James was entranced by the mention of corrupt intake procedures at these treatment centers. Often these rehab groups would have an in-house assessor. This person would only recommend placement at the facility that was paying the assessor’s salary.
It was just as corrupt as when Merrill Lynch was pushing sales of its corporate customers’ products. These stocks were worthless but Lynch still pushed their sale.
Assessors at treatment clinics in the chemical dependency business pushed their own company’s products. They were told by administrators to sell the company’s product.
James thought there should be some neutral agency doing assessments but if the government got involved, then Republicans could rig the system to be as corrupt as a Ponzi scam. Always one had to be aware of the evil that came from dealing with Republicans.
There were other points of interest. Treatment was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for families of addicts. Waiting lists for treatment from state-paid avenues had delays of years in duration. The only people who could both afford the treatment and cut the wait times were the super-rich. The middle class got no relief either from the route used by the rich or the poor.
The families of addicts would end up consuming retirement funds and homes. The finances of the families would be sacked and looted for a product of only questionable value. The reality of this arena of health care is that commonly one goes to a doctor and gets a diagnosis that seems credible. In rare cases people get a second opinion. In chemical dependency circles one gets a professional opinion and is so shocked by what that opinion says that all caution and reason halt. When people would be best served by a second opinion, they stop in their tracks and accept the first offer without question. These people were terrified. Of course they were scared. Of course they were desperate.
Worse yet, in repeat addict treatments the treatment centers fleeced the parents of heroin-addicted children for literally millions of dollars. Bills for treatment could range from $35,000 to $200,000 for one-time placements into treatment centers. Multiply that by seven for the many return visits. All of these visits were instigated by predatory biased assessors pushing “in-house” products.
James kept reading but turned on his small FM radio and put his ear buds into his ears. He listened to a song called “30 Days in the Hole.” Its lyrics said, “Black Napolese, make you weak in the knees, New Castle brown, really smack you down.” James pondered for a moment the end effect of a whole rock-and-roll community obsessed with drugs. The party that never stops.
James took the city bus home from the Greyhound station. He got back to his apartment and put on a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. He smoked as the coffee gurgled and burped in the “Mr. Coffee” device.
He checked his main stash of marijuana and filled a one-hitter pipe with a small amount of the druggy herb. He lit it and inhaled the pungent smoke. He was immediately high, and slowed, diminished in intensity.
He put his Inside Rehab book aside and settled in for an hour of disorganized lethargy. Slowed and disconnected from the world was how he felt. He remembered his friend describing the experience as being that of feeling disinterest in interacting with her toddler son. He felt disinterest in calling his friends but it diminished after about a half an hour.
He drank coffee while the drug ran its course and moved out of his mind. He added half-and-half to his coffee and watched as the cream made clouds billowing and roiling in his black coffee.
* * *
This was an experiment for James. He was deliberately testing his drug use. He paid attention as the marijuana’s tetra-hydro-cannabinol moved through his mind.
He decided to go down to the ground floor. He put his flight jacket back on and walked out into the hall, locking the door behind him.
He found Frog and a few of the others there. Jerry was still puzzling about entropy and the kitchen equipment while Frog and Matt were discussing Air Force use of drones in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Pashto in Afghanistan was not excluded. It seemed the drone controllers were quitting their jobs rapidly as few had the stomach for such killing.
James and Frog noted that the Air Force used the hand-held controllers for video games to control the drone aircraft. It was all becoming very toy-like. Few could deal with the realities of killing families on roads in Afghanistan. Knocking off a few Taliban was no problem but they used human shields. And those human shields were made up of Afghani families of men, women, children, and the elderly. All of a sudden it was more than just a video game.
James had noted the complaints of these new warriors and he cross-referenced them with his own experience at the communications center in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
He had freaked out, high on the mania of mental illness when he made it back to the States. The Corps had denied him benefits. Now he was back in the fight. Getting his VA benefits was his new war and he would fight it tooth and claw. He arranged to get an interview with a VA psychiatrist.
