Life can be cruel at times.  Life can be filled with contradictions.  Contradictions that become paradoxes in our day-to-day lives and as the years progress  leave us wondering,  what the hell happened?   The cruelty part is that there is no going back, no modifying the order of things or adjusting priorities.    Despite all good wishes and inspiring messages to the contrary, in pure existential terms we are left at the end of a cycle in possession of our triumphs and losses, our insights and misgivings.    Life in hindsight becomes a mathematical puzzle of sorts, but with escalating complexity as our perception of events and their outcome is constantly mutating, leaving us to readjust the pieces as time goes on.

There are different versions of assessment and readjustment, each filled with mixtures of satisfaction and regret.   I am not talking about the macro stuff here, the atrocities and eco-disasters, the flagrant disorders of the world.  Catastrophe is relatively easy to assess and reconcile on the macro level than the universal eventualities that sooner or later enter our lives.   Aging is one such area where the large, universal picture eventually makes a very lasting acquaintance.  With aging comes its usual accessories, health issues, frailty,  culminating in an intimate howdy do with our own mortality.    Such concerns are all out there, until that one day when you look in the mirror and start to think, “do I know you?”

But like it or not, we have all been programmed to deal with aging and mortality.  For the most part we think happy thoughts.  You turn on the TV and there is some saccharine commercial to remind you of all the tender moments you experience with friends and family in your approaching dotage.   We get the Lion King Circle of Life Routine , and we are encouraged that our brief blip on the radar screen may be filled with meaning and purpose.    We take heart in the acts of familial succession  and the belief we will reincarnate as we have before.    We project in the back of our thickening skulls that upon our return we will access the lush life, refusing to believe that in past lives and the ones beyond it we were meager peasants whose greatest triumph was now getting trampled by the noble’s horses.

Without all this concern for mortality and the afterlife there would not be much of a market for religion and corny movies.  All those Hallmark Cards and Kodak Moments may be selling at a discount on the dusty back bin of the  Dollar Store.   Mortality is perplexing.   It gives us food for thought and a sense of spirit and a glimmer of eternity.   It keeps us in line.  Or it doesn’t.    But few ever scoff at the notion that somehow, in some way, I am paying the price for my deeds and misdeeds.

But honestly, this is all the easy stuff.   Life and death; there’s nothing to it.  Whether you are stuffed in a hole or return again to repeat the same mistakes or make different ones, this concern is really a piece of cake.   Because at the end of the day your beliefs may give you comfort, offer solace at that heavy trafficked intersection of doubt and faith.   But the morning after, whatever you believe becomes moot.  Unless you hit the jackpot by guessing correctly on the Eternity Betting Pool  and then your journey to the other side rests comfortably on auto-pilot.

What isn’t easy is sex.   Sex is fraught with cruel paradox as if the great creator did some custom body work on Adam and Eve as if for the purpose of a practical joke.   Doesn’t really matter if it is Adam and Eve, Adam and Adam, or Eve and Eve, or any combination therein, the fact that each group is victimized by biology and its staggered time frame for sexual desire.    It is no secret that men are more interested in sex at an early age, their late teens and twenties.  Men have sexual thoughts about once every twelve seconds, barring distractions like earthquakes and fires.   And even then….  Women on the other hand may have sex at an early age but according to one study in the British Medical Journal that was also reported in Time Magazine, that for women that full blown libidinous activity doesn’t kick in until their late twenties.   The article reported that women are not having more passionate sexual fantasies between 27 and 45 but they are actually having more sex than women 18 to 26.   Sounds hard to believe, but, hey, its Time Magazine and the British Medical Journal, after all.  Who would know these things if they didn’t?

The theory is associated with evolution.  In a nut shell, in her younger years, a woman didn’t have to work so hard at sex to become pregnant.  It was only a matter of time.  Fewer times.   But over time and with aging having children was a greater challenge and as women had children at an older age, the sex fantasies and desire kicked in to accommodate the advancing years.

Here is the passage from Time Magazine–

Here’s how their theory works:

“Our female ancestors grew accustomed to watching many of their children — perhaps as many as half — die of various diseases, starvation, warfare and so on before being able to have kids of their own. This trauma left a psychological imprint to bear as many children as possible. Becoming pregnant is much easier for women and girls in their teens and early 20s — so much easier that they need not spend much time having sex.”

I believe there is more involved that physical evolution.   Reportedly, in women, the libido takes a breather, while for men it keeps right on going.    Boomer women especially, having been programmed to behave themselves in order to appear decent and marry the right sort of fellow, became sexually active a little later than the younger women of today.    Boomer women had to keep their legs crossed if they were going to be the good girl.  For extra money, the only call girling they did was to call their parents and beg for a larger allowance.   Or they worked in the college cafeteria or took a job as a waitress.  Alright, so come college they met a boy and the boy was nice…and they started to fool around.

It is only later in life that Boomer women start to smarten up and ease off the guilt that was fire forged and ice hardened by concerned but fearful parents.   Time is passing, and opportunity is dwindling.  Before you end up having heart-to-hearts with a pet iguana there is time for a virtual fling.   Some women, to avoid labeling and scrutiny even move to different and distant places.   Santa Fe in the years I lived there was fraught with single Boomer women on the prowl.  The difficulty was there were so few men, and the men who were single or available made the Peter Pan Syndrome appear the lexicon for ancient and sage-like wisdom.  Like I say, life can be cruel and full of paradox.   Even the married women aged 27 to 47 have more sex than younger or older women.  Sexual peak and all that.  As for the fantasies, let’s say more than a few do not involve their present partner.

But then, as the report contends,  after that hot and heavy decade or three of sexual desire, replete with fantasies and late night longing, the warranty on the libido begins to lapse.   The Cougar business notwithstanding, the  hunger is  more for the lascivious display at Yogurt Land than the sexual encounter.   The report, or the study, as with any other study, has its flaws.  Older women may be divorced or widowed, or are less inclined to gab it up at gray haired mixers.  I don’t know.

