Movie Reviews-Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Election, Blue Velvet, Deadfall

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Vote Your Conscience!!!!

As the election approaches it appears as if the President or his major party opponent may have a more difficult road to (re-)election than he or his partisans initially anticipated. So we see some bloggers, political leaders or media personalities scurrying forth to invoke fear and hurl insults against independent minded people who are not going to vote for either major party candidate. They congratulate themselves on their supposed wisdom in their voting choice and demand that others do likewise. They trot out their favorite policy hobby horse to convince you that you MUST vote for their candidate. If that doesn't work then they insult your intelligence or question your membership in whatever involuntary racial/gender group to which you happen to belong. Finally if all this fails to persuade you they'll trot out the spectre of the OTHER GUY getting to make appointments to the Supreme Court and talk ominously about the 2000 election. If their guy wins they will be back to mock you as a loser. And if their guy loses they will rush back to spew putrid vitriol in your general direction. Nader and Perot loom large as betes noires for them.


Ho-hum.

My conscience and vote belong to me. Nobody else. Anyone who lectures me that I am somehow "wasting" my vote by not voting for their favored candidate can kindly go attempt an aeronautical anatomical impossibility with a rapidly revolving tasty pastry.

One man with courage makes a majority. To thine own self be true. Whether you want to vote for either major party candidate, any small party candidate, write in a candidate, or refrain from voting altogether, it is your sacred right to express your political preference. That's right, your political preference, not anyone else's. You have the right to dissent. Your vote is not owed to anyone except yourself. Remember that regardless who you support next week. Vote or do not vote as you like. Someone who tries to convince you that your vote won't count unless you vote as THEY see fit is really nothing more than a bully. Don't let their fear determine your vote. Your issues and beliefs are just as important as anyone else's. Stand up for what you believe. Let your conscience be your guide. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

ObamaCare and Healthcare Costs: Revisited

A classical economics truism is that in an efficient market there is no way to make one person better off without making another person worse off. This is often used as an excuse not to make any changes. This could also be why the study of economics often seems to attract people who are invested in maintaining the status quo. This argument's weaker form is something that many people would agree with even though it tends to be associated with right-wing libertarians. This idea, famously made popular by libertarian speculative fiction author Robert Heinlein is TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). This means that every decision we make has costs and consequences. We need to account for these when we make policy choices. Again, someone who likes the status quo will piously invoke this saying and then refuse further investigation to see what the actual costs are. That's wrong.

But it's also wrong for someone who wants to change the status quo to ignore the unpleasant fact that there usually are costs. We have to at least review the costs to see if they're worth the change. This ultimately slides into a bit of utilitarian type of thinking, which is ok if you're trying to decide what a taxicab badge should cost or how much your property tax should be, but may not be the correct frame to use in questions of justice. For example no one, well few people anyway, will question the cost of liberating slaves or giving women the right to vote or stopping the arrest of homosexuals for being homosexual. If those things are right, then costs simply don't matter and you're probably a pretty cold heartless SOB for even bringing that question up.

So then if you want to change something but don't want people to think about costs you definitely need to frame the change as a question of justice. If you don't want change and wish to avoid arguments about justice you need to focus on costs and unintended and unforeseen consequences. We saw some of this play out in the arguments over ObamaCare. However as it turned out both sides (pro and con) strongly believed they had an excellent argument about justice (the individual mandate vs. the numbers of uninsured or the importance of universal birth control coverage) and as a result the popular discussions over the PPACA didn't really focus on costs. Rather cannily the Obama Administration and Congress set up the legislation so that most of the more unpleasant changes would arrive AFTER the 2012 election. Well that election will shortly be completed and absent an extremely unlikely sequence of events the PPACA is here to stay. As a result companies and organizations have begun to adapt to the law's less pleasant incentives. It's important to realize that these things aren't bugs. They're features.

Over the next 18 months, between one quarter and one half of Americans who get insurance coverage through their employers will pay more of their doctor bills themselves as companies roll out health care plans with higher deductibles, benefits consultants say. The result: sticker shock.

"They have huge out-of-pocket costs before they get any insurance coverage, it's a real slap in the face," said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. High-deductible plans set a threshold for medical expenses that an individual must pay for, often in the thousands of dollars, before insurance kicks in. Studies show people on these plans are three times more likely to delay or skip care than people on traditional plans, where doctor or emergency room visits are covered by a relatively low co-payment.