He knew what he was up against. The new breed was there with amputations and major freak-out. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder loomed high in the lives of these new shattered warriors. They had Wounded Warrior Project and the Gary Sinise Foundation to get them services and housing. These new kids deserved every penny, he thought. So much for the war on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld wars cost people their lives. The cost was more than just a body count. It was a stinking malaise of false promises and lost causes. Vets raised on Bush worship had been left with a benefits package that amounted to a discount at an Exxon gas station. Like some Soviet war hero getting to ride the trolley in Red Square for free if he wore his medals.
These new kids were coming back with addictions to oxycodone and getting messed up on Afghani heroin. They all said it was just Mexican but James had faith the new smack was coming in from Afghanistan. So much for the booty of war.
I love you, Patty, came the old refrain in his mind. He thought of his old lover in terms of her cocaine and Irish ways. Patriot games over the IRA and the Boys of the Lough. Such bands raised money for the IRA. Patty had a mean streak as wide as an Irish river. Her wild partying put combat troops to shame. As tough as Sinn Fein and as shifty as an IRA splinter group. He missed her in spite of it all. If he ever won his VA benefits, he would buy her an ounce of cocaine, just for old times’ sake.
He listened to Jerry and Frog discussing the Internet traffic of video games, looking at the drone vets and wondering if they would ever have a chance to do some real live gaming. Or was it real dead gaming? It looked so neat and clean until they got an order to put a hellfire missile onto one of those new Toyota 4x4 trucks.
Frog looked up at James and said, “Want to trip soon?”
“Not really. You know DJ’s golden rule. Don’t trip in a bad mood or LSD will only make it worse.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Frog. “But what’s got you so down? Would you like to catch a buzz? You look depressed.”
“I already got a small buzz going. Just came down to see what’s up. Wanna head to the liquor store and pick up a bottle of Jaeger?”
“Going for the alcoholism?” said Frog.
“I want a little bit of everything. Christmas was good. Dad’s got cancer. We think we got it all but I worry about the old goat. He’s one of a kind and I need the old bastard to live. I don’t need an inheritance just now.” James pondered over his words for a moment. “The world’s going to hell. Imagine how the Eagles of Death Metal must feel. They got hit by terrorists. They got a dose of the hard stuff. I am mad at these terrorists. I used to enjoy hashish but this new push they have come up with is putting me off my THC.”
Frog was dumbfounded. “Don’t blame growers in Humboldt County for the antics of ISIS. That’s letting them win. If you give up on pot, you’re caving in to the terrorists. You are letting them get to you. Send the Hell’s Angels after them. Give them some good old American steel and a TOW missile and put them back in the Stone Age. Set them back a whole two we
eks.” He smiled. “Got a smoke? I’m out.”
“Sure, here’s a Camel Wide.” James held a cigarette out to his friend, who gladly took it.
“Thank you. I am going outside to smoke it. See ya soon,” and he departed to just outside the coffee shop. He positioned himself out near the bus stop. He could see James and Jerry through the huge picture windows, looking like the famous painting Nighthawks at the Diner.
“So Jerry, I am going to have to go sober if I want to be a nurse. I will miss the social contact around getting high. It’s my entire social scene.”
“Then perhaps you better see more nurses socially. What about us? Are you still going to smoke with us?”
“Always. That doesn’t stop. I may just cut down. I will need to have friends but I cannot lose my edge for studying. I have to keep up a 3.0 grade point average. That’s not going to allow for much social smoking. I have to study. I can’t just go all blob-oh on my school work.”
James looked at Jerry and considered his camouflage hat, just like the one Dale had at the NA meeting. Both seemed as blue collar as the salt of the earth.
“You need a beer, Cathleen, and a joint. It’s American as a Harley Davidson. How long has it been since you had sex?” inquired Jerry.
“Four days. I feel guilty bringing this all to Cathleen. My desire to punish the world doesn’t need to include her,” said James.
Jerry looked at his friend in disbelief. “Are you so depressed you don’t want to proactively seduce your lover? You are a basket case today. Call her and get on with your life.”
