My old copy of  "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary" defines a thug as a "brutal ruffian or assassin"........simple enough; so why is it that I frequently hear NBA basketball players referred to as thugs while never hearing that label applied to NHL hockey players?

In the NBA a flagrant foul or fist fight can lead to huge fines and suspensions while a brawl in the NHL is celebrated as part of the game.

What do you think?

I no longer believe in a personal god but I do believe something happens when people are able to align themselves wholly toward their objectives.  Imagine a critical mass of people focusing on peace in the world or on healing our planet or ending starvation.  We know that war will eventually lead to the destruction of the earth but do we believe that we can end war.  I do.  We, at least many of us, believe that man caused climate change can destroy mother earth but do we believe that we can turn this tide by creating a renewable source or sources of energy.  I do.  We know that we can end starvation but do we believe we will do what needs to be done?  I do.  
 

How can I believe that miracles like these will take place given the history of the world to date?  It’s simple; believing otherwise leads to despair which is the end of hope.  People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King had no room for despair.  They persevered and others joined them and time went on and still more joined them and, eventually, change happened.  The cry of those wanting change was too loud to ignore and the shift occurred.
 

The question now becomes what am I going to do to lend myself to the accomplishment of one or all of these goals.  I can continue to write these little pieces and try to replace the anger I feel with love and understanding and I can look for opportunities to do more and to lend my voice where it might help.  I will continue to trust what Gandhi said; “what you do will make very little difference but it is important that you do it.” I believe we will reach this critical mass and that we will change to a peaceful, caring humanity and I believe that because I, like everyone else, can see the alternative which is horror beyond imagination.
 

The social anthropologist Margaret Mead is famous for having declared; “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
 

I’m reading and hearing everywhere that 98% of sexually active women use birth control regardless of religious affiliation and that the new affordable care act makes it mandatory for institutions offering health insurance plans to offer contraception free of charge.  It’s also clear that contraception is far cheaper than pre-natal care, birth or abortion.  Catholic bishops are in an uproar because they don’t want contraception included in the medical insurance policies of hospitals, universities and other institutions within their purview.  So it should follow that these institutions pay more for health insurance for their employees than similar but secular institutions given that their policies will be covering more births and pre-natal care than policies that include contraception.  But they’re not paying more because the President offered them an out and the insurance companies will magically provide contraception free of charge directly to the employees.  So the bishops get to continue what some may term hypocrisy by making believe they are not offering contraception coverage to their employees.  They’re good at this self-deception thing as they’ve been turning a blind eye to women using daily birth control medication while taking communion for decades; which sounds distressingly like receiving a sacrament while in a state of serious sin which used to be called a sacrilege and was punishable by eternal damnation.
 

I’m sure that many of these women realize the ridiculousness of the church’s position and follow thecorrectness of their own consciences but there are probably many who are living in terrible fear and internal conflict.  But the church has always treated women as second class citizens so we shouldn’t be surprised at this continuation of the callousness of the hierarchy toward them.
 

Earlier today I was reading “To be Human Against All Odds” by Frederick Franck.  The book was a gift from our soul friends Martha and Jack and is frighteningly beautiful and fearless.  In the book is a synopsis of a conversation that Franck had with Albert Schweitzer.  Schweitzer had been interviewed by a magazine reporter who tried to get him to speak of theology but Schweitzer wouldn't bite and simply replied, “Dogma divides, the Spirit unites”.
 

I would love to see the Catholic Church, the church of my youth to which I no longer belong, let dogma be healed by the spirit of humanness which, it seems to me, was what Jesus was all about. But it doesn't seem to be headed in that direction.  In fact I hear they are repudiating many of the human changes instituted by Pope John XXIII in the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960's.

When I was a young boy of 11 or so growing up in our little house in Jersey City with my 6 younger brothers and sisters, there would soon be seven, I used to steal dimes from my mother’s bureau.  I did it so I could buy a candy bar or a bottle of soda or maybe just to have them in my pocket.

