Jon Lebkowsky posted a wonderful bit from the Metaphor Project at GreaterDemocracy.org on the working of frames using Social Security as an example.  (For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of frames, I recommend taking a gander at MyDD's Book Club entry on George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant.)

In response to the post, I commented:

We could really use a brainstorming session to create frames around Social Security.  There's an awful lot of material with which to work and a crying need for editing.

Read the first inaugural speech by FDR.  It is chuck full of the rationale supporting Social Security:

"In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men..."

(http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/fr32/speeches/fdr1.htm)

We merely need to return to our roots and our core values to find the frame -- it's the honing part that is most challenging.

I can't help but think:

-- If Wall Street was such a safe place to put money, why do we need the SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley?  Social Security = security for society, not security for Wall Street.

-- If merely buying stock was enough to make us all wealthy and secure, why aren't all Americans already stockholders?  Show me the money.
 
-- Who REALLY benefits from the placement of billions of borrowed dollars into the stockmarket?  Follow the money.

Yeah.  Really.  It takes so little to buy stock right now.  Why aren't all Americans wealthy?  Why aren't they all secure?

 Show me the money. 

6:32:39 PM    comment []

Maybe it's the lousy weather.  Or perhaps the alignment of the stars.

I'm getting beaten up right and left today.

First, somebody is out to get me. 

Looney, huh?  Like I've completely slipped a cog?

Far from it.  I'm sure you'd feel the same way I do after the fourth phone call in 24 hours from yet another vendor claiming I signed up for information over the internet.

So far I've been called about an Associate's Degree program in Business (I already have both an Associate's and a Bachelor's in Business, thank you). 

Some poor saps have called me about $200,000 mortgages on $70,000 property; they both though it was rather odd I was asking for so much on such a small property.  To their credit, they both volunteered to contact their marketing departments and tell them the information was bogus. 

The last phone call was from an insurer; he wasn't quite as willing to give up even after I explained this mess, questioning me persistently about my current insurance, didn't I need more coverage... 

- Click -

Whoever it is that sicced these poor people on me has my first name, street address and my unlisted phone number.  They do not have my legal name, though.  Time to take a few extra precautions, just in case.  We may be changing the phone number we've had for fourteen years when we move next month, for starters.

We're freaky careful about our personal information, too.  I have suspicions how this started and it involves the school system...the school superintendent will be getting a call after the first of the year about it, in regards to their privacy policy.  If you have kids, I suggest you check your school's policy as well.  It wouldn't hurt you to check your school's policy if you are the student.

The other issue chapping my chops can be explained in one word.

Microsoft.

I have been trying to send a fax using Office XP, setting up the cover letter and attachments in Word.  So far Word has crashed four times; the Microsoft error reporting system tells me I need a free upgrade.  The free upgrade tells me I must have the Office CD's -- but the software came loaded on this system from the OEM and the disks are OEM versions that are locked in the fire safe.  Even if I didn't have to run to crack the safe and dig for the disks, I'm not certain that Microsoft would recognize the OEM disks as their software CD's.  I've tried resolving problems like this before and ended up in a fruitless loop -- Microsoft tells me it's an OEM problem, the OEM tells me it's a software vendor problem, and around and around and around...

Gah.

I just want to send a frickin' fax, for the love of Mike.  I was on a deadline and now I've had to miss it all because of an unstable piece of software.  I've rescheduled and bought a little time, but I'll have to use an actual fax machine instead of this bundled software that cost as much as the computer I'm using.

Whew.

Okay, now that I've vented my spleen, I'm going to try to get a little holiday cheer.

I'll warn you, though; if I get more phone solicitors today or another Microsoft crash, I'm going to have to splash a different kind of holiday cheer in my coffee mug.

Hope your ramp up to the holidays is faring better, whereever you are.

12:37:58 PM    comment []