Peg in the Machine

Right now the big thing is the hacked “Palin” yahoo e-mail account that was used for state business.  Now while this is bad on many levels (from being able to hide and delete messages that otherwise would’ve been saved to just bad business practices all around), it just goes to show how sometimes people are either technologically “dumb” or just “smart” in a way that you’d never want them working for you.

It’s “dumb” in the sense that you should never do that.  Personal E-mail is for just that: personal non-work related stuff (although I, being the president of a corporation, sometimes use a personal account for work things — it’s only when things sent with my work address seem to get “lost” [strange company name - it sometimes triggers spam filters when I first contact someone as it's an acronym]).

It’s “smart” in the way that it frees the people to do illegal activities without any accountability or records for the activities.  So instead of the person being nailed for selling trade secrets (or illegal appropriations for funds), everyone think’s it’s all OK.

Which is it with Palin?  Who really knows completely; although the latter will always be in the back of a person’s mind.

The problem with this happening, either with politicians or employees [which are really employees], is:

• it leads to the possibility for dishonest things happening with no ability to trace it
• it allows potential confidential information to be seen by third parties, archived or hacked with no proof it happened (imagine if yahoo/google/hotmail got hacked) or proof if yours was
• it allows information meant not to ever be disclosed to be sent, with no records it was
• it allows people to do illegal things without any papertrail (or electronic trail)
• it allows information to be removed sooner than it would be if done through proper channels

Basically, while it’s a good thing for personal communications — it’s a very bad thing for businesses —- even worse for governments as everything they do should be visible by the people.

Here lately I’ve seem some very disturbing things online.  Very disturbing doesn’t even start to describe how bad it can play out.  Apparently Palin has gathered a religious following of people saying she being chosen to run for vice president is the will of god, and she’s there to carry out his will.  Now despite her apparently saying that the war in Iraq is god’s will, and that a new oil pipeline is god’s will…. it’s disturbing to think that people want a “religious leader” type of figure in the office to put the country on the right track.

It’s disturbing as not everyone in the country agrees on religious beliefs (not everyone attending the same church will believe the same on everything for that matter).  And the thought of a person saying everything is “god’s will” is just another way of saying “you can’t blame me, I’m following orders!”

I fear what the country would be like if everything we do is justified as being “god’s will” — there’s a number of people in the world that think we’re trying to force our beliefs on them enough as it is — dropping a bomb, then including a bible in the food we give them certainly won’t help.

[note: with the exception of two things stated that Palin apparently said based on other sites, the rest is just extrapolation]

So here it is, McCain selects Palin to run as vice-president, and now people are screaming about her not being qualified. Of course they’re also saying Obama isn’t qualified. Which leads to the inevitable debate: which is more (or least) qualified?

It’s one of those things that should make people really think for a few minutes. The entire situation is quite simple really: Obama – Palin, McCain – Biden. They’ve got an “inexperienced” person paired with an “experienced” one to balance things out. The people are picked not for who will be best for the job, but who will be most likely to get in. It’s politics. The establishment’s been doing this since, well, a long while.

What should strike people as funny, and make this experience point moot, is when you think of the United States. How much experience in running a country and international relations did the founding fathers of the USA have? Think a moment – they founded the country. Now think of all these experienced politicians running the country and what they’ve managed to do: start wars with other countries that people don’t want, imprison people for no reason, look the other way when the people get trampled on, cut the rights of the people for their own protection, line their pockets with corporate money or just happening to have their corporation get govt. contracts, and ignoring the desires of the people for the right price.

So to recap:

• Inexperienced = new country
• Experienced = corruption and loss of liberty

So why do we want experienced people in office again?

And I say “who cares”.

After all the stupid “celebrity” type of things going on around it, with giggly girls laughing and hiding their mouths when Obama is mentioned like he’s the next coming it just goes to show that he’s a great politician — he’s managed to convince a large number of people he isn’t one, he’s a celebrity!

All he is is a politician.  One that managed to get elected, magaged to pull the wool over the american’s eyes by being the candidate for change….ing his views, beliefs and stances based on what will get him elected.

And then he picks someone that’s an even better politician!  Isn’t that a wonderful thing?  After all, the policiticans we have now have done such a wonderful job!  People can’t afford housing, food’s more money than people make, people need to work 2-4 jobs per house to afford the bills…. meanwhile the politicians (the big ones in the news) always seem to have multiple houses, millions of dolalrs, and the ability to buy a small island or jet.  Now that’s in touch with the common man!

[The above paragraph was sarcastic -- in case you didn't realize.]

So in the end it comes down to the one thing…. who really cares?  It’s just another politician that’s been in politics so long that “the establishment” can be an alias.

