Lt. (j.g.) Joseph H. Patterson, USN

While attending a performance at the Classen School of Advanced Studies (which included one of my son's friends), I noticed that there was a plaque on the wall, across from the main entrance, partially covered with posters advertising the school's yearbook and another proclaiming how much they love their Lady Comets.

Gently lifting back the tape stuck to this plaque, I found it was a memorial to Lt. Joseph Hester Patterson, US Naval Academy Class of 1936, and Classen High School Class of 1930, who was lost in the wreck of the USS Squalus in May 1939.

Ensign (later Lt. (j.g)) Joseph H. Patterson, USN

Now, anyone who knows much of anything about submarines will recognize the name USS Squalus.  At the time it was the newest submarine in the fleet, with all the latest improvements and newest technology of the day.  However, it sank off the coast of Portsmouth, NH, on a routine dive.  26 of the 59 aboard her were lost; the remaining 33 were saved in one of the more amazing feats of undersea rescue ever attempted.

USS Squalus, in happier times

(As for me, I've always been intrigued by submarines.  I can't say why that is, but, back in 1987, had the Navy had college benefits to match the Army, there's a very good chance I would have become a submariner rather than a tank crewman.  I've read quite a bit of the history of US submarines in WWII, and toured the USS Batfish (located here in Oklahoma, near Muskogee) and the USS Drum (in Mobile Bay, AL) and it was fascinating to see the same areas I'd read so much of on other submarines of the same classes.)

Submarines of that era were diesel-electric, meaning that they were powered by diesel engines while on the surface, and by electric motors, powered by batteries, while submerged.  The boats [submarines are always referred to as 'boats' rather than 'ships'--don't ask me why] were optimized to run on the surface, which accounts for the slow submerged speeds typical of that time.  Battery life was limited, and submarines would have to periodically surface to recharge the batteries and refill the compressed air tanks that made it possible for them to resurface.

I've done some searching on the internet, and found quite a bit of information on the Squalus and her sinking.  For unknown reasons, after the submarine had begun her 18th dive, when all aboard was in normal condition, all safety procedures followed and cross-checked, and was already partially submerged with no indication of any problems, one of the main induction valves, which supplied air to the big diesels, opened, and water poured into the aft sections of the boat, causing immediate flooding.  A partial watertight condtion had already been set (which I imagine was part of their standard procedures) which limited the flooding to the aft areas, including both engine rooms, the crew berthing areas, the aft torpedo room, and the battery spaces.

The surviving crewmembers were able to deploy an emergency buoy, and were also able to fire off marker rockets, which led to the Squalus' sister ship, the USS Sculpin, to locate the Squalus about 4 hours later.  The Navy immediately launched rescue efforts, which pioneered a number of new diving methods (including the first operational use of heliox, the mixture of helium and oxygen still used for extremely deep dives).  After 33 hours on the bottom, the last man off the Squalus, the skipper Lt. Oliver Naquin, reached the surface.  (The rescue efforts were headed by then-Lt. Cdr. Charles 'Swede' Momsen, inventor of the Momsen Lung, a rescue device to allow submariners to escape from stricken submarines below the surface, and whose exploits throughout his career are part of US Navy legend.  BTW, his first duty station was aboard USS Oklahoma.)

[Here's a link to an excellent US Navy site about the Squalus and the rescue efforts.  And here's one with the official statement of Lt. W.T. Doyle, a survivor of the sinking of the Squalus, which details all the procedures used in the dive.]

Lt. (j.g.) Joseph H. Patterson is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 9, Site 5969

The Squalus itself was recovered from the bottom (the bodies of the crewmen who lost their lives were not recovered until then) as a full investigation required the examination of the submarine.  As there were similar submarines already in service, and more being built, if there might be a flaw in the design it was critical to find it and correct it.  None was ever found, but as the suggestion was made that a crewman may have inadvertently opened the induction valve, confusing its control with the control for a different valve nearby.  Subsequent redesign of the controls made it practically impossible to confuse the two, even in complete darkness, by changing the shape of the controls.  (Incidentally, this same approach is used in aircraft cockpits to this day, to eliminate any possible confusion between, say, a landing gear handle with a flap control lever.)

As for the Squalus, it was repaired and recommissioned as the USS Sailfish.  USS Sailfish served in the US Pacific Fleet throughout WWII, sinking or damaging 20 Japanese vessels totalling nearly 84,000 tons.  She and her crew also earned 9 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation during the war. She was decommissioned in November 1945, and sold for scrap.  However, her sail and conning tower (that section you typically see people standing on, with the periscopes sticking up, when a submarine is on the surface) was removed and put on display at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, as a memorial to the 26 men who lost their lives aboard the Squalus, and to all their fellow submariners who have died in the line of duty.

