Frey vs. Frey

Richard Dawkins

2011-10-10T22:57:00.004-05:00

Below: Freyguy gets his books signed by Professor Richard Dawkins after a public lecture. The celebrated evolutionary biologist has authored many books, including the (in)famous atheist treatise and bestseller, The God Delusion. You can see how thrilled he was to meet me, after an hour lecture, a half-hour of questions, and an hour of signing books. I think it's safe to say that Richard and I are now close personal friends.

Kidding aside, he was extremely generous with his time and it was a real privilege to meet him and hear him speak. Only an Oxford-educated Brit can call something "uttah nonsense" and still sound polite. Here's a clip of Dawkins discussing evolution, science and religion with George Coyne, a Jesuit priest and astronomer.

What do you think of Dawkins? Love him? Hate him? Indifferent?

Not so fast

2011-09-27T20:05:00.004-05:00

You may have heard about a particle-physics experiment called OPERA, which seems to have measured neutrinos coming from the CERN accelerator traveling faster than the speed of light. If confirmed, this result would be extremely exciting and intriguing, as it would modify the foundations of all physics for the past 100 years.

The physics community seems to accept that the team at OPERA did a professional and thorough job, but naturally, there is also widespread skepticism. The effect they measured might be explained simply by some systematic error of 60 nanoseconds, although finding the source of the error itself could be interesting. In the next year or so, laboratories in the U.S. and elsewhere should be able to independently test the result.

A professor of particle physics told me and some other students, "It should be looked into with an open and skeptical mind." She's seen many extraordinary discoveries and disappointments in her 50 years as a physicist, so I guess she would know.

Just for fun: below is a video of how to build your own cloud chamber, a simple device which forms visible tracks as particles fly through it (go to 3 min. 10 sec. in the video to watch the tracks). Watching the tracks is fun and mesmerizing, and you don't actually need any radioactive samples like the one used in the video; unless you live in a lead box, an empty chamber will produce a frenzy of zig-zagging tracks due to the ambient particles raining down on us every day (mostly muons).

Palestinian statehood

2011-09-18T17:06:00.005-05:00

The situation as of 2007, from here. A detailed, full-page map of the West Bank can be found at the Washington Post. Israel has a population of 7.5 million (about 5.8 million Jews and 1.5 million Arabs). The West Bank has a population of 2.6 million, plus 500,000 Israeli settlers. Gaza has a population of 1.7 million.

The U.S. and Israel have been trying to dissuade the Palestinian Authority from seeking recognition as a state at the United Nations. Israel has threatened "harsh and grave consequences" if the PA goes ahead with its application to the UN.

But why? After all, polls have shown that a sizable majority (or at least plurality) of Israelis and Palestinians have supported a two-state solution for years. Clinton, Bush, and Obama have pushed for two states. President Obama said that "the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security." Since Israelis are recognized by the UN as having a state, shouldn't Palestinians be recognized, too?

President Solyndra

2011-09-18T12:47:00.001-05:00

President Solyndra

The current case of the solar panel company collapsing and taking a half billion dollars of taxpayer money down with it, is an excellent example of why the federal government should not be in the business of trying to manage business. I have explained to the Grad Student a number of times over the years that there are two fundamental reasons that the government shouldn't be in the business of managing business. The first is competence. They're incompetent. This is not to say that the people in the government are incompetent people, or that they aren't smart, anymore than saying Michael Jordan was an incompetent professional baseball player means he wasn't a great athlete. Look at the experience and education of the President and the Congress…even their advisors are academics, lawyers and financiers…not business professionals who have ever had much, if any business experience. The second is motivation. The government largely has the wrong motivation…political or personal, not profitable business goals.

This brings us back to Solyndra. The application for funding for the solar panel company was started under the Bush administration. But the people in the government agencies, charged with reviewing these applications, raised all kinds of "red flags" and tabled the loan application. First, it appeared (last January) that the company was very unprofitable, had no plan to get profitable, and would run out of cash by September (that's right, the "underlings" were able to predict almost exactly when it would crash). Further, this was a huge loan ($500 million) for this size company. But, the biggest equity investor was/is one of the largest "bundlers" of campaign contributions to the President's campaign, and this was/is exactly what he wants to promote…"green" energy; 1,000 jobs; stimulus money doing good on multiple fronts; etc. He even made a filmed photo op at Solyndra. Then, the government went even further…it apparently violated a law put in place that all federal loans of this type be in front of equity and other (junior) debt. This is common practice in the private business world anyway. But the government created an exception for this special case, and ordered it off the back-burner and accelerated. "Poof!"…there goes a half billion taxpayer dollars while a political backer gets bailed out, and almost all 1,000 people get laid off. Incompetence? Cronyism? Political favors? Wanting business to be what you wish it to be? You decide. I'm simply saying…my two reasons seem validated.