Well apparently every single political party and candidate is for “change”!  Obama’s the candidate for chang[ing his viewpoints].  Teh democrat party is the party for change!  The republican party is the party for change!  The party X is the party for change!  Everyone’s the party for change!

Even in my town there’s a huge sign:  Illinois republicans for change!  Yet… for changing what?  Based on the past in my town and county the only thing that’s changed is, well, how much stuff costs and the number of jobs (as in fewer).  Politicians keep on doing the same thing as always, and rocking the boat isn’t allowed.

But they’re all for change.  What’s more surprising than anything in my town at least is this:  the republicans saying they’re for “change” are already in office!  Makes you wonder — are they saying they did such a bad job these past years that they need change?  And if so — why would someone re-elect them?

Sometimes you have to love the little psychological ploys.  Say your for “change” and people think “change!  We need change!!!” All the while they forget these same candidates are the same ones that approved or instituded the policies that you don’t want.

If only people actually paid attention — they might just vote for a person or party that’s truely for change.

There are numerous accounts of people saying they were fired for blogging, or more accurately being fired for “inappropriate” content on the blog. Of course about as many workplaces (if not all) say that they didn’t fire people because of the blog but for another reason. From my own experience I’ve seen a woman fired for having the nerve to get pregnant, but then after she was gone the manager forged documents saying that she quit since he knew she’d be filing a lawsuit — then it’d be her words against “her” words that he said she did.

Do a simple search for “fired for blogging” or any variants of it and you’ll come up with a number of stories about it. Some sites will give you tips such as:

• Never talk about co workers, clients, customers, products, or anything slightly related to the company — even if details and names are changed
• Never disclose confidential information about the company (while revealing trade secrets would make sense… makes a person wonder about revealing illegal activities)
• Never post any pictures of yourself or anyone else doing anything good, bad, or illegal
• Never post any links to anything that might be considered “bad taste” (so even those links your boss forwarded to you shouldn’t be put up)
• Never let your workplace find out you have a blog
• Never lie to your workplace that you have a blog (so tell them)

And yes, those last two do contradict.

But when did the law start to support an employer for firing people for doing things on their own time that don’t violate any laws or policies — and that all but a handful of people don’t find tasteless? There’s even a story online about a man fired for blogging about his newborn child (http://drewciferstonezone.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-have-never-been-fired-from-anything.html, or just do a search for “Mercenary Audio Story: Drew Townson”). Now it’s true that most states have an “at will” employment policy, but it seems these days it seems as if people are fired for stupid reasons more than anything (thanks, in part, to the internet where the media can’t control what’s news).

Let’s have a list of real-world things that don’t result in people being fired:

• Sexually abusing another employee
• Beating up another employee
• Locking an employee in the basement (when they’re afraid of closed spaces)
• Stealing from the company
• Not doing their work, or taking an entire shift to put away a single pallet of goods (when other employees can put away a semi loaded down in pallets in a shift)
• Ignoring customers
• Selling trade secrets
• Showing up drunk/high
• Getting drunk/high at work
• Having sex on someone else’s desk
• Working for a competitor at the same time

And here’s a small list for what can get you fired (and yes, sometimes the above gets you fired too — but based on experiences, it takes a lot longer):

• Blogging about your newborn child
• Blogging about your life outside of work, with no mention of where you work
• Being caught having an affair (outside of work, with someone not related to the company)
• Doing something that many humans do
• Getting a virus on your computer that might download other things (even if the virus came from doing company-based work)
• Posting a cartoon at work (while it could be seen as “bad taste” — it makes one wonder if there isn’t more truth behind it)
• Having a child with cancer that you have to take for treatment that causes you to have to take off work

What’s sad is every one of those examples can be found online (even though some are from personal knowledge). And I’m sure there’s many more real reasons people have been fired that are covered up by the company.

But why is it even allowed to happen? Why haven’t politicians gotten involved to make it so any reason a person gets let go has to be documented with actual proof — and not be based on what a person does outside work (of course, if you’re running a daycare and an employee is arrested for child molestation and is convicted that’d be different [and tricky if not convicted]). And better yet — why are people putting up with it? Of course the latter makes all the sense in the world — people need their jobs, if they support the person they know they’re the next ones out the door.

Thanks to the principal of things that makes stuff stick out, why is it so hard to fire employees not doing their job, not treating people with respect, and not following company policy — yet employees can be fired within hours if they do something that isn’t against company policy and not even during work hours? I bet that at this very moment everyone reading this can think of at least one person at most of their workplaces that didn’t do their work and should’ve been fired. Chances are many of you know of at least one person who was fired for a reason that didn’t make sense or you knew the reason was wrong.

