Pity the Rich

Too often we find ourselves overwhelmed with concern for the most vulnerable people in this world, be it the child in inner-city Chicago who goes without health care, or the Indian farmer eking out a living on his 10 acre plot. We sometimes forget, distracted by our empathy for the poor, that the rich too can suffer terribly. We can thank the New York Times for reminding us of their plight with their recent story, "The Tyranny of the 2nd Home." It lays out, in terrible detail, the agony of living with a weekend home. Dear readers, I must caution you that after reading this story I felt an unbearable anguish. If you are weak of heart, you may wish to confine yourself to the following excerpts rather than reading the entire, heart-wrenching work:

These second, but never secondary, houses can be exhausting, their owners admit, a litany of bills and guilt and traffic — and meals to cook for guests who arrive with only one wish: to be entertained.

Second home owners can experience an unbearable level of anxiety, knowing their scenic view might disappear at any moment:

Expecting a bucolic retreat, the Sevastopoulos soon found themselves in a pitched battle over a threatened power plant across the river in Athens. As first proposed, the water-cooled plant would have had tall stacks that would have destroyed the view from their 1930s white Colonial Revival weekend abode.

Though a lucky few of these homeowners have access to private air travel, many are forced to use antiquated and dismally slow public (!) rail transportation to get to their second homes:

But despite the tyranny of the train, another nightmare for weekend commuters who don’t have a private jet, Mr. Bricker finds his house “idyllic, bliss,” with only one thing lacking. “If only I had the kind of job where I could leave Thursday night or Friday morning. ...”

In the desperate world of weekend homes, a fierce competition for scare resources can develop:

Yet building something — anything — in the Hamptons is “a nail biter,” he said. “Especially right now, before the season begins, because someone is always willing to throw money around to get their own project finished, and then you lose your contractor.”

Though many of us find ourselves giving to food pantries during the Christmas season, we forget that having too much food can be a terrible burden too:

“The vegetable garden — the production of too many vegetables, and the guilt of not eating them,” said Susan E. Bell, a paleontologist from New York City, who with her husband, Byron, an architect, owns a house he designed in Woodstock, N.Y. “And then, of course, all the effort it takes to persuade the house guests to take the vegetables with them.“

Bravo, Times, for having the decency and sense of social responsibility to bring the often-forgotten plight of the rich into the light.

Drug Dealers

The makers of OxyContin plead guilty of misleading the public about the drug's addictiveness [link]. According to US Attorney John Brownlee:

"With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public...For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice."

According to the DEA, the drug caused or contributed to 464 deaths in 2002. The company and three of its current and former executives were ordered to pay $634.5 million in fines, which initially seems like a large number, but it should be noted that annual sales of OxyContin were over $1 billion just in the year 2000, and at it's peak, there were over 600,000 prescriptions per year [link].


In other news, in Houston, Douglas Lee King Jr. plead guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to distribute [link]. He was caught with 3 ounces of cocaine, valued at approximately $3,000. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Old School

As you have probably heard, the FBI has foiled an alleged plot
by Islamic extremists to attack Fort Dix. Provided this all turns out to be real (plenty of precedence for it not to be) what struck me about this is that it seems that law enforcement authorities worked within the law to prevent the attack. The tip off came from an individual who heard about what the suspects were planning to do, no illegal wiretapping or torture. Using informants and undercover agents, the FBI investigated and monitored their activity, collecting evidence for a (hopefully) fair trial to follow. None of this appears to be contrary to some of those nifty amendments in our constitution. One might even say they were approaching terrorism as a (gasp!) criminal matter rather than some abstract evil to crusade against.

Sue Me

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May Day

I am too busy to write a new post, so I'll reuse this post that I wrote two years ago.

The international holiday, celebrated May 1st, in virtually every country around the world except the United States, ironically began here in Chicago during the worker's struggle for the eight hour day. On May 1st, 1886, the American Federation of Labor declared a national strike to demand an eight hour work day. Two days later, police in Chicago fired into a crowd of striking workers at the McCormick Harvester plant, killing several workers*. The next day in Haymarket Square, a demonstration was called in response to the killings. Although the demonstration was peaceful, the police attempted to disperse the crowd, and a bomb was thrown, killing several police officers*. Eight labor leaders were arrested, seven of which were not even present at the time of the bombing. With no evidence linking them to the crime, they were tried based on their beliefs, and some to all* were sentenced to death.

*In researching this holiday, I found tremendous discrepancies in the numbers. The number of workers killed by police during the McCormick Harvester strike ranges from 1-4, the number of police killed in Haymarket Square ranges from 2-15, and the number of individuals sentenced to death ranged from 5-8. The description of the history depends entirely on the source. Conservative sites, who still seem to still see this as a communist plot, manipulated the numbers in their favor, and also gave very detailed descriptions of the killed police officers' identities and the supposed brutality of their deaths, but described the worker's deaths as simply "a shooting and one fatality when police tangled with rioters." Left wing sites were equally biased. The disparity between accounts of the events, as well as the lack of recognition of the holiday here in the US, where it began, demonstrate that Americans are losing the struggle for workers rights. The eight hour work day is all but gone. Workers are only entitled to overtime after working more than forty hours per week, and even that is under attack by conservatives. In 2004, the Department of Labor regulations were changed, reclassifying more than eight million workers as "management" and thus not entitled to overtime pay. May 1st was officially recognized as "Loyalty Day" in the 1920's to contrast what was seen as a "communist" holiday. In this official proclaimation by George W. Bush in 2004, citizens are encouraged to "demonstrate their commitment to our country by supporting our military, serving each other, and teaching our young people about our history and values." Apparantly, by "teaching our young people about our history and values", he actually means creating a ridiculous holiday to attempt to erase aspects of history which he would rather we forget.