Category Archives: Economy

Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square (via sturdyblog)

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, preparedness, sustainability, the dreaded politics and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is absolutely a must read to understand the Greek protests, and indeed the economic crisis.

Pay particular attention to this quote from the article:

“A doctor talking on Al Jazeera yesterday explained how even GPs and nurses have become so desperate

that they ask people for money under the table in order to treat them, in what are meant to be free state hospitals.

Those who cannot afford to do this, go away to live with their ailment, or die from it.

The Hippocratic oath violated out of despair, at the place of its inception.”

No bribes, but much the same result here.

Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly. What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and … Read More

via sturdyblog

TEOTAWKI preparations…why?

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in comedy, common sense, Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness, sustainability

For those of you not in the know, that stands for The End of the World As We Know It.  This blog was designed originally as a political commentary on topics close to my heart — TEOTAWKI among them.  Now, while the CDC did recently publish a preparedness memo for the Zombie Apocalypse,  I’ m sure it was more than a little tongue in cheek.  HOWEVER.  That does not eliminate the fact that their preparedness memos are designed for EVERY citizen, and it would behoove one to pay more than a passing bit of attention on their list of *must have* items in one’s storage.

Why?  You ask.  And well you might.  I have a good reason, from my own experience.  When I was growing up, we lived for a time in a cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan.  In the winter, we had no running water — the pipes froze from October until June.  We often had no electricity — snowstorms knocked out power lines. We were snowed in, sometimes for weeks at a time — we lived 6 miles from the main road.  We had no central heat — we had a wood stove (that kept the house pretty warm) and a fireplace (that was pretty to look at but mostly just sucked the heat out the chimney).  So:  we had a large store of canned goods, both those that my mom canned and those we purchased at the store.  My dad hunted and we fished from the river for our protein (meat) needs.  We had kerosene lamps, and gallons of kerosene for those nights we didn’t have electricity.  We had cords and cords of wood cut and stacked.  We heated snow on the stove and bathed as well as cooked and cleaned with melted snow.  All in all, other than the time that I broke my little sister’s collarbone by playing the overly rambunctious bucking bronco (she was 2, I was 7), it was a pretty good life.  Oh, and when my rabbit ate the feet off my barbie dolls wasn’t so great either….  But back to preparedness.  Now, this was a long time ago, and it was special circumstances, and maybe you think that would never ever happen to you.

So how about a more recent example or two?  Recently a storm knocked out the transformer that served our corner of the county.  Our community along with four others were without power for a day.  We were without power for most of the time, others were without power for part of it and intermittent for the rest.  For us, that meant we had no water -  the community pumping system has no generator backup.  We had no electricity — so no lights obviously; we also had no oven because our stove is electronic ignition and, while a lighter will start the burners, the oven has a safety backup and will not light if there is no power.  We also had no heat as we use space heaters to heat the rooms we’re in, and a heated mattress pad on the bed, and the central heating doesn’t work without power (not that we have used it in the last five years anyway).  It was wintertime, keep that in mind.  Even in Arizona, temps can get pretty low, especially when it snows where we live.

Or how about the time a friend of ours had a power outage when they lived in Yuma?  Two weeks without power, water, heat, etc.  They had to move into a hotel.

So what did we do without power?  Well, we had stored food — and we had a pressure cooker.  We have a camp oven that could have made bread (or cake) on the top of the stove.  We have kerosene lamps, which provide heat — and light — and we have gallons of kerosene stored.  We did NOT have enough water, even though we have a water filtration system, so we had to go to the store for water (and thankfully we thought far enough in advance that there was water at the local market).  We had rain barrel water storage for bathing (boil first, of course) and toilet flushing.  And we had solar power backup, which meant we could keep the cell phones charged (no land line, no power) and the computer running, as well as the HAM radio.  We also have clothing appropriate for the weather — wool sweaters, long underwear, and are familiar with the idea of layering.  I even wore a hat in the house to keep my head warm.  Our outage only lasted a day, but we would have been comfortable and well fed even if it had lasted for weeks — unlike 99% of our neighbors…who went to stay with friends or family for the duration if they could, or suffered in the cold and the dark if they couldn’t.