And there are the men.  Their trajectory is dramatically different.  They start off strong and then start to flag as they approach or enter middle age.   It is a mixed bag of reasons.   This is not to say men of this age have allowed women to corner the market on sexual fantasy and romantic pursuit.   But it just ain’t the same.   Suffice it to say they are far more interested in 3-D than a D-Cup.  Unless the D-Cup is actually on the 3-D Television, and then the may go off on his lonesome to remember old times.

But then something kicks in and as men get older they get horny again.   Go figure.  Just when you thought it was safe to crawl back between the sheets.   Back a few years in history,  a man confronted the dreaded reality that the brain may still be filled with desire, but the penis has downshifted to a lower gear.     Lust over limpness, if you will.  So in was once upon a time the awkward but somewhat natural order of things, both spouses acclimate to the new conditions of age and erosion and spend more time showing their friends more pictures of their grandkids or that wing ding at Lake Havasu.

An equilibrium of sorts had been established.  But along comes Viagra.  Men become randy old fools and, according to the report, women tend to other matters.  Statistically,  67% of the men between sixty-five and seventy-four were sexually active.   Only forty percent of the women in same age group were sexually active.   A third of the men in the age range of 75 to 85 said they had sex within the last twelve months.  Only 17% of the women in the same age group can make the same claim.  Frankly I am impressed by the men, not so much that they had sex but at that age they can still remember they had it.   As for the women, as noted before, the report did not take into consideration some easily identifiable extenuating factors.

Alright, so what has this been doing to senior America?  And you believed their main concern was losing their Medicare.  Unh uh.   Aged boners are messing up the fire drill.   Older men are zipping up the Sansabelts and jumping the reservation.   At an age when their physical activity may be a a vigorous workout on the treadmill, they are sowing sin in Sun City.   Talk about an alliance among the willing.   They are jumping off their electro carts and cruising the streets for desperate hookers in a down economy.     According to an article in the Daily Beast, they are bringing back sexually transmitted diseases to hearth and home.    Imagine this doctor’s surprise when an eighty-year-old guy shows up with the clap.   They are leaving their wives,  and they are cheating on their wives.  Or, worse, they are forcing themselves on their wives.

The result is mixed.  According to the article, some women are enthused.  But most are not.   They thought this part of their lives were over and now the long retired  Jumping Jack Flash has nothing but time on his hands and a chubby.    Many women find such entreaties annoying.   But then, if they don’t for a few bucks or a couple hours distraction someone else will.  So leave it to good old American know how to produce a female version of Viagra.   The intent was to utilize  Boehringer Ingelheim’s  flibanserin, a drug for premenopausal women, as the new boost for women who report a lack of sexual desire.  Let’s follow the credo, even if there isn’t a market, create one.   Lots of high hopes.   But in two different studies the drug failed to show any increase in sex drive.  The elusive search continues.

Like I noted, there are exceptions to all of this and there are certainly extenuating factors.   But there is still no denying that life is cruel and full of paradox.   Not only as Elmore James once declared does he love her, but she loves him and so forth…but the sexual trajectories of men and women are so different their sexual encounters are torn asunder by bad timing and nature’s doctrine.   It’s hard enough to find love, and then when you do it’s sexual manifestation can become a total pain in the ass.  Perhaps in the end, our desire for satisfaction had disrupted the natural order of things.   At this time of life, Bill Maher joked, “maybe people shouldn’t be having sex.  It has to hurt,” he said. ” It hurts just to stand up.”

For me the bottom line is like all challenges, time will eventually sort this one out.  Or not.   And maybe those who resort to prayer, asking the Lord or the Goddess or the Universe, whatever, to sort out the rights and wrongs, to give them things, bring peace and prosperity, should beseech that same supreme being  that it would really be nice to rethink the math on the cycles of human sexuality.  Life is hard enough.

Emotionally speaking, we are a schizophrenic society.  Perhaps we are a schizophrenic world.   Quite often we have incredible needs where romance and sentiment are concerned, but we mitigate those needs with the crassness of survival in the modern context.  While we recognize a deep seated need to satisfy our emotional requirements we obscure these sentiments by approaching romance and marriage, even  relationships with our families, as some form of corporate merger or social detentes.   To our most romantic and sentimental instincts we add complex  layers of material opportunity and the cultural acceptance.

We buy into the movies, and the romance novels that manipulate our sentiments.   In media world, as opposed to the real one,  couples from the opposite sides of the spectrum, different cultural interests, ethnic backgrounds, economic stations, find themselves linked eternally.    The normal  obstructions of social norms and divergent interests,  to say nothing of peer pressure and cultural prejudice, withdraw from the sexual battlefield as love triumphs over all.  We can’t get enough of this stuff and buy into it, hook, line and sinker.

Media feeds on our  romantic idealism.   It manipulates our sentiments.   Now in the digital age we  are bombarded with these paint by numbers constructions from every possible angle.   We walk the streets and stand in lines, surrounded desire in fact our insistence on romantic denouement.   Often in paint by numbers, formulaic arcs, the illusion of true romance is served up to us at ten to fifty bucks a pop.    We wait in knowing anticipation while the fated lovers stumble over themselves and respective situations, overcome peer pressure and cultural differences, to finally reconcile their desire for each other so we the audience can reinforce our illusive pursuit of pure romance.   We buy greeting cards and watch endless maudlin commercials where parents race across the world to be home for their kid’s debut in their grad school play.   We watch endless commercials where families come together as one for that happy holiday meal.  Where they hug and eat and never argue.

In quest of love we do many things to ourselves.   We say things that we really don’t mean or even care about.   Sweet nothings, or broad generic terms of world peace and humanitarian considerations while berating the busboy for not cleaning our table.   We wear funny outfits that we hope make us attractive and then we become disgruntled when people are staring.   We once smoked cigarettes to look cool and sexy.  Now we smoke because it is a habit.  We take drugs, drink too much, eat too much, and more often than we care to remember we find ourselves in the sweet embrace of the toilet bowl at three a.m.

If you are male, you preen and shine and hope not to look as awkward and as uninvolved  on the first date as you most certainly will on the fourth or fifth date down the line.  If there is a fifth date.    You dress like a boy and think you’re a man and hope that you can somehow discover the equilibrium between looking like schlep and a cardboard cutout from Details or Gentleman’s Quarterly.   You get pierced and tattooed and claim it is not really an esteem issue but an expression of your individuality.   You bathe in cologne unaware that you are the only one who knows that smells like  a men’s room at fifty yards away.

