Thinking outside of the box requires a discarding of the status quo presumptions that we normally frame our solution and decision making in. Currently, our public education system is struggling financially to educate our children--let alone having more than nominal funding to adequately protect those most vulnerable in our society's, our children's, presence within a frequently highly notable and scheduled establishment. In other words, everyone knows where a school is located, that children will most likely be present there somewhere between the hours of 8 am to 4 pm every Monday through Friday. This is the kind of information that, for the average person, can precipitate very little harm. For someone like Adam Lanza, although very rare, it's all they need to know should they be looking for easy targets. At my daughter's elementary school, the sole precaution for preventing unwarranted entry to the school is the windowed front office overlooking the front entry. In other words, the front office staff would not know who was entering the building until they were already within the building. Sandy Hook Elementary had a step higher in that entrants into the building had to be "buzzed" in. However, even this additional precaution failed as Adam Lanza simply shattered the glass to gain entry to the building and proceed with his murderous rampage. These simple security faults were based on the failing of society as a whole to consider that someone could, in fact, be so sick an individual as to enter an elementary school for the purpose of slaughtering children. Despite a long history of having the "unthinkable" occur within our schools, we, as we are so prone to do, tend to forget the lessons of history and continue on with the status quo. Worse yet, now that Adam Lanza has so successfully assaulted society to its very core, then there is a slightly increased risk of copy cat behavior. The flaw within our rationale and our public education has been exposed. It must be repaired.
One of the largest talking points within the media has been the ongoing discussion of mental health treatments, how they have failed, and what should be done in the future to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. Such thinking is not so far off the mark but, regrettably, any changes in the mental health system now will not do anything for someone who may already be firmly established within their own form of psychosis. It also would require society's growing nature of moving away from community thinking and sharing towards individualization and privatization of "family matters" to restore itself back to community thinking and sharing. We are always loathe to share the personal trials that may exist within our families. We'd rather be the Joneses than be the ones on the receiving end of assistance and pity. Adam Lanza was 20 years old and an adult. His mother, despite having a good deal of money and presumably more than adequate access to quality mental health assistance, was really "on her own" through perhaps her own mind and society, itself. She didn't offer more than bits of information from a variety of reports of those who knew her and the subject of her son seemed to be a highly private matter. If this is, presumably, the default response of a parent of a troubled child or adult child, then we can presume that this is what most likely occurs with the majority of families of deeply troubled children. It is not necessarily a fault within the parent. We all hope that our children turn out to be wonderful human beings--not cold blooded monsters. Hence, whereas all the discourse about changes to the mental health system are still appropriate, it is still unlikely to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. In this light, we must look to ourselves to think outside of the box to
protect our children in a more immediate sense rather than take steps
that would not take any notable effect for a generation.
Teachers should be armed with guns.
One of the suggestions that I have seen has been to arm teachers and staff with guns. Unfortunately, that is a suggestion that overlooks the examples that history has to offer us. A number of school shootings, historically, have been at the hands of school staff with guns. Guns shouldn't be allowed in schools for two primary reasons: 1. human error may allow unwarranted access to the gun and 2. the authorized holder of the gun can become the culprit. Although we can safely presume that an extremely high majority of staff would never do such a thing, if we are looking to provide the greatest assurance of safety for our children within the schools, bringing a gun in is not a tenable solution. It is basically bringing a weapon into the school that could be turned against the holder and the children themselves. Even bringing in a stun gun still presents the same untenable issues. Although the number of children that could be injured by the unauthorized use of a stun gun would be minimal compared to the same circumstance with a gun, it is unlikely that such a weapon would be calibrated to a child's body. That is still an unsafe scenario.
Preventing unwarranted access through front door entry.
How well schools are funded tend to be a localized matter. Sandy Hook Elementary, located within an upscale neighborhood, had a security feature that my daughter's decidedly middle class elementary school did not--a buzzer and, most likely, a security camera with adequate resolution to assist in identifying the potential entrant to the school. This is excellent for schools of upscale neighborhoods but horrific for the majority of schools within the United States. This indicates a significant funding failure on a federal level in regards to promoting school safety within our public education system. Worse yet, I can recollect several schools in even less financially secure areas that resorted to the usage of portables away from the main building of the school that would be of even higher risk than my daughter sitting in her 5th grade classroom in the main building of her own. We will spend billions of dollars annually on national defense but apparently national defense does not apply to within our own national border in providing defense on a national level at our schools. If some of that national defense spending were applied towards our schools, we would be seeing systems of even higher quality protection than simply a buzzer that can still be dependent on human error. Every parent of a child knows that, at the beginning of each year, they must fill out a form that lists all individuals authorized to pick up their child. How difficult would it be, considering that these children will most likely remain within the public education system from K-12, a total of 13 years, to establish a biometric database for those parents and family members authorized to pick up their child. A simple iris scan can nearly reduce human error down to null in assuring that unauthorized entry to a school does not occur without traipsing on concerns about fingerprinting (although many of the 24/7 health clubs utilize biometric fingerprint systems for access) or any RFID chipping.
Why not unbreakable glass? Despite the additional security at the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary, it did not stop Adam Lanza from gaining entry to the school. All he had to do was break the glass. One of the simplest ways of still preventing access would've been the placement of bars across the windows. However, these are schools. They are not prisons and, in our high tech society, we can certainly do far better than that. Glass types exist that are both unbreakable and bullet stopping. Why do we not have these types of glass installed within every school in the United States? These are our children, after all--the loss of which is generally the worst thing that a parent could ever imagine. Having unbreakable glass does not increase the risk to fire death as windows can be made to open from the interior to allow safe and fast exit from each classroom during the new windows installation. Now that we know that someone could do such a thing as Adam Lanza, it makes sense that we should, as a society, correct that loophole.
Metal detectors...the sad fact of our growing population.
Nearly every adult recollects the events of Columbine. Not every adult recollects that there were, within a 10 year span in the 90's both preceding and following Columbine, a total of 240 homicides within our schools between 1992 to 1999. The number of deaths and school shootings was so unprecedented that the U.S. Secret Service became involved in an attempt to form a profile for school shooters and during the 1998-1999 school year, over 3500 students were expelled for bringing a gun to school. Although this figure is still a minute portion of the student population as a whole, that would still be a high number of schools as having a student that brought a gun to school. Although elementary school shootings and gun presence is at the lowest frequency, it is not without historical providence. The youngest school shooter was only 6 years old at Buell Elementary School. Also, from as far as I can glean, discussed very little on any national level, has been the detainment or arrest of three different high school students since Friday for making statements or outright planning a school shooting of their own. We find ourselves at the cusp of possibly entering yet another cycle of school shootings as copy cat behavior may again begin to arise. As my daughter will be entering into junior high next year and, therefore, into a higher frequency of school shooting (by students themselves), I would rather the inconvenience of her walking through a metal detector than the risk of having the unthinkable as a parent happen. As our population grows, so does the population of those who have the potential of doing the atrocious as it will remain a relatively static percentage of the total population. This is a sad and grim fact that we must acknowledge as a society. In a sense, we should be grateful for the fact that those who made these threats made them on the internet and were reported so quickly. However, not every shooter is going to give such warnings.
Hot or "Panic" buttons.
When I was in college years ago, I worked for a bank. One of the things that was installed within the bank at every teller's station was a hot button to notify the authorities of a robbery. We have had this capacity in our banking system for decades. Do we have this kind of system established within every classroom in the US? It is quite possible, considering the fast response to Sandy Hook Elementary, that they may have had a panic button installed somewhere within the school but Sandy Hook also had features not found within other elementary schools in the United States. Those buttons could provide even faster notification of an issue within a school and should be installed in every school and every classroom to provide the quickest notification to authorities that there is a problem. Out of all of the above suggestions, considering how long this technology has been out there, it would most likely be the least expensive option for our schools. It will, however, not prevent another Sandy Hook.
For some time now, our discourse has been on how expensive our school system is and arguments about how much staff is being paid and educational performance. This directly impacts the kind of funding that our schools receive and school safety should not be dependent on the economic status of a community or school performance. As I said earlier, if we can spend billions or even trillions annually on national defense, then part of those proceeds should reasonably go to low key changes for the defense of our schools. We have so much technology that could be used if we wished it to be. We are simply too distracted and too cheap a society to actually do it. School safety should be the one subject that we all can agree on as the lives of our children are priceless.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Lanza and Asperger's
The Newtown, Connecticut school shooting is one of those events that tend to grip the psyche in a stranglehold of questioning and a demanding of answers as to how such a thing could occur or how an individual can do something that the majority of society finds so utterly heinous. It's frequently at these times that news agencies will grasp at whatever abnormality may have existed with the killer in order to be the first one to provide a simple answer to those questions. In the case of Adam Lanza, the disorder that became the focus of potentially creating killers was Asperger's. Many do not understand what Asperger's or autism is and, with the tendency towards what I call having a blank face, it's all too easy to view someone with autism as being totally deadened emotionally, rather like a sociopath. However, the key difference between someone who is a sociopath and someone who is autistic is that there is a world of difference in feeling. A sociopath may have little care or feelings. An autistic child is deeply sensitive to all their feelings and senses.
