In the Beginning

I wanted to name this blog something to do with the stocks, the punishment device of old.  Names for most of that were already taken, so that was out, but I figured that wasn't going to work anyway.  I realized that the primary effect of the stocks, what made them work, was shame.  And the accounts of the people and situations I'm going to link to here in the weeks and months and, hopefully, years to come are blissfully unencumbered by shame.  Unless you count the people who read them.  But admit it:  something is seriously wrong with the United States when situations like the ones below, and the people who perpetrate them, are allowed to thrive when so many of us are struggling.  So it's Knews, Not News.  Unsurprised.  Familiar.  As in, I knews something was wrong with that news.

Like this:  Frm the Houston Chronicle:  A death at sea, hardship on land.  I don't know what's more shameful, that companies can get away with no other expenses but lost wages and funeral expenses because the employee died at sea (whether the company was responsible or not), or the fact that this law has been on the books, unchanged, for over NINETY years.

Or this:  Frm the St. Petersburg Times:  Let's Say It Again:  Florida's Legislators are for sale.  All I have to say is:  Well.  Duh.  The only surprising aspect of this is that it's so blatantly above board.  And that all of this is okay if they tell people in a report who bought them.  Which report, no doubt, will be kept for public viewing in a locked safe.  For which the combination has been lost.  And sunk in the deepest part of the Everglades.  Under a car.  And a nuclear power plant.

Or this:  Frm Business Insurance magazine:  Don't Ess-may with Exas-tay.  This is just silly, but I do have a question:  is it Ee-fray Eeech-spay or Ee-fray Peech-say?  My only experience with Pig Latin was long ago in my public high school.  I wasn't really taking it seriously.  It's one thing to have to study a dead language; it's quite another to have it be a primary part of a BLT.

Before I get tarred as a liberal or a conservative, I've given up on the whole Democrat/Republican thing.  Anyone who wants to couch this in terms of political parties is choosing to focus on just the teeny part of the iceberg sticking up out of the water.  But the rest of it is big.   And it's heading right for us.  And the lookouts are asleep.  But the deck chairs look nice, don't they?  Hey, does anyone else hear water running?

So read on.  Write me back to let me know what you think.  And thanks!