The Old Man

Muslim Americans weigh in on justifiability of killing civilians

2011-08-27T17:40:00.008-05:00

Gallup released the following results from a poll of nearly 2,500 Americans. The results are, I must admit, quite surprising.

Who knew that such large percentages of American Christians, Jews, and atheists believe targeting and killing civilians is sometimes justified? Who knew Muslim Americans were so strongly opposed?

The disparity between Muslims and Christians is astonishing when you consider the fact that the Prophet Muhammad was a military general, while Jesus espoused turning the other cheek. A solid majority of Christian Americans appear unconscious of the contradiction between their beliefs about violence, versus the word of the Gospels:

43Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; (Matthew 5, King James Version)

"...Oh, and I forgot to say unto you, target and kill your enemies. Including civilians sometimes." ~ Jesus

Avoiding Obamageddon

2011-08-22T18:25:00.001-05:00

The following was written by Fred. Freyguy posts it on his behalf.

We’ve all heard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, it turns out that until 2009 the path to perdition was overgrown with weeds and meandered through woods over environmentally sensitive areas. But thanks to shovel ready stimulus we can now get there far more quickly.

One of the paradoxes that economists, particularly liberal (Keynesian) economists like to point to is how behavior that is good for the individual (saving) can be bad for the economy (which needs people to spend). Frankly I consider this, how shall I put it, wrong. What is bad for the economy (and usually the individual) is sudden and dramatic change (whether or not you believe in it). Savings are good for all manner of entities.

World War II is said to have brought us out of the Great Depression, which is taken by many as proof that what we need during depressions/recessions is massive government spending. But Roosevelt went through the alphabet on government spending programs prior to WWII and the result was that we stayed mostly mired in economic woe. So what got us out of the Depression? Well, it’s seldom just one thing that causes it or ends it. But barring consistently poor leadership, depressions and recessions have been known to end all by themselves as the economy rebalances – that is the natural state of things economic.

Fast forward almost six decades and we find that huge increases in spending by the federal government have not had the desired effect of stimulating the economy. Of course you can blame headwinds and floods and the Tsunami and banks and Wall Street and energy companies (unless they produce subsidized “green” energy) and greedy Benedict Arnold business people who outsource jobs and even greedier millionaires and billionaires who won’t pay their fair share and terrorists from the disloyal opposition and the S&P rating agency and… oh, the recession was deeper than first thought. Yeah, so then the recovery should have been steeper.

Now I don’t have a problem with No Drama Obama dialing up the rhetoric. Heck, the election will be upon us before we know it and what else is he supposed to run on? With a projected one billion dollars at his disposal (and with his ability to have the public pick up campaign expenses if he claims it’s an informational bus tour) I am buying my popcorn early and grabbing a front row seat for what is sure to be the most negative campaign since… well, I don’t know. Most have been pretty ugly.

So do I blame Obama? Sure, he’s earned it. But the problem has been building for a long time. Politicians need to realize that while they can anoint winners and losers the economy is neither a mathematical construct with interchangeable parts nor a zero sum game. You never get to mourn businesses that were never born.

So what do we need? More certainty would be a good place to start, but less regulation would be even better. Passing trade deals that have been collecting dust as Democrats dither would also be nice. Allowing more immigrants to arrive and stay legally would be good for the economy, particularly those immigrants who are bright, well-educated and entrepreneurial (neither party seems to be able to grasp that one). I am uncertain whether higher taxes for millionaires and billionaires who earn more than $200,000 (is there a disconnect here?) will hurt the economy much, but closing the loopholes and simplifying the whole mess would certainly help. Basically we need a tax code that incentivizes productivity or at least doesn’t punish it. Oh, and also one that even a run-of-the-mill MBA can figure out without professional assistance.