These plans have been around for years, pushed by employers, insurers and industry experts who believe that consumers with "skin in the game" will drive demand for better quality care at a lower cost. It is a rationale also backed by President Barack Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

But now corporate America's adoption of high-deductible plans is accelerating, partly because of Obama's health care reform, which requires insurance plans to provide more expansive coverage such as preventive care.Several industry surveys forecast a two-percentage-point increase in the number of companies offering only high-deductible plans in 2013 to about 19 percent, and a larger jump of anywhere from 5 to 25 percentage points in 2014.

LINK

This is a really important concept. Because insurance companies are being forced to provide more expansive coverage, can no longer correctly and routinely rate coverage differently by gender and age and must include people on their parents' coverage until age 26, their costs will increase. In order to mitigate some of that cost increase the insurance companies intend to share this cost with the sucker insuree. As the article briefly references there is also a philosophical belief among the people who brought you "health care reform" that a big reason behind health care cost rises is that people just demand and consume too damn much health care. And how better to cut down that demand than to raise the price, hence the increase in high deductible plans. See how well this works out for everyone? Well maybe not you but heck at least more people will have health care coverage and everyone gets free birth control!! YAY!!!!

The problem with this line of thinking is of course that with few exceptions no one just runs down to his or her doctor and starts requesting hysterectomies, colonoscopies or angioplasties just for the heck of it. No one looks at their health care coverage plan, sees that he only has a $250 co-pay for major procedures and promptly books himself into the hospital for a weekend dialysis session. I mean for just $250, how could you pass up that deal?

People go to the doctor or hospital when they're sick, when a loved one urges it, when an insurer or employer demands it, or for a regular check up (yearly, quarterly, monthly, etc). Price isn't really a consideration. The demand for doctors is not very elastic. I will switch car washes if the new car wash costs $1 less and has the same quality. The same is not true of doctors. Trust is a huge element here. When I "shop around" for doctors I am more concerned with trust, experience and expertise than with cost. Lower cost doctors might actually give me a BAD feeling. Money matters but doctor and patient do not share the same level of knowledge. If my doctor tells me I need to undergo this procedure or take this medicine, generally speaking I am not qualified to question his decision or try to jaw him down about costs. At best I can go with a gut feeling or maybe get different opinions but if every doctor I see says "Yes you need to take this medicine and/or have this procedure done or you will die/be crippled/live in horrible pain for the rest of your life" then that's what I'm probably going to do. No one who is having a heart attack demands to be taken to Dr. X instead of Dr. Y because he has a 10% off coupon from Dr. X. Very few of us could afford to pay the true cost of a required procedure. That's why we have insurance. Delaying your car's scheduled oil change until next month's paycheck is one thing. Ignoring that new spot on your body or that cough that won't go away involves an entirely different set of consequences.

As the higher deductible plans roll out employed people will pay more out of pocket for health care coverage. This contradicts the President's breezy assertion that "If you like your health care plan you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away no matter what." I guess strictly speaking it's still your health care plan but the price will have gone up and the coverage may have shrunken. So it really won't be what you had before the PPACA. This makes employed people unambiguously worse off.

This really stinks because as an employed person I lacked real complaints about my health care coverage. And for those who didn't have health care coverage because they weren't employed or their employer refused to offer the benefit, I would have supported opening up Medicare/Medicaid for them. That would have made more sense than the PPACA but because the Administration was determined to keep the private health care industry happy it made the decision not to go down that path. So if you're employed you get to enjoy higher deductible plans and most likely higher premiums as well. Let the good times roll!!

Time will tell if PPACA was a good idea. I think not. Others may think differently. But at the very least we should all realize that it was not cost-free. There really ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Thoughts?

Sununu, Powell and Racism

It's silly, a little tiring and probably bad for my blood pressure to keep up with and blog about every stupid utterance that comes from major party campaign surrogates, especially racial shots from right-wing Republicans. It is what it is. But every now and then someone says something which goes a bit beyond the normal silliness and fluff of election year political statements and reveals something a bit uglier.

This was the case with former Bush Chief of Staff, former New Hampshire Governor and Romney campaign adviser John Sununu who, when asked about General Colin Powell's endorsement of President Barack Obama, could only sputter that it must have been because both men are black. Right.