Politicians need to get involved and prevent these incidents from happening. Laws need to be rewritten to protect the people, not the companies that give money to the re-elections.

It’s the topic that’s come up everywhere these days:  Who do people really want in office, and what do they really want to be done?

All around people keep on saying how they really want to vote for third-party-candidate X, but they know they won’t get in so instead they’ll vote for Satan’s right hand man (or sometimes saying left hand hand).  They don’t agree with the candidate, don’t want them in office, but they’re the lesser of the two evils.  Sadly it seems to be said with over half the people — if they all voted the way “it doesn’t matter” the Democrats and Republicans would become the “third” party and the “third” parties would be the primary ones.

But I digress, a bit.

What is strange about the way many people seem to view the candidates isn’t so much that they’re different in what they’ll be doing —- but that they’re going to do the exact same things, just have different methods to get there.  And we all know what the same thing is:  keep everything the same, increase wars, keep on chugging out oil, and screw the little man.  Isn’t it a shame when you go into an election and get to choose not what will happen, but what will be done to get there?

Think about that for a moment.  No matter who you elect, you’re going to have the same basic things done and you have no choice about that (want wars to end?  get over it!) — but you have a choice on how you get to that point.  Some choice isn’t it?  All the main decisions that affect the people’s lives are already decided, you just get to decide whether path A or B leads you to decision A.

This has to be without a doubt the biggest complaint in my family right now.  It took my mother almost 5 years to finally get it despite her being unable to do any job — and the disability office’s attorney person (the guy who shows up to court to try and prevent you from getting it) saying in court “there’s nothing she can do, she should get it”.  The judge commented it was unique for the attorney trying to “prevent” you from getting it doing an excellent job arguing the other point — even though after looking at the details he agreed without hesitation.

But it’s not her case that makes me think that politicians really need to overhaul this system…

Imagine a guy who’s a diabetic and takes insulin.  Now picture that because of this is isn’t allowed to get a CDL (for one reason or another — but it’s a potential risk).  Now imagine that he had been working (*cough* illegally *cough*) at a place that knew it (he had a CDL, but the state didn’t know at the time or laws changed or something).  Now imagine he gets really sick and can’t work.  Driver’s license comes up for renewal and… oops…. guess what?  Can’t get a CDL anymore because the state found out!  Which means, he can’t do that job anymore (despite not working at it for a few years due to the sickness).  Calls up disability, know what they said?  “Go back to driving a truck!”  After a complete “huh” moment he said “I can’t get a CDL anymore, which means I can’t drive a truck”  — they more or less just repeated the same thing, said it wasn’t their fault then told him to go back to working at a shoe factory (that closed 20 years prior), then another place (that closed more recently, but still closed).  By then they’d reached his high school years.   Two years, multiple useless politicians, multiple court dates and two attorney’s later he finally got it.  Of course all his back pay went in paying all the loans worth up to fifty grand that they had to take out to live — so they weren’t living on the streets.

Then you have another man.  Can’t work because he requires oxygen, and his workplace (due to OSHA requirements, and just an overall hazard) isn’t able to even enter the factory.  Files for disability (2 years before retirement too) and has two diseases that are a life sentence — if he’s lucky he might live another 5 years.  Denied — he’s supposed to “go back to working at the factory”.  But like above, he can’t work at the factory due to state and federal regulations.

There’s something really wrong in the world when a state agency tells you that you won’t get something because you can do something that other agencies say you can’t do because of the reason you applied to get the something.  [Really, that made sense -- I hope at least].  And all it does is hurt the people!  When the person finally gets it, they go back to when you first applied — so it’s not like they’re getting that much more money.  Meanwhile you have probably thousands of families all across the United States just on the brink of homelessness because they can’t work, and can’t get disability!

Want to hear something really funny?  Politicians won’t help — but they still call for donations to get re-elected.  Granted they probably don’t know who the people are directly and all, but it’s still funny.

You’ve heard it before when someone says they don’t believe in violence, “what if someone’s going to kill your family?” Either that or a variant of it. But in many cases, if not most (saying “all” for anything is generally not wise), it’s “non violent — but defense doesn’t count”. Quite simple philosophy really, you don’t go out beating up others, killing, harming, or otherwise initiate violent actions — but if someone were to threaten you or the helpless, they’d step in to prevent the violence (which of course can lead to violence). The real goal of “non violence” is to prevent the initiation of violent acts.

So strike first before they strike at you policies wouldn’t exist.

