Corporate Naughtiness Revisited

I read this on dailykos this morning. Big surprise here - of course.

"The Rich Are Different by Devilstower

Thu Dec 27, 2007 at 01:54:10 PM PST

Michelle Leder at footnoted.org specializes in reading company reports and looking for those little special treats given to those folks who have their feet at the top of the corporate ladder.

So what has she found? Marketplace has some of Michelle's best finds for 2007.

How about the CEO at Qwest, whose daughter gets to use the corporate jet to travel to school? Puts that kid whose mother pulls up to jr. high in a Hummer in her place. Cost to the stockholders: about $600,000.

Personal travel was a theme in CEO perks this year. Just ask the CEO of I2. The company covered his commuting expenses so he could live in Maine while the company offices were in Dallas. Cost to the stockholders: $949,000 -- and by the way, the company was busy scrambling to avoid collapse. I'm sure the other employees got equally nice treatment."(rest of post here)

They were jacking it from Marketplace themselves. There is something devilishly wonderful about the self-righteous snarkiness that progressives, liberals, or whatever the preferred nomenclature is, express when these perennial stories pop up. Plus who doesn’t like to snark a little themselves?

I was at a funny little dinner party a few days ago with some friends of the family who all work in higher education. They were speaking about the move of some people on the sub-continent away from agriculture and toward manufacturing jobs. Their main thesis appeared to be that if the poor Indians could see the results of the move away from AG to factories ten years on, then they would stay in AG.

I love these people; I grew up with them. But please, give me a break. Do they wish that they themselves had stayed agrarian? I looked in all the packages and gift bags from the day and I only found one not made in China. Talk about hypocritical. I think I disappoint my family when I make comments to this effect, but isn’t it easy to sit in your heated house streaming internet Christmas radio, exchanging inexpensive gifts and even cheaper social commentary?

Progressives are just as complicit in this corporate world as anyone else. As long as cable television is cheap and consumer goods are cheap, we are all willing to grind brown and yellow people into the ground.

Mad Max - Nigeria Edition

"At least 45 people were burned to death on the outskirts of Lagos when fuel they were siphoning from a buried pipeline caught fire. Nine out of 10 people in Nigeria, Africa’s top exporter of crude oil, live on less than $2 a day, and many are prepared to take huge risks to obtain free fuel." By REUTERS Published: December 27, 2007

Is this Mad Max or what? I can just see this type of thing happening down here in South Florida where I live. This really made my morning special when I saw it on the NY Times site. I can't wait for the fuel crisis to really heat up. At least in the US we can still buy guns.

White House's Perino sounds like a sub-normal intelligence Liar again (big surprise)

So I saw this on a Media Bistro link to Politico this morning when I was checking my holiday emails.

"The New York Times has changed the subheadline in Wednesday’s front-page story on the CIA’s destruction of secret interrogation tapes, following a formal request by the White House.

The correction has already been made online, and there will be a print correction in the paper, according to a Times representative.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement that the Times subheadline — “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said” — was inaccurate.

“The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling, and we are formally requesting that NYT correct the subheadline of this story,” Perino said.

The White House has continued not to comment on what the representative dubbed “misleading press reports.” (retrieved on 12/26/07 from an article by Michael Calderone on http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7481.html)

Big surprise that the CIA would destroy tapes of torture, right. They are just doing their job - they're spies, duh! The uproar around this is ridiculous. What other action would you possibly expect from spies? I mean really? What? The thing that is fascinating and annoying and stupid is the posturing, of the Times, the White House, the impotent lawmakers, etc, etc, ad nauseam. I wonder what it is like to come off like a total d-bag like Perino does every time she opens her mouth. Bush really loves to put her in the position of sounding like a moronic asshole. I bet she isn't so that is what really intrigues me. What is it like to be forced to say patently idiotic things every day? Even if you have drank the Bush Kool-Aid it must be a little horrifying.

Camillus House

This is a pic of the front entrance to Camillus House. Actually it jus one of four locations that they have down here. It is also right where I parked my SUV. I definitely felt like a cultural tourist. The program was started in 1960 by Mathias Barrett, a Catholic brother from the other side. Brothers are like mini-priests, in case you don't know. I don't remember the exact distinction, but they can't perform a lot of the sacraments and they still can't marry or have sex. So that is a go figure. Apparently they CAN do really awesome charity works, like old brother Mathias. He also founded the Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd, who are these cool Catholics dedeicated to helping the poor and needy à la Camillus House. The brothers are still associated with the house (they said grace before each meal when I was there).