When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to look at whether that's an endorsement based on issues or he's got a slightly different reason for endorsing President Obama," Sununu said, adding: "I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

 I don't usually pay attention to endorsements because I don't really think they mean what they used to mean but I think I would have read about or remembered the uproar if Colin Powell had endorsed candidates for President like Shirley Chisholm, Dick Gregory, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney or other humans who met the American standard for blackness. However I think all of those people struggled along the campaign trail without the Powell endorsement. Watch the Sununu video below.

This is a really interesting statement because it reveals some things about how Sununu sees the world and how he sees Black people. The immediate question that comes to my mind is whether Sununu will vote for Romney because both he and Romney are white? I would venture to guess that Sununu would say no and claim that he's voting for Romney because of issues x, y, z. But he's evidently unwilling to extend that same presumption to Colin Powell, strictly because Powell happens to be black. Never mind any of Powell's achievements, statements, beliefs, worldviews, experiences or the experiences of people who have worked with and for Colin Powell.  In a slip of the tongue Sununu showed that to him race trumps all. I guess all of those Black people who constantly voted for one white candidate or another are invisible. And when whites voted for whites that was just fine. But you blacks all stick together see. 

Many times people like to tell themselves that racism or us-them thinking is an artifact of the lower classes, the working classes, the kind of people who drive pickup trucks, own lots of guns, wave Confederate flags and have to take a shower as soon as they get home from work. Well, no it's not. Sununu is a very accomplished man and he's also a Mensa member. Chances are he's smarter than you are. But intelligence is no barrier to racist thinking. Sununu has eagerly taken on the role of Romney's attack dog, the Gregor Clegane that every now and then slips the leash and bites someone before the candidate rushes up and puts the muzzle back on the beast. Sununu has a history of race-baiting or outright racist remarks about the President and/or his supporters. So he's doing his job. His remarks are no accident. He didn't slip the leash; he was unleashed. He's appealing to a very ugly (small??) portion of the Republican base, one which doesn't really think that anyone black has any business being in the White House unless they're serving tea. The ironic thing is that given Sununu's Southern European/Middle Eastern origins, it wasn't that long ago in American history that his "whiteness" could be questioned. And in some places in Europe it still would be. And how in the world does someone who was born in Cuba of all places get the nerve to lecture the President of the United States on "how to be an American"? The only answer to this is that to a lot of people, too many people, American = whiteness. The election of a black man to the Presidency makes it painfully obvious that American <> whiteness. And it never did, really. This country was mixed from the start.

If you've read this blog before then you know I'm not really a huge Obama fan. There are legitimate honorable reasons to vote for either major party candidate or any other candidate that best suits you. The irony is that Obama has mostly governed (feminist and gay rights sympathies aside) as a center-right politician, as what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican. His race has excited the far right to primal screams of hatred and disgust at the idea of "losing their" country and constant evocations of Obama as "an affirmative action president" (witness Donald Trump's fascination with Obama's grades and birth certificate or Palin's fascination with Obama's blackness). But Obama's race may have also made people on the left who would otherwise be up in arms over unemployment, entitlement reform and civil liberties mute their opposition, precisely because they don't want to be on the same side as some right-wing yahoos. The fact that Sununu feels comfortable calling a woman journalist and a news organization "groupies" shows that should Obama win re-election some right-wingers will literally explode from the dissonance between what's in their heads and reality. Of course the same is true of some on the left if Romney pulls it out. And either way I'll be there to laugh at the loser. Count on that. But my bigger concern is that whichever millionaire wins the election there will still be numerous Americans who think just like Sununu does. And many of those people are comfortably ensconced in positions of power in businesses and organizations where they can hire, fire and promote people. Some of them are even in law enforcement or politics. Think they'll be fair minded? It's not for nothing that Col. Wilkerson said that the GOP, his party, is full of racists.

QUESTIONS
1) Was Sununu out of line?
2) Does he owe Powell or the President an apology?
3) Should the President make a stronger statement about Sununu?
4) Why hasn't Romney been pressured to drop Sununu?

Book Reviews-77 Shadow Street, Mickey Cohen, Ultimate Autos

77 Shadow Street
By Dean Koontz

I used to read Dean Koontz as avidly as I read Stephen King. Koontz was a favorite. I think he was a favorite of a lot of people since between them, King and Koontz titles used to easily take up one-half of horror section shelf space in many bookstores. However tastes change as we age and it's been a long time since I read any of Koontz's work. A few weeks back I saw this rather hefty paperback on sale for almost nothing so I picked it up. The story wasn't original but there are some talented writers who have claimed that there are very few original sci-fi/fantasy stories, just classic themes that are reworked according to a writer's individual taste and skill.