The USS Squalus Memorial at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

The memorial in Portsmouth, another at the gravesite of another crewman aboard Squalus, Torpedoman's Mate 1st Class Robert Gibbs, a model of the Squalus created by a long-time dock worker at the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which now resides in the Tuck Memorial Museum, and the plaque at Classen SAS are the only memorials (other than some fine websites) that I have found.

Now, I cannot know why the Classen High Class of 1950 chose to have a plaque made and installed for a classmate who graduated from their school two years before they were born.  The plaque states that he was a hero in death as much as he was a friend in life.  And I cannot dispute the fact that, for whatever reason, the Class of 1950 felt strongly enough to honor Lt. Patterson in such a manner.  That reason must have been sufficient in their eyes to pass on the legacy of Joseph Patterson to future students in perpetuity; that his life, and the manner of his death, should be something worthy to inspire and motivate future graduates of that fine institution.

But here today, almost 73 years after his death, his plaque is covered by mundane posters, obscuring its message.  To be honest, the plaque is in need of cleaning; some sort of pink residue besmirches the lower parts of the plaque, and there's other accumulated dust and grime in the depths of the lettering.

In a larger sense, is this the ultimate fate of all memorials?  I doubt one student in a thousand there at Classen SAS can tell you the story of Lt. Patterson as well as I have above; at best they might remember him as 'that guy whose name is on that thing at the front of the school'.  But how many years will it take before the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is held in so little regard?  We Oklahomans have, to me, an enraging tendency to disregard our history, tearing down memorials to make way for more 'useful'--meaning commercial--purposes.  Or, as in this case, we simply have so little respect for them that we cover them up and pretend they're not even there.

And so, given the way things are, how long before the Bombing Memorial falls into disrepair and we fill it in for a more 'appropriate' commercial purpose?  Perhaps some new business tower, or more parking?  How long before our descendants purposefully forget about us, and what happened to us, and the reasons why we felt it important to memorialize the things we have created, built, and installed to remind us--and them--of who we are, and who we were?

On a practical standpoint, perhaps not every one and everything deserves to be memorialized; if all memorials were maintained indefinitely, eventually the landscape would be littered with memorials everywhere, some stacked on top of others.  Perhaps we need to be very careful about who and what we memorialize.  But we also need to respect the judgment of those who have gone before in who and what they chose to memorialize, and to keep those memorials well-maintained and presentable.  To do otherwise demeans us as a people.

Warriors of the Cold War

Ran across a story this morning, the day after Christmas, from Danbury, Connecticut. It's about a mysterious building, fairly large (270,000 sq ft) with no windows except in its cafeteria, where a large portion of the town's population worked. Everything that happened within was classified until very recently.

This building was where the KH-9 spy satellite's cameras, optics, and film handling systems were built. For many years during the Cold War, the KH-9 was one of America's premier spy satellites. Unlike later satellites, the KH-9s used film, and would load that film into special canisters that would then re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, and would be caught, dangling from a parachute, by a specially-equipped C-130 as it floated down in mid-air.

So finally all the former workers there could finally tell their families what it was they did, the reason for all the long hours over the years, the missed ball games or birthday parties. Their work was vital to the defense of the United States and our allies.

While it may take a completely different type of courage and dedication to serve a tour (or multiple tours) in Vietnam, Iraq, of Afghanistan, still these folks displayed their own type of courage and dedication. Yeah, they never got shot at. Yeah, they got to go home to their wives and kids at the end of the day, eat real food, take showers, sleep in a real bed. But to have the dedication and tenacity necessary to preserve national security takes more than what a lot of people are capable of. And make no mistake; the Soviets were our enemy. Where do you think all the ammo, rockets, missiles, and other ordinance fired at Americans in Vietnam came from? Time may dull the perception, but it was nevertheless the truth at the time. And regardless of what others may say, these men and women who worked here and kept the secrets here lived lives of true significance and service to our nation and free people everywhere.

But it's also interesting to note in the comments to the article the number of people insisting how the Cold War was all a big waste of money, that it was all useless, just a big propaganda ploy.

I suppose if one needed an example of how badly history education in our public schools has sank, here then is a perfect example.