If you are a male, you try to show that you are sensitive and caring, but that you aren’t just another pussy.   You avoid like the plague being categorized as a guys’ guy or a ladies man.  You try to be different from the pack, but not so different that your date or your lover starts to think you are strange and burdened by a hidden agenda where you secretly boast of a butterfly collection or bury skulls in your flower bed.   You go to the gym and run for miles, claiming it is all about our health when you know damn well you are far more attractive with an athletic physique than the slob who sits in the cubicle right next to yours.

You get your penis enlarged by adding fat tissue and cutting tendons that make it dangle more than nature may have first intended.   You do this to impress yourself and to impress her.  You wonder if you have impressed her enough that she will go to bed with you.   And then you worry if you were good in bed and and if you measure up to her previous experience.   You wonder how in the hell you can leave in the wee hours and not look like a shopworn cliche.   After all this, you visit your shrink who invites you back for another year of analysis.

But the price men pay for love, even when they actually pay for sex, is nothing compared to the gauntlet of tribulations that women must endure.   From bleaching to waxing, to shaving certain body parts that will itch for days, until you scratch like a monkey, showing off at the children’s zoo.   You get your first face lift at fourteen.   After which there is are future years where you engage in sessions of liposuction, ass and tummy tucks so that you still look good walking the unbearably painful walk of three inch heels.  You pluck your brows and paint your nails.  You wear perfume, but you worry if it is the right perfume, whether it defines you or makes you smell like just another slut.  You go backless and braless, you eat too little and then eat too much, only to show penance once again with your arms wrapped in the cold and familiar embrace of the proverbial toilet bowl.

You get stitched and sewn, tanned and tailored.   You wear clothes too tight and shoes too small.   You go blond, brunette, step it out as a redhead for a minute and a half and wish for the day when you can say “screw it,” I’ll leave it gray and live with those oh so natural, murky yellow highlights.   Like men you date and you wonder if you are attractive, if he really wants to go to bed with you.  You wonder if you are good in bed, if you measure up to his other lovers, or if his previous lovers were of the barnyard variety.   And then you wonder how in the hell you can leave in the wee hours of the morning and not look like a shopworn cliche.  And then your remember, it’s your place, so there is no escape.  After all this, you visit your shrink who invites you back for another year of analysis

You worry about aging, whether you are still attractive, and whether you are a sexual being.  You start worrying about this when you are eleven, and you don’t stop worrying until they put you in the grave.   You worry so much your brow wrinkles.  And then you get your Botox shots.  You realize Botox is not the best thing for you as the secret ingredient causes Botulism, a deadly poison.  A deadly poison that may in the long haul cause nerve damage.  But who cares?   You look better and this is then and later is later.  And by then you are dead anyway, so who cares?

So now what did they do?   New studies have discovered a relationship between paralyzing your nerves, which Botox does, and your inability to express emotion.   People on Botox are slower to smile or frown or show anything other than the stoic expressions the ancient Greeks used to proffer as a viable lifestyle.   According to the recent study, some of it summarized in the Los Angeles Times, among other place, Botox shots will confuse the brain.   Botox Shots, researchers discovered, block facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language. Emotional expressions apparently send feedback to the brain.   It is a combined effort between smiling and frowning and our awareness as to whether we are having a good time or a lousy one.

Simply put the reaction time between the stimulus and the emotion takes longer than it does for a senile geriatric to cross the street in St. Petersburg.   Facial expressions make the brain make sense of the world around us.  No facial expressions the world around us is tough to grasp, as if it isn’t tough enough already.    Stuff happens to you, and you don’t know what you are feeling.  Good times, bad times, there you be, unable to grasp whether you are ecstatic or really pissed off.   Or at least, according to the study, it may take awhile before the brain gets the message.

If we extrapolate this study, then for all we know, Botox could affect our sexual congress.    Enough Botox could freeze the facial expressions and delay the sensory signals to the brain.  It would be the orgasmic version of the late arrival.   It’s like showing up for the banquet when they have already removed the  dishes from the tables and folded up the chairs.   The Botox orgasm.   Between the big sensation and the “Oh God” screaming,  hours may have passed.  By then it is Sunday morning.  Your neighbors don’t know if you had an orgasm or you were getting ready for church.

Anyway…it’s not that I am critical of our vanity.  Observant, maybe, but hardly critical.  It is what it is, and far be it for me to provide any meaningful alternative where I don’t sound like a rescued speed freak from an abstinence ministry.  Besides, I am too vain for that.   People need to do what they do and in a world of chaos and uncertainty at least try to have a good time.

The only thing is, if you dose yourself with Botox, how will you ever know it?

Everyone tries to declare how special they are.  While various groups debate their differences, define their histories and otherwise demonstrate their significance on what is becoming a very small planet, there is one undeniable fact that lingers in the back of our brain.   We are all going to die from something.   We may die quickly and violently, or we may linger and suffer before we pass on.  But the stark fact is sooner or later we are checking out of here.

It is almost funny that this is perhaps the one remaining single fact where there is little or no debate.  We argue about everything else.   We argue about the big stuff, and we argue about the little stuff.    We argue about global warming.  We debate the merits and deficiencies of race, gender, and sexual preferences.  We argue about gravity and the age of the Earth.   We can spend hours debating the morality of everything from where to buy the best pair of jeans to driving an SUV.   We argue whether we  Darwin evolved or were a product of a divine plan explained to us ever so precisely through umpteen religions and secular theories.    We argue whether cow farts and bottled water will hurtle out planet to its impending doom.

We argue incessantly.  Taking sides and shouting each other down  has become a major industry.  You can’t market complexity and nuance, because thoughts that are complex and nuanced are disturbing and prey on our insecurities.   We are more secure with crackpot theories than we are with uncertainty.    So we argue in absolutes,  and even then we prefer to keep our absolutes simple.   If they are not simple, you can’t buy the books, go to the lectures and otherwise listen to the pundits and politicians who cater to our particular set of beliefs.   Simply put, if you can’t put your thoughts on a tee shirt, they probably ain’t worth remembering.