If no country or person would initiate a violent act, there would be no violence – except in sports, but that’s another thing altogether and isn’t “violent” in a sense.  Few political parties out there even promote non-violence, the green party does, not sure about others, but neither the Democrats or Republicans have a non-violence policy — if they do something’s really wrong.

They start wars and develop laws to “protect” the people from terrorism.  When a candidate wants a war to end, they’re considered “weak” against terrorism so they go against their so-called beliefs.  But even now, there’s reports that neither McCain nor Obama is planning on ending the war; reports that around 90,000 new troops will be sent in, but nothing about really ending it or sending in a troop of diplomats.

Peace can’t be found at the muzzle of a gun, nor at the tip of a warhead.

There’s an old joke about a woman who takes her husband’s boat onto a lake to read in peace and quiet.  A game warden pulls up and asks for her fishing license — she says “I don’t have one.  I’m not fishing.  I’m just reading my book.”  Warden says “but you have all the equipment, so I have to fine you if you don’t have one.”  So she agrees and says “and I’m charging you with rape!”  He asks “Why?!? I haven’t even touched you!”  And she replies “But you have all the right equipment.”

Just because a country has the ability to create something doesn’t mean they will create something.  Striking first to make sure they won’t do it only increases the chances that they will, for self defense.  If you force someone into submission, they’ll defend themselves — then the media and the people will all chant “See! They did what we said!” and in the back you’ll hear a few voices trying to be heard saying “but we forced them to do it.”

There is never a winner in a war.  Everyone looses.  What’s sad is the people of a country might not want the war — but as long as the leaders want it, war it is.  Anytime you hear about a country wanting to put up blockades, force a country into submission, fire missiles into another country, or anything else…. unless you’ve seen proof that the other country started it, the aggressor isn’t the targeted country, it’s the targeting country.

To think that a country and all the people in it just want to kill others is absurd.  Now there might be some groups that want that.  There might even be countries that will back them.  But when violence is the first thing people think to react on, it makes you wonder if diplomacy was ever considered.  With some people, you can’t negotiate.  That’s just a simple fact of things.  But for most people out there, they’d be willing to make concessions.

It makes a person wonder:  when billions to trillions are spent to promote the military, how much is spent for diplomacy?

One thing I find completely shocking is just how many people are surprised when a politician running for office doesn’t vote the way they promise.  Or in some cases vote the complete opposite despite it going against what everyone believes the politician stands (such as Obama and the FISA amendments).  One month he’s for repealing the bill, the next he’s granting pardons and amendments to it.  The internet goes into a fury over this “shocking” thing since he was supposed to be the candidate for “change” not “Bush version 2.0″ (“another Bush” as some are calling it).

But what I find more shocking than anything isn’t that he voted against how everyone expected — but that people actually are shocked that he did.  As time goes on you hear the same basic things all the time, politicians doing the opposite of what they say they’ll do and what policies they were voted into office on.  Some shock.  Didn’t people realize that this who “change” Obama was referring to was an advertising ploy more than a political stance?  If you’re really the candidate for “change” you shouldn’t have to say anything.  People should be able to see it in your actions.  They should be able to see it in your life prior (I won’t say “political” life as a people stay true to themselves, and it’s not always the same — not to mention people aren’t born politicians).

People keep on talking about how the lines between democrat and republican are clear and set.  Yeah…right.  If that were the case they’d have completely different ideas on everything, and it’d be the same throughout the party.  But, it’s not.  It’s down to the individual’s personal beliefs.  And even in the parties, these same people saying they’re so “different” also use terms like “liberal” and “conservative”.  So you’ve got liberal democrats and conservative republicans, but also conservative democrats and liberal republicans (which some would say they’re in the wrong party).  They’re so tangled up and trying to say how different they are, that when you boil a lot away — they all accept corporation donations, they don’t all vote the way you’d expect them to (go against their party), and in the end even if you have a few good ones that do what’s right – they get shoved aside and outvoted by the others.

So this year, just like all others, you get to choose between two candidates.  The Demoblicans (or Repubocrats) — however you want to combine the two into one.  In the end, doesn’t really matter.  They might have different goals to get to a point, they might have slightly different ways to get there, but in the mish-mash of political parties running the US government, you’ll end up with the same thing we always have — something in the middle that people hate, politicians love, and more political fodder to fuel the next mud slinging campaign.

Or…. you could vote for a completely different party.  One that’s ideals and goals are so apart from both of those that they conflict on almost everything.  Your choice.  You could vote for the lesser of two evils, or cast a vote for a third party — telling the two that not only did you take the time out to vote, but you didn’t vote for them.  So then when the lesser of two evils gets elected, they’ll be sent a signal that they weren’t even really wanted in.  And anyone worth anything would take notice.