Victimization

1968 Baltimore riots - 2015 wasn't the first time

Feel free to correct me if I'm missing something, but three attitudes seem to be common in every human being I've ever come across who has hit rock bottom:

• My situation is totally someone else's fault.
• I'm unfairly getting the short end of the stick.
• I can do whatever I want.

These are very selfish words to live by.   No man is an island.   We all have to depend on others to some extent.   Life is not fair.   Much of it is beyond our control.   That reality is no excuse for sitting idly by in the face of injustice.   There are things we can control.   Sometimes we find people who illustrate magnificently how to make the best out of the hand we've been dealt.

As I watched the ongoing news coverage of the riots in Baltimore, I saw a lot of examples of selfish acts with looting and ignoring the pleas for nonviolence.   One person asked what the difference was between these riots in a major city or wanton destruction after a college basketball game.   There is none.   Thugs are thugs.

The news media gets blamed for fanning the flames of violence.   That is a price for a free press I'm willing to pay.   CNN deserves major kudos when they interviewed a 30-year veteran whose service dates back to Vietnam.   He was standing up to out of control rioters, telling them to go home where they belong and to stop disrespecting the memory of a possible victim of police brutality or neglect.   His bottom line: "I am an American."

When I hear angry voices, I hear people who feel 100 per cent victimized.   It doesn't just apply to young African Americans in big cities.   Fox News is happy to drum up the idea that their target audience has done all it can to look out for others and is now victimized by everything from being white to religious persecution to total gun confiscation.   The urban rioters sadly ignore the fact that they will only make their situation more desperate by burning down their own neighborhood businesses.   My concern is how this will push the disconnect between two segments of America to even greater levels. 

Not So Fast

Last week we learned that Norway would be pulling the plug on what we know as good old FM radio by January 2016 in favor of DAB - digital audio broadcasting, where one broadcast signal can carry multiple stations with higher quality.    Wait, isn't that the same technology that's been tried on a limited number of FM and even AM stations in the USA with less than stellar results?   How could a failed technology "left for free market forces to decide on" in this country be the wave of the future someplace else?   In the United States, the new so-called "HD radio" channels have not been used for their original purpose.   People have not snapped up radios equipped with the HD receivers.   While the main HD station program is available in FM quality sound on AM and offers two or three additional CD quality channels on HD FM, the net effect has been a proliferation of analog low-powered "translator" FM stations fed by an HD-2, HD-3, etc.    Some station operators have taken advantage of this loophole to expand ethnic, religious or other specialty programming previously unavailable from small market broadcasters.   In the process, the FM dial has become crammed with signals that overlap while AM HD disappears as that band faces the bigger problems of a dwindling and aging audience.   

Will digital audio broadcasting be the new force in radio?    The way our communications regulators decide things here, I doubt things will change very rapidly.   So many technologies have been touted as the "savior" of radio.   Remember FM quadrophonic, the addition of more FM signals in the 80s/90s, competing (and failing) AM stereo technologies and allowing more AM stations to stay on at night?    

Instead of approving hundreds of new low power FM applicants that fail to truly serve local communities, why didn't more longtime AM stations get preference on FM positions?  In Canada, most AM stations have gone off completely as many established AM broadcasters were allowed to get preference in a transition to FM.    When there was room, a struggling AM had a better shot for survival.    In the crowded Northeast, it's a shame we didn't have a wider FM frequency range allocated to the local operators who own (or owned) some of the most iconic and distinctive heritage radio stations now facing extinction in AM static and nighttime interference.   

As with digital TV, over the air reception of HD radio doesn't just gradually fade; it cuts out completely.   This is especially a problem because these digital signals don't have the radius of regular analog terrestrial stations.   This issue needs to be addressed.   Will we then have less free access to radio the way we need to subscribe to over-the-air local TV 25 miles from the transmitter?     Noway is a simpler place; the American transition to digital radio will not be as short and sweet.    

Paying For "Those People"

Dumb Thinking

Another tax deadline comes and goes.   Most of us pay up or get back some money we loaned interest-free to the federal or state governments over the past year.   It's been a way of life in this country for at least a century.    We generally accept it as one of the few sure things in life.   Is that acceptance changing?    With at least one of the presidential contenders, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, calling for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service.   This plays into a sentiment on the right that increasingly distrusts the federal government and expresses resentment over sending money to "those people" in the form of various programs.   At the same time, those "red states" where the feeling is most pervasive are also the biggest beneficiaries of our federal tax dollars.    The right wing is also tone deaf to the unprecedented tax breaks given to the largest service-oriented businesses that routinely pay their employees poverty wages to the point where many full-time workers get federal assistance.   Who pays for that, McDonald's corporation and Walmart heirs?    The wealthiest one tenth of one per cent of Americans get a huge break by avoiding any inheritance tax.

The poorest in our society often get the blame for bleeding our public coffers dry, yet the savings of weeding out abusers of the welfare system for drug abuse wouldn't even justify the cost of screening aid recipients.   To date, nobody has come up with a better system proven to fairly tax everyone according to their means and needs, including a proposed "flat tax" across the board or more regressive sales taxes.    Libertarian calls for abolition of the income tax do not provide an acceptable alternative.   If you want to reform the system for fairness, we can talk.   If you want to slam the I.R.S. as just another evil arm of our government in your Utopian dreams or polarizing route to a Presidential run, count me out. 

Red With Embarrassment

Indiana Protests (Reuters)

No sooner do I finish railing in my last post against turning back the clock of positive reform when the Indiana governor signs a bill into law paving the way for businesses to refuse service to same sex couples.   Governor Pence's defense of the law was so pitiful that even Republicans who voted for its passage have had to consider scrapping or "clarifying" it.     The resulting political and economic backlash should be enough to deter any other states from passing these discriminatory laws, but along comes Arkansas Governor Hutchinson ready to pander to social reactionaries by signing similar legislation.  Presidential aspirants looking for GOP primary support (even big bucks main-streamer Jeb Bush) see this as a way to enhance their own social and cultural conservative credentials.   Thankfully, most Americans have undergone a remarkable evolution on this issue since the dawn of the 21st century.   Attempts to exclude portions of our society in the name of religious freedom or states' rights go back to the birth of our nation.   The Fox News narrative is false again.   Religious freedom is not under attack in America.   Religious beliefs and customs are taught and learned through life.   Sexual orientation is in our DNA.  

I applaud Governor Malloy's quick action banning Connecticut state government travel to Indiana.   There are also enlightened leaders in Indiana and Arkansas, such as the mayors of their respective state capitals, who oppose these backwards laws and remind us that even the reddest states aren't ready to sacrifice economic stability and social justice to advance narrow, outdated agendas.