Irrationality of US Health Care

Wall Street has nearly self-destructed. Predictable, according to Marx. My question, my lamentation--why couldn't it have been the health care insurance industry instead? A show on PBS tonight claimed that the medically uninsured in the US, some 40 million people, cost the economy $130 billion a year in lost productivity--which is more than the cost of insuring them. Health care should not be managed as a for-profit business. Health care is a fundamental human right, not a privilege to be granted the sick based on their ability to pay or the insurance plan of their employer, if any. The Declaration of Independence states that each citizen has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When you're ill and can't afford to get health care, you have no happiness, your liberty is greatly impaired, and your life, well your life sucks. The Founders did not intend a country that would be populated by thousands of people roaming around on any given day saying, "My life is crap."

The Myth of CEO Accountability

A letter to the editor in the Sept. 19 NYTimes (p. A22) from a Sharon Bermon:

"Nicholas D. Kristof doesn't go far enough when he suggests that overpaid American CEOs should 'learn from Britain and Australia.' I would like to see some masters of the [financial] universe line up, bow deeply and apologize to their employees and shareholders--in the fashion of Japanese managers. And then give back the money they didn't earn."

No Pain at the Top

Three cheers for House speaker Nancy Pelosi who is quoted in today's NYTimes (p. A15) re the US financial crisis: "Let's hear from the private sector. How these captains of the financial world could make millions of dollars in salary, yet their companies fail and then we have to step in to bail them out."

Vested Interests on Their Knees

All the full of sh*t conservative extremists and reactionaries and plutocrats and self-centered expropriators comprising a certain element of the investment class are looking more than usually asinine these days, as the great Wall Street firms go belly-up from excessive greed and short-sighted thinking, and it's amusing to think of the way they always claim government is the source, not the solution, of the periodic economic catastrophes that afflict this nation, because when the chips are down the Republicans are down on their knees begging Washington to save them from bankruptcy, at the taxpayers' expense. Yet, metaphorically speaking, they are my brothers and sisters, these a**hole investment high-rollers, and I extend my arms to them and would gladly take the time to explain to them the errors of their ways, if they would only find the time to fit me into their busy schedules.

Lynch & Stephen Daedelus Discuss Esthetics

From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

"--I speak of normal natures, said Stephen. You also told me that when you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of dried cow dung. Lynch broke again into a whinny of laughter and again rubbed both his hands over his groin but without taking them from his pockets. --O I did! I did! he cried."

New York: Viking, 1964, p. 205.

Wall Street Self-Destructs

In response to the collapse of the high and mighty Wall Street firms it is essentially impossible not to think of Gordon Gecko (Gekko?) from Wall Street and his famous ipse dixit: "Greed is good. Greed works."

Right.

Post Post

I read an amusing script on TriggerStreet and posted a review there today. Story about postal service investigative agents. They go to a house suspected of drug trafficking via post and show their badges to the suspect at the door and he says: "What did I do? Forget to put a return address on an envelope?"

Nothing New Under Le Soleil

I borrow a DVD from the library titled Gabrielle, a French film by I can't remember whom, based on a Conrad work called The Return and how does it start? With the longest opening voiceover I've ever heard. I didn't get around to watching it till the night before it was due, so I wasn't able to watch all of it, because I was tired, but I'm going to borrow it again and see how many pages, or minutes, it runs. It was kind of a typical French film in that it had long, long conversations between two people, the kinds of scenes I'm not allowing myself to write. It deals with a well to do couple who live in an enormous townhouse in what I suppose is Paris and they have like four or five servants, it's true decadence, holds one's attention--the maids wear white gloves when serving dinner. To think that they might accidentally touch the food! Mon Dieu! I'm back to working on the script that opens with the long voiceover after having finished major alterations on Intent to Kill, now titled The Murder Portfolio, based on an excellent story conference with Joe the Conqueror, query letter and one-page synopsis, along with tag line and logline ready to go.