I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's. He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11. Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act. However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression. My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap. All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline. He didn't even know what he had done. The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework. He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response. He has never done anything similar again.
It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's. Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws. We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal. When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school. My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol. Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are. For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence. Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it. Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes. I just had the misfortune of not being a wall.
My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college. One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there. It was not fear for the other students that I felt. On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart. Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children". From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face. Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo". I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it. My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity.
An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others. A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation. We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light. We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street. We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way. Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression. It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies. For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer. On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying.
As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's. It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role. His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's. The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society. However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life. If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer. If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.
I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's. He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11. Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act. However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression. My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap. All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline. He didn't even know what he had done. The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework. He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response. He has never done anything similar again.
It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's. Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws. We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal. When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school. My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol. Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are. For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence. Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it. Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes. I just had the misfortune of not being a wall.
My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college. One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there. It was not fear for the other students that I felt. On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart. Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children". From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face. Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo". I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it. My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity.
An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others. A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation. We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light. We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street. We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way. Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression. It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies. For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer. On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying.
As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's. It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role. His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's. The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society. However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life. If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer. If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.
Friday, August 10, 2012
A Life in Hiding
Once upon a time, I was just a girl going to college. As a double science major in biology and botany, my days were generally spent going to class, labs, and then, home again, reeking of formaldehyde. I was living downtown in student housing and, on the weekends, would go out dancing with my friends. Pretty typical college student lifestyle but somewhere along the way, Raul A. Diaz found me and turned my life upside down. By the year's end, post-Diaz, I was in fear for my life, had changed my hair color three times, had moved, been forced to drop out of college and disappear forever.
I'll never forget the evening that Diaz first made his presence in my life known to me. I was in my small studio apartment busy making dinner while my cat was watching tv when the phone rang. When I answered the phone with the typical hello, I was greeted with a raspy low voice asking me "what kind of panties do you have on?". I was chilled for a second but then, figured it was one of my male friends playing a prank on me. I started laughing and asked, "Pippet, is that you?", fully expecting my friend to come clean. Instead, the same voice said "I'm not Pippet". After several minutes of back and forth, I realized that it really wasn't my friend playing a prank and quickly hung up the phone. That was the first time I spoke to Diaz. For the next few days, the same person kept calling and asking that same question, over and over again. I hung up the phone, every time, sometimes after shouting "leave me alone!" or "stop calling me!" over the receiver. I was getting about 5 or 6 phone calls a day and the strain of it was starting to show. Still trying to make light of the whole thing, one evening when I had friends over, he called again and one of them took the phone from my hands to say in falsetto, "why do you want to know what kind of panties I have on?". Diaz promptly hung up on them. Although I half heartedly laughed at the exchange, something inside me was sinking. My grades were already starting to slide just after the first week. It felt like there was something terribly discordant in my world. There were nights where I stopped answering the phone entirely. It seemed to me that whenever I answered the phone, it was always the same voice on the other end asking the same inevitable question.
In December of 1992, after two weeks of these phone calls, I knew that I had to do something. I couldn't concentrate in class anymore and worse yet, I was falling asleep during some of the lectures for sleeping at night was becoming difficult. That afternoon after coming home from the lab, I called my phone company to report the problem. The customer service representative was unsettled by what I told him and offered me two options. The first was that I could simply change my number and eliminate receiving the calls entirely. The second was where I filed a police report, which would allow Qwest to put a phone trap on my phone that would log every incoming call to my number. I mulled my options over for a second. It was so very tempting to just change my number and end it right there yet something inside me was screaming that that was a very bad idea. I told the Qwest representative that I was going to file a police report. Even he said he was relieved that I chose to do that, too, feeling that same dread that I was feeling, too. That dread turned out to be universal for something about the incidents were disturbing to the Portland police officer who took my report. Working together to resolve the situation quickly, by the next day, the phone trap was on my phone. For one month, it would log every call coming into my home in the hopes of catching the caller's identification. Every time I got one of these calls, I was to record the time and date of the call. In the end, they would compare my notes to the calls recorded on the trap and hope to catch the caller.
For a month, I took each call and dutifully recorded the time and date. To cheer me up during a rare snowfall, my friends brought over makeshift sleds one night and we spent the evening, sledding down one of the steep streets near my apartment building. It was a great night and I remember laughing and feeling relaxed. At one point, a man had stopped underneath a streetlight to watch us sledding. I remember noting him in his long black leather trench and long dark hair pulled back into a low, tight ponytail and for a moment, he and I locked eyes as my friends and I slid past. He smiled at me and I beamed back, thinking that he was just a random person who stumbled across us and was enjoying our merry making in the snow. We were acting like little kids. What wasn't there to like? By the time Christmas arrived, I was so grateful to finally be free of it and spent the weekend at my grandparents' home in Tacoma where I felt safe. I was so tired that I curled up at the bottom of one of their immense chairs and fell asleep like a cat. I slept that entire Christmas, only to awake for Christmas dinner. The month of having to take every call was nearly over though. I steeled myself for the time remaining until the caller would be caught. Just a few more days and it would all be over. That's what I thought.
The month ended and I handed my notes over to the police. Within an hour, they called me back with the report that they had possibly identified the man calling me. To make sure that my case against him stuck, though, they asked me to take one more call. This one, they said, would be the last but I would need to actually talk to him and try to get him to talk for as long as possible while recording the entire conversation on my answering machine. They would be sending a police officer over to wait for the call so that I would feel safe during the conversation. God knows I did not want to have that conversation but when the police officer arrived, he affirmed that it was very important. Keep him talking as long as possible. Find out all that he knows. It didn't take long for that conversation to take place. He was calling so much by that point that it was maddening. I'll never forget that conversation for as long as I live. It started out with the same raspy voice asking me what kind of panties I had on and I responded with a question myself--"Why do you want to know? You don't even know who I am." My blood ran cold when he told me that my name was Stephanie and then told me my full name. My thoughts were racing wildly for I didn't understand how he knew my whole name. I was only listed in the phone book by my first initial, surname and phone number. I challenged him as to still not knowing who I was or what I even looked like but he described me perfectly. Then started telling me where precisely I lived, what car I drove, which window on the 15th floor of my apartment building was mine and what door in the hallway was mine, too. He knew when I had classes, when I came home. It became very clear why he was asking me every day what kind of panties I had on--that was the only thing he couldn't possibly know. I cannot possibly describe what I was feeling as this went on. If fear was a wind, then I was a wild whirlwind. I was absolutely terrified. After he was done, I couldn't take it any longer and blurted out, "You're trapped" just before slamming down the phone. I must have been wild eyed when I handed the tape over to the officer who had been standing nearby throughout.
Everything changed. He never left my side and instead, a second police officer--a female, soon arrived at my apartment, too. They told me that they would stay by me until he was apprehended. A friend made the mistake of coming over during this period and it was terrifying to watch both officers ready their gun before demanding that he identify himself. It's almost laughable because my friend was also carrying a gun at the time. He heard their guns click on the other side of my door and readied his own. After a brief stand off and my intervention, soon my friend and I both were stuck waiting with the two officers, so plainly ready for anything to go down. It all felt so surreal. People say that just the smallest amount of this story sounds like it came from a movie. Well, that's what it felt like to me at the time, too. I was so dissociated, I couldn't even feel anymore. Everything was just happening around me like a movie though with a keen awareness that this was my life.
Diaz had left his home on foot soon after the phone call with me had ended. According to the Portland police, they entered his home with a warrant for his arrest and searched the premises. It was during this search that they went into his basement and found that Diaz had built a shrine to me there. A homicide detective was called in on the spot to examine the shrine and more police officers were called to start hunting for Diaz. He was finally apprehended after two hours on the middle of the Burnside bridge. I was told by the police that they blocked off both sides of the bridge to arrest him. This was no simple prankster. Raul A. Diaz was someone that had long been known to them since he was just a kid. He was a diagnosed sociopath with a violent criminal record stretching from the time he had turned 18, who had had a juvenile record stretching even before that. He was considered to be very dangerous but had always just skirted the system so that his jail terms were always short. Mostly assaults. Diaz had no record of ever doing anything like he had done with me. The homicide detective said that, with me, Diaz had stepped from violent offender to a violent sex offender. The shrine, he said, indicated that the situation for me was escalating dangerously and that eventually, I would be murdered by Diaz. They showed me his mugshot and I realized that the man under the streetlight on that snowy night had been Diaz. Sometimes danger can be right before you with a light shining down on it and you can still be blissfully unaware that your life is in peril. He had taken that step into the light so that I would acknowledge him, just one step closer to death.
I was told in no uncertain terms that my life was forever changed by one sick, violent sociopath's obsession. I had to hide and hide for the rest of my life. Because of the level of information that Diaz knew about me as per the recorded conversation,, nothing was safe--not even the DMV. My life would be filled, out of necessity, with vigilance. Never be found. Always change my driver's license the day that I was to move and never have it be my current location. Always leave it one behind in a cold trail for him to follow. Avoid as much connection to the address of my residence as possible including bills being put in other names. A lifetime of lost friends and missed reunions who fell out of contact and could never find me again for even my family would not part with any information about me because of Diaz. That's been my life and for years, it was painful but easy. Over the past few years, it's been a constant fight. As privacy rights declined, the risk to my children and I inversely increased. It's become harder and harder to keep my children and I safe. Some people don't care and, frequently, it seems that many people out there don't care much for their privacy. They give it away freely and this allows for an ever more pervasive intrusion and release of information for everyone including those whose lives depend on privacy.