But then every once in awhile some actual facts escape from spin cycle and we are confronted with their statistical reality. These are not the speculative statistics or manipulated statistics, positioned just  to validate our point of  view.   No.  Instead these are the types of fact that are actually hard to argue with.   The ugly truth as it is sometimes known.    These are the simple numbers that lay reality at your feet like an abandoned child that nobody wants to nurture.    These are facts that remain consistent regardless of the cause , blame or subjectivity.  These are the facts that leave little wiggle room, that are distinctive in their certainty so that debating them appears more like futile  buffoonery than rational argument.

Such facts?   Not only are we going to die, but we are actually killing ourselves.   Maybe it’s the lemming concept or the human version of the long march to the elephant graveyard.   Maybe its gross denial mixed with complex mixtures of stupidity and ignorance.   Maybe deep down we just don’t care.  Maybe our compulsion toward self-indulgence is so great that nothing, especially common sense, will get in the way of our collective suicide.

I am not talking here about the macro levels, the easy stuff, nuclear war,  global warning, and the death of the planet.  I am not even speculating on the probability of the sun eventually burning to the cinder or a meteor clipping us when we least expect it.   Even global starvation and massive pandemics are not on the table here.   Being invaded and eaten, as Stephen Hawking recently predicted, by aliens from another planet; we can forget about that, too. I am talking about how through our lack of responsibility we are in fact taking responsibility for doing ourselves in.

New studies report that nearly half the adult population in America has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes.  One in eight is playing the quinella, where they have at least two out of three of these diseases.   According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, 15% of us are walking around unaware we are afflicted with at least one of the three diseases.   Which means to me,  folks can pontificate authoritatively about everything from the rash on our ass to the Rapture and the End of Days, and yet still walk around having no idea they are seriously ill.    We talk about lofty things like taking care of the planet and taking care of the poor, but yet we can’t seem to take care of ourselves.

What is even more interesting that certain diseases plague certain ethnic groups more than others. In America, African-Americans are prone to high blood pressure.  Those of European descent find high cholesterol gets in their way, while Latinos suffer more from diabetes.   Surely, there is some extension of these disease from one ethnic group to another, hands across the water so to speak.  Also, there are other serious diseases that afflict different groups.  I realize their are environmental concerns and individual or familial congenital defects.    And then, in terms of health and fortune, it sometimes boils down to nothing more than the luck of the draw. But for our purposes we can stick with the article and just these three diseases.

While each ethnic group seems more in peril from a particular affliction, the causes for each of the diseases are pretty much the same.   Mainly the causes revolve around smoking, a junk diet, obesity, and physical inactivity, better known as the sedentary lifestyle that makes the purchase of one of those fat mover electric scooters almost irresistible to some of the late night cable crowd.   I would think no irony should be lost on the fact that our true common ground is our self-indulgence and bad health.

I have often found it just a tad specious that just about every ethnic group likes to brag about its past.   Each ethnic group and nationality can go on for days about its glorious heritage and its contributions to civilization. There is no end to their performances and days of  glory.  Then.    It is not that a disbelieve their claims.  But often find myself searching for their particular relevance in the modern world.  I wonder if all the casting back to the past serves as a distraction from the vagaries of our present times.   I realize others will view a world through a different prism, but I tend toward the pragmatic and prefer to see how those past achievements can best be put to use in the modern day.   How do we put them to use, and where does it leave us now?

From the looks of things, it leaves us obese with hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol.   All represented in one form or another in the same collective rut.   So in existential terms, regardless of  specific achievements attributable to one group or another, we are all sitting here, living in denial and dying sooner than we should.   If there is any consolation; it’s all pretty democratic.   No matter what our ancestry, half of us are taking the decided inaction to let the quality of life slip out of our reach.     We talk grandiose about saving the planet, but according to the recent study, we are having a tough time saving ourselves.

We talk about being sensitive to our surrounding, aware of the environment, our fellow creatures, and the challenges we are faced with.  But yet in terms of our own well being, fifty percent of us can’t get out of our own way.  We can’t hurdle our indulgences or come to terms with the realities of our own health concerns.     Yeah, sure, we like to talk about it.    We talk about the junk food, our carnivorous habits, and the polluted air we breathe.  We even see the doctor.  Yet here we are.

So I guess at the end of all this I am forced to wonder how are we doing to do all this planet saving when we can barely hurdle our personal afflictions?   Is there any real logic to fending off hunger, water shortages, and global warming, while we continually ignore the factors causing our own demise?   Here was are, ethnically speaking, all stuck with some kind of health burden and the best we can do is to skew the statistics to our own disadvantage.  Maybe in the face of loftier ideals, the notion of the best example is the way we take care of ourselves.

Illegal Immigration is largely like the weather.   To quote Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”    Of course that isn’t entirely true with regard to immigration as different states and even local municipalities have attempted to put into law statues that would in various ways limit the rights if undocumented workers.    Or the more significant attempts,  California some years back tried to enact Proposition 187, as a result of a populist petition attempting to limit or deny the quantity of public services the state could administer to illegal immigrants.    This was knocked down by the courts as unconstitutional.

And then Arizona came up with its new statute, SB 1070.  Among other things, the law makes it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona.  Another section of SB 1070 requires law enforcement authorities  to make a reasonable attempt, when practical, to determine the immigration status of any person with whom they have lawful contact. This leaves open the question of whether it will lead to racial profiling and harassment of Hispanic U.S. citizens but are not carrying acceptable proof, such as a driver’s license.   In response, the state officials in favor of the law deny it will lead to racial profiling.  One legislator said they can determine whether someone is an illegal alien by the type of shoes he or she is wearing.  Or something like that.

Subsequent to the passage of this bill, which was signed into law by Jan Brewer, the Arizona Governor, the immigration  issue came once again to a boil.   Many critics have condemned SB 1070 as draconian, racist, and unwieldy.   Supporters maintain that inaction by the federal government on immigration issues has compelled the state to move forward.    Supporters cite the troubling  cost of illegal immigration to the state, especially in a bad economy.  They claim this new law will be a means of combating the increased gang violence initiated by the Mexican Drug Cartels and associative street thugs.

