore 
--We Don't Talk Anymore, Cliff Richard

  Who are you?
(Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Come on tell me, who are you? 
--Who Are You? The Who 

I'm looking through you
Where did you go?
I thought I knew you
What did I know? 
--I'm Looking Through You, The Beatles

 _____________________

This small story is rife with implication.

The Jacksonville Times-Union ran the following Tuesday in their "Law and Disorder" column:

Man shot in arm during walk

A man in Jacksonville was shot once in the arm Sunday night in the area of West 38th and Main streets.

The victim was walking home from his cousin’s house when a man in the street asked, “Who you is?” said detective M.E. Pichardo.

The victim replied, “Who you is?” back and the shooter pointed a handgun at his face before hitting him multiple times in the head with the gun, Pichardo said.

The victim then said, “You got it, you got it, you got it” and kept walking on his way until the shooter shot the victim once in the left arm, Pichardo said.

"Who you is?" Is there any more poignant cry of confusion, both grammatical and situational?" Was either party able to ascertain who the other was? Wouldn't it be wise to beat feet and hit the bricks at a rapid rate after such an inquiry?

As on the national level, if you are not the right tribe, name, club, crew, peeps, gang, we might have to take you out. If you are not a fast-talker, your inability to respond might just be the end of you.

The exchange lacks the clarity of the more military, "Halt, who goes there?", followed by a password, followed by an "advance and be recognized." It also indicts the efficacy of Florida's No Child Left Behind policy, and whatever succeeds it. Though the subject of the repetition in the last graph of the declarative, "You got it" is unknown, its insistence without clarification is a standard of poor Southern speech.

When adjectives fail, Southern dialect allows simple repetition to serve as an intensifier or descriptor, as in, "It's a good, good day", meaning something like, "a very fine day". Triple repetition is not unheard of to express a superlative feeling.

So, from this short bit we can surmise what happens when ignorance meets aggression, or aggression arises out of ignorance: an inexorable walk towards violence. You could blame the gun for what happened, but that explosive outcome is only the thing which got the interchange press.

In fact, these brutal meetings of confusion play out daily in every block of every city; yours, too. If we do not get a slug in the arm we sustain a figurative bloodying of our heart or soul. We all suffer from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers' terror expressed by these two men. "Who ARE you?" I thought I knew you, but I find that I do not.

"Who you is?" How does one answer? How does one even ask?

...on the brighter side, "Who you is?" is always better than "Who you was."

A Black Border for America

--Thomas Nast on fake economy

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
--For What it's Worth,
Buffalo Springfield

Round and round it goes,
where it stops, nobody knows
--Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour

And somewhere men are laughing,
and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville -
mighty Casey has struck out
--Casey at the Bat, Ernest Thayer
______________________

This was written with the last pen sold by our now-defunct Borders Bookstore. The pen was made in China; it ran out of ink by day two.

Back in the halcyon days of 20th century United States, mystery writer John D. McDonald authored the Travis McGee series, an easygoing character who lived on a boat. In order to wrangle favorable book deals from his publisher, McDonald would say that he had the final installment in the bag: A Black Border for McGee; in other words, he would kill off the cash cow if they were niggardly in their negotiations.

Mr. McDonald, former OSS member (R.I.P), could not have known there would soon be a Black Border for America. The closure of the Borders bookstore chain signifies many things. Most obviously, the loss of 19,000 more jobs on September 1. They will soon be joined by the losses incurred from the closure of 1,300 post offices. Congressman Darrell Issa projects 200,000 fired laid-off over the next few years.

While our government diddles over budget caps and defaults the everyday lives of our middle and lower classes are slowly fading to black, because the things not counted in the cost of living index -- things like gas and food -- are the mainstays of their lives. How is it we can have a rosy uptick in consumer purchasing? Because the wealthiest 5-20% are back to purchasing top drawer items at full price, because they know there will always be more for them (Sales of Luxury Goods are Recovering Strongly.)

Meanwhile, dollar stores are failing to make their quotas or have an extremely thin profit margin because their denizens are cutting back to the bare essentials, cutting out "discretionary" purchases like hand lotions. A Dollar Store manager said apologetically in a NYT article, "it may sound ridiculous", but the stores will often not raise popular items by 10 cents as that would have a significant impact upon their client base.

Back to the pen: Ranger has a handsome wooden Hallmark pen for which he cannot obtain refills; we are no longer manufacturing them. The only hope for using the refillable pen is to find unused ones on eBay when stationary stores close out, or to order an adapter provided by Hallmark Canada to allow the use of other refill cartridges. Ranger finds himself like the Road Warrior, searching the parched landscape for niceties that one were.

It seems Americans would rather buy 50-pks at Costco of cheapo Chinese pens rather than taking the time to actually keep track of and dissemble a pen for refilling. More trash, less value, the appearance of value, less manufacturing in the USA.

Meanwhile, Fla-duh Governor Rick "Pink Slip" Scott calls for ever more students to become engineers, scientists and mathematicians, without specifying where these people will work. But some people will surely benefit: The community college system, which will run under-prepared applicants through the remediation mill for several terms, and all the support associated with that. Surely every government agency involved with placing, training and benefits for people mismatched to field. Failure and sickness is becoming big business in the U.S. Rick Scott would know this from his holdings in the health care field.

