Too few bags, too much baggage

My first thought was that Boeing had taken over Walgreens, because if you hold their paper bag as though it were a newborn baby, it still splits open like a watermelon hit by an assault rifle. Even when the bag contains a single packet of gum with two sticks missing, its handles fall off upon lifting. 

It's all about quality control and service. 

You'd think that bags were rationed like aluminum during war, they're so hard to come by. Customers with walkers emerge from supermarkets with a dozen groceries in hand, trying to balance them like jugglers or waiters. 

Stores and banks act like they're doing us a great favor by putting up with our patronage. They used to give us televisions and microwaves and tokens for opening an account. 

Nostalgic old-timers like me need to lower our expectations. We are all being concussed by retrograde progress. We are indentured to antisocial media, misinformation-gathering systems, mind-numbing recreational devices and despotic, intrusive agents that would be prosecuted, were they not machines.

From the quality of materials used in construction projects, to the stature of magistrates nominated to lifetime federal judgeships giving testimony at Senate confirmation hearings, the standards of fitness have been abysmally compromised.

But we've been through dark ages before. Some medieval version of Robert Kennedy Jr. was likely denied protection by the King's Royal Lancer Service, and a feudal Tusi Gabbard put on the Sherwood Forest TSA watchlist, because of her elective affinity for Robin Hood.

Not much we ordinary folk can do. No point emulating King Canute, who ordered the ocean tides to retreat, so that his toes wouldn't get wet. His authority didn't avail him. Nature proved no respecter of kings, just like democracy of people in modern times.

What's left but to crush lantern flies and bemoan the orchestrated degradation of society. And poke our local dystopia a little.

A 91-year-old woman was recently fined $600 for reporting rats that were on city property. Was it because the "rat czar" suspected the woman of recruiting the rodents into a private militia?  

Temerity is the calling card of government, but individuals give audacity a run for their money.

The owner of $300,000 Lamborghini is appealing his $800 fine for having been snared by a "noise camera.” He demands an exemption, because the manufacturer built in the engine's decibel-busting, ear-splitting insult to the ears as part of its marketing of the car's sex appeal. 

Rank, economic even more than military, has its privileges. And leniency its tragedies.

A 32-year-old motorist, whose license had been suspended 56 times, killed her own child in a car accident a few weeks ago. If the suspensions were equidistant, that means one every few months. What dignity and deterrent power do the law retain when it can be defied so brazenly with its own consent?

The MTA has no monopoly on sucking dry the federal funding teat. But the government's threat to deny the agency the grants it needs to correct the poor safety practices of New York City transit that the feds themselves acknowledge pose "a substantial risk of death or personal injury,” is a senseless deflection. 

Instead of aggravating the existing suffering of MTA employees and customers, they should punish the administrators whose negligence or ineptness imperiled them. Simply feigning indignation about the presence of problems and then returning to "business as usual" is a malicious diversion,  not a substitute for actually tackling them. 

Although it does provide sunscreen to their asses.

As of now, public hospital doctors are still being told to cut the time per visit that they devote to treating patients. The purpose, according to Dr. Ted Long, NYC Health + Hospitals' senior vice president for ambulatory care and population health, is to reduce waiting time, which for adults has doubled over the last year. 

Perhaps his title should be shortened also.

But he has a point. So does the Doctors Council SEIU, the union that is advocating for the hiring of more physicians, so that the burgeoning patient load can be accommodated without cutting corners of patient care. It would be a win/win. 

But tender loving care comes in units of attention, and time is a precious commodity and stern  taskmaster.

Perhaps an efficiency expert will propose that any delay in detecting a pulse be deducted from the time allocated for the next consultation. The government can order a consignment of stop watches. These truncated visits may bring the collateral benefit of giving patients practice in getting to the point fast when describing their fevers and visor-like chest pains.

Most of the government's sins are committed either in the name of altruism or cost savings. 

Congestive pricing is not dead. Governor Kathy Hochul put it in an induced coma. Now she is floating the idea of exempting some city workers from these tolls, which resemble customs duties at border crossings. 

That notion should be sunk. The pretext for these exemptions applies to many other workers as well. A divide-and-conquer, multi-tier system would further balkanize New York. Everyone should be exempted. 

And let's hope, for the sake of the treasury, that not too much of the $19 billion of our unclaimed money held by New York State gets indemnified. By the way, when people step forth to claim their share, will they have to prove who they are, or is identity irrelevant, as with voting or official descriptions of suspected criminals?

Even when there is a video capture of an evident murderer, rapist or arsonist, the media will often restrict the description to something like "wearing a hat and pants.”

Are there priorities that override the precedence of apprehending monsters? Provided all protocols are met for all communities, there is no racist overtone or supremacist profiling. The egalitarian principle belongs in grammar and style books also. It is now common journalistic  practice, especially in commentaries about social and educational policy issues, to use capital "B" for Black but a small "w" for white, when referring to people. 

There is no such thing as lower-case humanity. 

We will never get to the bottom of our disunity until we hit bottom from trying to mine it like gold prospectors. 

In the meantime, here's an exercise that's very popular amongst sophists: make three columns, the first consisting of adverbs, the second of adjectives and the third of nouns. Pick one word from each column and use it as a phrase that will make you sound like an instant pundit on any issue, such as the Department of Education's agonized quandary about cellphones.

Storing these life-support systems will be a logistical nightmare that will require an army of iPhone governesses and invite innumerable charges of theft, misappropriation, damage and privacy violation charges. Abrogation of adult authority in meting out discipline, much of it compelled by DOE policy,  has emboldened kids and eroded the system's all-around credibility.  

Maybe three words from a crib sheet is all that is needed to turn things around. Quick fix tricknology is still in the testing phase on the world stage.