Why do I think *you* should do at least a little of the same?  Well, the reason is pretty simple.  The American Society of Civil Engineers (the ones who make sure the highway over passes, water systems, sewage systems, electric grids, etc — all the things that make modern life possible) say that American infrastructure is failing. 

The power outages are going to get more frequent, the water quality from the tap is going to get worse, gasoline is going to become unaffordable (even if prices drop — if you don’t have a job you can’t afford gas) and food INsecurity is becoming an increasing concern of our government regarding our citizens.  Do you want to end up having to impose on friends or family, or do you want to be the one being able to offer shelter (and really good food) for those who *need* shelter?  For me, the answer is simple.  I’m a hedonist, I want to be comfortable no matter what the circumstances — so I prepare.  I’d much rather be hospitable than impose.

I had a conversation with some coworkers this past weekend — they were talking about sources for rubber seals for their pressure canners and cookers.  I informed them that I own an All American Pressure Canner.  And that if the end of the world happened, I would still be happily canning away while they cursed their cookers and canners.

Why this one?  Well first of all, because it was given to me, before I realized the benefits.  Second of all, IT DOES NOT REQUIRE A RUBBER SEAL.  If TEOTAWKI happens, I can still can to preserve food — because my canner doesn’t rely on industry to provide rubber seals.  If seals quit being made tomorrow, I could still can.  And canning our excess is definitely a large part of our preparedness.  It’s cheaper — don’t believe anyone who tells you it isn’t — and the quality is much higher.  I KNOW what is in those cans, I grew it and canned it.

You should store water, at least the amount you drink in 48 hours — and you should rotate it monthly, and you should put either iodine or bleach into the storage container to prevent bacterial and fungal growth.  We have a 2. 5 gallon water jug but that wasn’t nearly enough for our needs for the amount of time we were without water — which is my mistake.  I had foolishly thought we would just use the rain barrel water — but when it came down to it we weren’t brave enough to run the water through the filtration system.  So, we now have several containers that I need to fill and store.  We use between 5 and 8 gallons of water daily, between drinking needs, coffee (this is *not* a luxury in our house) and cooking, as well as for the animals.  In the summer we use more, because it’s Arizona and it’s HOT.

You should store at least a week’s worth of food — peanut butter, rice, dried beans, canned veggies and meats.  Admittedly you can choose food you would NEVER eat if you didn’t have to, but why not choose foods you already eat and buy extra?  Then just rotate it through your normal stores. I believe the CDC recommends two weeks’ worth.   If we couldn’t get to a grocery store for six months, we would still eat like we always do.

You should have a lantern or two — or at least a bunch of candles.  Believe me, light makes the difference between depression and hope.  And candles put off a hella good amount of heat — maybe it won’t be 70, but it will be a little warmer, especially if you keep several in a smallish room.

For our further preparations, we have planned to install a wood stove.  It will allow us to heat without being dependent on electricity at all.  And we also plan to get solar powered lanterns.  Kerosene got *quite* expensive this last year, enough so that it justifies the cost of solar lanterns.  Unlike kerosene, though, we buy them once and they will last for many years (provided I remember to put them in the window to recharge…) – and they give off better light for knitting, reading, etc.  And are cleaner — no nasty smell.

In short, you should actually pay attention to at least some  of the recommendations of your government.  It could possibly save your life, your dignity, or your marriage.

The state of Arizona’s medical problems.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, the dreaded politics

Well, our senate, in its infinite wisdom, did not pass the hospital levy bill.  This is a bill that was basically a tax on hospitals, clinics, and doctors that would give 3% of their take back to the state.  It was a voluntary tax — and would end up being reimbursed as the parties would end up getting it back in the form of medical reimbursement from AHCCCS and Medicare.  Think of it as a circle — these entities pay in advance to start, but get paid back as they continue to pay the 3% for future reimbursement.

250,000 people will lose their AHCCCS benefits in July.  These people aren’t going to simply quit getting sick, and they’re not going to quit coming to the hospital.  Now the hospitals are just going to quit getting reimbursed for services rendered.

