Episode 32: Wegener's Granulomatosis Rears its Ugly Nazi Head, and It's Got a Hole Right in the Middle of its Face

Okay, so maybe he was a Nazi and maybe he wasn't, but based on some research that he WAS, the doctor whose name stands for granulomatosis with polyangiitis, today's "preferred," non-epynomous name for what used to be called Wegener's Granulomatosis, I'll try to use the newer name, or GPA for short.

Whatever the hell it's called, it's hell.

Okay, I don't even have a firm diagnosis at this point--or, rather, I don't have the labs to back up the clinical diagnosis I was given by my Johns Hopkins rheumatologist, but given the fact that this is the place where the best specialists in most fields hang their pointy hats, I have to accept that she may well be right.

When I saw the kidney/vasculitis specialist for Wegener's a few months ago, she told me I needed to see the rheumatologist on an ongoing basis.  I'd told her I wanted to cancel those appointments because my symptoms weren't bad at all--I don't enjoy these visits to Baltimore physicians and would like to minimize the pain in the ass of having to go there.

But today I just want to bitch a little about GPA or whichever vasculitis is apparently destroying my body one tiny bit of artery at a time.  So, to update all my loyal fans (I think my only readers are what's known as pirate or vampire sites that click up your viewings though no one is actually viewing anything), these are the symptoms of GPA I've had and that are currently emerging.

I'm not going into all the other damned conditions I have; in one of my earlier episodes I list them, and it's just too depressing to go through again.

So here's the timeline, more or less, for JUST GPA in my life:

Episode 31 - On Trickle-Down Economics--Have you noticed the word "trick" starts the whole concept?

Before I get started, I want to thank my Uncle Freeman (marvelous name, isn't it?  So Scottish).  He was on duty in Hawaii on the day Pearl Harbor was struck.  Today is the anniversary of that day in infamy.  I am so grateful that Freeman lived, so grateful he was my uncle and his wife my aunt--beautiful, beautiful Ruth--so grateful he lived so he could father all three of the sons who would become my tall, handsome cousins when I entered the family.  Thank you, Freeman, and may you be round dancing and meeting all those ancestors you traced back to the 9th Century in heaven!

Now, back to the business of the day.

One of Reagan's two initiatives that have altered our world so drastically, leaving us in the midst of turmoil and fear and need (the other being the Reagan Doctrine--another episode):  Trickle-Down Economics. Have you noticed that the word "trick" starts the whole concept?

The idea was spoon fed to the American public by claiming that the method would grow jobs and make our economy stronger.

How?  It's simple!  Before TRICKle Down, everyone in the U.S. paid approximately the same rate in taxes--that is, other than the very poor who were given a break--something the gimmes resent so horribly even though that "break" doesn't even compare to the mega-rich's robbery legally sanctioned by this policy.

So, let's take the richest among us and give them a TAX BREAK!  If we do that, they will invest all that extra money into new ventures, new jobs, and new wealth for everyone!  Right?!

How dumb do you have to be to believe that?

Let's make the money earned on investments an exception from regular old income taxes for wages EARNED.  Let's tax investments at a mere 15 percent, rather than the 30-something they used to have to cough up like the working schmucks still do.  How hard is it to do that math?  Take away money from the public coffers, and not just any money, BIG MONEY, and it will miraculously re-appear when the masses have good-paying jobs.  Um.   I think the other half of that math equation has been zeroed out.  So where will the money come from?  That's right, sports fans, you and me, the working stiffs whose checks get smaller every year theirs get fatter.  Damned obese, actually.

Let's let the rich get richer on their investments--no work required to do that, just money, and they've got plenty of that, so let's just make it easier for them to make MORE money and cut their tax rates by more than half. There's a sucker born every minute, and a whole lot of them buy into this malarkey.

Because we ALL know that the rich have the best in mind for the rest of us.  They are always willing to share their wealth. (Ooooooooooooooooooh, that sounds Socialist; gives me the chills; god knows it's a far scarier thing for everyone to be entitled to a reasonable living than for all the money to be hoarded at the tippy top while the rest of us suffer.)

But wait?  With all that extra money we've given them, why are the Mega Rich sending all the jobs overseas? That's not what Ronnie promised!  Why are they closing factories and plants here in the U.S., the  place their money was supposed to trickle down to?  Why are they buying up small corporations that are barely making it, bankrupting them, and declaring bankruptcy so they don't have to pay anything back, and leaving the tab with the taxpayers?  And WHY THE HELL do half the citizens they are shoving this to keep believing their lies and buying into their crap?  Oh, wait, they can't buy into it--they don't have enough money left.  They just give their brains, hearts, and souls over to it and watch their assets dwindle.

TRICKLE DOWN?

The only things that have trickled down in this country since the Reagan era are the number of jobs in this nation,
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the amount of money in our bank accounts,
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the amount of money in our retirement funds, and, most of all,
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our quality of life,
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our hopes for the future, our hopes for our children's future . . .