Most of all, we need to understand that spending does not create wealth. Efficiencies create wealth. Yes, I know, efficiencies can put people out of work. Obama periodically mentions that (the difficulty of creating jobs, sigh). But the modern age has shown that there’s tremendous upside potential to not having 90% of your population engaged in agriculture…organic gardens not withstanding of course.

American Atheists: a bunch of jerks?

2011-08-21T14:32:00.012-05:00

In July, the publicly-funded 9/11 Memorial Museum was sued by an atheist group to prevent the display of a cross made of WTC beams. The group American Atheists said on their website:

"This cross is set to be included in the official WTC memorial. No other religions or philosophies will be honored. It will just be a Christian icon, in the middle of OUR museum. This will not happen without a fight.
...
We will pay for our own memorial of equal size inside the museum, or the museum will not include the cross. Equality is an all-or-nothing deal."

The museum has since said that a Jewish star of David cut from the WTC rubble will also be on display. American Atheists subsequently argued that since Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists died on 9/11, they should all get displays in the museum--not just Jews and Christians. Otherwise, the group argues, the cross should be removed.

What do you think?

Personally, I don't think it would be so terrible if the museum allowed several religions/philosophies to erect memorials. But the whining coming from American Atheists is silly. The group fails to recognize that the 9/11 cross is an historical artifact. It was used as a makeshift shrine by the laborers who were digging out bodies during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. If the workers had memorialized a piece of rubble resembling an atom--which is the symbol of American Atheists--I expect that would be displayed in the museum, too. But history does not respect American Atheists' definition of "equality", and our museums would surely be impoverished if exhibits of religious significance were an "all-or-nothing deal". (Imagine trying to apply the logic of American Atheists to a memorial museum of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.)

I'm relieved that other atheists agree this 9/11 cross suit is much ado about nothing. I have never liked this group, American Atheists. They try to remove roadside crosses--you know, those harmless memorials for people killed in car accidents. Frankly, they act like jerks. Pouncing on every opportunity to claim offense, and throwing tantrums over trifles, is just as tiresome when it comes from atheist groups as when it comes from Christian groups.

Who's the Leader?

2011-08-16T23:23:00.003-05:00

The following was written by The Old Man. Freyguy posts it on his behalf:

I've been listening all week to our President, as he officially launches his "Fear and Blame" campaign...The Downgrade is due to the Tea Party holding the Republican's hostage... The downgrade is due to a divisive debate... The Congress should come back to work and solve this (if they do, call me, I'll be on Martha's Vineyard)... There's an unwillingness to compromise in Washington, and that's causing the problems...S&P was wrong to downgrade the U.S....The "rich" should pay their "fair share", that's the problem.

But...but...who's the Leader? Who is supposed to bring the sides together to compromise? Who is supposed to lead by example and not use partisan attacks and accusations? Who was supposed to bring Hope and Change to Washington DC? Has anybody seen that Leader? I find the quote below, from a 2008 Presidential candidate, to be on point.

"If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent's patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics."

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Aug. 19, 2008

What Cicero didn't say

2011-08-06T01:22:00.005-05:00

This phony quote has been making the rounds on the internet again:

"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and any assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." -Falsely attributed to Cicero, 55 B.C.E.

Some mutations say "public debt should be reduced" and "the mobs should be forced to work". (It's so hard to find good slaves these days.) The quote has cropped up in conservative corners of the internet (where else?), from the distinguished pages of Forbes.com, to user signatures on forums about Ron Paul and gun ownership, websites about liberty and free markets, and so on.

But the quote is "almost certainly spurious", according to Respectfully Quoted: a Dictionary of Quotations. It appears to come from A Pillar of Iron, a work of historical fiction written several decades ago by Taylor Caldwell. The book has been criticized as excessively fictional. I haven't read it; forgive me for judging this book by its cover:

I'm picturing a movie version of this, where Cicero is played by Antonio Banderas; in the last fight scene he says some one-liner like "Not in my Rome!" before throwing Julius Caesar from the top of the Senate.

This false quote, and others, have inspired the Freakonomics blog to develop three cardinal rules to help identify phony quotes:

Quotation Rule #1: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter disagrees with that are attributed to Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler are almost always phony.
Quotation Rule #2: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter agrees with that are attributed toLincoln are almost always phony.
Quotation Rule #3: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter attributes to classical figures like Cicero, and that criticize modern, allegedly liberal trends are almost always phony.