Rumor has it some hospitals are already actively laying staff off — respiratory therapists, techs, and nurses in anticipation of these cuts.  Others are simply not hiring for empty positions as people leave; every hospital I know of is running on short staffing.  Not that this is new; it is merely much worse than it used to be.  One hospital I have heard of is giving ICU nurses 3 and 4 patients; telemetry nurses are getting 6 at another.  These are NOT safe nurse to patient ratios.  And I can guarantee, when (not if) the shit hits the fan and a patient has a negative outcome, the facility will blame the nurse rather than take the responsibility for overloading them.   Whichever facility that might be.

I have even heard that patients who are admitted to one hospital are ending up spending their stay in the ER because the hospitalists (the doctors who take care of you while you’re admitted) refuse to accept care if the patients don’t have insurance.  This, friends, is what will end up happening on a grand scale state wide.  I can anticipate that within a few years, some rural hospitals may even close entirely.

All this, while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid are reducing reimbursement to facilities nationwide based on patient satisfaction surveys.  Which by the way have nothing to do with the physical quality of care, nor the appropriateness of care rendered, but with the patient’s perception of how well their desires were catered to by the staff.

This is the beginning of an absolute nightmare for access to health care in general, and illness care in particular, in this state.

I have spring planting fever in a bad way

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, Independence Days, sustainability

I waited months longer this year, three months to be exact, to plant because last year I had leggy overgrown plants and I had to start over last year after a late and heavy frost.  I feel behind this year.

In the left pot is a couple of Bocking 14 comfrey plants; the back is lavender, and the two right are rhubarb.  I found out by accident that while rhubarb dies in the ground here, it does wonderfully well in deep pots.  Who knew?  I’m looking forward to rhubarb pie finally.  And the leaves won’t be wasted even though they’re poisonous, they’re a good dye plant.  Yay!

Far left is more Bocking 14 comfrey; they were supposed to send me six plants but I got 8, hence the two in the other pot.  These are only temporarily in the pots until I dig and compost near the fence where they’ll be permanently situated.

Next left is rosemary, to replace the rosemary that died; next to that is chives, and far right is my rhubarb plant which is so happy it was even trying to blossom until I snipped it off…I want leaf stalks, not flowers!  It tends not to produce as much edible foliage if it is allowed to flower, and it also does not tend to produce viable seed due to its long history of cultivation via splitting the root bunch.

My asparagus bed.  The chickens, when they accidentally ‘got free’ without supervision, dug up my asparagus roots over the winter and I thought they had killed them all.  I just planted more, so the entire bed is now dedicated to asparagus; happily, I found when I was trenching for the new plants, that they had killed fewer of the established plants than I had thought.  That is good, because we have been dedicatedly NOT eating the asparagus for the last three years, patiently waiting for it to get firmly established before we began gorging ourselves.

What else was planted today?  A 4 x 4 bed of carrots, hopefully that will mature and be out of the bed before I need it in June.  Lettuce, turnip greens, green pepper, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green chiles, and orach.

The white eggplant I think are done; being stepped on was not a good experience for them.  I transplanted them from the little peat buttons into compost in the hope they’ll do better; we’ll see.  More of the purple survived the trauma and they tend to produce better anyway in my experience.  We’ll see how it goes; I still have time and I may just plant another six or so to cover my bets.

One loofa seed from my Christmas loofa gift basket has sprouted!  I got a basket with soaps and a loofa from the Guild Christmas exchange.  I planted the four seeds that were left inside it and I wasn’t expecting anything at all so that was a fantastic surprise.  I got more loofa seed anyway just in case.  A plant that is edible and is useful as a scrubby?  How can you go wrong?

I’m pleasantly tired, and very dirty.  If only this wind would stop!  I’m starting to understand why settlers in Wyoming went mad from the wind.

 

No Power

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness

We have no power, no telephone (but cell works) no water. A transformer went last night. DH is grateful for the solar power that is allowing me to make a new blog post; I’m grateful for the kerosene lanterns, the candles, the pressure cooker, the rain barrels (for flushing) and the Berkey filter system for drinking water, as well as for our food storage.

Lesson learned. We definitely still need a wood stove. It’s about 58 in here, and sure to drop lower tonight; we need lanterns with better light than the kerosene lanterns so rechargeable solar lanterns are definitely in our future; we need drinking water storage. And a toilet seat for the bucket that is in the bathroom so that we can just take the urine out to the garden on a daily basis.

