The Broad View

Personal solutions to the financial crisis: MDP vs. DCSP

A friend writes:

Meanwhile, Carolyn and I have been discussing financial matters. She and her husband have embraced the mattress diversification plan (keeping their money under several mattresses, not just one), whereas I am a proponent of the domestic currency stabilization plan (checking under the sofa cushions for spare change).

"Mounty Bat Palin"

No, that's not akin to "Moonbat", nor is it a Palin smear. That's my name if Sarah Palin had been my mother -- Mounty Bat Palin.

With the Palins bestowing such wholesome (and inventive!) American monikers on their children as Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator (h/t MissLaura).

Just imagine what your name could be if you'd been lucky enough to be born a Palin!

My own First Dude would be named Crank Widow Palin and our li'l Moosekateer would be Soup Landmine Palin.

Yikes! There's a gunman on the loose in our neighborhood!

Update on Wednesday morning: From KEYT.com, "The standoff between Santa Barbara Sheriff's Deputies and an alleged gunman ended at around 1:20 a.m. last night. It lasted for more than 10 hours."

Update at 7:45 p.m. PDT: The police helicopter left for a while (to refuel, we learned from the television reportage), came back, and is now gone again -- it's sunset. KEYT reported that the suspect was holed up in the house he was said to live in -- on Authay Drive. SWAT teams arrived, roads are blocked off, there's a K-9 unit on the scene.

On the map, the red line follows Authay Drive. My house is marked with the red dot.

First the fire, now this. Such excitement for our tranquil corner of the universe.

---

No kidding.

There's been a helicopter flying circles overhead for an hour or so. When Pat went out for her usual afternoon walk she saw a couple of cops with shotguns on a local footbridge. We got a "reverse 911" call (glad to know the system works!) about 15 minutes ago, describing the suspect and telling everyone to stay indoors with doors locked.

Wow!

From KEYT.com

BREAKING NEWS: Suspect On The Loose In Goleta Neighborhood

An intensive manhunt is underway near Hollister Ave and Auhay Dr. between Santa Barbara and Goleta. A vehicle that was involved in a high-speed pursuit crashed near Auhay Dr. while being chased by law enforcement. According to CHP website, one of the vehicles involved in the collision was an unmarked Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department unit. After the crash, the wanted subject fled on foot towards the area of Auhay Dr. Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department has set up a perimeter in the area and have called in air support to aid in the search. Scanner reports say the suspect is a tall, white male wearing all black and is known to be armed. KEY News has crews on the scene and will bring you more information as it becomes available.

Whitewash and hogwash

As long as I'm talking about corporations, Republicans and branding, I'd like to segue to the related issue of image manipulation and control.

Corporations have learned to use image advertising to effectively change the public's perception of the corporation's business and reputation. (Since most corporate types are Republicans, the Party has naturally adopted the same techniques.)

There are two commercials currently being broadcast widely that I find galling. Every time I see one, I literally yell at the tv and whoever's in the room.

The first, and most infuriating, is the ad for the PPA -- the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. It opens with a string of ordinary slobs expressing their heartfelt thanks to the PPA for enabling them to get their prescriptions, i.e., to remain alive. Then we get spokesman Montel Williams cheerily informing us that through the goodness of America's pharmaceutical industry, poor people around the country who had difficulty affording their prescriptions are now getting free meds. Then we see the PPA Bus trundling over the countryside presumably dropping anti-depressants and statins off the back to the grateful groundlings.

This is image manipulation on a world class scale. The rapacious pharmaceutical companies know that news stories about poor people suffering and dying because they can't afford their meds -- anywhere from $155 to $398 for a month's supply of Advair or $31 to $82 for Lovastatin -- would be the end of their sweet deal. Not even their trained seal legislators would be able to withstand the public roar for draconian regulation. This must be avoided at all costs.

So even though the blood-sucking pharmaceuticals will get those extortionate prices from Americans who can somehow afford it, they manage to avoid the worst publicity by giving medicine away to the poor to shut them up. It's just good business for them, the same as buying friendly congressmen and senators or taking doctors on lavish junkets so they'll remember your pills and potions when they take out the Rx pad. And in the end, given the obscene profits the pharmaceuticals rake in, giving pills away and bribing people is small change.

Meanwhile, those of us with prescription insurance coverage rarely hear or see the actual list price for the drugs we buy. Sure, we know the co-pays have gone up precipitously and may be killing us at $35 a pop for brand names, but we can hardly fathom that some drugs cost a king's ransom. And many don't make the connection between outrageous drug costs and premiums rising at double-digit rates.

But hey -- we've got Montel Williams to soothe us with tales of pharmaceutical philanthropy.

The second ad is one of those commercials with lush photography, romantic images, intimate music and a sentimental, feel-good narrative -- all saying exactly nothing about the product. Behold "The Human Element":

Quite a stretch from the Dow Chemical of my youth, the loathed manufacturer of napalm. The despoiler of our nation's air and waterways. The negligent corporate parent of Union Carbide, the company responsible for the disaster of Bhopal, still toxic after more than twenty years.

