The State of Our Health and the State of Our Fears and the State of Honest Services as Guarenteed by the Constitution

It’s time for the Kansas City Marathon again – not that I’m running in it – not that I know anyone running in it – not that I really care – but it is so annoying – Dave and I got caught in it before, was that last year – the cops guard the barricades rather than direct the traffic – all the cars circle around and around looking for a way out – it was almost over when a break came and the cop in the motorcycle boots started hollering GO GO GO – and I had to start my truck and I fumbled and he hollered even louder. I had called Dave and told him not to bother meeting me at the coffee shop – It took almost an hour but there was no one at the coffee shop and plenty of parking when I got there. Why had I been so anxious – it was the parking. It was getting so late and there wouldn’t be any place to sit at the Broadway. Everyone was having the same problem – they don’t tell you what streets to take was the common complaint. Everyone’s a half an hour late, he says, they have the whole city shut down – you have to drive all the way around and they don’t tell you what streets to take. It took me an hour to get across the route – but what need had I to hurry. Then he started hollering – Go Go Go. A marathon is not a spectator sport especially in the back where their limping and waddling – and God the fifth time I had to listen to “We are the Champions” at the re-hydration station next to which I was stalled. Oh the crunch of the empty paper cups as they get stompeled.

Pain is life’s only reality, Greater than faith, or hatred even – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p369

The Supreme Court Looks For Honest Services

Honest services
An intangible right
At heart one should not
Bargain away public trust


How can one make a dishonest
      Dollar anymore
Wrong doing can be done
It would seem without even
     Taking the money
And who needs to run
     When there’s influence
     That can be peddled


“A scheme or artifice
      To deprive another
Of the intangible right
      To honest service”


It’s a statement of our state of civility
When the unspoken has to be said
Critics say it’s defined with too few words
       And that they are self-referential
Honest service is carrying out your half
        Of the contract - can it be that
       Honest Serivce really means Honest Serivce


The well being and self-image of the smokers splits off from the suffering assigned to the non-smokers who with the new sense of power conferred by public attention and recognition, seize upon the possibilities for exclusion and stigmatization also afforded by the logic of risk. Thus the smokers who not long ago fueld the locomotive of growth as free consumers, find themselves devalued and stigmatized as ‘drug-addicted social vermin’ – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p146

The only difference between Postmodern and Late Modern is that we must invent the one and suffer the other

There is everything to fear, including fear itself - – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

Everyone now knows that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world – Monoco is the only country in the world that comes close to spending as much as the US does per capita. What most do not realize is that almost half of the cost of our healthcare system is paid for out of public expenses (this would be even greater if tax subsidizes did not help finance most private insurance plans). But what is not is well know is what we actual buy with all these dollars (2nd highest percentage of GDP in the world – next to Timor) – thus I have graded our performance according to UN national data on healthcare:

A+ - Adult mortality due to T B
A  - Adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS
B+ - Prevalence of TB
B  - Mortality due to cardiovascular disease; childhood mortality due to
        pneumonia; healthy life expectancy;   adult mortality due to non-
        communicable diseases
B- - Life expectancy; childhood morality
C+ - Infant mortality; neonatal mortality; life loss due to communicable disease
C - Adult mortality; adult mortality due to injuries

D - Life loss due to non-communicable diseases
F - Life lose due to cancer; childhood mortality from
     miscellaneous causes; life loss due to injuries;
     childhood mortality due to injuries

The wishes of children ride handsome yellow horses – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p221

More health statistics: Food safety - cases of contaminated food per 100,000 population

United States    – 26,000 (resulting in 5,000 deaths and 325,000
                           hospitalizations  per year)
Australia        - 27,000

United Kingdom   – 3,400
France            – 1,200

One must ask what do the food chains in the US and Australia have in common that those in France and the United Kingdom do not? What level of illness and death is acceptable to ensure corporate profit?

Space without a sign, was once again a chasm, traveled, without beginning or end, nauseating, in which everything – including me – was lost – Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics, 1965 p35

‘Old’ terrorism is an all-or-nothing game motivated by the establishment of a new state – from illegality to legality; from violence to control of a state’s monopoly over the means of violence 'New' terrorism while certainly all-or-nothing for the terrorist is anything but an all-or-nothing game.

It was a place of comfort for a worrier, because it created a snug, smug atmosphere of security – never mind how false - Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind: 1929-1939, 1976 p2

A 650 ml bottle of Flying Horse Larger puts me out – dead on my couch in dream land. Its almost five now. Earlier it had been a do nothing rainy day as I sat in the Laundromat (due to an overflow in the coffee shop) drinking a China Black tea form a paper cup (God, I hate paper cups almost as much as I hate Styrofoam cups). There’s a man that looks like Bruce Dern setting next to me – unshaven and dirty – he’s leering at a young lady sitting across from him.

The paucity of evidence is increasing in the could-be society – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p106

“How are you?” he had said. “What?” she asks. “How are you?” he repeated. “Fine” she replied getting a little leery. He mutters something about her appearance. She says “What”? He says “I mean you look nice like someone a man would want…” I give him a “you are on shaky grounds, buster” look. He quits down for the moment.

Control of the control of control can become a source of threat and side effects of threats without end – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p19

He’s still staring at her. He is muttering something that sound like ‘must be six feet tall’.. She is trying to hide behind an open newspaper

When there is a new beginning, there are new possibilities of action – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p49

He dons a single glove with which he picks his nose – not exactly Michael Jackson is he – a concern with hygiene and cleanliness that was not evident in him.

I squat on my hock, raise my head / To the moons, and howl. / I dig my nails into my sides. / And laugh when the snow turns red. / As I bend to drink, / I laugh at everything that anyone loves. // All my dream horses climbing to heaven – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p189

The young women went and locked herself in the restroom a half an hour ago . The barista tries to coax her out. She kept assuring her “oh he’s harmless”. But it was not her that he had been leering at. It’s disrupting the routine – others desire to use the restroom too.

In the late twentieth century, one of the two ultimate arguments for virtually anything is “scientific studies show”. Its only competitor is “It says in the Bible…” – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

The worst type of non-knowledge is not knowing what you do not know – the consequences of this type of non-knowledge can be fatal and at best it is profoundly disturbing

The preventive measure against catastrophic risks themselves trigger catastrophic risks, which may in the end be even greater than the catastrophes to be prevented – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p119