Today, I am happy to report that, according to the Portland Police, Diaz is likely to be dead. Although I will remain vigilant for it is not absolute, I feel free enough to share this whole story publicly without fear that Diaz will read it himself and only feel empowered over the impact he had on me. The incident with Diaz happened in a time where there were no stalking laws. The judge presiding over the case called me, himself during his deliberation and voiced his absolute distress and apology for not being able to protect me better. Diaz, this man whose apprehension required the blocking off of a major bridge in Portland, served three days in jail for the crime of telephonic harassment, two years of mandatory psychiatric care, a two year no-contact restraining order, and was ordered to do 14,000 hours of community service for the total crime of what he had done. There was no limitation on community service. It was the least that the judge could do. Even though now there are jail sentences and some greater protections of victims of dangerous stalkers like myself, I am keenly aware that somewhere out there, there are women whose lives have been led just like mine was for 19 years, living in constant fear and struggling to hide their current location in defense of their lives.
Three days ago, for the first time in 19 years, I discovered that my current location, despite all of my efforts to hide, was publicly released. It took three full days to get that information removed from one single website. It took calling the CEO of the website at his home and more. It was three days of sheer terror and lock down for my children and I. In a way, I am oddly grateful for the incident for, thanks to the efforts of another homicide detective for the Portland Police Bureau, she searched through the records to come to the conclusion that Diaz was most likely dead. Yet it's important to know that these things don't just happen in movies. They happen in reality and for those who think that privacy isn't that important, well, before Diaz, I had taken care in keeping myself protected and this is my story. Sometimes danger can be right before you, standing in the light, and you can still be unaware. You'll never know how dreadfully important privacy is until it's too late. Be careful, be vigilant, and most of all, be safe.
I'll never forget the evening that Diaz first made his presence in my life known to me. I was in my small studio apartment busy making dinner while my cat was watching tv when the phone rang. When I answered the phone with the typical hello, I was greeted with a raspy low voice asking me "what kind of panties do you have on?". I was chilled for a second but then, figured it was one of my male friends playing a prank on me. I started laughing and asked, "Pippet, is that you?", fully expecting my friend to come clean. Instead, the same voice said "I'm not Pippet". After several minutes of back and forth, I realized that it really wasn't my friend playing a prank and quickly hung up the phone. That was the first time I spoke to Diaz. For the next few days, the same person kept calling and asking that same question, over and over again. I hung up the phone, every time, sometimes after shouting "leave me alone!" or "stop calling me!" over the receiver. I was getting about 5 or 6 phone calls a day and the strain of it was starting to show. Still trying to make light of the whole thing, one evening when I had friends over, he called again and one of them took the phone from my hands to say in falsetto, "why do you want to know what kind of panties I have on?". Diaz promptly hung up on them. Although I half heartedly laughed at the exchange, something inside me was sinking. My grades were already starting to slide just after the first week. It felt like there was something terribly discordant in my world. There were nights where I stopped answering the phone entirely. It seemed to me that whenever I answered the phone, it was always the same voice on the other end asking the same inevitable question.
In December of 1992, after two weeks of these phone calls, I knew that I had to do something. I couldn't concentrate in class anymore and worse yet, I was falling asleep during some of the lectures for sleeping at night was becoming difficult. That afternoon after coming home from the lab, I called my phone company to report the problem. The customer service representative was unsettled by what I told him and offered me two options. The first was that I could simply change my number and eliminate receiving the calls entirely. The second was where I filed a police report, which would allow Qwest to put a phone trap on my phone that would log every incoming call to my number. I mulled my options over for a second. It was so very tempting to just change my number and end it right there yet something inside me was screaming that that was a very bad idea. I told the Qwest representative that I was going to file a police report. Even he said he was relieved that I chose to do that, too, feeling that same dread that I was feeling, too. That dread turned out to be universal for something about the incidents were disturbing to the Portland police officer who took my report. Working together to resolve the situation quickly, by the next day, the phone trap was on my phone. For one month, it would log every call coming into my home in the hopes of catching the caller's identification. Every time I got one of these calls, I was to record the time and date of the call. In the end, they would compare my notes to the calls recorded on the trap and hope to catch the caller.
For a month, I took each call and dutifully recorded the time and date. To cheer me up during a rare snowfall, my friends brought over makeshift sleds one night and we spent the evening, sledding down one of the steep streets near my apartment building. It was a great night and I remember laughing and feeling relaxed. At one point, a man had stopped underneath a streetlight to watch us sledding. I remember noting him in his long black leather trench and long dark hair pulled back into a low, tight ponytail and for a moment, he and I locked eyes as my friends and I slid past. He smiled at me and I beamed back, thinking that he was just a random person who stumbled across us and was enjoying our merry making in the snow. We were acting like little kids. What wasn't there to like? By the time Christmas arrived, I was so grateful to finally be free of it and spent the weekend at my grandparents' home in Tacoma where I felt safe. I was so tired that I curled up at the bottom of one of their immense chairs and fell asleep like a cat. I slept that entire Christmas, only to awake for Christmas dinner. The month of having to take every call was nearly over though. I steeled myself for the time remaining until the caller would be caught. Just a few more days and it would all be over. That's what I thought.
The month ended and I handed my notes over to the police. Within an hour, they called me back with the report that they had possibly identified the man calling me. To make sure that my case against him stuck, though, they asked me to take one more call. This one, they said, would be the last but I would need to actually talk to him and try to get him to talk for as long as possible while recording the entire conversation on my answering machine. They would be sending a police officer over to wait for the call so that I would feel safe during the conversation. God knows I did not want to have that conversation but when the police officer arrived, he affirmed that it was very important. Keep him talking as long as possible. Find out all that he knows. It didn't take long for that conversation to take place. He was calling so much by that point that it was maddening. I'll never forget that conversation for as long as I live. It started out with the same raspy voice asking me what kind of panties I had on and I responded with a question myself--"Why do you want to know? You don't even know who I am." My blood ran cold when he told me that my name was Stephanie and then told me my full name. My thoughts were racing wildly for I didn't understand how he knew my whole name. I was only listed in the phone book by my first initial, surname and phone number. I challenged him as to still not knowing who I was or what I even looked like but he described me perfectly. Then started telling me where precisely I lived, what car I drove, which window on the 15th floor of my apartment building was mine and what door in the hallway was mine, too. He knew when I had classes, when I came home. It became very clear why he was asking me every day what kind of panties I had on--that was the only thing he couldn't possibly know. I cannot possibly describe what I was feeling as this went on. If fear was a wind, then I was a wild whirlwind. I was absolutely terrified. After he was done, I couldn't take it any longer and blurted out, "You're trapped" just before slamming down the phone. I must have been wild eyed when I handed the tape over to the officer who had been standing nearby throughout.
Everything changed. He never left my side and instead, a second police officer--a female, soon arrived at my apartment, too. They told me that they would stay by me until he was apprehended. A friend made the mistake of coming over during this period and it was terrifying to watch both officers ready their gun before demanding that he identify himself. It's almost laughable because my friend was also carrying a gun at the time. He heard their guns click on the other side of my door and readied his own. After a brief stand off and my intervention, soon my friend and I both were stuck waiting with the two officers, so plainly ready for anything to go down. It all felt so surreal. People say that just the smallest amount of this story sounds like it came from a movie. Well, that's what it felt like to me at the time, too. I was so dissociated, I couldn't even feel anymore. Everything was just happening around me like a movie though with a keen awareness that this was my life.
Diaz had left his home on foot soon after the phone call with me had ended. According to the Portland police, they entered his home with a warrant for his arrest and searched the premises. It was during this search that they went into his basement and found that Diaz had built a shrine to me there. A homicide detective was called in on the spot to examine the shrine and more police officers were called to start hunting for Diaz. He was finally apprehended after two hours on the middle of the Burnside bridge. I was told by the police that they blocked off both sides of the bridge to arrest him. This was no simple prankster. Raul A. Diaz was someone that had long been known to them since he was just a kid. He was a diagnosed sociopath with a violent criminal record stretching from the time he had turned 18, who had had a juvenile record stretching even before that. He was considered to be very dangerous but had always just skirted the system so that his jail terms were always short. Mostly assaults. Diaz had no record of ever doing anything like he had done with me. The homicide detective said that, with me, Diaz had stepped from violent offender to a violent sex offender. The shrine, he said, indicated that the situation for me was escalating dangerously and that eventually, I would be murdered by Diaz. They showed me his mugshot and I realized that the man under the streetlight on that snowy night had been Diaz. Sometimes danger can be right before you with a light shining down on it and you can still be blissfully unaware that your life is in peril. He had taken that step into the light so that I would acknowledge him, just one step closer to death.