I too was a cold warrior; I served in the Army in one of the 'border cavalry' units in Germany back in the olden days, patrolling the East German border. And I was there for the fall of the Berlin Wall; the most momentous historical event I have ever been a part of (admittedly a nearly infinitesimal part, but a part nonetheless). I have seen the other side; I have heard the stories firsthand of what things were like over there. And me and my fellow soldiers were prepared to use deadly force, under our rules of engagement, to protect West German citizens if the need ever arose (it didn't). But we still manned the observation posts, walked the border trails, called in our sitreps, and gave up time with our families in order to serve the greater good.

And what do you think would have happened if the United States had chosen not to 'fight' the Cold War? What if we just went back to our pre-WWII isolationism and abandoned Europe and East Asia to whatever fate would befall them, with an expansionist Soviet Union--led by Stalin no less!!--looking to gobble up still more land and subjects? England would still have ol' Winston Churchill there to glower at them and keep his people motivated; probably Great Britain would have withstood the Soviets. But all the rest of Europe probably would have fallen under Soviet domination. What if the United States had not led the United Nations in opposition to the invasion of South Korea? Japan, for its part, had been so devastated by American conventional and fire bombing--far outside the areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that it could put up no real resistance to the Soviet T-34 tanks that would have been landed on Japanese beaches and rolling down from the north.

No one would have had the ability to deal with a minor distraction like the creation of a Jewish state . . . far too many major issues to allow something like that, in 1947. And even if it had been founded, how long would Israel have lasted without massive military assistance from Europe and America? Not much past 1956, that's for sure. And who thinks that the Arabs would have been merciful to the Israelis after they'd defeated them?

There would have been no France to even attempt to stop the Viet Minh; no Battle of Dien Bien Phu; the North Vietnamese would simply have been able to proceed with the invasion and take-over of Laos unimpeded. And so there would be no American involvement in Vietnam.

The nationalist Chinese would have had no hope. Even if they did make it to Taiwan, who would have been there to help defend them?

Soviet/communist expansion would have been unchecked in Africa and in Latin America as well.

And no one would have ever gone into space, much less to the moon.

True, we would have had LOTS OF MONEY!! Untold trillions that had been spent on defense and the CIA over those decades! And really, doesn't that really represent what America is all about? We're all about the MONEY! (Witness the bailouts of corporations 'too big to fail' while the ranks of the American homeless grows by leaps and bounds, and tens of millions of Americans fall into poverty--but it's all THEIR fault!! They just need to work harder--just listen to Herman Cain! But I digress.)

And we wouldn't have lost all those American lives in Korea and in Vietnam, and elsewhere throughout the rest of the Cold War. And there's nothing over there that's worth a single American life . . .

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This was once one of our highest ideals, our highest beliefs, that we are all created equal. Therefore, how can we, if we truly believe this to be true, value an American life more than, say, a Somali life? Or a French life, or a Japanese life? If we are all equal, then we all have equal value.

And then other truths kick in. "An injustice to one is an injustice to all", according to Martin Luther King. "Silence before an injustice is yet another injustice", according to Ghandi. If we are to be true to the ideals handed down to us from our ancestors, from the founders of this great nation, then these impose certain responsibilities upon us, certain duties that we must fulfill. And among those, in the words of yet another great American, is the duty to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to ensure the survival and success of liberty."

Therefore we HAD to hold the line against the Soviets. We HAD to aid our allies, including our erstwhile enemies, West Germany and Japan. We HAD to stop the North Koreans and the Chinese in Korea. We HAD to try to hold back the North Vietnamese, even though we were ultimately unsuccessful (though we won every battle of the war, our politicians still lost the war, due in large part because our enemies understood something we did not, and attacked not just our forces in the field but the American political 'center of mass' here at home, and, to a sufficiently-large degree, twisted American public opinion against the war--but again I digress).

We HAD to have the Reagan-era military buildup, because there was a vulnerability with the Soviets. We engaged in the biggest peacetime military buildup, daring the Soviets to keep pace. But at home the Soviet people were weary of sacrificing everything for security; they wanted a little something for themselves, some sort of improvement in their lives. The Soviets tried to supply both, but could not, Eventually the 'whole rotten edifice' came crumbling down, not with a bang but with a whimper, in a nearly bloodless ending that no one could have conceived even 2 years before.

Which in turn meant an end to nearly 50 years of 'Mutually Assured Destruction', of the world merrily going about its business only 30 minutes away from the potential end of life on earth. That's how we lived, young 'uns. Didn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's how geopolitical conflicts between nations and ideologies intruded into all human life, even in a small town in east central Oklahoma on the shores of our biggest lake.