And maybe, when these poor schlumps find no jobs, they can rock their basic math skills by being able to subtract the receipt total from funds given at the burgeoning Dollar Stores without dumbly staring at the register and being flummoxed by the offer of an extra penny to avoid getting four back. Surely the tabs will never be too high to compute, and dollar type stores are a growth area. It's something.

The economic climate of America is not going to improve for the masses anytime soon.

Where Have all the Solons Gone?

Pink Slip Rick + Gerard Robinson

The impact of war is self-evident,
since economically it is exactly the same as
if the nation were to drop a part
of its capital into the ocean
--Karl Marx

Those who can, do,
Those who can't, teach,
Those who can't teach, coach,
Those who can't coach, administer
____________________

One problem with government is that mediocrity is rewarded and lesser-qualified individuals rise to the top by virtue of lock-step conformity and partisanship.

When the state of U.S. public education is languishing and Florida languishes at the penultimate ranking of states in terms of quality of education, our vaunted governor Pink Slip Rick appoints Gerard Robinson as Florida's new Education Commissioner.

Mr. Robinson's qualifications to this weighty position are bugger all: He holds a MEd from Harvard and taught 5th grade for one year. Nil, zippo, aught qualifies Robinson to be commissioner of Florida's education, aside from the fact that, as Vice President Biden once said of President Obama, he is a tall, black man "who is articulate, bright and clean." Oh, and he's a "change agent" (New Education Leader is Reform-minded).

Education is a field that undergoes reform before we even know the facts, but as a simple Army dictum goes, we shouldn't mistake movement for progress. What constitutes reform? We would trust an educator with a Bachelor's + 30 years experience before trusting a callow 1st-year middle school teacher appointed by a venal carpetbagger.

Private school vouchers plus charter schools are getting backing from Scott, a businessman favored by those against anything which smacks of socialism. Of course, those same people are happy to have police, fireman and public transportation when they need it. Public education is being gutted, and nothing better is being fronted for the average student.

Political reliability is not an educational qualification. We should stop playing Lotto with our kid's education.

Beelzebub's Trough

Now I bet you niggers do think y'all white.
College don't mean shit.
Y'all niggers, and you gonna be niggers forever
--School Daze (1988)

I'm a little bit country
And I'm a little bit rock 'n roll
I'm a little bit of Memphis and Nashville
With a Little bit of Motown in my soul
I don't know if it's good or bad
But I Know I Love It So
--A Little Bit Country, Marie Osmond

Academy: A modern school where football is taught
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

A mind is a terrible thing to waste
--United Negro College Fund motto

A mind is a terrible thing
--Eddie Murphy, SNL
__________________

Let's talk about socialism in America today. We will begin with the public school system.

Aviator47 @ Milpub today posed the question:

"Why does public education exist? Does it exist to help/please/entertain the student or the parent, or to meet a societal need? I doubt that the way we implement it in the US is really about the needs of our society. If it were, then a diploma would be a clear credential of an identified level skills, knowledge ability in specific subjects."

The only thing most people agree on is, education is a mess. But why do we even have public schools? The question is anathema. Why don't we allow some students to follow a vocational or IT track (the equivalent of the old "secretarial")? Anathema, again. We hew to the fallacy that education is about leveling the playing field, making it so that you, too, might be president one day.

But that's folderal, for if you are to be president, you better be a good money-maker (if not born into it), a good entrepreneur, and have all the skills that accrue to that undertaking. We don't teach that in school -- that's privileged information, and those that have it are averse to its wide dissemination, or we would have a different sort of educational system.

And how is this socialist mosaic funded? Partially through Ranger's property taxes on an investment property in a county in which his children could not attend school anyway, even if he had them. His assessment (above) shows he pays three school-related taxes amounting to over $1,000, which gets funneling through the tax collector to be distributed by the school board.

Ranger pays taxes for somebody else's kid to have a seat in the classroom, and is this not a definition of socialism? The involuntary redistribution of Ranger's wealth, without his input. Is this just and equable to pay for goods and services that one does not use? Why not tax only families utilizing the school system? Why not a "special purposes" fee?

The U.S. has made a societal choice to socialize at the local level, while the conservatives continue to rail at this de facto situation. Socialism is the devil, so your kids are feeding at beelzebub's trough.

These education taxes are but one example of the contradictions and fictions that guide our clueless and hypocritical political and personal lives. Do you take a commuter train to work? You, too, are benefiting by socialism at work. Many of the loudest voices still understand the need for public transport, for how will their household help make it out to the suburbs to service their every need?

Schools are also funded through the Lotto -- gambling, an activity skewed to taking it out of the poor. Just like socialism, gambling is an evil to the likes of the conservative crowd, but they somehow turn their heads like Linda Blair in The Exorcist in order to allow its funds to trickle into the slumgullion that is socialized education in America. We can't be honest, but we have mastered averting our eyes.

Here is the humdinger: We will oppose socialism with all of our might -- with wars and violence -- all while meekly paying our taxes.

Can you say, "hypocrisy"?

--Jim and Lisa