I was told in no uncertain terms that my life was forever changed by one sick, violent sociopath's obsession. I had to hide and hide for the rest of my life. Because of the level of information that Diaz knew about me as per the recorded conversation,, nothing was safe--not even the DMV. My life would be filled, out of necessity, with vigilance. Never be found. Always change my driver's license the day that I was to move and never have it be my current location. Always leave it one behind in a cold trail for him to follow. Avoid as much connection to the address of my residence as possible including bills being put in other names. A lifetime of lost friends and missed reunions who fell out of contact and could never find me again for even my family would not part with any information about me because of Diaz. That's been my life and for years, it was painful but easy. Over the past few years, it's been a constant fight. As privacy rights declined, the risk to my children and I inversely increased. It's become harder and harder to keep my children and I safe. Some people don't care and, frequently, it seems that many people out there don't care much for their privacy. They give it away freely and this allows for an ever more pervasive intrusion and release of information for everyone including those whose lives depend on privacy.
Today, I am happy to report that, according to the Portland Police, Diaz is likely to be dead. Although I will remain vigilant for it is not absolute, I feel free enough to share this whole story publicly without fear that Diaz will read it himself and only feel empowered over the impact he had on me. The incident with Diaz happened in a time where there were no stalking laws. The judge presiding over the case called me, himself during his deliberation and voiced his absolute distress and apology for not being able to protect me better. Diaz, this man whose apprehension required the blocking off of a major bridge in Portland, served three days in jail for the crime of telephonic harassment, two years of mandatory psychiatric care, a two year no-contact restraining order, and was ordered to do 14,000 hours of community service for the total crime of what he had done. There was no limitation on community service. It was the least that the judge could do. Even though now there are jail sentences and some greater protections of victims of dangerous stalkers like myself, I am keenly aware that somewhere out there, there are women whose lives have been led just like mine was for 19 years, living in constant fear and struggling to hide their current location in defense of their lives.
Three days ago, for the first time in 19 years, I discovered that my current location, despite all of my efforts to hide, was publicly released. It took three full days to get that information removed from one single website. It took calling the CEO of the website at his home and more. It was three days of sheer terror and lock down for my children and I. In a way, I am oddly grateful for the incident for, thanks to the efforts of another homicide detective for the Portland Police Bureau, she searched through the records to come to the conclusion that Diaz was most likely dead. Yet it's important to know that these things don't just happen in movies. They happen in reality and for those who think that privacy isn't that important, well, before Diaz, I had taken care in keeping myself protected and this is my story. Sometimes danger can be right before you, standing in the light, and you can still be unaware. You'll never know how dreadfully important privacy is until it's too late. Be careful, be vigilant, and most of all, be safe.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Even the Founders posted anonymously, YouTube.
This morning, as I was hunting for a video on DayZ on YouTube that I
wanted to share with a friend talking about the game, I was prompted by
the site to decide whether or not I'd like to start using my real name
on YouTube. I had heard that this was coming and already knew my
answer--hell no. The options, however, that I was given as to the
reason for my decline were this: Well, my YouTube account obviously isn't for a tv show or character. I'm certainly not a music artist. Nor is my channel for the promotion of a product, business, or other organization. Is my channel name well-known? Although I did receive the "you can monetize now!" message from YouTube, I don't consider it to be "well-known". If it were such a thing, I'd probably not like it that much. What I post is primarily for my friends and family. That, in itself, falls under "My channel is for personal use but I cannot use my real name". I find the latter portion of the statement to be very odd as it would seem to imply that the content that I put up is somehow questionable and therefore, I cannot use my real name. I'm not so far off the mark on that interpretation as John Mello, Jr. at PC World stated in his blog post, "People who leave constructive comments are likely to embrace the new policy, but others will continue to hide behind anonymity and revel in their vile comments." I'm not a political activist in a repressive regime (not that I'm aware of) but I also am not someone who wants to revel in my vile comments simply because I want to preserve some form of anonymity. If I make a comment on another YouTube users' video, it's always constructive even if it is as simple as "great vid!!" or something that requires editing because I ran out of character space. I'm a writer--vile comments aren't my forte. Expressing myself through language is.
My reasons for not using my real name are simple. I know that my channel is viewable by everyone on the planet with a computer or smart phone. I don't mind the random viewer of my channel looking at my videos. I actually can rather appreciate it because I am a firm believer in the free exchange of ideas. The problem is that it is freely viewable by everyone on the planet and freely giving out my name along with the videos just spells trouble. Whereas some may argue that I'm simply paranoid, I fall back onto what one of my good friends once said, "It's not paranoia when you know there is something to fear." Once upon a time, a total stranger who also happened to be a known sociopath with a 10 year long violent criminal record found me, too, and built a shrine to me in his basement. When the man was to be apprehended and the shrine was discovered, a homocide detective was called in to interpret it. His interpretation was that the sociopath's obsession was escalating to the point where it was likely that I would be murdered if he was not stopped. Is he still out there? Yes, probably. Are there others out there just like him? Statistically speaking, absolutely.
My second bit of experience on this matter was after my PC Gamer win (which is owned by the same media company as PC World). Generally, when somebody wins a contest, their name is released so when I won, I understood what was the "norm". What I didn't expect was for the magazine to loot a picture of me from my steam account that not only gave people a look at me but also my steam account information, right alongside with my real name. Because of the sociopath, I had been warned by the local police to stay hidden for the rest of my days so once a month, I do perform a Google search to make sure that what is out there cannot be traced back to my location. What was disturbing was that my PC Gamer win actually changed my search results to find results that I had missed entirely. Hell, they even discovered that I was published in the online telephone book when I had been paying additional monies to make sure that I was both unpublished and unlisted in it. The only explanation for the change in search result--that people were trying to actively find me. That is creepy as hell. I was scampering to cover my tracks online as a result.
Although the internet is comprised of people and I try to treat others on the internet just as I would in real life, the internet is completely different from real life. For one thing, everything that one does on the internet leaves a digital trail. Having that digital trail being associated with your name allows anyone the opportunity to learn a massive amount of information about you. This gives any stalker far more access to information about you than one who exists in your actual life. Whereas my stalker from long ago knew where I lived, what car I drove, and the faces of the people that I associated with, a cyber stalker can learn infinitely more. The more they find, the greater the chance that their pathology will escalate right along with it.
I find it ironic that we have gone from looking at cyber stalking laws to a sudden push to eliminate anonymity in order to eliminate some hurt feelings due to "vile comments". I also find it ironic that we have gone from an internet society whose aim was to protect children to one that casts children's private information out into the open entirely. My 10 year old daughter had a gmail account in order to converse with family in Arizona. Just last week, I discovered that she had been responding to videos using her real name on YouTube and berated her for it. I firmly and perhaps harshly admonished the need for anonymity, especially for children, on the internet because I wanted her to comprehend the dangers. The reason why she was posting on YouTube videos under her real name? Because her YouTube account was established at the time that her Gmail was made and it was YouTube that put that information "out there". She didn't even know that she could change her account name. She's a 10 year old for God's sake.
So explain to me Google why you think putting my 10 year old daughter or myself at risk is worth assuaging some hurt feelings. It's a huge leap from a more recent opinion that upheld anonymity on the internet for the protection of the privacy of an individual, especially children, and that negative commentary was just a downside of the freedom of speech. Personally, I don't buy the rational of it being solely to "clean up comments". This, from the same Google, whose vision for its employees was "Don't be evil" and who previously made repetitive statements of how they wish to protect our privacy. I am not blind nor am I stupid. What I see is Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt, now a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, scampering to assist the government in identifying political dissenters posting on YouTube videos by forcing them to either out themselves or flag themselves by saying that they have something to hide. It's the only rational explanation for putting people at risk and entirely foregoing previously held beliefs in regards to the privacy of their users. Forcing people to either use their real names or flag themselves simply lessens the work load on our intelligence agencies should someone being saying something that is outside of what is acceptable free speech. Criticizing the government is protected free speech--speech that incites violence is not. Whereas I fully support tracking down those who are choosing to incite violence (a small portion of the population), I do not agree in eliminating free speech as an alternative for that is precisely what Google/YouTube is doing today.
Beyond political dissenters, there is also the issue of employers. It wasn't very long ago that articles regarding employers requiring access to prospective employees' Facebook accounts hit the news and it's been a privacy issue for some time. Making YouTube users out themselves also hits on an employee privacy issue as well. Whereas an employer isn't going to know what movies their employees watch or radio shows they listen to on their free time, by forcing YouTube users to utilize their real names, they now will know all this information and more.