James reached for his cigarettes and his Android phone. Frog was just coming back in from the cold of the outdoors.
“James is so depressed he is just saying no to recreational sex,” said Jerry to Frog.
“That’s dire,” said Frog. “The very cure for his depression is now looking repulsive. Cathleen’s cute. Foolish man.”
“I’ll call her. Get off my back,” said James.
James got up and bid his friends farewell. He pushed the buttons on the phone and soon had Cathleen on the other end of the connection.
She was happy to hear from him and listened to him detail his dilemmas. School was over and she had just returned from visiting her family. All looked well for the couple. Neither had obligations. They had each other and all was well. James felt foolish discussing the fate of Fritz with Cathleen but it was the dilemma of the day. You just didn’t discuss one heartbreak girlfriend with a current lover. He felt guilty.
All was well. A few glitches in his social life but all was well and he retreated to her apartment on the park.
* * *
The next morning James awoke and looked at Cathleen’s charming form lying in the bed next to him. All was well and he was in homey surroundings. He climbed out of bed and put his clothes on. He stepped out front of the apartment’s door and smoked a cigarette. He came back in and sat down on the couch.
Cathleen rose and headed for the shower wordlessly. He pondered his dilemmas. Cathleen would still love him even if he was a drug-addicted former Marine, present Bohemian. She was loyal to the man he was. His depression was momentary. His obsession with Patty Fitzgerald was touching to Cathleen. He was a man of loyalties. His existence as a Marine was endearing. Men would die in Iraq and be comforted with a ration of two bottles of cold Budweiser for the trade in fighting for world peace. She had to admit he was lovable. She sang as she showered and toweled off in a bathroom steamed up with the by-product of 20 minutes of hot water. The bathroom mirror was fogged up.
If Fritzkrieg ever knew how serious James’ obsession was, she would no doubt be touched by his loyalty.
“Fritzy loves ko-ko dust, James. Accept it. She is a loyalist and cocaine is Native American. You have lost her to the dust bowl. She’s gone and you’ll never get her back. Love me now and let her go. You cannot serve two masters. I demand you stay in my arms forever, or at least through spring quarter.”
“Oh, you just love my dilemmas, don’t you? I love you both. I worry about her but you’re right. I cannot obsess on her. She will remain an unwritten chapter.”
Cathleen marched from bath to bed and began to dress. “You should write some science fiction about her. Some aliens and spaceships will get your mind out of the brain freeze she puts you into. Have a beer for breakfast and fog your brain over her. You’re pathetic,” she said in joyful sarcasm.
He looked at her beautiful form and couldn’t agree more.
* * *
Sean woke at 6:30 a.m., showered, brushed teeth, shaved, ate, dressed, and headed out to the Honda Accord. It started and he said a short prayer of thanks.
Off to the counseling job and into rush-hour traffic. Thirty-five minutes later he was at a modern brick building, settling his car into his reserved parking space.
Team meeting from 8 a.m. till 8:30. Assignments for new cases. First case? 9 a.m.! Mrs. Fuller. She, no doubt, will have her kids in at daycare and school and be ready for her counseling session. Learning to live free of the grip of alcoholism. Twelve years sober. Six years after divorce. Time off from work to get a session in.
Mildly racist, classist, ageist, she was not Sean’s favorite customer, but it paid the bills and she was good at showing up on time. Money ruled the world and she was loaded.
Sean had three sessions before the noon lunch break. Each case was different. All had their points of interest. All were congenial and personable. Sean had worked to create ease and trust even when he was not thrilled to work for each individual.
At lunch he checked James’ blog site. It was loaded with a note and two science fiction stories. Clearly James had no clue as to the powers of the leviathan he was working with. He was nothing to them but a small cherry on top of a huge cream pie and the knife was coming soon to take him down in a myriad of small slices.