Now some 60 years later I’m finding dimes on sidewalks or in the gutter near my car or in driveways……I look down and there’s a dime.  At first I thought nothing of it but then thoughts of my thieving past started to come up…..and thoughts of Mom who died 4 years ago……..and more dimes appeared.  Now I don’t mean to say that these silvery discs appear every day or that there have been very many of them, maybe 10 or so over the past couple of months but I love it and I know that it’s Mom telling me that she’s OK and that she knew I was taking those dimes all those years ago.

We had very little money in those days but never went hungry and had every educational advantage one could imagine.  Maybe Mom knew about those missing coins and replenished the supply when it ran low.

Faith wise I think of myself as an agnatheist, a word that I may have invented although I doubt it because “spell check” hasn’t yet underlined it.  I don’t believe in a god per se but I do believe in some continuous consciousness going on around us and somehow I believe that Mom and Dad and Susan and Paul and others are aware and spiritually alive.  It makes me feel good and to think about Mom when I see a dime sparkling up at me from the ground.

As far as I can see, the theory that the world economy will collapse if these countries don’t make their interest payments is an unquestioned premise.  And the only way to question it is to let them fail and watch the results.  I don’t own any Greek or Irish bonds and I really don’t care if all of the world’s major banks take a huge haircut.  Maybe they’ll fail too and become the size they ought to be.  They are too damned big now and they have far too much influence on our world.

They have been making riskier and riskier loans for a long time.  They refinance old debt with new, longer-term issues.  They know that this refinanced garbage has very little chance of being repaid but they don’t care.  They will take a huge fee for repackaging the debt and get some interest only payments for a while and then move on.  They don’t care a whit if hundreds of thousands of people are laid off and/or lose benefits in order to get interest payments on loans they never should have granted.  In terms of Ponzi schemes they’re Madoff cubed.
 

The American People Want _______.
or
The Market Went Up/Down today because _______.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this but I may just lose my mind the next time I hear another congressional corporate pawn state in the unequivocal way that only they can muster that “the American people want…..blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”.
 

I am one of those American people and probably above the norm educationally and the debt ceiling is not my primary economic concern nor is the national debt.  My primary economic concern is the concentration of wealth in our world and, no, I am not calling for redistribution; I am simply looking for fairness even though one could argue that a redistribution of wealth has occurred over the last thirty years but redistribution going to the rich is a subject we don’t like to talk about. 
 

I am also a small business owner and I assure you that the corporate tax rate has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I hire additional people.  It’s much simpler than that; I hire more people when my clients order more printed products.
 

I’m probably not alone in this either but I’m sick of listening to “experts” tell me why the market did what it did on any given day.  It’s either unemployment claims, or Europe putting the world on the edge of cataclysm, or the USA losing its AAA rating, or retail sales going up/down, or whatever else they can dream up.  I might be branded a cynic here but I believe markets move primarily because traders love volatility and the wilder the better and they conjure up levels of fear or euphoria to make it happen.
 

Osama Bin Laden, the murderer of September 11, 2001 and of many other days was found and killed yesterday by some incredibly brave members of our armed forces and intelligence community.  I heard about it early yesterday morning and really didn’t feel much of anything.  Our government had been searching for him for these ten years and his capture and death didn’t feel very much like a conquest to me.  It was a very mild relief that the search was over and now, finally, we might get back to more peaceful days.
 

An hour or so later I heard that there was great jubilation and cheering in the streets that he was dead.  People were waving flags and cheering USA, USA, over the fact that our government had killed this perpetrator of the worst evil ever to befall our country.  I was surprised at that reaction but probably shouldn’t have been.  We are a warlike people and life to many of us takes on the dimensions of a zero sum game.
 

I have committed violent acts for which I am sorry and I hope never to repeat them.  I am grateful for the lives of Mohandas Gandhi, Jesus and Martin Luther King who all practiced non-violence and did so with bravery in their hearts.  They were strong men all and they knew that the result of violence has always been greater violence.
 

The words and acts of Gandhi have been a wellspring for me for a long time.  He said that “victory attained through violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary” and that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.  It seems to me that we are becoming blind to the history of the world which has proved over and over that violence begets violence…..every time.
 

I am neither sad nor happy that Bin Laden is dead.  I am sad that we never learn but remain aware that I am capable of that which I know to be counter to the peace I long for.  I am hopeful that that awareness will continue to keep me on a path to peace. 
 