The alternative? Either flag yourself as someone who chooses privacy ("I cannot use my real name") or try to lie. Apparently, for some users who have chosen to remain anonymous on YouTube, they lost their ability to comment on videos. I chose to flag myself and am still able to comment. They chose other alternatives and no longer have access to speak freely. So very contrary to Google's mission statement, straight from their own Google company page:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Don't be evil, Google. Perhaps it's time to remember your own slogan and mission though I cannot help but imagine that the damage to your reputation is now done. I once really admired your company. I am not a political dissenter or someone who gets their jollies off of writing nasty things to other people on YouTube. I'm just an average human being with a healthy respect for my privacy. Shame on you for putting me between a rock and hard place alongside my daughter. Whereas most people seemed to comprehend what Facebook was all about from the beginning and, therefore, are more tolerant, people actually admired your company once as a healthy proponent for privacy and speech, a pedestal that your company put itself up on. You stuck my daughter out in the open as a 10 year old little girl and made it "really hard" for her to protect herself. How do you think this mother feels about you right now? The irony is that these kind of moves don't fix anything. The people that are the real problem will simply go underground. You should know that. Our government should know that. Such heavy handed moves only makes things look worse and can make people angry. Like this mother who also happens to need her privacy and cherishes the free exchange of information. Why even the Founders published things under the guise of anonymity...isn't that right, Publius? Or should I say James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay?http://www.pcworld.com/article/259753/youtube_asks_users_to_post_real_names_in_bid_to_clean_up_comments.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
http://www.google.com/about/company/
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Life and Death of a Rez Cat
Life on the Navajo rez was hard. I was always the type of person who was easily moved by others' suffering, both human and animal alike. So much so that my 4th grade teacher's rather cruel nickname for me was "Fragile" as if it were some fundamental flaw. If there was one word that I would associate with the Navajo rez, the first word I would think of is "death" and the second, "poverty". That was the way of the rez for not a day would go by where one wouldn't see the carcasses of wild dogs strewn across the highways. A sight that I was told that I would someday get hardened to. I never really did but, instead, hid my distress at the sight by ranking it for gore on a scale of 1-10. It wasn't so much that people died all the time out there. Instead, the greatest death toll was in both the cats and dogs that were born out there. There were diseases that afflicted the animals for which the Navajo had no name, whether it would be the disease that ate all the fur off their bodies or the one that rotted them from the inside until maggots came out of a still living dog. Then there were the animals themselves, frequently left feral and hungry. The wild dogs would eat the cats or even each other. I remember rescuing a puppy out there only to discover that it got out and found itself a carcass of a puppy to chew on. It horrified me to the bone though it was the way of the rez.
On the day that my cats, Lucky and Gin, were born on the rez, it was nothing more than another typical glimpse of that brutal world. They were part of a litter that had been given birth to in the parking lot or perhaps had been immediately dumped there by the cat's owner. Hard to say but there the litter of 6 were left in a small pile within the parking lot of an office building. All day long, the employees working inside clucked and pitied the mewing and dying kittens; yet, none did a thing to try to save them. Survival for such an occurrence was an impossibility to the Navajos working there. The only possible outcome for these kittens was a slow, cold and hungry death. I didn't hear about the kittens until 5 pm that day when my daughter's father called me to tell me of the horrible sight. He said that he heard a fierce mewing and sure enough, one of the litter had survived the day in the desert sun. I demanded that he turn around and bring me the kitten immediately. In the short time waiting, I found a recipe for emergency kitten formula and went door to door, looking for a infant medicine dropper with which to feed the kitten. I'll never forget my first sight of Lucky. His placental sac had never been licked clean and had dried to his fur in a dark brown speckled with clay dust. His umbilical cord was still long and he was a tiny, fragile thing. I sent my daughter's father straight back out to the grocery store to pick up the supplies to make the kitten formula and immediately started to gently clean Lucky and clip down his cord. As luck would have it, her father stopped one more time to check on the litter and found one more surviving kitten flopping in distress in the setting sun. This was Gin and she was perhaps the luckier cat of the two for by the time she came into my care, she was cold.
I spent the rest of the evening, tending to Lucky and Gin's distress. After they were cleaned and both their cords clipped, I warmed them against my chest before giving them their first meal ever through the baby dropper. I didn't even think twice about doing any of this or give any thought as to what it truly meant to take on the role of mother to two kittens. Baby kittens aren't unlike human babies at all. They needed to be fed every two hours, kept warm constantly, and on top of it all, baby kittens can't defecate and urinate without their mother. After the first 5 days, I was deeply exhausted and was contemplating possibly giving up. I couldn't do that though because I was poignantly aware what precisely I was to these two kittens--I was the only mother they ever had known and they depended on me for life. How could betray such tiny things? My only real choice was to become their mother in return, just as much as I would be my own two human children. It filled me with fear to understand this for I knew that it would only end in sorrow for me. The norm is that our children tend to survive us. These two children of mine weren't going to ever possibly do that. I would outlive them both. That, too, I accepted and we, three, survived the 5 weeks of every two hour feedings. Living out on the rez where the closest veterinarian was a horse doctor, I also took on the role of veterinarian, too. Gin had a concave chest that needed special care. Both struggled with bouts of constipation and bloating from the kitten formula. We got through it all though and I was rewarded with two beautiful little children with furry faces.
I washed them clean a few times a day with a warm, damp washcloth wrapped around the tip of my forefinger to emulate a mother cat's tongue. As they grew older, I taught them to pounce and drag away tiny stuffed animal kills for these were survival skills that I knew that they may possibly need. I taught them to touch noses as a way of saying hello. In the end, they became two very unique cats--a mixture of both human and cat qualities. My son helped me during the day with Gin and she bonded most with him. Lucky was my son, through and through, loving to be held like a baby and reaching his paw up to gently touch my hair and face with a look of complete adoration on his face--just like my own human children did when they were infants. None of us ever considered either of them to be as simple as pets. They were our family, through and through. They were more than just survivors of what should have been a fatal birthing, they were survivors of the Navajo rez. Some of the Navajo came to see them once they had survived and were taken aback at how amazing the two kittens were.
When it came time for Lucky to be neutered, there was little choice but to go to the horse doctor. Yet, he had experience in the neutering and spaying of smaller animals for he, out of grief for what he saw happening to the feral cats and dogs on the rez, would capture them and fix them for free before setting them loose again once their wounds were healed. He was in absolute awe over Lucky and I think he didn't want to part with him at all when I went to pick him up. I knew my Lucky bear was special. I always did. I was so happy when we returned to Oregon because the neighborhood we were in was sheltered and safe. Lucky liked nothing better to play in the backyard and would only leave the yard to occasionally walk with my daughter and I to the school bus stop around the corner. Life was great for Lucky until 6 months ago, a feral cat wandered into the neighborhood. Perhaps turned out by a desperate homeowner in the midst of this recession, it began to terrorize all the cats living in the block. Lucky became injured and formed an abscess over one eye, which my son and I promptly treated that night. I took Lucky in to the vet the next day to make sure that he would survive and updated his shots.
Lucky's abscess quickly healed and he became himself again. Doting, adorable Lucky who was an example of perfect health with his shiny, thick fur, good build, and clear eyes although he had taken up the most heinous cat activity of urinating outside of the litter box. I presumed it was spraying to ward off the feral cat, who did eventually disappear. He also took to drinking from the faucet and rarely left my side. Beyond these new affectations, however, he was such a picture of health that it deeply confused me when I started to feel like he was going to be leaving me soon two months ago. There wasn't a single thing about him that had changed but yet, something had imperceptibly and irrevocably changed, which terrified me. Yet, there was Lucky, seemingly the picture of health, to grab my hand from his perch on my bed to tell me that it was time to sleep only to sit upright on my chest with his own chest puffed and a cat smile on his face, purring wildly at his conquered victim. In fact, he exuded so much good health that, when an accident occurred one night and his tail became injured, the vet gave him his checkup and found that Lucky was extremely anemic. More testing came and feline leukemia was found. A fatal flaw had been made when Lucky had been treated for his abscess--he was not given the vaccine. My Lucky bear was dying yet, even the vet was convinced that he had much more time, despite the dangerous anemia. His fur was so shiny, his weight so good. Such a happy cat despite the pain of his tail injury. She sent him home with me for which I'm glad. Lucky passed away in my arms that night when he no longer had enough red blood cells to keep his body alive. A mother always knows when her beloved child is dying, even when everything seems right. We still know. These past two months, both Lucky and I savored each others' company, seemingly with the poignant awareness that we would soon be parted.
The next day, Gin was taken in to be tested for feline leukemia. Delicate, beautiful, tiny little Gin immediately charmed the entire staff as much, if not more, than Lucky did. We all cried for joy when she came up negative for the disease that had killed her brother just the night before. Lucky's poor veterinarian was devastated that he had died. I told the staff to remind her what she had said herself about Lucky--he tried so hard to keep everyone from worrying about him. Lucky duped us all but, because of her, Gin had a chance. Lucky, himself, had given her a chance by all his little weird behaviors from stopping using the litter box to no longer sharing a water bowl with her. Gin, in return, is taking care of me for Lucky in picking up all of Lucky's routines with me that he can no longer do. Lucky may have been born a rez cat but he was a rez cat extraordinaire and so, too, his sister.
I know it's hard in these uncertain times to remember or rationalize the cost of a vaccination for a beloved family member but I urge you to take the time to do so. Most cities in the US have mobile pet clinics that are also low cost. Many also run vaccination specials that can further bring down the cost. It is far better than tears, grief and loss for your family or for your neighbors.