It's so sad. "The Human Element" is a lovely series of images and sentiments. It's obscene that it's in the service of a transparent whitewash.

It's not that we don't understand that chemical manufacturing is an indispensible part of our lives. It's not that we don't appreciate the chemical products that make our lives better. But none of that excuses crimes against our planet and criminal neglect. To Dow Chemical though, it's easier to manipulate public opinion through a pretty ad than to clean up their act.

And there are others -- the ads for the extractive industries that tell us how much they care about the environment as if they did more than the bare minimum to comply with regulation. My favorite is BP with the sunny flower logo. We're supposed to applaud because they're researching alternative energy technologies now. Yay! It would be rude to remind them that they're also part of the global oil racket that is determined to keep pumping and selling at ever-higher prices until there's not a drop left. Bah.

Unnatural Male Enhancement

While researching links for the previous post, I stumbled across this AP item which must be immediately broadcast far and wide:

Toad aphrodisiac kills man, NY issues warning

NEW YORK - Health officials are warning New Yorkers to stay away from an illegal aphrodisiac made from toad venom after the product apparently killed a man.

The city's poison control center issued the warning Friday after receiving a hospital report that a 35-year-old man who ingested the hard, brown substance died earlier this month.

The product is sold under names including Piedra, Love Stone, Jamaican Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock at sex shops and neighborhood stores. It is banned by the Food and Drug Administration. [...]

Health officials said the hardened resin, made with venom from toads of the Bufo genus, contains chemicals that can disrupt heart rhythms.

The aphrodisiac was supposed to have been applied to the skin, not eaten, but authorities said even that use can be harmful.

Will someone please explain why men are so obsessed with their penises that they will do anything, ingest anything to get a woody. Gullible men will kill any animal, preferably exotic and endangered, to obtain bizarre body parts that might somehow magically impart the dead animal's puissance to their flaccid members. It's just pathetic. No wonder every day brings an avalanche of spam touting penis enlargers and bogus aphrodisiacs. No surprise that we're inundated with ads and commercials pushing Big Pharma's favorite cash cows, Cialis and Viagra. (What is it with those idiotic Cialis commercials ending with the happy couple outside somewhere in a pair of bathtubs? Is that some kind of symbolism I'm missing?) And who could forget to mention Smilin' Bob and his Enzyte habit? Natural male enhancement, indeed. Ha!

Of course, women who inject themselves with Botulinum toxin can hardly wag their fingers at a little toad venom.

Quote of the Day

"As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out — and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."

--Warren Buffet, in his annual letter to shareholders

I wanna blog again, but...

This coming Saturday, the 23rd, is the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Santa Barbara. As in years past I'm co-chair, and the PAC of which I'm president sponsors the event.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty busy with last-minute details. We sold out on January 29, leaving a bunch of disappointed pleaders on the waiting list, and one of the struggles is to temper that disappointment and try to shoe-horn in as many as possible. So instead of 400 people coming (we set that as the cutoff point; last year we had 470 to hear Wes Clark, and it was too many people for the room to accommodate in any comfort) we've slowly crept back up to about 450.

As my grandma of blessed memory might have said, "Oy vey."

Curiously, though, after a long dry season during which I chose not to be part of the blogosphere shouting match on the politics of the day, I do find myself with things I want to say — though some of them, quite frankly, would be "not for work or children."

It is my intention to be more active here once the concerns of the dinner are behind me. And I hope the fine mind of Chiaroscuro will be more in evidence too, as Chiaro's work energizes me no end.

Till soon...

Our town's candy cane Christmas

My daughter pulled her Mini-Cooper into a parking space the other day and noticed something she just had to show her friends, who may not live in a city — as we are blessed to do — whose government has a well-developed sense of whimsy.

She e-mailed the photo to me saying, "How could one not LOVE Santa Barbara??!!"

Testing readers' sharp eyes?

A couple of weeks ago (I've been saving this up) the NYT reviewed the new Frank Langella movie, "Starting Out in the Evening." As always, at the end of the article, there was a paragraph about the rating. I chuckled when I read it, wondering whether some waggish editor stuck in the last phrase just to see if we were paying attention:

"Starting Out in the Evening" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some profanity, sexual situations and references to the work of D. H. Lawrence.

Note to Santa Barbara County Voters

The Presidential election is NOT next week.
You can't vote for anyone in any party in a Primary election.
Just because you WANT to vote against a candidate in the City Council's race, if you don't live in the City of Santa Barbara, you CAN'T!
When your ballot says to return to the City of Santa Barbara...DON'T return it to the County Offices.
You can't register to vote if you fill in your Voter Registration Card with the address..."I can't remember."

Ahhh...got those gripes off my chest.