All in all, not so bad. We’ll be playing guitar, I’ll be going to bed early (I work tomorrow anyway) and I have a propane camp heater for the bathroom so I can get around in more than 45 degree temps.

Supposedly they’ll have the power back up by tonight; I’m not holding my breath. We’ll be OK if it doesn’t come back right away.

After all, with a failing infrastructure it’s the wave of the future.

My job is making me sick.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, the dreaded politics, work

My job is making me sick.  Well, I guess it isn’t the job itself, per se, it’s the fact that my level of work related stress is so incredibly high, and my ability to recover between shifts is non-existent, that my defenses are simply down for the count.

When I say sick, I don’t mean, “oh, well I just can’t face going to work today so I’m going to call out” kind of sick.  I mean, pulling over on the side of the road on the way to to work so I can puke, stopping in gas stations to purge myself in the bathroom kind of sick.  I’ve had dysentery and frankly I’ll take that over this.  It is without a doubt stress related but legitimate illness none the less.  Fevers, the whole nine yards.  Even water becomes a luxury because I can’t keep it down.  This is the second time in a month this has happened to me; I’ve also begun having migraines with disturbing regularity after a period of several years with less than one per year.  These too have picked up in severity; I never used to actually vomit with migraines although I would be nauseated.  I’m not so lucky any more.

As some of you might know from my previous posts, I work in a very busy metropolitan emergency room.  It means that we take care of a high volume of patients daily, regardless of whether or not the trauma services are needed.  I recently heard the numbers:  last year, we cared for an average of 150 patients per day.  This year, we are caring for an average of close to 200.  Now, fifty people doesn’t maybe seem like that much, but you multiply that by the fact that each nurse is caring for an average of close to 6 additional patients per day, it adds up.  Each of those people is another assessment; each more than likely means lab draws, IV’s, medications, re-assessments, other treatments as needed, final assessment, discharge, and escorting to the discharge area.  All of that needs to be crammed into the same time period as the previous patient load used to be, and means that everyone is constantly under time pressures as well as direct pressures by management to ‘move them through!’

When I went from being a firefighter paramedic and working 24 hour shifts to being a nurse and working 12 hour shifts, probably the biggest surprise to me was the fact that working a 12 hour shift is as mentally and sometimes physically taxing as working a 24.  That’s because as a nurse, you don’t get ‘down time’ in between patients.  You always have at least one, usually more, and you are always thinking ahead to what has been done, what still needs to be done, who is sitting in triage and will probably be your next patient and what will be need to be done immediately for that patient, and so on…for 12 hours.  Now, I’ve worked 24 hour shifts and worked two jobs at a time for nearly 20 years, but this is without a doubt the most stressful job I’ve ever done.

Add to that the fact that our administration is –wasting- hundreds of thousands of dollars on ‘consulting groups’ to *supposedly* increase our productivity, and we are in a constant state of flux because of that, and there are now constant and unrelenting pressures on us to produce as though we were assembly line worker s pumping out auto parts, and you can maybe understand that my level of stress has been bumped up by more than a few notches in the last eight months or so.  The fact that we are a not for profit organization, and that people come to our facility from all over the Valley specifically because of the reputation for quality care we have sustained for nearly 50 years, doesn’t seem to matter to our administration.  They have lost sight of the fact that we are non-profit, and only care about increasing the profit margins, I would guess so that their salaries remain completely OUT of line with the rest of the line staff, and so that they continue to accrue ridiculous bonuses for said ‘productivity’.  If you are getting the idea that I’m bitter about that you’d be right.  If you are getting the idea that I’m not alone in my feelings of stress and alienation you’d also be right on the mark.  Administration approved the purchase of pizza for the entire hospital last week….big whoop.  Yeah, that makes up for treating us like crap for the last year.  Totally.

As you might guess, it shows in sick calls, in short staffing, in the numbers of people – many of whom have been at our facility their entire careers – leaving for other places and jobs where they aren’t treated as cattle herders and brow beaten constantly.  Our facility got rid of the incentive pay for extra shifts a couple of years ago; I recently heard it is probably being brought back because it’s nearly impossible to get people to come in on their days off any more.  They can’t get pool people to stay because they can work elsewhere and be treated better (which is saying something very significant when you consider that our facility, for many years, was almost impossible to get hired into unless someone died) In fact, it’s now down to when they DO get someone to work extra, they send people home based on how much they make per hour rather than who is next on the go home list.