Good Neighbor Mobile Vet Clinic
On the day that my cats, Lucky and Gin, were born on the rez, it was nothing more than another typical glimpse of that brutal world. They were part of a litter that had been given birth to in the parking lot or perhaps had been immediately dumped there by the cat's owner. Hard to say but there the litter of 6 were left in a small pile within the parking lot of an office building. All day long, the employees working inside clucked and pitied the mewing and dying kittens; yet, none did a thing to try to save them. Survival for such an occurrence was an impossibility to the Navajos working there. The only possible outcome for these kittens was a slow, cold and hungry death. I didn't hear about the kittens until 5 pm that day when my daughter's father called me to tell me of the horrible sight. He said that he heard a fierce mewing and sure enough, one of the litter had survived the day in the desert sun. I demanded that he turn around and bring me the kitten immediately. In the short time waiting, I found a recipe for emergency kitten formula and went door to door, looking for a infant medicine dropper with which to feed the kitten. I'll never forget my first sight of Lucky. His placental sac had never been licked clean and had dried to his fur in a dark brown speckled with clay dust. His umbilical cord was still long and he was a tiny, fragile thing. I sent my daughter's father straight back out to the grocery store to pick up the supplies to make the kitten formula and immediately started to gently clean Lucky and clip down his cord. As luck would have it, her father stopped one more time to check on the litter and found one more surviving kitten flopping in distress in the setting sun. This was Gin and she was perhaps the luckier cat of the two for by the time she came into my care, she was cold.
 |
| Just a few weeks old and already adored. |
I washed them clean a few times a day with a warm, damp washcloth wrapped around the tip of my forefinger to emulate a mother cat's tongue. As they grew older, I taught them to pounce and drag away tiny stuffed animal kills for these were survival skills that I knew that they may possibly need. I taught them to touch noses as a way of saying hello. In the end, they became two very unique cats--a mixture of both human and cat qualities. My son helped me during the day with Gin and she bonded most with him. Lucky was my son, through and through, loving to be held like a baby and reaching his paw up to gently touch my hair and face with a look of complete adoration on his face--just like my own human children did when they were infants. None of us ever considered either of them to be as simple as pets. They were our family, through and through. They were more than just survivors of what should have been a fatal birthing, they were survivors of the Navajo rez. Some of the Navajo came to see them once they had survived and were taken aback at how amazing the two kittens were.
 |
| Little People were way cooler to Lucky than a lousy ball. |
 |
| Touching noses |
The next day, Gin was taken in to be tested for feline leukemia. Delicate, beautiful, tiny little Gin immediately charmed the entire staff as much, if not more, than Lucky did. We all cried for joy when she came up negative for the disease that had killed her brother just the night before. Lucky's poor veterinarian was devastated that he had died. I told the staff to remind her what she had said herself about Lucky--he tried so hard to keep everyone from worrying about him. Lucky duped us all but, because of her, Gin had a chance. Lucky, himself, had given her a chance by all his little weird behaviors from stopping using the litter box to no longer sharing a water bowl with her. Gin, in return, is taking care of me for Lucky in picking up all of Lucky's routines with me that he can no longer do. Lucky may have been born a rez cat but he was a rez cat extraordinaire and so, too, his sister.
 |
| Reaching for my hand, saying "love me!" |
Good Neighbor Mobile Vet Clinic
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The New Dark Ages
We live in a most pivotal time. As much as that may be so poignantly hard to believe as it is far too easy to get up in the morning, drive through relatively clean suburban neighborhoods to work, spend the day working with others who, through the very onerous task of maintaining the depersonalized world of business by eschewing human emotion, emphasizes a sense of stability. Only to drive back home through those same relatively clean suburban neighborhoods to eat dinner and watch television programming that makes real life seem so much simpler in some ways. Rinse and repeat. Yet, there are little seeds of discontinuity even within those relatively clean suburban neighborhoods. The homes in need of paint, lawns slightly overgrown, the empty storefronts within the strip malls--all prickling away if one is attentive. Each of these harbor untold, unshared stories of desperation. What has happened to America whose ideals were once the white picket fence flanking a pristine yard and the well maintained home?
Historians have the task of labeling the various time periods of human civilization through terms that adequately describe them. The Golden Age, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, The Industrial Age. If there is any term that I could say most adequately describes our own time period, it would be none other than the New Dark Ages. Some may balk at such a comparison for certainly we have far greater technology and are far cleaner. Our educational system is still providing learning for the masses and the average way of life is still a vast improvement from our prior Dark Age counterparts. Yet, that would also be turning a blind eye on those seeds of discontinuity buried within our own seemingly pristine world. We need to recollect the very basic idea of cause and effect. For every thing that occurs, there will be a resultant effect. Nothing lives within an isolated bubble. Quite the opposite, we, along with every other living creature on this planet, live in one bubble together. The ramifications of changes within this bubble will be felt throughout. So as more and more find it increasingly difficult to obtain adequate health care, then so will disease increase. Already, diseases once thought abolished through vaccinations have been rearing their ugly heads as parents with little choice but to continuously cut corners, choose to put food on their table over vaccinating their children. A very poignant example of cause and effect.
The Dark Ages, however, are not defined as simply being a very dirty, disease ridden time. On the contrary, the Dark Ages were dark because human beings lost any form of enlightenment. Dark is the absence of light. The Dark Ages were a time where the masses were left uneducated and where feudalistic structures stratified and removed all hope of opportunity to surpass the economic and social status of one's ancestors. A time period where the mass of human populous, with little doubt, had no choice but to be subservient to their masters whether through inducement of poverty, stripping of land ownership, and even life, itself and could not believe in anything otherwise for to oppose such forces most certainly meant death or incarceration. Intellectualism and the sciences were shunned and deemed heretical while religion fleeced out promises that, at the end of it all, the meek shall inherit the earth. Yet one has to ask whether God would smile upon those who allow themselves to grovel in the dirt over utilizing the very gifts that God so purportedly gave to them to shine? If I were to point to the greatest source of deprivation for the masses in the Dark Ages, I would say that it was that human beings were deprived of the one thing that normally would drive them to improve to their fullest potential--self interest.
We are in the New Dark Ages indeed despite our cleanliness and education because that is precisely what has been stripped of the human masses. We have lost our self interest to survive, to seek better for ourselves, and shine. How different from the Dark Age world is Greece? Spain? Or even the United States? I have found it so baffling to see so many willfully strip away their and others human rights of choice, liberty, and opportunity for prosperity through a sense of self-interest that is no different than the farmer willfully giving away most of his crop to protect what little livelihood he could maintain. We live in a time where science again is regarded as heresy and where a man making less than $30,000 a year will vociferously and sacrificially defend a man making over 30,000 times more. Where has self interest or even the concept that we, as communal beings, benefit when our communities thrive gone? Humanity is no less indoctrinated in belief systems that, either through gentle persuasion, irrationality or brute force, enforce subservience. To say that this is unacceptable is not to condone revolution for the only revolution that can possibly hold any hope for humanity as a whole is not one filled with blood but a revolution in thinking. We need another Renaissance. Yet, is it any mistake that even those who may recognize this so perversely blame the root of it as being the Illuminati, the very name of the group of scientists and philosophers who strove to rekindle enlightenment in humanity so long ago? We need to recall that it is not a matter of whether we deserve better but to recall that we can do better for ourselves and for our children. That to shine, to be a light is what illuminates and enlightens us all.
Historians have the task of labeling the various time periods of human civilization through terms that adequately describe them. The Golden Age, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, The Industrial Age. If there is any term that I could say most adequately describes our own time period, it would be none other than the New Dark Ages. Some may balk at such a comparison for certainly we have far greater technology and are far cleaner. Our educational system is still providing learning for the masses and the average way of life is still a vast improvement from our prior Dark Age counterparts. Yet, that would also be turning a blind eye on those seeds of discontinuity buried within our own seemingly pristine world. We need to recollect the very basic idea of cause and effect. For every thing that occurs, there will be a resultant effect. Nothing lives within an isolated bubble. Quite the opposite, we, along with every other living creature on this planet, live in one bubble together. The ramifications of changes within this bubble will be felt throughout. So as more and more find it increasingly difficult to obtain adequate health care, then so will disease increase. Already, diseases once thought abolished through vaccinations have been rearing their ugly heads as parents with little choice but to continuously cut corners, choose to put food on their table over vaccinating their children. A very poignant example of cause and effect.
The Dark Ages, however, are not defined as simply being a very dirty, disease ridden time. On the contrary, the Dark Ages were dark because human beings lost any form of enlightenment. Dark is the absence of light. The Dark Ages were a time where the masses were left uneducated and where feudalistic structures stratified and removed all hope of opportunity to surpass the economic and social status of one's ancestors. A time period where the mass of human populous, with little doubt, had no choice but to be subservient to their masters whether through inducement of poverty, stripping of land ownership, and even life, itself and could not believe in anything otherwise for to oppose such forces most certainly meant death or incarceration. Intellectualism and the sciences were shunned and deemed heretical while religion fleeced out promises that, at the end of it all, the meek shall inherit the earth. Yet one has to ask whether God would smile upon those who allow themselves to grovel in the dirt over utilizing the very gifts that God so purportedly gave to them to shine? If I were to point to the greatest source of deprivation for the masses in the Dark Ages, I would say that it was that human beings were deprived of the one thing that normally would drive them to improve to their fullest potential--self interest.