Mandatory Volunteer?

So my first move as a fresh faced volunteer was to work over at Better Way House of Bargains on 79th street, moving stuff around the warehouse and whatnot. However I of course dilly-dallied and when I called Jimmy back to set up my time, he was like ‘Cool! How does the end of December sound?’ My heart fell. I had to make the dreaded email to the professor asking for the extension (always embarrassing). Armed with my extension I went back to my Plan A, Camillus House. I had also waited too long for them to apply back when I had originally looked into it. They get filled up really fast during the thanksgiving season. I sort of guess that this is a primitive white guilt instinct that kicks in just before the instinct to conspicuously consume goes into overdrive, sort of like a capitalist pre-balancing of karma.

Well Ed over at Camillus had already told me that he had open slots the first week of December. Extension in hand, I emailed him back to confirm that the slot was still available. He said that it was and I headed over there after work. I was rushing, so I did not get to put on at shirt and sneakers et al. so I went in there in a starched dress shirt (I left the tie in the car). I found Vita, aka Miss Vita aka Miss ’V’ and she put me to work.

We served the first group, the small line (roughly about 50-60 people). Then we scrubbed pots and pans and got set for the big line (I was shocke dthat the first line turned out notto be the 'Big Line' that Miss V told me about) at 6:30, which was easily 4 times that. There were upper phase clients helping us and all kinds of people running around. AT about 6 a whole team of EMT trainees came to serve the dinner. There was also a dude who was doing court ordered stuff and his whole extended family came in to see if he could leave at one point. He was really funny, just an uptight Hispanic dude, also in a dress shirt, looking around helplessly.

I felt like a fish out of water at first. I obviously had no clue what was going on or who to listen to. I wnt for the dished because I figured that I knew how to do that and that I would make friends easier, being that no one likes to scrub pots after pots after trays after pots etc. etc. The strategy worked and I felt comfortable and the regular upper phase clients seemed to appreciate the scrubbing. Miss Vita put on some old school funk mixed with Miami freestyle: Cameo followed by Debbie Deb followed by Egyptian Lover followed by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force – you get the picture, Miss V was dope and it made the pots much smoother. I got extra points for knowing all the music and also for having seen Cameo, as well as Egyptian Lover live.

I did feel kind of like a schmuck asking them to take a picture. I explained to them that it was for school. At first they assumed I was in trouble with the Law, since most volunteers are either of that group or with a group from work or church. I told them ‘see you next Wednesday.’ Miss V said ‘we would love to have you back anytime you want. ‘ I was covered in dish water and sweat by the time I got the guts for the picture. I wished I had the minerals to get one in the beginning so I could have a before and after. Next time I will.

I felt very good on the way home, having alleviated some white guilt that had been building.

Summer Session

The new section has commenced as of this past weekend, and the material, as well as the professors, looks great. We are using the Yalom book which seems like a great read thus far. Things are definitely looking up in the program. We can see the light of day and if everything goes marginally according to plan we will be graduated by this time next year.

I still have no idea how to get started on a thesis. Supposedly the information is in the program manual, but, if we go by their logic, so is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Were Carl Rogers and Michel Foucault the same person? You make the call:

Moyers v. Stewart

I saw the Bill Moyers program ‘Journal’ online last night. He was interviewing Jon Stewart from the Daily Show. One of the items that was discussed was Stewart’s interview with an Iraqi author where they discussed how it was o be in a state of almost constant loss. The Iraqi author stated that most people that could leave the country did. So I wonder ‘who is left over there?’ The other point that was made, and which was also made on Morning Edition today, was that the press put so much attention on the Virginia Tech murders, yet the Iraqi people are murdered at a far greater rate each day over there. The idea occurs that the Iraqi people are depersonalized; I am not sure if that is based on race, distance, thoughtlessness, religion or what. How does one grieve in a war zone? How does our country not grieve those people?

Drugs are Good Money.

