Listen up, America! Our neighbors are growling!

Every once in a while, when I am spending way too long at my desk or watching the NBA playoffs, my precious dog will come up next to me, look me right in the eye, and growl. It’s not a vicious growl. It’s just her way of saying "Hey, look, buddy, you brought me into this household. I didn’t ask to be here. I really had no choice in the matter. But since you did bring me here, the very least you could do is pay a little attention to me every once in a while."

And it’s true. As much as I love my dog, I will get involved for long stretches of time in some project and the result is I wind up taking her loving, faithful companionship for granted. She’s not demanding constant attention, but she doesn’t want to be ignored either.

Today we are hearing the growls coming out of this country’s African-American neighborhoods, neighborhoods that have been shamefully, disgracefully ignored and forgotten for decades. If anyone thinks the death of one black man in the back of one police vehicle is the reason for the demonstrations we’ve witnessed these past few days in Baltimore, they are overlooking the real problem. It may be the excuse for the demonstrations, but the reason for them is the same as the reason we have seen similar types of demonstrations in black communities for the last 50 years. It’s because we have systematically ignored and forgotten and pushed aside a significant portion of the American people and after decades of neglect they are saying at "the very least you could do is pay attention to me every once in a while."

How many times have you heard the cry, whether the demonstration is in Maryland or Missouri, in New York or South Carolina, "All we want is to be heard."

But we don’t hear them. We don’t pay attention to their needs and their wants and when they finally raise their voices in despair, we too often condemn them for it.

To me, the great shame of the Obama Administration is the continued neglect of the large, poor, under-employed African-American sections of America’s larger cities. I thought for sure that our first black President would try to find some resources to help black communities. But instead his focus has been solely, it seems to me, on the middle class.

Because the spotlight now is shining down on Baltimore, let’s look at the numbers there. The white unemployment rate in Baltimore is 7.4 percent. The black unemployment rate is 18.9 percent. More than 40 percent of the families living in the neighborhoods of the city where the demonstrations took place live below the poverty level.

We have yet to see the upheavals in Texas that other states have witnessed, but, by no means, does that make us immune. The unemployment rate for whites in Austin is 5.2 percent, for blacks it’s 10 percent and that unemployment rate for African-Americans nears 14 percent in Houston and San Antonio.

Income inequality resulted in the citizen uprisings in Egypt that topped the government of Hosni Mubarak and resulted in recent violent uprisings that bordered on a revolution in Spain. As former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "You don’t want those kind of riots here."

But, if recent events are any indication, I fear that kind of uprising may be exactly what we are going to witness unless we quit catering exclusively to the rich and pandering to the middle class. That’s one of the reasons I applaud Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings’ Grow South initiative and his focus on public education in the city. He sees the proverbial handwriting on the wall and took steps to do something – anything – about it. But initiating a program and seeing it through successfully are two completely different things.

Personally, I am ashamed at the way we have disregarded such a large segment of our population. Perhaps the thinking is "Not only do they not contribute to our political coffers, they probably don’t even go out and vote so why should we pay any attention to them." Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Forty-one years ago — nearly a half century — Randy Newman recorded the song Rednecks and one of the verses of that song went:

"Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down"

It’s a shame, it’s an absolute disgrace that 50 years later we’re doing exactly the same thing. Listen up, America, our neighbors are growling. They’re growling in Baltimore. They’re growling in New York City. They’re growling in Cleveland. They’re growling in Ferguson, Mo. It’s time to let their voices be heard, to pay attention, to work at finding solutions to the problem that could literally tear this country apart.

CVS Pharmacy where our motto is “If we kill enough of our customers then, perhaps, we won’t have to work so hard”

Considering the patient-pharmacist relationship as a covenant means that a pharmacist has moral obligations in response to the gift of trust received from society. In return for this gift, a pharmacist promises to help individuals achieve optimum benefit from their medications, to be committed to their welfare, and to maintain their trust.

—American Pharmacists Association, Code of Ethics, Article 1

Now that is one huge truckload of bat guano. At least it is when applied to CVS pharmacists. Specifically it’s a huge truckload of bat guano when it comes to the pharmacist operating (hopefully, not for long) at the CVS Pharmacy located on the southeast corner of Forest and Abrams in Dallas.

I usually don’t like to write about personal experience on this blog unless they serve in some way to illuminate something terribly wrong in our society that the rest of the population of that society needs to be made aware of for their own well-being. This is such an instance.

Tonight, a few moments after 7 p.m., I was returning home from giving the dog a run with her best buds at Moss Park. I stopped at the neighborhood CVS (which I now know stands for Cancelling Vital Serivces) to get a prescription for Pravastatin. The pharmacist on duty categorically refused to take my refill information. When I asked if the pharmacy department was closed, I was told it was open until 10 p.m. When I asked why they would not take my information, the quack in charge (at least the only one back there wearing the traditional white jacket) said they were "overloaded." When I then tried to tell them I wasn’t in need of an immediate refill, that I could come back and retrieve the refill 24 hours later, the guy in the white jacket simply turned his back and walked away.