I actually think the way our facility’s administration thinks is related to our culture at large.  The dysfunctional value they place on themselves as being necessary to the functioning of the facility while they remain completely oblivious to the problems at the level of the baseline reason for the facility’s existence seems to be to be related to the profits and bonuses of Wall Street executives.  Their bonuses too are completely out of line with the line staff salaries.  They too value themselves as entirely too valuable while ignoring the fact that their companies wouldn’t work without the little people do actually do work for them.

I recently heard on BBC radio that a study was recently done using college level business students at a major university.  The premise of the study was to see if bonuses raised productivity or if the threat of punishment – to management – raised it.  It turns out the threat of punishment – not only losing bonuses, but losing position, motivated managers to do their job properly – to actually manage – and be involved in the day to day activities that were tied to the punishment.  Performance significantly increased for the group with the threat of punishment.  Now, what that says about human nature I wouldn’t like to guess, but I think it’s worth noting that our administration is utilizing the threat of punishment – for lower level staff – as a stick while keeping any and all bonuses for our increased productivity for themselves.

I have no good conclusion for this rant except to point out that I – someone who has been pretty resilient for a lifetime – am becoming as I get older, prey to stress related illness.  I shudder to think what that might mean if I were to become disabled.

Ugh. I hate technology sometimes.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, sustainability

We have two laptops; one is a gateway that’s nearly ten years old — Mr. Tin Foil bought it for me when I first went back to school. The other is a Vaio, which he bought to take with him to Hawaii when he worked there, as well as going with him all over the Western Hemisphere when he worked for a company that sent him out weekly. It’s about five years old.

Well, in the last probably six months or so, the Gateway (which is the backup laptop) and the Vaio both have been getting QUITE cranky. The poor gateway is just old and slow; the Vaio keeps doing things like refusing to recognize the printer, insisting we have no internet (which we do), refusing to recognize our home network, crashing in the middle of important things, and so on.

Since he uses the desktop now that he doesn’t travel any more, and I use the laptop since I stand up and take it around the house with me frequently, this has been a huge issue — we’re both going to school, both our classes are on line, and we both need to have access to a computer to get our stuff done, often at the same time.

I gave up today when I could no longer download any podcasts, and it took restarting the computer three times to be able to access my online class, which ate up nearly an hour and a half. We broke down and bought a new laptop. I am NOT happy about the price, but I would be much more unhappy not to graduate in May.

I am pretty unhappy about the fact that laptops don’t last very long. I’m told that ours had a long life though, so maybe I just am expecting too much. I was pretty upset when my Ipod started crapping out too, but the people at the store were absolutely incredulous that it’s lasted me eight years. Guess it’s a matter of relativity.

I’m getting a wood stove for sure now, though. I gotta balance this out with a low tech option or it will make me crazy.

Walker is a Koch whore, bought and paid for….just listen!

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, the dreaded politics, work

It’s a two part audio; someone called Walker’s office pretending to be David Koch. Quite the interesting audio, I must say, well worth the nearly 20 minutes to listen to the whole exchange. Link to the original blog site (thanks to the Beast for posing and posting!!) after the two audio links. Partial transcript there, but you really lose some of the juiciest parts if you only read the transcript…

The Beast’s blog

Awesome.

Now, as I said I think union brass are out of touch with reality; they are greedy in many cases. But that is not the case with the average union member. My dad was a union organizer for many years; I am slightly ashamed to say that when I was growing up I thought it was a stupid job whose time had passed 50 years ago. Then I moved to Arizona, the ‘right to work’ state and took a job in a casino right across the river in Nevada. I started working right when the casino workers were trying to organize for better treatment and pay. Shortly after that was when union organizers were found murdered in the parking lot of a casino. Wow. What my dad did was dangerous and valuable, and it took moving nearly 3000 miles away for me to realize that.

My home state is one of the states now trying to bust unions. And my dad is now one of my heroes.

Update: Great article. Puts my sentiments into better words than I could have, and I had been kicking around a post on exactly this.  (of course, that’s probably why he gets paid to write and I only blog.)