But that's all gone now. If the 'Greatest Generation', the generation who grew up in the Great Depression, and went on to win The War (WWII), and build America in to the world's biggest and truest superpower, then this is what my generation was able to do--remove the spectre of worldwide nuclear annihilation from all our lives, and also to bring freedom, not always clean and tidy, but frequently messy and sometimes painful, to untold millions around the world. And we did it in the same way as our forefathers did since The War--holding the line, guarding the Frontiers of Freedom, in the Cold War. And in our ranks I will most emphatically include those workers who built spy satellites in Danbury, Connecticut.

Lee Roy Selmon

It is only appropriate that my blog, related to Eufaula, OK in a very loose way, should note the passing of Eufaula's most famous son, Lee Roy Selmon.

Universally recognized as an extraordinary human being as well as a truly legendary football player, Lee Roy Selmon passed away yesterday, Sept. 4, 2011, as a result of a massive stroke he experienced on the preceding Friday.

Few football players have been as honored in life as Lee Roy Selmon, and few are as held in high regard in the memories of his teammates, coaches, opponents, and fans as he. To have helped the Sooners win back-to-back national championships, started off as the first-round draft pick of the then-new 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which then promptly went 0-14 that season, but then worked with his teammates to turn things around so that just three years later they played in the NFC championship game, to have his career cut short by a back injury, but then to continue to live with the same humility and yet such drive as he showed during his playing career shows the true nature of who Lee Roy Selmon was. The Lombardi Trophy. the Outland Trophy. National Football Foundation Scholar/Athlete. Two time All-American. Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. NFL Defensive Player of the Year. 6-time Pro Bowler. Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

What people have had to say about him has been amazing. "It has been a life's pleasure to know Lee Roy Selmon for 33 years," said Tom Edrington, of the Tampa Tribune. Barry Switzer called Lee Roy "the best player I ever coached."

Gary Shelton, in the St. Petersburg Times, perhaps said it best:

"The measure of a man is not in the games he plays. The measure of a man is not in the money he makes. It is not whether he has an expressway named after him, or a restaurant, or if his name is in the Bucs' Ring of Honor. It is not a bust in the Hall of Fame, or a statue that may be built on his college campus, or in the memories of a thousand black and white photographs from his playing days.

"In the case of Selmon, the measure of him and his meaning should be measured by the shadow he has cast. By the lives touched. By the grace shown . . .

"In sports, in life, there are a lot of a good, decent people. There are caring athletes, and charitable athletes, and socially aware athletes. But there has never been an athlete whose basic decency has come easier to him.

"Selmon [w]as never been a man who had to work at being a good guy. There are a great many athletes who work at being a good guy, who want the world to know they are being a good guy, who border on playing a role of a good guy. Not Lee Roy. Lee Roy [was] just being Lee Roy."

And so it is dismaying to find that the city of Eufaula, which for many years had a billboard on US 69, on the north end of town, near the hill where the hospital is located, billing Eufaula as "The Home of The Selmon Brothers", no longer lays claim to Lee Roy and his brothers, at least in a public forum. In a state that has such a huge emphasis on athletics and in football in particular, and in such a small town (only 3,500 or so) that has produced 4 spectacular players (Lee Roy Selmon, his brothers Lucious and Dewey, and J.C. Watts), to not recognize them is unconscionable. I would gladly contribute to an impressive bronze statue of the four of them, in their Eufaula Ironheads uniforms (yeah, they're the Ironheads; I never heard why that particular name was selected for the high school's teams), perhaps there off of Highway 9 on the south end of town, near the high school. And there's plenty of empty storefront spaces there in town for a small museum, too.

It was in Eufaula, or more precisely just outside of town, where Lee Roy and his brothers grew up, where they learned the values and developed the character, not to mention the strengths and skills, that would so set them apart from the others who took the field with them, and later on in life. (Lee Roy was also a member of the National Honor Society while in high school there.) Eufaula should claim at least a little bit of pride of having been where these men grew up, who went on to such greatness and universal acclaim. And it is altogether fitting and proper that the town should honor their memory: such things should not be the exclusive purview of the Sooners and the "Gaylord Family/Oklahoma Memorial Stadium", it should be, first and foremost, in their own hometown.

Universal Health Care . . .

The Chineese news agency Xinhua reports that on Aug. 30, a 24-year-old American man in Cincinnati died due to an untreated infection from a toothache, leaving behind a 6-year-old daughter.

The man, named Kyle Willis, started experiencing pain in a wisdom tooth two weeks before. A dentist recommended that he have it removed. However, because he had no job and no insurance, and no money to cover the procedure out-of-pocket, Mr. Willis declined.

"Subsequently, the tooth infection spread to his brain, causing a headache. So he went to an emergency room, where he got prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications, and he chose the latter because he could not afford the antibiotics," the article states.