We are in the New Dark Ages indeed despite our cleanliness and education because that is precisely what has been stripped of the human masses. We have lost our self interest to survive, to seek better for ourselves, and shine. How different from the Dark Age world is Greece? Spain? Or even the United States? I have found it so baffling to see so many willfully strip away their and others human rights of choice, liberty, and opportunity for prosperity through a sense of self-interest that is no different than the farmer willfully giving away most of his crop to protect what little livelihood he could maintain. We live in a time where science again is regarded as heresy and where a man making less than $30,000 a year will vociferously and sacrificially defend a man making over 30,000 times more. Where has self interest or even the concept that we, as communal beings, benefit when our communities thrive gone? Humanity is no less indoctrinated in belief systems that, either through gentle persuasion, irrationality or brute force, enforce subservience. To say that this is unacceptable is not to condone revolution for the only revolution that can possibly hold any hope for humanity as a whole is not one filled with blood but a revolution in thinking. We need another Renaissance. Yet, is it any mistake that even those who may recognize this so perversely blame the root of it as being the Illuminati, the very name of the group of scientists and philosophers who strove to rekindle enlightenment in humanity so long ago? We need to recall that it is not a matter of whether we deserve better but to recall that we can do better for ourselves and for our children. That to shine, to be a light is what illuminates and enlightens us all.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Attempting to Comprehend Discretionary Spending in the Federal Budget
This morning, I hopped on facebook and found a message waiting for me there. A friend of mine, having seen a pie graph about discretionary spending floating about in FB land, asked me if the pie graph was skewed or not. Off I went to the source data as provided by the US Office of Management and Budget, where I was able to relatively quickly ascertain that yes, the pie graph was indeed accurate and made my own version of it using the very source data. Although I had finished the requested task, the numbers that I was seeing within the spreadsheet were grotesquely fascinating. I was hooked. I apologize in advance for the quick and dirty graphs but when I started doing this, I was thinking in terms of accuracy and haste. After all, this wasn't something that I was going to get graded on or paid for to do. It was purely out of sheer curiosity. The second caveat is that, although the OMB states that "to the extent feasible, the data have been adjusted to provide consistency with the 2013 Budget and to provide comparability over time", it doesn't say how far back and whether the numbers have been adjusted for inflation. Comparability over such a length of time would, however, require some form of inflationary adjustment so I am tentatively assuming that the data has been adjusted for inflation with a nod to the possibility that I could be wrong. With that being said, let's see what I found.
This was the initial pie chart that was asked to be recomputed and redone. This pie chart shows the discretionary spending of each program as a percentage of the total discretionary spending for the year. For programs showing 0%, that doesn't necessarily mean that there was no discretionary spending. It simply means that the amount was less than 1% of the total. The total discretionary spending for 2011 was a little over $1.3 trillion so we're talking about a whole lot of change with National Defense being the largest component of it. 96% of that "National Defense" is DoD-military discretionary spending and the other 4% is simply listed as "Other Defense". The information within the spreadsheet goes back all the way to 1962 so I thought that would be rather interesting to see as well.
Federal Discretionary Spending in 1962
Even from a distance, you can guess that yep, that big grey Pac Man is for "national defense". Surprisingly enough though, the percentage of national defense as a portion of total discretionary spending has actually decreased considerably between 1962 to 2011. But, before we all can start waving peace victory banners, what needs to be considered is that some of the other programs have been expanded over the years as the world has changed. What we're really seeing is that the number of programs utilizing discretionary spending has increased its use of it. On a humorous side note, the general composition of what constitutes "national defense" is relatively unchanged--even in 1962, it was 96% (rounded) DoD-military and 4% "other defense". Some things apparently don't change over time.
Thinking in terms of "over time" got me wondering about how just has discretionary spending changed over the past 49 years. I needed a new graph.
Total discretionary spending from 1962 to 2011
Scary!! Even from a distance you can see that this really is not a good thing. For those that get confused about the (in millions) thing--100,000 would be the equivalent of $100 billion and 1,500,000 is the equivalent of $1.5 trillion. At this point, even an atheist like me is praying that these numbers aren't actually adjusted for inflation after all because this just looks so ludicrous. A good question to ask at this point, however, is "just what the hell is discretionary spending?". Wikipedia provides us with a quick definition: "US government expenditures which are subject to annual review and authorization by Congress, as distinct from expenditures authorized by existing laws." (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/discretionary_spending). Okay then, discretionary spending is what money gets spent through Congress' discretion and not because of existing laws. I bet you that the president at the time probably has veto power on this, too, because that's how our government works--checks and balances. Apparently, though, the guys running the government just seem to be thinking of just checks.
We already know that national defense is a big piece of the pie so what has happened with that over the same time period? Hmmm, let's see:
National Defense Discretionary Spending from
1962 to 2011 Interesting. Well, it makes sense somewhat as these jumps are probably wars, right? Let's see...the US became involved in the Vietnam War starting in 1965 and ending in 1973 so a spike should be there, right? Hmmm, I guess it goes up a little. Well, okay...how about the Persian Gulf? That went on from 1990 to 1991 and that explains that spike in...hmmm, it decreased in 1990 but spiked in 1991. There's the spike! Hmm. Did something happen in the 80's? I'm confused. Afghanistan started in very late 2001 and Iraq in early 2003 but why is the spending getting ramped up again in 2000? If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the DoD has psychics on board, but no worries, I'm not. I just don't have any explanation for this at all. I'm not a member of the DoD--that's a matter of national security. We're not supposed to know what they're doing outside of spending a ton of money with very little historic explanation.
Let's go with what we do know historically. The growth in spending from year to year can tell us a lot because it's not dealing with numbers but simply the percentage of change. Therefore, we can compare the spending growth in the military involvements during the period available (1962 to 2011). And oh yes, I went there--lavender (has to match my blog!!)
Growth in national defense discretionary spending during wartimes
I give up. Where's my white flag of surrender? I have zero explanation for this. Keep in mind that any positive number means that they spent more than the prior year by that percentage amount. If it's negative, it means that the discretionary spending was less than the prior year. So, what we have is a decline in spending in the first years of Vietnam and the Gulf wars but not in the first year of Afghanistan (and they were already ramping up spending the year before!). In Vietnam, it started declining about mid-way through the operation whereas it's a constant growth during our last operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is nice to know, however, that this kind of spending declined the year after the Persian Gulf (it looked very lonely with it's little blip). That got me wondering though. How much has discretionary spending for national defense changed in the last 49 years? It has increased 129%. That's a lot more money being spent today today by the DoD than 49 years ago. Please, please tell me that it's not adjusted for inflation....please.
Stepping away from the defense spending and back to just Congress' spending. I thought it would be interesting to see what information I could find as far as how our deficits and surpluses are looking over the last 49 years. If Congress is spending a lot more, then it has to be because we can afford it, right? The ideal scenario for a government is to hover right around 0. Too much surplus means that wealth is being accumulated that isn't getting passed on to the citizens. Too much deficit means major trouble. (Think Greece, Ireland, Portugal and more as the extreme example of that). Luckily, the OMB had that information available, too.
US Federal Surplus and Deficits from 1948 to 2011
Really, very not good. You don't even have to click the link to know that this is really, very not good. It's heartbreaking. We were in great shape for so long. What the hell happened? Well, in the 1970's, there was a recession and the OPEC oil embargo but things start getting out of hand in the 80's. That's the handiwork of "trickle down" economics. Problem with trickle down economics is that they most likely didn't provide enough tax revenues to make sure that the natural growth in spending as the nation grows was balanced out. That's exactly what that says. Toss in increases to discretionary spending and it's gruesome. The surplus in the late 90's where it spikes up above the 0 ridge is Clinton tweaking the budget and vetoing line items within it. If you look back at the graphs of total and national defense discretionary spending, you'll see a plateau there. He was definitely trying to balance the budget and we ended up with a surplus. Hopefully, that surplus was used to pay down some of the accumulated debt. One can only hope....
In 2000, it drops back significantly below the 0 goal line with the election of George Bush but you can tell that they tried to reign it all back in again. And then, catastrophe strikes in 2008. A lot of people want to point fingers at Obama for that one and perhaps that is somewhat well placed. Discretionary spending was growing at a fast clip and seemingly unchecked. However, there is another way that we can compare this to decide what exactly happened to our nation's budget. We can look at other countries. Finding that kind of information in the same format is hard but looking for this kind of plunge should be pretty obvious. Thankfully, the website, Trading Economics, has a cool little feature where they will put all sorts of information in a graphical format.
First: Greece, one of the most financially bankrupt governments in the world
Second: UK Government Budget Deficits and Surpluses
Both Greece and the UK's deficits plunge horrifically in 2009 to 2010. The US plunged first in 2008. What happened in 2008 that could affect countries around the world similarly? It wasn't Obama being elected as president because Obama has nothing to do with Greece's or the UK's budgets. All that leaves is the Financial Crisis of 2007-8. It truly crippled the world.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Professionalism and Accounting in the 21st Century
This is my accounting capstone final paper where we were asked the question of what it means to be a professional accountant in the 21st Century. Enjoy.