Does that sound like someone committed to society’s welfare? No, it sounds like someone committed only to his lazy butt.

Now for those not familiar with Pravastatin, it, among other things, "helps prevent heart attack and stroke in people who have heart disease." I guess that means the quack pharmacists at CVS must adhere to the philosophy that "preventing heart attacks, hmmm, that doesn’t seem too important to me. I mean everyone deserves a couple of heart attacks in his or her lifetime."

Tonight, of course, will be the last time I ever set foot inside a CVS Pharmacy. You readers out there are free to do as you wish, depending on how much you value your own health and well-being. There’s a Walgreens about a mile further down the road that’s going to be seeing a lot more of me.

And, yes, I have filed official complaints about this pharmacist’s actions to CVS corporate, the Better Business Bureau, the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the aforementioned American Pharmacists Association. If I hear anything from these folks, I’ll be sure to let you know. Watch this space.

In the meantime, be warned.

Casual Observations (mainly about government irresponsibility)

• Anyone who thinks the government shutdown has anything to do with Obamacare isn’t paying attention. A significant group of Republican right-wing-nuts were elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 by promising to shut down the government. This irresponsible move by a minority of Republican lunatics is not a tactic to achieve some end, it is the end itself, as far as these jerks are concerned.
• Opinion polls reflect this reality. In a CNN/ORC International poll released yesterday only 10 percent of Americans polled said they approved of how Congress is operating and a whopping 87 percent disapprove. What’s worse for the GOP, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 17 percent approve of how Republicans are handling government affairs and 74 percent disapproved. (Democrats’ approval rating was 32 percent, not great, but almost twice as high as Republican, and up 1 percent from the last poll).
• Ironically, one of the many programs the shutdown won’t affect is the Affordable Care Act. In fact, beginning today, Americans can go on-line to purchase their own affordable health insurance from one of the many available exchanges. It all starts right here.
• Today also marks the 55^th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It will be celebrated by only about 550 of NASA’s 28,000 employees. Those 550 are needed to keep operational those satellites currently circulating the globe. The rest have been told not to report to work today because of the government shutdown.
• And, finally, speaking of polls, according to a poll conducted by the arch-conservative Fox News Network, 47 percent of Americans oppose Obamacare (a figure I found incredibly low, considering the source of the poll). However, that same poll revealed only 34 percent of Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act. I guess those poll results reveal more about the intelligence level of those watching Fox News than anything else. "Here is a prediction for you," President Obama said last week. "A few years from now, when people are using this to get coverage and everyone’s feeling pretty good about all the choices and competition that they’ve got, there are gonna be a whole bunch of folks who say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I always thought this provision was excellent. I voted for that thing.’ You watch. It will not be called Obamacare."

Gun rights group compares itself to Holocaust victims

Only an Insensitive Blithering Idiot would even dare to compare people trying to hide the fact that they own guns with Holocaust victims. That makes Jon Boch, head of the oxymoronic “Guns Saves Lives” group of Illinois, a card-carrying IBI.

Guns don't kill people? Sure. Fine, Whatever.

There's got to be something that can be done to prevent tragedies like this.

Chalk it up to the traditionalist in me

I have no idea what the stadium where the Texas Rangers play is called. To me, it's Arlington Stadium, although I do remember one time it was called "Ameriquest Field" or some such. The Delta Center in Salt Lake City now has an instantly forgettable dot com name. There's Minute Maid Park in Houston (which used to be Enron Field and now has the nickname of "The Juice Box.")

Yep, buying the naming rights to athletic stadiums is a big deal. I understand that when the Mets move into their new stadium, located adjacent to the old one, it will be called Citi Field and not Shea Stadium. I can live with that.

However, in my mind, there are three stadiums that must remain with their original names -- Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium (even the new one must be called that) and Wrigley Field. I bring this up only because real estate magnate Sam Zell, who now owns the Chicago Cubs and its home field, Wrigley, is seriously considering selling the naming rights.

And you know what? I don't think there's anything we can do to stop him. But here's what we can do. We can join in a worldwide effort to make sure that it is always referred to as Wrigley Field. I know I won't have any resistance from this from Cubs fanatics. They won't call it anything else but Wrigley. But I am imploring newspaper writers and editors the world over to join in this crusade.

I have heard there is one thing in my favor in this effort. The City of Chicago has apparently slapped a historic landmark designation of some sort on Wrigley Field that even protects the famous red marquee over the entrance. As long as that sign remains proclaiming the structure "Wrigley Field, Home of Chicago Cubs," I think everyone could legitimately refer to it as such, regardless of Zell'z zealotry.