While I was doing more research on these two papers I am writing, I came across an article which claimed that more than 50% of the authors of the DSM had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies. While this is sadly unsurprising to me, it still carries a certain amount of gravity. Since many symptoms of so called disorders are measured subjectively, the influence of big pharma on the evolution of this science/art must be enormous.

what to do, what to do?

Lately I have been thinking that a staged approach to change might be the way to in almost all areas. The first stage would involve a behavioral emphasis and the second stage would involve an existential approach. The idea would be that if the patient had some pressing problem with a set of behaviors that she wanted changed, then that would be addressed immediately with a behavioral approach. The guiding theory underlying all of this would be that eventually the pursuit of meaning would be addressed in session, and extensively.

Life Coaching

I talked to a friend of mine who does life coaching this week. He says that the whole idea of it for him is to come from a place of strength instead of a place of deficit. He said that with life coaching the belief is that the client has all the answers within them, a la Rogers. The process he described sounded similar to solution focused therapy.

System of a Family

I am a little nervous because I am getting ready to start running a family group therapy session. My supervisor is an LMFT and he is giving me lots of instruction, also the senior therapist at my sight is extremely experienced with family therapy. A lot of times, the families that attend the group are angry and upset and may not be very happy to be there.

Thinking and reading about the postmodern approaches reminds me of the Foucault that I read in college and the idea of relativistic constructions of reality. That calls into question the concepts of normalcy and what constitutes that type of behavior. I think that interventions like solution focused therapy that can be used to help guide patients, without letting go of the theoretical underpinning that I find dear.

This week the topic of substance abuse treatment has arrived at the doorstep of the class. I have worked in drug treatment for over 5 years, first as a tech, then as a paraprofessional and now as an administrator of sorts. It seems to me like substance abuse treatment is a whole separate entity from therapy per se. I don’t think it fits into my mind as the type of thing where a person has met a great deal of their needs and now wants to grow as a person a la Maslow, which is where I see myself as a therapist in private practice, some years down the road. I see drug treatment as a very behaviorally oriented intervention, where people are educated about the tools they need to have in order to stay clean and feel happy staying clean. If they remain in recovery for some amount of time then they may most certainly seek therapy later. What I guess I am saying is – drug treatment is not therapy.

So after taking the what-kind-of-therapist-are-you-test last week, I decided to purchase the Yalom book, The Gift of Therapy. I couldn’t put it down last night, the guy is damn insightful. He also seems to be of the belief that managed care has severely compromised the ability to engage in a commitment to open ended therapy with a clinician. Somehow I doubt that Yalom has a hard time getting private-pay patients into his practice. There seems to be a certain defeatist attitude in terms of managed care. I suspect that if a therapist is well established they will be able to find patients that are willing and able to pay out of pocket for treatment. Let’s face it, private health insurance is only about 15 years old, and probably won’t last forever. Freud probably wasn’t paid by HMO’s either.

Haven’t written in a little bit. It’s hard to keep up the discipline to journal or blog or whatever you want to call it. I don’t think I could ever keep a daily journal, at least not one that was written in a physical book – it would probably get lost.

This week in class we took a little diagnostic exam as an exercise. The exam was to give us a hint as to what overarching theoretical perspective we were most aligned with. The one that came up on top for me was the existential school. Which I was completely surprised about. I know that I was a philosophy major in undergrad, but I didn’t really get into the whole meaning of life part of Philosophy. I was more concerned with the foundations of language and mathematics as well as epistemology. I guess now I will try to read some more about existentialism in therapy.

psychoanalysis

This week we read about this man over here to the left. A Viennese medical practitioner who employed techniques of talk therapy to his (largely female) clientele. In this day and age it is very popular to vilify the man - but is that really fair? He smoked cigars, shot a whole pile of coke and treated some patients. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Not only did he treat others but he attempted to analyze himself. (bizarre, right??) Its always easier to throw rocks with the benefit of hindsight. The guy was a little weird but he did put some names and words to intuitions that still hold true to this day. Moms and Dads affect kids' lives... (or do they) The anal/oral/phallic stuff is a little creepy/crappy. The therapeutic value of his interventions is suspect; they are more than a little clunky and archaic, but let us not forget that he was a bonafide seminal figure in the world of psychology and counseling!! And really, how different is contemporary therapeutic practice from Freud’s. Practitioners do what they think is best and in the way they think might help someone. The research hasn’t cleared too much up. At least it doesn't really seem so yet.