The traditional idea behind what it means to be a professional within the field of accounting has generally had an emphasis on the important role of the accounting professional in serving the public interest. The concept of serving the public interest as an accountant has been to provide as much assurance in the accuracy of reporting financial statement data in order to preserve and restore the public confidence within the field of accounting. Although these concepts are undoubtedly important to professional accountants, they are also short sighted in today's socioeconomic climate as global civil unrest increases. The target of protesters and the general public's ire is ubiquitously labeled as simply "capitalism". However, both the accounting profession and protest groups like Occupy have it all wrong. For the common people, their confidence has not been shaken in the accounting industry but instead, in capitalism as a whole. For professional accountants who solely focus their self criticisms in subjects such as the accuracy of the numbers they provide, they are missing the broader implications and effects of the very data that they provide in managerial decision making.
When Ray Johnson asked the question what it meant to be a professional, many of the students stated that being a professional required that one be certified. In the role of devil's advocate, I suggested that a plumber was still a plumber regardless of certification. Comparing a plumber to an accountant may seem to be distasteful but it's effective for describing the impacts that can occur when either a plumber or an accountant does not behave ethically in the course of their profession. For a plumber, the damage of unethical behavior can result in the damage to the foundation of the home where the work was done and the public's perception of the profession. On the other hand, for an accountant to do the same in their field, the damage done is less on the public's perception of the profession and more on the very foundation of capitalism, itself.
Enron is a perfect example of the affect of the power of accounting. The Enron scandals could not have occurred if it weren't for Andy Fastow, the former CFO of Enron, and Arthur Anderson both working against the public interest and the accounting profession as a whole by utilizing their professional knowledge to enable fraud and illegality. If Arthur Anderson had, instead, upheld the public interest required as accounting professionals, the Enron debacle would not have occurred. Although we within the accounting field focus heavily upon Fastow and Arthur Anderson, we fail to recognize that it is not the field of accounting that was damaged in so much as Enron becoming the poster child for corruption within capitalism among the general public. The accountants and others abusing accounting methods, such as Andy Fastow, who participate in these scandals are rarely household names for the general public. However, ask the same public what Enron means to them and they will invariably answer with corruption and capitalism. Instead of focusing on what the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson should have done, they will, instead, be aware of the thousands of individuals who lost their pensions due to the fraud and corruption of Enron.
Probably the most well-known catch phrase of the Occupy movement globally is "People, Not Profit" as the protest targets capitalism as a whole. As I mentioned earlier, the Occupy movement is off the mark in its target. Instead, the movement should be targeting the very methods of accounting used world-wide. Over the years, news articles discussing the working conditions and treatment of employees globally have been on the increase, further fueling the sentiment of Occupy's "people, not profits". Most recently, I came across an article on the probably biased Mother Jones' site where one of their journalists worked undercover at an Amalgamated Giant Product Shipping warehouse here in the US. While maintaining reasonable skepticism at hand as I skimmed the article, I read the following line, "From the temp agency, Amalgamated has ordered the exact number of humans it should take to fill this week's orders if we work at top capacity."[1] Although the journalist has no apparent idea what it is precisely that she is complaining about, what she is describing is undoubtedly, to an accountant's eye, the effect of cost accounting on the human condition when the calculation of those numbers does not include the human condition, itself. However, not once does the journalist make this link and, instead, the article becomes yet another in the long line of criticisms against capitalism. Instead, the criticisms should have fallen on the methods of accounting that encompass numbers alone and without comprehension of impact or public perception.
Working conditions are not the only area where accounting professionals may be doing the public perception of capitalism harm. News articles reporting companies closing factories after reporting billions in profits such as Huffington Post's recent article titled, " PepsiCo Layoffs: World's 2nd-Largest Food Company Cutting 8700 Jobs Despite Higher Revenue"[2] also certainly doesn't help. Although PepsiCo's restructuring may improve the profitability of the company for its shareholders through figures provided by its accountants, one has to wonder whether the accountants placed a monetary value on possible public enmity and negative press as a factor within their calculations or advisements to PepsiCo's CEO in making this decision. Did they even consider them to be factors while they were focused on the numbers provided for the upcoming year's financial forecast?
Another news story fueling public enmity towards capitalism over the last two years has been corporations stockpiling cash despite maintaining profits during the recession. Although each of these companies may individually have reasons for stockpiling cash as with Molson Coors' plans to expand their market, collectively the behavior has been contributing to raising the public's ire. According to Jim Zarroli in an article about corporations stockpiling cash for NPR, "U.S. companies that earn profits abroad have to pay taxes when they bring it home, so they tend to like to keep money overseas as long as possible."[3] Keeping income offshore to avoid US taxes is undoubtedly the work of accounting professionals and it is not the only tax related accounting activity that has raised public ire towards capitalism. Another common public complaint is the very well known matter of GE and their tax accountants who are responsible for GE paying no taxes at all despite billions in profits for the last several years. Although both the stockpiling of cash and the avoidance of taxes are both clearly accounting related issues, it is still not the accounting professionals that are being questioned but instead, simply these matters become more fuel for the capitalism funeral pyre.
If one would ask any professional in any field what would be the worst outcome possible of their actions, I would not be surprised if the answer would be "to cause another's death". The loss of life has perhaps the most dramatic impact of all. In September of 2011, the final report on the cause of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and death of its 11 rig workers and untold numbers of wildlife due to the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was released. This report by the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found " five examples of where the company made 'decisions that reduced costs and increased risk' as the well ran $58m (£37m) over budget."[4] It is not CEO's that create prospective budgets. It is professional accountants.
Although it may seem unjust to level a large portion of the blame on accounting professionals for what is happening globally and the potential demise of capitalism as they are simple suppliers of numbers, I argue that the quality of those numbers provided are not inclusive enough. The professional accountant provides the very backbone from which management makes their decisions and that provided information can have dire consequences upon human rights, society, politics, and the environment. As accounting professionals, we must recognize this grim fact and shift our thinking to embody this. It is a natural fit for accountability and accountant both share the same root. Likewise, it is already our duty to serve the public interest in the most basic of terms. As accountants, we must be accountable for our actions and respect the trust given to us by the public with a broader definition of "public interest". We cannot simply be number crunchers bent on accuracy in reporting but we must also act as philosophers able to measure ethics and potential outcome. Maintaining growth in profits for our shareholders as our sole measure of duty may ultimately lay waste to the very society and environment in which our shareholders reside.
There is an inherent need that the quality of the information that we provide be inclusive of more than simply just numbers. There is no adequate measure of public enmity nor is a human being capable of operating at a maximum capacity like a machine. There is no measure of discontent when a middle class citizen pays more taxes on $100,000 income than GE, who made $14.2 billion in 2010.[5] Nor is it readily apparent that the accountants, whose advise is expected by management, are considering the larger picture of public discontent at all. Over the last 6 months, the world has experienced massive civil unrest stretching across the globe from Nigeria to Japan to Greece to New York City and beyond whose predominant focus has been capitalism. If capitalism as a system appears to the general public to be drunk on greed, as protesters frequently state, then it is the accounting professionals who act as the enablers by providing the bottle from which capitalism drinks.
In today's fast paced and interconnected world, serving the public interest as a professional accountant can no longer be simply about accuracy in accounting numbers but, instead, a professional accountant must regard the world with their eyes open wide. What we are dealing with today in the 21st century is no longer simply just a lack of public confidence towards the field of accounting but a rapidly declining loss of public confidence towards the very system that accountants operate within as a whole. The damage that can be done by a professional accountant who chooses to keep his/her eyes closed is substantial and the resulting loss of public confidence within the profession goes relatively unfelt. Instead, it can cause thousands to gather in a city to protest the very system in which they work. It can cause people to lose their homes and live on the streets, in cars, or tents. It can plunge a country into burning chaos. Their cost cutting measures can result in the defilement of a gulf and even death. One of my favorite sayings has long been, "With great power comes great responsibility"[6] and if there is any profession that holds such an immensity of a power, it is the accountant.
[1] McClelland, Mac "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave". MotherJones. March/April 2012. Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=2
[2] Anderson, Mae "PepsiCo Layoffs: World's 2nd-Largest Food Company Cutting 8700 Jobs Despite Higher Revenue" . Huffington Post, February 9, 2012. Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/pepsico-layoffs_n_1265407.html
[3] Zarroli, Mark. "Companies Sit On Cash; Reluctant To Invest, Hire" NPR August 17, 2011. Retrieved: March 13, 2012http://www.npr.org/2011/08/17/139703989/companies-sit-on-cash-reluctant-to-invest-hire
[4] Rowena Mason, "BP cost-cutting a cause of Gulf of Mexico oil spill, US report finds", September 14, 2011. The Telegraph. Retrieved: March, 13, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8763644/BP-cost-cutting-a-cause-of-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-US-report-finds.html
[5] Jake Tapper "General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010". ABC News, March 25, 2011. Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558#.T2ACaPXp4xA
[6] Uncle Ben, "Spiderman".
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