A quote from the writings of Franz Kafka popped up on my home internet page today, it said: “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to fashion.  Rather, follow your most intense obsession mercilessly.”

I don’t know if I can follow that advice with the fire advocated by Kafka but I do feel the need to stick ever more tightly to my principles regardless of the barrages thrown at us Progressives/Liberals.  I listen to the news proclaiming that we are a bankrupt nation and that the expenses we need to cut are the so called entitlements.  These “entitlements” are the benefits we have guaranteed to the financially insecure whom we have left behind.  We are a ruthlessly competitive society and, as such, there are many who do not win and are thus left out of the spoils splitting.  Our claim that we are a caring people is not backed up by our constant beating down of the less fortunate members of our society.  The current House budget proposal seeks to remove funds from the Healthy Start program which aids poor mothers and their infants.  If our purpose is to pick on the defenseless, infants are a good place to start.

When are we going to stop nurse-maiding major industrial and agricultural corporations and banks?  How can I find out how many billions of dollars are given to these industrial behemoths each year?  How much of our half trillion dollar defense budget goes to corporations for weapons we don’t need just because their plants are in powerful congressional districts?  When are our congress people going to start wearing NASCAR uniforms with patches from their industrial sugar daddies sewn on their chests? 

My intense obsession is that I know that we citizens of this great experiment must speak our truth in the face of the “facts” that rain down on us from corporate and government liars.  Don’t tell me that health care can’t be managed by Medicare less expensively than by insurance companies.  Don’t tell me that the government shouldn’t negotiate pricing with big pharma.

I know that the pension systems of many state and municipal governments are being manipulated so fix them and stop the stealing.  But I also know that many of the investments they were talked into during the recent go-go years were extortionist and should be prosecuted.  We focus on the cheating pensioners but they’re small time compared to the big bank thieves.  We focus on them because it’s easier to pick on the little guy and especially so when the big guy is lining your pockets and is well on his way to owning all the media.  And speaking of media the house budget is recommending that funding for the Public Broadcasting System should be eliminated.

I can’t do much about these injustices but I can follow Gandhi’s direction that says: “Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is very important that you do it.”
 

I get a literary quote posted to my home internet page each day.  Sometimes they’re thought provoking, sometimes confusing and occasionally incomprehensible.  Yesterday’s quote was from W.H. Auden and it said, “A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.”

The picture of the mythic hero standing with his sword while a fire breathing dragon looms over him is certainly the thing of poems and fairy tales.  But what came to my mind was the image of a U.S. Air Force officer kissing his family good-by and driving to his office where he sits in front of a computer monitor and directs a drone some 7,000 miles away toward a bombing target where people will be killed and then getting back in his car and driving home for some dinner and family time.  I have very little quarrel with this “pilot” but I am deeply troubled by the concept.  He and we are so far removed from the destruction we cause that it somehow doesn’t feel like murder but it is and it is premeditated.

What goes on in the minds of these “pilots”?  How can they do this?  Are they in some form of deep denial or are their brains washed by the esprit de corps preached to them constantly?  Do they ever, while hugging their children, think of the parents and children they might have killed that day?  Do they ever ask why are we doing this?  I’m no poet but I’d like to hear someone write one about the mind of the drone driving bomb deliverer.

I got a call from the Democratic National Committee last evening asking me if I was disappointed in President Obama.  I told them that I was and that my primary disappointment was that we were still fighting and occupying Afghanistan and that I’d never heard a good reason for it.  My comment was ignored and answered with the question “didn’t I like the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell?  I didn’t know what to say so I simply told him that I would not be donating any money to the DNC. 
 

My brother Paul died two months ago after many years of suffering.  I am the eldest of the eight McGee siblings and Paul was second.  He was a wonderfully respected and well loved geriatric physician in Sussex County New Jersey where he served for some 40 years.