Blog Post Twelve
F-35 is junk
So far the F-35 has cost over $400 billion and it is almost purely junk. It only has two small items of usefulness. In the vertical takeoff role it can serve the Marines and as a stealth fighter it has a small radar signature. One big catch: With a load of bombs or missiles, it loses its radar invisibility as a full bomb load with racks has the radar signature of a railroad boxcar. It has a forward turbine that serves the Marines requirement as a vertical take-off jump jet. In the Air Force role that space could be used for fuel or weapons. In that role it may prove to have at least some value but it lacks rearward visibility, and as the pilot cannot see what is behind him, it has only limited use as a fighter. Scabbing weapons like missiles to the outside ruins the radar invisibility. It is $500 billion of junk. Like a white elephant, it is a horse designed by a committee.
My own principles on military procurement are simple. Get the Marines what they need and mass produce that for everyone else. The Marines were the first branch of the Department of Defense to use the Thompson submachine gun, they were pioneers of close air support of ground troops, and they have led in the role of amphibious warfare since their inception as the English Royal Marine Corps 400 years ago.
The F-35 has cost over $400 billion, which is the first priority of the Department of Defense, which is to fleece America of as much money for billionaires as is possible. This is said to be an investment in “infrastructure,” which is exactly the opposite of the philosophy that commanders in the field have been using since the introduction of maneuverist thinking. Infrastructure means investing in huge corporations, too big to fail. It means the creation of shipyards big enough to build huge aircraft carriers but not small police-action ships like frigates and destroyers. Infrastructure means over-investing in things that are not needed for the actual military but are meant to line the pockets of billionaires and corporations. Waste is their business and we are meant to believe that this investment in infrastructure is in our best interest. Infrastructure investing is not nimble or mobile. It sits there like an obsolete factory that makes nothing useful.
The F-16 was d
esigned in secret by three fighter pilots and a small group of defense contractors who circumnavigated the whole Pentagon community and was started with an investment of less than $180,000. The F-16 shot down a Russian bomber over Thanksgiving of 2015 in Turkish airspace and successfully destroyed Iraq’s first nuclear reactor long before any of the Gulf Wars and their search for weapons of mass destruction. Israel did that with a small group of four F-15s and four F-16s, tightly held in formation so to look like one airplane on radar. The Israelis have a long reputation of making do with existing equipment and creating success with what would otherwise be thought of as junk. Give them a star like the F-16 to work with, and they can do miracles.
The F-35 will go down in history as an adequate aircraft but not an exceptional one in any of its roles. The problems that created this mess are being acted out now in the 2015 struggle to seek and take the Presidency of the United States. Newt Gingrich caused a procurement scandal that the Air Force did everything it could to avoid. Gingrich proposed, and forced through Congress, a purchase of ten new C-130 Hercules cargo airplanes that the Air Force did not want. Gingrich did this because the airplanes would be made in his congressional district. The Air Force would have preferred to spend that money on other projects. Gingrich is now pushing Donald Trump to get with other Republicans and target the rhetoric of the Democrats in calling Muslim Terrorists by the name “radical Muslims” in an attempt to attack ’60s radical Democrats (of which Clinton is one) who backed the anti-war activists. This may not sound like it has anything to do with buying airplanes, but if Gingrich gets his way through Trump, it will mean years of misdirected military procurement for generations to come. The real war is between Gingrich and Clinton over philosophical differences while the symptom of that divide will be decided in military dollars which are the spoils of such an attrition-style battle.
During the era of the B-1B bomber the Congress placed a mandate on the B1 that it cost less than $25 million per copy and the original procurement order was for 240 of these planes. After the cost went up to $68 million per copy, the B-1 proved to be the costliest order in the history of the Air Force. This was when a duplex house in Minneapolis cost $40,000. Now the same house would cost anywhere between $150,000 to $200,000. This means that in today’s dollars, the B-1 would cost a minimum of $230 million per copy. With Trump singing Gingrich’s tune, we can expect to have misdirected purchases for the next nine years. The B-1 and the F-35 are prime examples of such misdirected purchase power. Subsequently the order for the B-1 was trimmed back to 60 planes and the F-16 was successfully put into production at a fraction of the cost.