Whether it is a draconian law filled with racist policy, or whether it was done out of frustration against federal inaction, one thing holds true–passions on both sides of the issue have been ignited.   There have been demonstrations around the country, while the radio waves heat up with opinions from both sides.

Groups in support of the illegal immigrants drag out their facts and statistics, claiming that undocumented workers pump more money into the economy than they deplete.   Those of the opposing view drag out their own set of statistics, citing the serious depletion of resources, how illegal workers are taking jobs away from eligible Americans, etc.  And Congress, meanwhile, listens patiently, as it has done for over a decade, and then does nothing.

Michael Hiltzik, columnist at the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote a column asking both sides to cool it on the rhetoric.   The article was entitled, “Turning Down the Temperature on Illegal Immigration.”  It is a good article and describes how in this discussion most contributors lead with their passions and not with their heads.   Hiltzik notes that–

“The two extremes of the immigration debate line up like this: One side says legalizing the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants will produce an economic boom — $1.5 trillion added to U.S. GDP over 10 years, says UCLA; $16 billion for California from legalizing undocumented adult Latinos alone, according to USC.

The other side maintains that illegal immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans and contribute mightily to our huge state budget deficit. The cost of taxpayer-funded benefits for “illegals,” says Steve Poizner, who’s running for the GOP nomination for governor, has sent California over a cliff. (His latest TV commercial shows a car plunging into a ravine, which seems like a rather spendthrift way of making the point, for someone who’s all about economic responsibility.)”

Hiltzik then goes on to write that according to the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, that in the short term legalizing most currently  ineligible workers would have little or no effect on the labor market.  He also goes on to write, that the job market open to illegal immigrants has less to do with legal workers and more with the usual circumstances of employment, meaning skill sets, education, etc.   Such limitations being what they are, it is unlikely that the undocumented workers will move up in the labor scale.  The report indicated that tax revenues were unlikely to surge if the ineligible workers were legalized.  Nor would the better skilled labor force be  particularly threatened by immigrants who lack the education and skill sets to threaten those jobs.

So in the essence, and in the short term, the PPIC study projects that legitimizing the presently illegitimate workers would create neither a major tax infusion nor threaten the jobs of eligible workers.   Most illegal workers are already paying taxes and they would merely continue to do so.   What it would do, it is predicted, is decrease exploitation of the illegal workers and encourage them to become more acculturated.   It may stabilize their families and otherwise bring people into the light.     There would be a cost to all this, of course.

Some will argue that the state and the country have already been inundated with illegal immigrants.   Some complain that they should not be referred to as  ”illegal,” but the fact remains that as long as the laws are on the books,  that is the term for people who enter the country illegally.    Some claim all our people are immigrants.   Others retort that their relatives came here legally, dutifully filed their papers, etc, and entered in compliance with American law.   True.  Maybe.

But then I have always wondered if it was only a fence or river and not an ocean between them and the American shoreline, how many would have done the same damn thing and come across illegally.   How many of our European ancestors would have been wetbacks and not the bonafide entrants we brag about?    I know also, as there were quotas and various laws on the books, that to bypass these limitations our European ancestors who came here in the late 19th and early 20th century lied on their documents.  I found customs and immigration documents on several relatives.

I  have relatives that to avoid quotas listed themselves as married, when they were in fact a brother and sister.   Another  female relative is listed in the immigration documents as an eight year old boy.   Until the day she died,  she lived in fear that she would be discovered.   Odd.  But true.   I sincerely  doubt that mine was the only family that lied about their status in order to be admitted through customs.

Both sides of the illegal immigration issues love to drag out statistics.   They bandy about numbers and figures and vouch they are accurate.   When it is only estimated that their are 12 million illegals living in the United States then money numbers, like the population count is at best an approximation.   Since the nation is too large a space to consider for the moment, let’s just take California.

California has no shortage of undocumented workers, and certainly the state has pro and con felt the impact of their presence here.  California, historically, has always confronted this issues in one form or another.   The state in its past has utilized everything from the  Bracero program that began in 1917 and was implemented on and off through 1964, to its ignominious Federal Reparation Act where in the 1930′s somewhere around two million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were shipped to Mexico.  This act was first authorized by Herbert Hoover and it didn’t end until Franklin Roosevelt became President.

Mind you, this was in the middle of the Great Depression and for whatever reason the state was in no mood to discriminate between Mexican Nationals and American Citizens.  The roundup was wholesale.    It has been estimated that sixty percent were actually American citizens.  I know of one woman whose mother experienced this very fate.  She has for decades urged her daughter to always carry identification for this very reason.   But talk about drawing the short straw and being forced to start over; this is about it.   Perhaps Arizona should take his piece of history into consideration before moving forward on its SB 1070.

On the other hand, California has benefited at different times from the Federal Bracero Program.   In 1917 through 1921 it was legislated that Mexicans could come work in the farm fields.   Then, after deporting them for a decade or so, the Bracero program was reinstated.   Between 1942 and 1964, again when the U.S. was off fighting wars and short of labor, some four million Mexican laborers were admitted to do farm work.   During those years much of the border was even more porous than it is today with travelers moving from one side to the other with relative impunity.

The reasons for the Bracero program were pretty much what they are today.   There was a shortage of laborers willing to work the fields and commit to menial tasks.   This was especially the case as most farmers were unwilling to pay a a living wage to domestic laborers.   So, like today, they got cheaper labor on a cash and carry system.  And when the harvest season was over, the workers were to return to Mexico.  A win-win situation.  The fields were harvested, and people in need of money made some money, along with what was often considered abusive treatment.   And the farmers were able to expand the agricultural industry in America so that it was foremost in the world.

Thing is, many braceros did not return, but stayed in America instead.    For that period of decades, millions came over to work, and millions were later arrested and sent back.    In 1952, seeing this as an increasingly serious problem, the government enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act.   This made made harboring illegal aliens a felony punishable by a $2,000 fine and a prison term of five years, it also included the so-called Texas proviso.  The Texas Proviso protected the farmers by assuring the employment of illegal aliens is not the same as harboring them.    This way, there were no penalties assessed against US employers who knowingly hired illegal workers. So you can use and maybe abuse them.  And once you were finished they were left to fend for themselves.