In this case the story is about The Pendleton, a old mansion with a troubled past that has been changed into a swank hotel. Every so often, usually about 38 years, there are problems, apparitions appear, people kill other people or simply disappear. So basically this is a haunted house story. Obviously this immediately reminded me of Stephen King's The Shining or Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House  or Richard Matheson's Hell House but not in a negative way. I was eager to see what a master writer like Koontz did with this format. I will have to go back and check some of his older works but my immediate impression is either that Koontz has become a lot more long-winded since last I read him or perhaps a writer of his skill and success has a slightly different relationship with editors than some neophyte would. I found myself struggling with this book's length. There are some long books where you find yourself frantically turning the pages because you can't wait to see what happened next.  For other books though you frantically turn the pages because you really want the book to end because you have other things to do. Don't get me wrong, uninspiring Koontz is still better than 90% of other genre writers but this story could have easily been chopped in half and not lost that much. It was over 500 pages. That was just too much for me. The story feels stretched out. There is a lot of detail about what each character is seeing. 

Koontz isn't a political ideologue but he does lean conservative and as he usually does in his books, takes a few shots, some deserved, some not, at liberal ideologies. But his real ire is reserved for those that think they have a right to control other people's lives, no matter what their politics may be. This comes through loud and clear in his writing and certainly is on display here. Koontz despises bullies, supernatural or not.
In The Pendleton, the thirty eight year period of calm has expired and the residents start seeing things that can't be real-things from other times and perhaps even from other dimensions. However as a few of them find out the hard way what they're seeing is real and can kill them. Until it's too late they don't try to get out of the hotel. I didn't like this because it seemed to me like they all should have left almost immediately. Anyway it will be up to the hotel residents (some plucky single mothers and their children, a lawyer, a no-nonsense ex-military man, some dedicated or lazy hotel workers, a mentally deranged contract killer with serious Oedipal issues, a drunk Senator, a scientist with a secret, etc..) to find out what's going on, how the events are connected to one of them, and save themselves and maybe the world. Portions of the story are also told from the POV of the entity behind all the strange events.

Again, I liked the setup but was just a bit disappointed in the delivery. YMMV. If you haven't read Koontz I would still strongly urge you to try him but would suggest his earlier works. When he's on he's as good a writer as anyone out there. He, like King, usually has some sharp insights into human nature. I just didn't think this book ranked with his classic work.





Mickey Cohen:The Life and Crimes of LA's Notorious Mobster
by Tere Tereba

When someone says Mafia you probably think of a Italian/Sicilian gangster who's going to make you an offer you can't refuse. In 20th century American organized crime history the Italian element was dominant. However although the Mafia is not an equal opportunity employer, organized crime as a whole certainly is. Until roughly the late forties or mid fifties the Italian element in organized crime was roughly equal in power with other Caucasian ethnics, primarily Jewish Americans. As one crime expert put it, "The Italians had the muscle, the Jews had the moxie and they all made money".
We don't speak of Jewish American crime families today because classic Jewish American criminal groups weren't structurally set up the same way as Italian American mafia families. The Jewish gangster organizations tended to be one or two generation operations, and often disintegrated upon the death of the founding boss. There doesn't appear to be a Jewish criminal analogue to the NY Five Families, which have been in their current form for almost a century. But from the late forties to the early sixties in southern California there was one dominant organized crime boss and his name was Mickey Cohen. He fought off all attempts to steal his crown, both from within and from outside the organized crime fraternity.

Cohen first came to prominence when he attracted the attention of legendary infamous crime boss and killer Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the Syndicate big shot who arrived in California to organize rackets for the benefit of the New York and Chicago mobs. Cohen, then a robber and killer for hire, had robbed a Siegel backed gambling game and initially refused to return the money. After Siegel coldly explained the facts of life and death to him Cohen saw the light and gave the proceeds back. Siegel admired the younger man's guts and brought him into his West Coast operations. Cohen, who had his own Cleveland and Chicago patrons, rose swiftly in Siegel's organization, becoming Siegel's top bodyguard and second-in-command.