To me he was much more than that physician; he was my brother whom I loved deeply.  My earliest memories of Paul are of him studying….studying anything and everything in the living room of our little house on Ege Avenue in Jersey City.  One of his pleasures as a young boy was reading the Encyclopedia Americana that our parents struggled to buy so that we might have reference materials available when we needed them.  Paul was the first person I knew who memorized all of the state capitals; he knew every New York Yankee stat there was to know; he was one of those people who seemed to know everything.  His unquenchable thirst for knowledge was a good part of the reason that he won full academic scholarships at every level of his education.  Because of his determination and, gifted with innate intelligence, he never had to pay a cent toward his tuition at St. Peter’s Prep, St. Peter’s College or Cornell Medical School.

Ironically, the suffering he endured was, I believe, caused largely by inadequate medical care.  Early in his freshman year at St. Peter’s College he got sick.  He had a fever of unknown origin and began to experience swelling in his legs.  He was admitted to the hospital; the fever continued and the swelling grew worse.  He was subjected to “exploratory surgery”.  They took his appendix out and looked around and, as I remember, continued to be stumped.  Over the next few weeks his body developed “new” veins, actually visible on his abdomen, which fed his legs although poorly.  He was forced to wear very heavy support stocking from then on, around 50 years.  He did his best to help his poor circulation by riding his bike for many miles through the hills of Sussex County for years until he no longer could.  These physical problems led to him experiencing many surgeries.  He developed asthma, arthritis and was constantly plagued with phlebitis and polycystic kidneys.  He continued to practice through all of this and actually made hospital rounds in a wheel chair almost to the very end.  It must be said that he probably would have had to stop a few years ago were it not for Barbara, his wife who was his constant helper and assistant for all of the 10 years of their marriage and who apparently loved him sweetly.

For me his wake and funeral served as a sort of reintroduction.  I knew that he was a dedicated physician and I knew that he was very bright but I had no idea of the impact he had on the people he served or on the other Docs he worked with.  I heard people say time and time again at the wake that he had “saved my life” and they asked “what am I going to do now” and doctors said that he was their doctor; specialists told me that they had to be on their toes when they were referred a patient from Paul because they knew he would question their every decision.  They loved him too.

It was really nice to hear his high school friends tell stories about him which helped us all to remember what a character he was and that he had a terrific sense of humor which, I’m sure, helped him to endure the constant pain that he lived with for decades.

God speed brother and if there’s a paradise maybe you, Susan, Mom and Dad can make room for the rest of us. 
 

I was born in a country which had within it an economy. I believe we now have an economy which calls itself a country.  My sense is that our nation is no longer governed by the people but rather ruled by a cabal of CEO’s most of whom run banks.  But these “banks” no longer do much of what banks used to do.  They now lobby congress for rules changes which allow them to do things that were once labeled criminal.

For example, loan sharks were jailed for charging rates less than some of these “banks” charge the economically disadvantaged today.  And, not surprisingly, they pick on the same people that the sharks used to feed on.

These “banks” also create things that they call financial instruments that are essentially bets against securities they are selling to clients.  And to make matters worse they can bet thousands of times the value of the securities.  It’s been said, and rightly so, that it’s essentially the same as buying many fire insurance policies on the same building so that when the building burns the insurer pays thousands of times the value of the building.

A couple of years ago when these banks, through all sorts of risky games, put the world economy on the edge of an abyss there was talk that many of these firms were too big to fail; meaning that if they were to fail they would take the world down with them.  This was determined to be a fact but nothing was done to make them smaller.  Therefore, we have essentially told them that if this happens again we will once again save their collective butts so go ahead and play your games and reap your ill-gotten harvests and when you fail we’ll be there.  We have, all of us, become the prodigal parent.

The worst thing about all of this nonsense is that it is legal in the USA.  So, how can this be?  The only answer is that the perpetrators are making the rules and they are backed by our supreme court as I believe can be seen in their decision in the Citizen’s United case where they allow corporations to spend whatever they like in support of political organizations backing individual candidates.  Corporations have been told that they have the same rights as ordinary citizens but there is nothing ordinary about their power given the vast sums of capital they control.
 

The so called battle between these two media giants will have winners and losers.  And to the surprise of no one the winners will be both Cablevision and Fox and probably a few non participants like Verizon FIOS and others.  The losers will be the “viewing public” who will be paying more and more for television, a service which was free only three decades ago.