Apparently the antibiotics cost $27, while the pain meds cost just $3. Eventually, Mr. Willis died of the infection.

Back in February 2007, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver also died of complications from an untreated toothache. A routine $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life, but his uninsured mother, who was covered by Medicaid, could not find a dentist that would accept Medicaid coverage. Instead, as the infection progressed, young Mr. Driver required much more advanced medical care, including 2 surgeries and 6 weeks in a hospital, again covered by Medicaid, that cost more than $250,000 (meaning taxpayers paid for this) but was in the end unsuccessful in saving the young man's life.

Here's a picture of Deamonte with his mom, after brain surgery that was done to try to stem the infection.

Now of course with the story of Kyle Willis being reported by a Chineese news agency, they have a political axe to grind, specifically for their domestic audience; the tired old gambit of making oneself look better by portraying someone else (the United States, in this instance) in the worst light possible. They're still upset about having funded America's addiction to credit, I think, which of course points straight back to themselves, but that's another issue, for another time.

Anyway, the whole concept of universal, 'single-payer' health care here in the United States is pretty much dead. Certainly here in rabidly Republican Oklahoma, 'Obamacare' is universally and vitriolically scorned; if one were to use the actual name of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 with the average Oklahoman, no one would know what in the hell you were talking about. Anyone who had either the audacity or the stupidity of even suggesting universal health care runs the risk of being tarred and feathered and being ridden out of town on a rail (well, almost). (The same folks tend to insist there's no such thing as global warming, despite the fact that we Oklahomans are just wrapping up the hottest summer ever, with 61 days over 100 degrees; the previous record was just 50 days over 100, but THAT'S yet another subject.)

But . . . the question still remains. Why should we continue with things the way they are? I know I cannot afford to use the health insurance I have (GEHA, through my employer; their arcane rules for what they'll pay, to whom, and when, and what for, have left me to use this only in dire emergencies), plus I have no dental or vision coverage, because I cannot afford it. The best I can do, and hope to be able to do someday, is to pay for an eye exam so I can take the lens prescription to work and get the government-provided safety glasses they offer because of the hazards of my job, so I can get new glasses (even if they come with the decidedly unattractive side safety shields) as my current glasses, which are a little over 10 years old, are nearly falling apart. BTW, I'm diabetic too, and have never had a diabetic eye exam, and yes, I've been experiencing some of the symptoms of diabetic retinopathy: blurred vision that gets better when my blood sugar is low. And on the topic of diabetes, GEHA also refuses to pay for diabetic testing supplies . . . the apparent reasoning being that if they don't pay for preventive care and the disease runs it's course, to blindness and/or amputation, then I'll lose my job and my health care coverage with them, so they're not going to have to pay for the aftermath--Medicare will--so why should they pay for preventive care? It may be barbaric and inhuman, but if your only concern is corporate profits, it is logical.

Anyway, enough about my problems and back to the subject. Our politicians and their corporate sponsors/masters have successfully convinced enough of the American population evils of 'socialized medicine' that the Big Insurance, Big Medicine, and Big Pharma feeding trough will never be empty. 'Socialized medicine', as they like to call it, represents an enormous threat to their profits and dividends, so they (the Big Triumvirate--Insurance, Medicine, and Pharma) have made sure it will never be enacted here in the United States.

(Here's an idea for political reform: make all politicians wear NASCAR-style uniforms, with patches all over them, so we'd all be able to see who their sponsors are . . . )

But here is a PARTIAL list (though as complete as I have been able to assemble) of countries that have universal health care in one form or another:

Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greenland, Greece, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iraq, Iran, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Monaco, Moldova, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Qatar, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vatican City, and Venezuela.

Egypt? Yes, even Hosni Mubarak provided health care for his people, along with the secret police. Iran? Yes, the ayatollahs want their people healty, probably so they won't be hacking and coughing while chanting, 'DEATH TO THE GREAT SATAN!". Libya? Yes, even ol' Gadafi provided health care, and presumably the rebel NTC government will keep it. Mexico? Yep, even with all their other problems they provide health care for their people; in fact, their constitution requires it. North Korea? Yes, Kim Jong-Il needs all the followers he can get. Pakistan? Yes, and that means that Osama bin Laden had health care provided for him by the Pakistani government; makes you wonder how many of his victims didn't have any coverage, and how many rescuers who tried to save them who are now suffering due to their efforts don't have access to adequate health care. Russia? Yes, like Mexico, it's in their constitution; they have to. Syria? Yes, rounding out our group of tyrannical dictators is Bashir Al-Asad, who at least cares enough to provide health care coverage for his people while his army machine-guns anyone who dares to speak out against him.