Siegel later ran afoul of boyhood pals and fellow organized crime bosses Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano as well as the Chicago Outfit when he refused to share the national wire service and was suspected of skimming casino gambling funds. After Siegel's assassination, Cohen took over his California operations and expanded them greatly. He was contemptuous of the local Los Angeles Mafia family and survived several assassination attempts from what was widely considered to be the "Mickey Mouse Mafia". Cohen had a severe case of OCD, perhaps bought about by his early poverty and STD infection. His OCD would save his life multiple times. Once when a would be Judas shook his hand to mark him for assassination, Cohen immediately left for the bathroom to wash his hands and so missed the ensuing drive-by. Another time Cohen noticed a scratch in his Cadillac fender and bent down to inspect it at the exact time that a rifleman from a rival mob was taking a shot. Some of the attempts on Cohen's life were set up by police. Loquacious, dangerous and rather greedy the dapper Cohen had his fingers in just about every major criminal enterprise in Southern California. Extortion, loan sharking, bookmaking, gambling, pornography, prostitution, and narcotics were his bread and butter. Cohen's legal businesses included clothing stores and ice cream shops. Cohen also had several links to the film industry. He ran an extremely lucrative sexual blackmail business. One of his employees, an bisexual gigolo named Johnny Stompanato, was the lover of film legend Lana Turner. Stompanato was allegedly killed by Turner's teen daughter. Angry at the lost income, Cohen released private and rather intimate love letters from Turner to Stompanato and threatened to release even more intimate film.

This book details Cohen's rise from desperate childhood poverty to lowly thug and goon to Siegel's gofer and later crime boss in his own right to his fall from grace via federal tax evasion convictions. The second conviction finally reduced and perhaps broke his power. This is the true life story which inspired most of the LA noir film and book stories from LA Confidential to Raymond Chandler's works. There is a lot of information about the LAPD. For whatever reason although I was used to thinking of that department as extremely brutal I didn't think of them as particularly corrupt. This book explodes that misconception. The original crime bosses in LA were often Anglo/Irish high-ranking police officers! 
It wasn't until the arrival of Siegel and Cohen that power was passed and even then there remained numerous ties between the criminals, the businessmen, the lawyers, the film studios, the judiciary and the police and prosecutors. Everybody was dirty. This was a fascinating story based on both primary and secondary documents. Tere Tereba did a really good job of setting the stage and telling the story here. I like all the information she dug up on old Hollywood. Heck, this book is as much about the underside of Hollywood as it is about organized crime. See if you can find the 60 Minutes interview in which Cohen insults LAPD chief William Parker as a "sadistic drunk degenerate". There are oodles of info on Richard Nixon, Shirley Temple, RFK, Frank Sinatra, Billy Graham and many other famous names. Cohen was always good for a snappy quote. During a Senate hearing when he was accused of living badly and being surrounded by violence, the pugnacious little gangster responded "Whaddya mean surrounded by violence? People are shooting at me!!!"




Ultimate Autos
by Tom Stewart

What car or truck do you drive? Why do you drive it? Do you enjoy driving it or was it simply something that was practical or within your budget? Do you care about style and performance and showing off or do you simply care about safely getting from point A to point B? Well with gasoline remaining above $3/gallon most of us have to at least consider the fuel economy of what we drive. And most of us are not millionaires or billionaires so even if we wanted something much nicer than we have, chances are we couldn't afford it.
But if money wasn't an option, would you get something different? If so, then Ultimate Autos: The Kings of Bling might be a good place to start looking. The book is somewhat dated; it was first published in 2006. However many of the cars listed within are still in production in later updates. All of them are head turners. These are cars I will probably never own or drive but a man can dream can he not. If you need to ask the dealer or manufacturer how much any of these vehicles cost, you really need to go buy something less expensive.

The coffee table book lists cars which are the prettiest, the highest performing, the most expensive and the most well made. The book is broken up in seven sections (GTs, Convertibles, Euro Supercars, Sedans, SUVs, US Supercars, and Concepts). Each vehicle gets a number of lavish photographs, (the book's paper is glossy and fits the subject matter very well) ,detailed specs and price, and historical production analysis and comparison. Some of the vehicles discussed include the Ford GT, Brabus Maybach, Ferrari FXX, Aston Martin Vanquish, CXT 7300, Hummer H1, Holden Efijy, Maserati MC12, Pagani Zonda, Bentley Azure and many others. Since I happen not to have a spare $400,000 (roughly the median price of the vehicles listed) laying around I won't be purchasing any of these in the next few weeks but if you happen to have that sort of cash and aren't doing anything with it this book might excite your interest and a trip to your local dealer or made-to-order manufacturer.