Since we are a nation that struggles mightily with both facts and history, suffice it to say that in general the legislation being put forth by Arizona today is rooted in the past.  That is to say that this is not the first time a really bad idea has been cloaked in some weird extension of necessity to hide the general vulgarity of its  true purpose of greed and discrimination.   More than a few times nations have followed leaders that have in the name of national urgency and some other jingoistic refrains come down on one group or another for the financial gain of the few.   While we are not among the worst of these examples, we certainly possess a few we would rather sweep back under the carpet.

While emotions run high on both sides of the issue, the fact remains that to a great extent the immigration question is a numbers game.   Once upon a time it may have actually made fiscal sense to utilize the Bracero Program.You may not like the program for humanitarian reasons.   But in terms of economics, it worked out.   Bring them in, pay them on the cheap, and then send them home.

But anything like the Bracero Program is no longer feasible.  And the current system, as it renders itself today, is little more than a de facto Bracero Program.    Like I said, it is a numbers game.   If an employer looking to pay someone cheap wages, say $10 and hour, and the cost of living in that city or state, including public and social services, and the burden on the infrastructure, is for argument’s sake, say $20 per hour, then clearly it is the public who is picking up the rest.   The taxpayer is supplementing the employer for any overage in social and public services that exceeds the $10 an hour.

That is why the whole notion of cheap labor is delusional.   When you pay people less than what it cost to live, the burden will fall somewhere.   It will fall the taxpayer.   While we subscribe to the illusion that we are obtaining cheap labor, we grouse at the fact that we are picking up the tab for social services.  We don’t mind hiring illegal immigrants; we just don’t demand the employer pay them for their services.   Because, let’s face it, the only reason an employer hires an illegal worker is because they don’t have to pay them what they would have to pay an eligible worker.  Bottom line is that you will have to pay for labor in one form or another.  Either through the wage itself or as a supplement to social services.

The employer pays the illegal worker bupkes and then passes the overage on to the taxpayer.  The taxpayer whines about it, and supports stupid and draconian laws that clamp down on the poor soul who departed thousands of miles from poverty and debilitation in quest of making a living.   This is who we pick on.  This is who we vilify.  It is so much easier than condemn the poor guy trying to make a buck than to go after the employers who are trying to pass their labor costs off to you.   I won’t even go into the nannies and gardeners and the other domestic laborers who the Mommies and Daddies of the world don’t mind buying on the cheap to watch little Junior to to make sure the neighbors don’t leave ugly notes under your door about your lousy looking lawn.

The Federation for Immigration Reform estimates that the annual cost for Illegal Immigrants in the United States has been $36 billion.   By the end of 2010, that figure is expected to increase to more than $60 Billion.  By 2020, the estimate is over $100 Billion.  Mind you, this is from a group whose acronym is FAIR, a group in favor of immigration reform.   These are not estimates from some hate filled bunch of racists looking to make a point.   And FAIR’s estimation considers only three major programs–educating the children in public and primary schools, medical services, and incarceration.   These estimates do not take into account the increased burden on the infrastructure, nor the accelerated cost of both medical and auto insurance born by the legal citizen.

In California, there are an estimated three million immigrants.   They are not all laborers, but spouses and children who are either unemployed or working part-time.   FAIR’S  estimated cost for the three aforementioned programs is something like $8.8 Billion.  There are other estimates that list the cost at $10 Billion and even $14 Billion.  But who is quibbling about a few billion here and there?   No matter how you cut it, this is a lot of money.  When the state shortfall is something like $24 Billion then this is a substantial portion of our debt.   And it is climbing.  Unless you suffer from same delusion of cheap labor, it is apparent the burden of illegal immigration is bankrupting the state.

I know some say that the illegal working community pays taxes and pumps a lot of its money into the economy.   They claim that the money the illegal workers contribute in taxes and spend on goods and services is nearly equivalent to the services they receive.  Oh, really.   So…if you take $8.8 Billion and divide it by 3 million.   The resultant estimated cost is about $3,000.00  for every man, woman, and child. Which means for an average family of five, the taxpayer would have to pay approximately $15, 000.00  just to break even with their share of the state budget supporting the undocumented community.   Families comprised of undocumented workers, depending on the study, pay an average of $4,500 to $7,000 in annual federal taxes.   So there appears to be a shortfall.

Before one starts thinking that this is an argument in support of the anti-immigration movement, it’s not.  It’s just the facts, M’am.  Or like I wrote earlier, a numbers game.   The issue is then how to pick up the shortfall.   The obvious means is three-fold.  On one hand, do a better job of sealing the borders.   It is absurd that a nation considered to be the most powerful in the world can’t keep a watch on its on borders.   While we fight wars thousands of miles away, you would think we would allocate more than a few measly bucks to monitoring our borders.

But, most importantly, it is imperative we develop a pathway to citizenship.  By keeping the illegal workers in the shadows, we will experience the result of a permanent underclass.  All that jargon about starting out poor in American and rising up the ladder of success is negligible if we cannot find a means to acculturate undocumented workers.   We can piss and moan all day about “how dare they enter this country illegally, ” but nevertheless, they are here.   They are here because we wanted them.   We needed them. We needed their cheap labor; we needed them to tend the lawns and watch the kids, do repeated tasks in factories, and build stuff that we self-righteously entitle “cost effective.”  We wanted them, and now we got them.  Apparently, we may have too many, especially in an economic downturn when much of the jobs have dried up.  Some never to return again.

So, yes, do a better job of sealing the border and assure through a pathway to citizenship we do not suffer the embarrassment and cost of a permanent underclass.  Look, some will always be poor, and even more will never have enough money.   But then there are those, who like the immigrants before them, start out from meager circumstances and move forward.  Several generations pass and the farmers, maids, and housekeeper, have kids who are doctors, lawyers, business people, and politicians.   But that will not happen through repression.  It will only happen if we create a plan, a rigorous but sensible plan.   Do what you are supposed to do, and one day you and your children may have a bigger slice of the pie.  Or not.  But at least you have a shot at it.