Are we to actually believe that these two behemoths are really at odds with each other?  I for one do not believe it for a minute.  I won’t go so far as to call it a conspiracy because you know what they say about conspiracy theorists and I certainly don’t care to be numbered among them.

I believe it’s simply another case of one giant corporation feigning war with another for the sole purpose of increasing revenue without increasing cost or service.  It’s sort of like the little make believe battles between the drug companies and the insurance carriers.  When the dust settles we the people pay more for less and the corporations show bigger and bigger profits.

O bla di, O bla da life goes on………

Who am I? I know now, more than ever before, who it is that resides deep within me and that it is not the personality built by my life experiences over these almost 70 years. It is more likely that cherubic infant whose photo graced the bureau of my bachelor apartment almost 20 years ago. Those were powerful days. I was initiating a divorce from my wife of 26 years and someone suggested that I keep a baby picture of myself in a place where I would see it often. This little angel had a real smile that shone from his soul. To paraphrase Frederick Beuechner who said so beautifully in his book “Telling Secrets” the world had yet to have its way with him.

Over the days and decades as this little one grew and learned of the dangers both real and imagined that inhabited his world he began to hide that open smile and put forth a personality. It seems now that a purpose of that personality was to hide his shame and win the applause of others. Early on he began to feel unworthy and unlovable. So he developed tools to keep these feelings and thoughts deep within himself while projecting an image in opposition to them. He continued to build and burnish this image which he ultimately came to believe was the authentic him.

A number of years ago I came across the Hindi expression “neti-neti” which I was told meant “not this, not that” and was useful in the Hindu world in helping to understand the nature of love or god or other unexplainable concepts. I find that I am one of these unexplainable concepts and that “neti-neti” helps me when I use it in times of unrest. I might be in a fury over some perceived wrong. More and more now I’ll ask myself what was that or more to the point who was that? Was that me or was it a part of that personality which I use as a mask? My answer can be “not me, not me”.

I continue to experience feelings of fear based rage today but I almost never act on them.  There is developing within me a feeling that brings me back toward that little guy with the beautiful smile. The truth that I am, at my core, a kind, gentle and loving man who is less and less afraid of that truth.

I am a great fan of Mohandas Gandhi and this quote of his helps me:

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won.  There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fail.  Think of it……always!”......Gandhi

At times like these with war raging everywhere and the distance between the economic classes growing wider with greater and greater speed; with people starving in this the richest nation in history; with the social and financial crimes of corporations receiving the imprimatur of governments one might, understandably, despair.  I know I have felt helpless and voiceless in the face of it all but when I do speak out I feel better and hope begins to overwhelm the despair and passion and energy pour in. 

In his blockbuster book “The Big Short” Michael Lewis describes a scenario wherein bond trader A asks bond trader B how he is going to screw him in a trade they were considering.  Each of these characters knew that the other was going to take as much as possible with no regard for anyone else.  I guess you can call that trust because it’s all out in the open.  In this arena I can trust that you couldn’t care less about me and that it is, therefore, my job to protect myself from you.

It shouldn’t be that way when we buy a life insurance policy from a company whose stated purpose is to help people in their time of need, but it is.  Bloomberg Markets has just published a piece by David Evans about major insurance firms and the deceptive methods they employ in distributing death benefits.

Apparently the mother of a fallen soldier in our never ending war on terror was informed by one of these companies that her son had named her as the beneficiary of a $400,000 life insurance policy.  The company then asked if she would like a lump sum or a 36 month payout.  She opted for the lump sum and the company sent her what appeared to her to be a checkbook but it was not.  It was a debit book with a number of check like drafts that she assumed were checks.  Each had the name of a major bank on it and it appeared that she had an account with that bank but she did not.  The $400,000 remained in the accounts of the insurance company earning some 5% annually while she was paid interest amounting to ½%.  To add insult to injury her $400,000 was not FDIC protected while in the accounts of the company a seemingly minor point but, given the disasters of the last few years, who knows?

Andrew Cuomo is opening an investigation on this and I wish him well.  The insurance giant is sure to employ the famous “small print defense” where they, like the traders albeit in more refined language, tell us how they’re going to screw us.