That's 101 nations, representing 4 billion, 867 million, 366 thousand, 896 people, according to the latest data available. (Data from Wikipedia and the CIA World Fact Book.) The total world population is expected to hit 7 billion in October 2011, so this list represents 69.53% of the world's population.

One big caveat here, of course: this does not reflect anything at all as to the QUALITY of health care--just that the governments of these countries care enough to provide at least a minimal level of health care to their populations. Of couse, while some of these are near the bottom of quality in terms of health care, this list also includes recognized world leaders in terms of health care.

[WARNING: High cynicism levels to follow] So . . . to follow the propaganda here in the good ol' US of A, 69.53% of the world is suffering under the horrors of 'socialized medicine', of universal health care. Makes you wonder when we're going to launch another war of liberation, this time to free the suffering peoples of the world from their government-provided health care systems. You know, the economy is cratering, and wars have always been good for the economy . . . What if we said that their medical systems are just a cover for WMD?

Screwing the Military . . .

This just in: DoD Panel Calls for Radical Retirement Overhaul!

Oh, this is a beaut! Essentially, the DoD, in an effort to reduce costs associated with retiree pay in years to come, recommends that Congress do away with the traditional military retirement program. Essentially, the way the current system works is that it's a defined benefit program; after 20 years military service, a person can retire and receive 40% of their base pay over the highest-paid three-year period. After 30 years service, it increases up to 60%. (Back in the olden days, it was even better, with the percentages at 50% and 75%, respectively, but that was way, way back.)

And the recommended plan is to eliminate that altogether, and replace it with a plan very similar to a 401(k) program, like most civilians have.

So . . . what's wrong with that?

How many civilian jobs, besides fire and police, include the possibility that workers may have to give their lives for their employer? How many civilian jobs require that you give up a number of rights we civilians enjoy? How many civilian jobs can send you halfway around the world, to extremely austere conditions, where there are people who are actively trying to kill you, AND keep your family in the dark about what's going on? Yeah, there's some cushy military jobs; always has been and always will be. But there's plenty of hard-core military jobs that have absolutely no civilian equivalent--infantry, armor, artillery; submarines; landing in a hot LZ or assaulting an enemy-held beach. And you can't ignore the flyboys, either; how many jobs can require you to strap yourself into a small cramped compartment, fly 18 hours

into a combat zone, bomb targets while evading SAMs and triple-A fire, and then fly 18 more hours back home?

Have we come so far away from the major sacrifices the military has made in the past that we have forgotten? More than 1.2 million Americans have died in battle since the Declaration was signed. How many other professions have had to sacrifice so much to ensure our freedoms? Yeah, we've lost nearly 5,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; but we lost over 58,000 in Vietnam, and more than 400,000 in the European and Pacific Theaters in WWII; more than 620,000 died in the Civil War to bring an end to slavery in the United States--which was more than 2% of the population of the entire nation at the time.

I remember hearing a story from a nurse, back in WWII, who landed on Omaha Beach on June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day. She was from Georgia, and saw the beach as the boat carried her and her fellow nurses to the shore. "Oh, that looks like good old Georgia clay," she exclaimed, seeing the reddish cast just beyond the waves. A colonel standing nearby told her, "Honey, that's not clay. That's blood soaked into the sand."

Is it really appropriate then to cut the admittedly generous retirement plans offered to those who have held the line, manned their posts, and kept the War on Terror away from country, away from our homes? They serve day in and day out, ready to be the ones who may have to pay any price, bear any burden, to protect our country and our way of life. Their line of work is far more demanding than ours, any of ours, and that retirement plan is one of the things that they deserve--even if it is expensive. They have earned it.

Doing Good

My son William and I spent yesterday evening at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, volunteering our time to help in their efforts. Last night it was the Food for Kids program, the one that supplies a backpack of food to kids in school, to help keep them fed over the weekend.

Each backpack contains about 3 3/4 lbs of food (about 1.7 kilos). There was a small jar of peanut butter, a sleeve of crackers, a small box of shelf-stable milk, another of chocolate milk, another box of fruit juice, a pack of almonds, a small bowl of applesauce, one of those self-contained bowls of cereal, a pack of dried fruit, and one of those fruit-cereal bars. The USDA considers 1 1/3 lbs (that's around 600 grams, doing the conversion in my head) of food to be a meal, so there's just under three meals there. I don't know about the nutritional content, but it seems to be pretty balanced. It might be sufficient for three meals for a younger child, maybe kindergarten through 3rd grade, but probably not enough for an older child.