Music Reviews-This May Be My Last Time Singing, Doin' Hard Time on Planet Earth

This May Be My Last Time Singing-Raw African American Gospel 

There are three basic building blocks of American music (well four if you include country). These forms are blues, jazz and gospel. Just about every other music that grew up in America came from some version, combination or descendant of those genres in one way or another. In 2012 of course there is a lot of water under the bridge. Many fantastic musicians have come and gone, leaving their mark on the world and changing music in unforeseen ways. What is understood as rock or blues today doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with what was understood as rock-n-roll in the fifties or before. But if you go back far enough as I like to do you can find music that call it what you like, is not easily or simply restricted to one category.

This would be the case with the sublime collection This May Be My Last Time Singing. This is a three CD collection of hard core indie Black gospel 45's from 1957-1982. Some of the singers are well known, most aren't. But this collection from top to bottom boasts an authenticity and soul that is really hard to find in popular music or for that matter even modern gospel these days. And although the collection is made up of people who generally first and foremost considered themselves gospel musicians there are very obvious links to blues, soul, country, and even a little rock-n-roll. Ironically one preacher inveighs against the evils of rock-n-roll while singing over a riff that would not have been out of place on a Funkadelic album. Blues and gospel are just different facets of the same thing. This collection is gospel but you can always hear hints or occasionally outright nods to whatever the popular music of the day might have been. Just like with today's rappers some of the singers here spent time in prison and used those experiences to emote.

The swing that is obvious in early American rock-n-roll but generally disappeared after the British invasion often came out of the church (especially Baptist, Pentecostal,etc). It's no accident that so many soul singers and even blues and rock-n-roll singers started out singing in the church. The musics are a little different but definitely share family relationship stretching back to Africa and to a lesser extent Europe. Some gospel songs that are today almost completely identified with black gospel were initially English or Scottish hymms. If you are into soulful singing and alternately mournful or joyful choirs, that is on display here. If you are looking for outrageous guitar solos and weird tones you can find those here as well. Everyone here has their own sound. This really impressed me. Some of the music could have been recorded better but the dynamics generally carry everything through. This is truly magnificent stuff. If you don't have it you should get it. I don't know how anyone could not start dancing or singing along with something here. Whatever your religion may be or even if you have no religion, this is the kind of music that makes you happy to be alive. This brings back happy memories of my youth. If you are unfamiliar with gospel this could be a good introduction. If you like gospel you might enjoy some of these rarities. I REALLY like the Skylifters' version of "You Better Mind". "Baptized"'s vocalists were rather obviously giving a nod to Sam Cooke but in 1962 a LOT of people were trying to sound like Sam Cooke.

The Devil's Trying to Steal my Joy  Peace In the Valley  You Better Mind

Cloud Hanging Low (Part 1 and 2)  Baptized Life is a Battle
If I could hear my mother pray again

2 Black 2 Strong MMG, Doin' Hard Time on Planet Earth

I no longer listen to a lot of rap music. It's a combination of having aged out of it, moved to a different place in my life and just being somewhat bored with much of the subject matter, language and frankly the skill sets. But a long time ago in another life I did listen to more rap than I do now. One group that I liked a lot was Harlem NY's 2 Black 2 Strong MMG. They combined a nasty streak of gangsterish nihilism with black nationalism and afrocentric history. These things didn't really go together of course. As a result a few songs teetered on lyrical incoherence but the group's primary rapper, Johnny Marrs, had the skill and style to pull this off. As far as I know they only ever released one album Doin' Hard Time on Planet Earth, back in 1991 and then either broke up or dropped off the face of the earth. I couldn't find any other information on them.