Thirdly, don’t hold the worker trying to make a buck accountable for being the bad guy.   That is way too easy.  A simple target to vent frustrations.   But the wrong target.   Make the employers accountable.    Best to pay it through wages than through supplemental taxes.   A better wage makes for happier people, but it also triggers increased taxes.   Yes, you may have to pay more for goods and services, but like I wrote earlier, all illusions to the contrary, you are going to pay for the social and public services one way or another.  So stop complaining.

There have been increased crackdowns on employers hiring illegal workers.   Businesses are fined, and in one recent case the employer was accused by the IRS of defrauding the government out of $16 million in back taxes that he didn’t pay for his undocumented workers.   The company was fined and closed, and the head of the company was sentenced to ten years in prison.   The case was recently upheld in the appeals court.

As the Co-Founder of Corra Group, I see a change in attitude among many employers.  Most of the saner ones realize their days are numbered when it comes to hiring illegal workers.   They face stiff fines and closure.  Since we primarily conduct background checks for employment purposes we conduct Social Security Traces that verify that the social security number is real and that it appears to belong to the employment applicant.   We are also designated agents through the Department of Homeland Security for the electronic E-Verify or I-9.   As of the first of the year, any federal contractor or employer doing business with a company that is a federal contractor is by federal law mandated to run the E-Verify on their employees.

Ironically, there was one state that got out in front of this situation.  In 2007 the state’s governor signed into law the first employee sanctions legislation.   Each employer was mandated to conduct the I-9 on any employee in order to verify his eligibility to work in the United States.   It was a tough law.  The first time you were caught hiring undocumented workers, the authorities would close your business down for thirty days, as well as fine you.   The next time they were caught, the employer faced increased fines, possible permanent business closure and loss of license.   A tough law that went right to the heart of the matter.   It was the type of law the President Obama found the most viable in relation to one aspect of immigration reform.  The legislation was House Bill 2779.  The governor who signed it into law was Janet Napolitano.   The state was Arizona.

Go figure.

Whatever happened to the working class?   From appearances they are all around us, working in everything from the dozen manufacturing plants still remaining in the United States to the auto and truck mechanic bays and doughnut shops across this fair land of ours.   There are carpenters, plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, butchers, bakers, cab drivers, bartenders, waiters, sewer workers, construction crews, landscapers, and even farmers and cowboys.    But, amazingly, no one is working class, anymore.

At least no one ever cops to being working class.  Not in this day and age.  When was the last time you heard a politician discuss the plight of the working class?   Television news pundits never refer as working class to the blue collar worker losing his job to some eight year old kid in China.  Or to a robot, also from China.     Even the working class doesn’t describe itself as working class.   Today the working class regards itself as middle class.    The Tea Baggers, many of whom are working class, hold up signs and make speeches about the potential demise of  the middle class.    The guy that delivers your paper every morning will lament how massive media consolidation has all but destroyed his position as a middle class earner.     Despite the dirt and grime of their professions, the hard physical work and all the dangers involved, the coal miners and oil drillers consider themselves members of the middle class.  The blue collar philosopher, Eric Hoffer, would today be described in the back of his books  as the notable middle class longshoreman.    Even the crack whore working in the grimmest parts of town will tell you now she isn’t working class, but middle class, and that her livelihood is  threatened by urban renewal ramped up  by the monied elite.

Blue collar workers describing themselves as middle class, to some extent, is nothing new.  In Europe the working class considered themselves to be working class, and they wore that distinction with pride, no matter how dubious a category it may appear to a lot of us.   Even here in the  early and mid-century United States, the working class was comfortable calling itself the working class.   Hell, labor unions were first formed around that very notion.   The workers.   The working class.  They recognized they were plumbers or trades people and as such they were people who worked with their hands.  They cut meat and splattered blood on their aprons, made bread and were covered with flour.   They laid bricks and dug tunnels, worked in steel mills and manufactured tools and garments.   They got dirty and were physically tired at the end of the day from doing all that physical work.    They had their dreams and visions, but suffered few delusions as to where they stood in the face of the overall strata.   Simply put, they were working class.

But come the sixties and when America was in transition, it was increasingly uncomfortable to wear the label working class.  Being working class meant that you maybe were less than your potential and couldn’t buy all the stuff that was being offered to consumers in the post-war era of guns and butter.   If you were working class, you might have doubts as to whether you were entitled to the finer things in life.   Perhaps you weren’t meant for that wall-to-wall nylon carpeting, the station wagon, and the Amana  over-and-under frostless freezer that was touted as the prize on every game show.

Owning a television was a whole different story.   You knew, even if you were working class, that you could at least have a television, because that kept you distracted and brain dead, which nullified the chance of self-improvement and further dissension.   You also needed that TV for the commercials, so you knew how much all new  and improved lemon scented  crap was out on the market, and which brand of crap you should buy.

I came from a neighborhood in transition.   It was the rare time in American history where doctors and lawyers lived next door to plumbers, carpenters, construction workers, and the guy who owned a store.   It was the era when ethnic groups emerged from the ghettoized neighborhoods at the urban core to the city fringes and city  suburbs where developing neighborhood offered affordable housing and access to the business centers.   For some, they moved into these neighborhoods with the intention of remaining there.  For a good many others, it was a whistle stop,  the starter house between the old world neighborhoods of the inner city and the new.  This is  where you firmed up your professional practice or got your business together, before moving into the suburbs where the single family ranch-style house,  two car garage and shopping mall waited to greet you new found success.

But no matter, whether you were the steel work, plumber, or the fledgling young lawyer, the general perception was you were middle class.   Forget about the junker car, the clothing bought from off-brand stores, the cheap food, and cramped living quarters.   Forget the fact that many of the parents were only high school graduates if that, and a portion of their kids what never put their foot inside a college door.   Forget all the parochialism, and rigid stricture of the immigrant and post-immigrant class.  The perception was you were doing better then both the poor bastards who had been stuck in the old world, or the ones fortunate enough to make it here.   They didn’t eat what they wanted, and they were lucky if they had a pair of shoes.  You had two pairs of shows, your work shoes and dress shoes.   You didn’t go hungry, and you had a car to drive and a place to drive it to.  You weren’t among the poor wretches working in some cotton field or some old world factory, scuffling out a a buck.    So you had to be middle class.