The Regional Food Bank started the Food for Kids backpack program in 2003, following a story from an Oklahoma City elementary school principal about one of their students who had fainted in the school lunch line on a Monday. When questioned, the principal found that the child had not eaten all weekend, not since lunchtime at school the previous Friday. The child's family was in dire financial straits, and they had no food in the home.

The program provides chronically hungry school children (identified by school personnel) with these backpacks, on Fridays and before school holidays, so they'll have at least something to eat over the weekend. The children then return the backpacks on Monday, and the Regional Food Bank makes sure there's food to restock them for the next weekend.

Since 2003, when the program served just 5 Oklahoma City schools and 180 students, the program has grown to cover 305 elementary schools, in 42 counties across central and western Oklahoma, serving more than 10,000 students every week of the school year.

I'll quote from their website:

"Since there is a critical connection between childhood nutrition and cognitive and physical development, even nutritional deficiencies of a relatively short-term nature negatively impact a child's health, behavior, and the ability to concentrate and perform complex tasks. In additon, going without food can cause behavioral and psychological effects such as depression, aggression, anxiety, and poor social skills in children. Food is the most essential school supply. Hungry children cannot learn."

Of course, being centered around schools, that still leaves the kids at risk of going hungry during the summer. The Regional Food Bank also supports other programs (MANY others), some of which do address this need during the summer months.

Now, I don't know where you might be, you who are reading this, and I don't know what the situation is like in your community. I do know that this is a significant problem here in Oklahoma; we rank in the bottom 5 states in the US in terms of 'food security', people regularly getting enough to eat. Deindustrialization has hit hard here (I'll address that topic in another post) and many of the good-paying jobs are gone, and what's replaced them are lower-paying service-sector jobs. The net result is that our state is poorer than it used to be, and that reflects in people not having enough to eat.

The Regional Food Bank's data shows that their average recipient of assistance is in a family of three, with at least one adult working at least one job (and frequently more than one job). The average annual income for these families is $11,440, well below the poverty line. Less than 20% are unemployed, and nearly 1/3 are disabled or retired (this data is from across all of the Regional Food Bank's programs, not just Food for Kids). So it's not a case of those hoary old stories of 'welfare mamas' that some people assume; these are generally decent working people who simply cannot get a job to make enough, at least at this point in their lives, to feed themselves and their kids. Most telling is the fact that of those families with children served by the Regional Food Bank, 56% of adults stated that they (the parents) sometimes had to skip meals because there was not enough money for food, but only 11% stated that their children had to skip meals because of a lack of money for food. So there's a whole lot of moms and dads out there, doing without so their kids can eat. And all it takes is one major illness, one car wreck (and you know that if they're having trouble putting food on the table, they're not going to have full coverage on their car), and they're in even worse shape. And there are thousands, and thousands, of people like this out there; across the United States, there's easily a couple of million people in situations like this (if not more).

Now . . . let's put this into perspective in terms of the budget crisis and the debt ceiling debate. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, there's no real way out of this financial mess we've collectively created over the past 40 years without massive cuts in federal spending coupled with significant tax increases. The SNAP program, the one that used to be known as food stamps, that's a federal program (the benefits portion is fully funded by the federal government, and the feds pay for nearly half of a state's cost to administer the program). And it could very well see additional budget cuts. That means there's less money for food for each of the recipients. (And according to a Food Research and Action Center study, in 2007 there were 13 million more people who were eligible for SNAP but had not signed up--and that's before the recession hit, too--so there are untold millions more not on SNAP that are not 'food secure', to use the government term for being hungry.)

[And yes, I've seen the stories of people buying steak and lobster on SNAP cards--which speaks to a need to reform the SNAP program to prevent such abuse, NOT that it should be eliminated or that everyone who's on it is a louse that's milking the government for everything they can get. And in that particular case, the individual who bought the steak and lobster--with the intent to resell it--was caught and has been charged with welfare fraud, and faces up to 5 years in prison if convicted.]

There's a whole bunch of those federal 'safety net' programs that are potentially going to get cut, and cut back hard. The folks up on Capitol Hill keep bandying around figures like $4 trillion in cuts, $2 trillion in cuts, $9 trillion in cuts--where do you think those cuts are going to come from? Do you know that if you were to spend $1 million a day, each and every day, since the time Christ was born until now, that you still wouldn't have spent even $1 trillion? Even with inflation, a trillion dollars is still a whole lot of money.

And every tax increase reduces the amount that can be spent on other things, like food for example. Even if we tax the hell out of the rich, it still won't generate enough revenue; some of the tax increases are going to have to be borne by each and every American, including the working poor. So in years to come they'll have even less to spend on food, for themselves and for their kids.