Compared to much of today's rap this album is sonically stripped down. There's not a lot of fat. The album makes judicious use of samples from classic soul and funk, most famously Bob's and Earl's Harlem Shuffle, which I am including here simply because it is an awesome song. The vocals on Doin' Hard Time on Planet Earth are loud and in your face but the album itself is not recorded so loud that it's unlistenable.
The lyrics are  often always profane and definitely not fit for polite or mixed company but are perfect for listening to if you are lifting weights or getting ready to punch somebody in their muyerfuying face. Well. I haven't punched anyone in their face in a while but I do like using this music as backdrop for exercise. In some very real ways this music is the spiritual descendant of the blues music that I like. "Iceman Cometh" is one of the best protest songs against police brutality I've heard. I like how they sampled the bass line from The Temptation's "Ball of Confusion" for "War on Drugs". The song "2 Black 2 strong" remains a necessary corrective to some historical myths.

Across the 110  Up in the Mountains  Iceman Cometh  Only The Strong Survive
Ghetto Blaster  War on Drugs  Burn Baby Burn (with Chuck D)  2 black 2 strong (with Jamillah Shabazz)

Detroit woman forced to live with house squatter

Believe it or not I really don't like writing negative blog posts about my home town. So this will be the last one for a while. There's good people in Detroit. You should know that. But there are also some dirty no good bottom feeder parasites. Every time I think I am finished writing about foolishness, lo and behold here comes another story. This story touched a nerve because I think it provides a perfect example of what plagues Detroit. This situation has a legal twist. Hopefully The Janitor or Old Guru can explain it because I am simply not understanding what is going on here.

Imagine that you left town for an extended period of time to work, have a baby, take an overseas vacation, visit a terminally ill relative, settle an estate, wait for repairs to be made on your home, wander the earth or whatever. Let's say that upon your return, you discovered that someone (a previous tenant? mentally challenged write-in presidential candidate?) had moved into your home, changed the locks, altered the wiring and plumbing, taken out liens, thrown out or sold your belongings, and otherwise taken possession of the home that you bought and paid for. Now I think that even the most peaceful person on the planet might get a little upset. And let's say that when you called the police, fully expecting that that they would remove this insolent interloper and drag them away to a richly deserved jail cell, the police said "Hey this is a civil dispute. We're not qualified to make decisions about who owns what. Tell it to the judge. Don't do anything rash. Stop bothering us. Don't call us again!"

If this happened to me I think that someone (not me) would have a rather serious problem. I don't want to think about what other people I know who are not as levelheaded, peaceful and calm as I am would do in that situation. This hard to believe event allegedly occurred in an area I know very well. Watch the video.


To be blunt, this is why many people have fled Detroit. In Detroit, there is a serious chronic problem with lack of respect for law and for other people's property. I have occasionally considered investing in Detroit property or in certain Detroit business opportunities. However I would have to spend an inordinate amount of money on lawyers, insurance and security. All else equal, who would do that if they could invest in another city where there's some basic understanding of the difference between yours and mine?

So when a burglar enters your home, don't call the police. Call a lawyer to start a case to prove you actually own the home??? Does that make any sort of sense? There may be excellent reasons for society not to allow violence to be automatically used in so-called civil disputes. I am sure our legal experts can think of many. But squatters don't squat in places where they will be immediately ejected and subjected to pain for even trying. Say what you like about the Koch Brothers or any other millionaire or billionaire but I bet that they don't have to worry about this problem because anyone trying it would get removed and/or hurt just as soon as they did. If you attempted this in a rich area security would immediately toss you out and maybe throw you a beating before the cops arrived to take you away.

Must we all hire private security to watch our homes and cars 24-7? Squatting lends credence to the idea that law is whatever the strong say it is. Therefore, increasingly people will just ignore the law. If you don't then you're just a sucker looking to get taken. Whichever woman is lying here, she's a predator. She's sought out a weak herd member and is trying to bring them down. You simply can not have a functioning market place without the ability to make and keep contracts and own property. You can't. Economic activity will move to places where people don't think that they somehow deserve to just take your property. I don't mean to sound like a crazed Ayn Rand disciple but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's almost enough to make you vote for Mitt Romney.* If this attitude spreads, and it has, Detroit will remain largely bereft of good businesses, good schools, and young families. Property tax revenue will continue to dwindle and Detroiters will wonder why their city continues its long decline. About a decade ago area home prices were close to eight to ten times the price quoted in the story. I wonder if increased crime, poor city services and squatters had anything to do with that price fall? Nah. Couldn't be. Could it?

Questions

What's your take? Can you believe this? Can this story be real?

What's the difference between a home invasion and a squatter?

Should the proper owner take the law into her own hands?

*Grand Central that's a joke....