That’s what America was all about, wasn’t it?  Being middle class.   If you declared yourself middle class, you demonstrated you had arrived at least in some fashion.  You were doing better than your ancestors.  They, those poor working stiffs, would have envied you.   And while you shunned some of the constraints of old world morality and bias, you embraced enough of the Calvinist sensibility of hard work and a lot of denial to register as one with the middle class.   You wanted things, and in many practical cases you could actual buy them.   Who among your ancestors  in the Irish Famine or the dregs of Lower Slobovia, had ever heard of frozen produce or TV dinners?   And here you were loaded with those wonderful Birds Eye boxes of frozen Green Giant deliciousness stored  inside your all new Amana Freezer.

So now that no one was working class anymore, you had a nation of the middle class.   That is with the exception of the rich or wealthy.   And the poor.  but the poor had nothing and weren’t going anywhere, so there was no real need to pay much attention to them, other than to cluck cluck about how pitiful it all is and call them poor no longer.   Instead they are the underclass.    Sounds better, anymore than middle class sounds better to blue collar workers than working class.   Except the poor don’t really give a damn that they are now the underclass and not poor, as no word phrase shape shift half-assed magic is going to make them anything but poor.   No dilemmas here.

But enough of the poor.   Nobody likes to talk about the poor, except Mother Theresa and the patrons of a charity dinner where  a couple hundred cronies looking for a tax write off to appear noble honor a rich guy for his selflessness and generosity.   And since Mother Theresa is dead,  you won’t hear her going on and taking your time about the plight of the downtrodden and helpless.

So it’s the rich.  Once upon a time the wealthy patrician class in this country, the people who ran things, didn’t call themselves the rich.   In fact, in a vain effort to remain discreet, they didn’t call themselves anything at all.   But then they didn’t have to.     For one thing it was considered gauche and unacceptable.   Crude.    Everybody knew, anyway.   Besides, if you start calling your self the wealthy class then some of the working class might want some of your money.

But then, as the emerging wealthy class, as opposed to the established, patrician wealthy class, the Kennedy’s and the Rockefeller’s and the like,  began to make more money decorum went south for the season, and the neo-rich couldn’t resist flaunting their toys for all the world to see.  The very concept of gauche and good taste  put on its designer goodies and fled the MacMansion on a Gulfstream.   Gross consumption was the word of the day, and those who had come by recent wealth were heralded in the cross media platforms as  was heroes of the modern world.  They were to be admired, envied…and copied.

So this meant that the real middle class and of course the upper middle class– as there had to be at least an attempted distinction between the middle-middle and the upper middle–went chasing after the formerly middle but emerging wealthy class.   This meant the middle class wanted what the rich wanted, and the rich in this case were the oil barons, the bankers, real estate mavens, stock brokers, models, sports stars, and the twelve-year-old start up guys with a new kind of digital company.  Of course, this group, traditionally, were not at the pinnacle of great taste and culture.   But they had what they had, cretins or not, and the middle class wanted it, too.   And since some of the middle class was also the working class, calling themselves the middle class, you had an unprecedented  demand for what in marketing parlance is termed luxury items.

There is an inherent problem with luxury items.  It is not always easy to determine what is truly a luxury item and what is not.  Other than the price.   Once upon a time the more discerning, the connoisseurs could  discern the difference in quality from everything from food to furniture.   They were educated in the nuance and distinction.  They knew woods, fabric, drape, and workmanship.   The ability to distinguish the good stuff from the mediocre was either self-learned or  was part of the patrician package deal.   Or, at the very least, there was some cultural flunky in access who could fill them in.   How else were you going to be the ruling class and, no matter how discreetly, lord it over the masses if you didn’t know the difference between fine bone china and paper plates?

But that was a different world.   In today’s world who has time to learn all this stuff?    And even if you did, chances are in a cookie cutter world of mass consumption much of the luxury brands you are buying at premium prices are being knocked out by the same slave in the same factory in a village that ten years ago finally got running water..   So along comes branding.  You don’t actually need to know what makes something worth more, what gives it special quality and craft, form and function.  All you have to do is look at the label.  If it costs a lot, then it’s quality.   That’s it.  As with romance, politics, human behavior, or the history of the Earth, let’s not meddle in complexities.  Let’s instead carve it down to a few simple concepts that even the idiots in the cheap seats can understand.

So in the middle of all this, where in the hell is the working class?   And, more so, in this world of only one constant, that of eternal confusion, how do you make the distinction between the working class and the middle class, even the upper middle class.   The wealthy elite; that’s easy.   Just look for the Gulfstream parked in  he driveway.   But it it is only an RV taking up space in the breezeway and clogging all the neighbor’s view is the family who owns it working class and prepped for the big weekends out at Lake Somewhere, or are they middle class with a penchant for the great theme park?

Tough call.    What does make the difference between the working class and the middle class?  Is it education?  Breeding?  Income?   Is it where you buy your stuff?  But then the same designer sweat socks you paid a fortune for on Monday are selling Friday in a big box store.   So no go there.   If we  break it down to occupation, it is still pretty confusing.  Typically, a plumber or landscaper is working class.  But if he owns a company and has a fleet of fourteen trucks, and he raked it in big time in the housing boom, then maybe he is worth more than his station would indicate.  Maybe he is a wealthy guy, not wealthy class wealthy but upper middle class.   While, say  the account executive or sales manager who should be middle or upper middle class has fallen on tough times in the economic downturn in an industry that is facing obsolescence is making the same salary as the manager of a Piggly Wiggly.  If you go by salary, then maybe the troubled account executive is working class, or out of work entirely and desperately in search of a job.  But I digress.

And what about the manager in the Piggly Wiggly?  Is he working class or middle class?   If he has his name labeled on his shirt, does it make a difference as to which class he is part of.    We have to contemplate the station of the  IT guy, the techno geek, wearing the torn Mickey Mouse Tee-Shirt he bought at someone’s yard sale in order to forget he is very much under the thumb of a multi-corporate structure, is he working class or middle class?  As for the hooker, mentioned paragraphs ago.  Where is she in the class structure?  I guess as with any other commodity, it is a matter or pricing and volume.

So it would appear in the great socio-economic milieu that the working class is gone and forgotten.  It is an archaic term, I suppose, in some ways.  Everyone works, after all.