And if we're to have any hope whatsoever for the future of our nation, we need to be paying a lot more attention to our kids, and to their education. What they learn in our schools is fundamental to what they'll be able to do as adults. If we wish the United States to continue to be the powerhouse of innovation, of research and discovery, of entrepreneurship, and of social justice that it has been in the past, we need to ensure that our schools are up to the task, and that our students are ready to learn--and if they're hungry it's just that much more difficult to accomplish the more lofty goals of education.

So . . . the need for programs like the Food for Kids backpacks, and organizations like the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, is only going to go up and up. So, wherever you're at, won't you please take a look around and find an organization like ours here in Oklahoma City that helps those less fortunate? Even if you don't have any money to donate (I know I'm stretched pretty thin), you can donate something that's far more valuable--your time. All of us, regardless of the size of our bank account, only get 24 hours in a day. Volunteer labor helps groups like this to keep their costs down. The need for this is universal, I suspect, even far beyond the borders of the United States.

I suppose it comes down to a basic question: is there too much suffering in the world? And, are you willing to do something about it? It goes beyond being a good Christian, or a good Muslim, or Jew, or Buddhist, or any other religion I know of; it's a 'decent human being' thing to do, to help relieve the suffering of others. It's even being a good atheist; those who suffer are more likely to commit crimes than those who are happy and content, and even atheists are victims of crime.

Together with a group from Griffin Communications (which owns the local CBS affiliate, KWTV Channel 9, here in Oklahoma City, and KOTV Channel 6 in Tulsa, and others as well--you can't say enough good things about that company, and maybe I'll do a post on them later, too) last night we collectively bagged up 1,584 backpacks of food for the start of the school year, which starts, for Oklahoma City Public Schools and Putnam City Public Schools here in the metro area, this next Monday, August 1st. So that's 1,584 Oklahoma school kids who will have at least something to eat next weekend, out of a need for 10,000+. What about the rest? And what about the following weekend? And the one after that? Are you willing to help?

If It's Good Enough For The Catholic Church, It's Good Enough for Congress

Here's an idea to help resolve the current (and ongoing) crisis in Washington, and it borrows heavily from the Catholic Church.

Way back in 1268, following the death of Pope Clement IV, the College of Cardinals convened their Papal Conclave to elect a new pope, just as had been done many times before, and many times since. However, the cardinals of that time had a real problem getting the job done.

So first they locked them up, away from everyone else, in a chapel (the Sistine Chapel hadn't been built yet). It was hoped that by isolating them, they would more fully concentrate on the task at hand.

But that didn't work.

So, the cardinals were only given bread and water to eat and drink. No other food or drink was allowed in to them. (BTW, this is still a valid punishment used by the US Navy to discipline sailors who get into trouble.)

But still that didn't work.

So . . . they removed the roof from the chapel where the cardinals were staying.

That did the trick! They elected Pope Gregory X.

So, here's my proposal, and I propose that we use this every time that Congress refuses to pass a budget or otherwise do their duty. 30 days prior to the deadline (the end of the fiscal year in normal years, where they have yet to pass a budget for the following fiscal year), we lock them in the House chamber, along with the President. No aides, no family, no one at all. We can watch them on C-SPAN, and if they need a doctor, we could send one in, but that's it. The Vice President gets to sit in the big chair in the White House for a change. Yeah, I know he/she is supposed to be the president of the Senate, but somebody's got to be there to push the button if it's necessary.

15 days prior to the deadline, we put them on bread and water. And they get one good multi-vitamin per day.

And 5 days before the deadline, if they still are squabbling like a bunch of spoiled 4 year olds, we move them all out onto the National Mall, and cordon them off, keeping the public at least 100 yds back. No tents, no sleeping bags; no chairs, tables, or desks. Just 2 blankets and a pillow each. The dietary restrictions (bread and water, and a vitamin pill) continue in effect. They can stay out there and bake in the sun (OK, they can get some sun screen if that's the case), or freeze in the snow (they can have a coat, gloves, and a ski cap), or get wet if it rains (pass out the umbrellas--and take them back up when the rain stops). And there they stay until they do what they were elected to do.

Sound a little extreme? Well, maybe, but then again that's exactly how our troops out in the field live. And besides, they're all a bunch that's not all that tough; they won't let it go that far. They're not going to want to have to sleep on the ground with the bugs--they'll pass the legislation needed to keep them all inside and comfortable, and able to go to Morton's for dinner.

And we won't have to go through all the garbage they're putting our country through.