In my experience, these rules are true too often; beware quotes with these properties.

The ban on gay blood

2011-07-22T23:58:00.007-05:00

Since the HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C outbreaks of the 1980's, which killed thousands of hemophiliacs in the U.S. alone, governments around the world have adopted blood donation policies which ban, or temporarily defer, people who are in statistically high-risk groups for blood-borne diseases. Every bag of donated blood is tested for a number of diseases, but excluding high-risk groups provides an additional measure of safety. In most countries, the list of deferred donors includes IV drug users, people who have paid or been paid for sex, hemophiliacs and their sexual partners, and men who have had sex with other men since 1977 (MSM).

It's the permanent, lifelong ban on MSM blood donations (common in most countries) that is the most controversial policy. People naturally find the insinuation that their own blood is somehow "unfit" for charitable donation insulting. And the gay community is, understandably, especially sensitive to a policy which seems to throw wood into the fire of homophobia.

In the media, and especially on the Left, there appears to be near-unanimity that the MSM policy is outrageous, unfair, scientifically unsound. A New York Times article reported: "Gay Men Condemn Blood Ban as Biased". A recent Washington Post blog agrees the policy is "unfair, outrageous, and just plain stupid," and unapologetically cites an article comparing the policy to "blood libel". A writer at the Guardian apparently believes the UK National Blood Service, and others who support the MSM ban, are "bloody bigots". Senator Kerry and several other Democrats wrote a letter to the FDA urging revision of the policy. Both Canada and the U.S. revisited, but did not change, their MSM policies.

As a hemophiliac, and a scientist-in-training, and a proud LGBT rights supporter, I have a somewhat unique perspective on this issue. Opponents of the ban seem to make great use of rhetoric, but shy away from the most important and sobering facts of the matter. Here are some of them:

Estimated Number of New HIV Infections, by Transmission Category, 2006

There were 53,600 new HIV infections in the U.S. in 2006. Notice that more than 53% of new HIV infections were due to male-to-male sexual contact, even though the CDC estimates MSM constitute only 2% of the overall population. (This contrasts with Italy, where HIV is transmitted primarily by heterosexual contact, and MSM are no longer banned from donating blood). Furthermore, virtually all of the HIV transmissions by non-MSM behavior came from IV drug use and "high-risk" heterosexual contact. Here, "high-risk" refers to heterosexual sex with (1) an IV drug user, (2) MSM, or (3) a person known to be HIV positive. In other words, practically none of the new HIV transmissions were caused simply by heterosexual behavior which did not involve a condom--at least in the U.S. This is remarkable, when you consider how many more heterosexuals than MSM there are in the U.S.

In many countries, anyone who has ever used an IV drug, or ever had MSM contact, is permanently banned from donating blood. However, the other piece of the pie--the high-risk heterosexuals--are typically only deferred from donating for 12 months. This difference, it is argued, is unfair.

But then, HIV is not the only concern. MSM are also at higher risk of other viruses, such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HHV-8 (herpes virus). Then there is the concern about the new viruses that, like HIV and Hep, may one day appear in the blood supply, without warning, without testing. This point is made rather well in this BBC show on the issue. The host introduces "a scientist and a gay rights activist" (he says this without irony). The scientist--medical director of a blood transfusion agency--says that a 12-month deferral of MSM "might be okay" to mitigate the risk of HIV transmission, but "it's not all about HIV ... [MSM] have in the past been a source for new and unknown infections coming through" to the blood supply.

In the scholarly literature, it is widely accepted that the ban on MSM donations has made the blood supply safer, and lifting the ban will increase the risk in most countries without significantly increasing the available blood supply (here, here, here, here, here). Still, there is room for scientific debate. It may be that today, a lifetime ban of MSM is overkill. The American Red Cross and the blood banks say a one-year deferral would be sufficient. The key point here is that governments should revise the MSM policy based on detailed, quantitative, empirical analysis of the risks and benefits such changes would pose to blood recipients (including, of course, gay recipients). Policy should not be determined based on appealing (but misguided) feelings about what is fair to blood donors.

On a side note ....

I found this interesting: the NY Times cited a "comprehensive report" on the blood donation issue published by an AIDS service organization. The report is authored by people with PhDs in unspecified fields (they appear to be professors of various humanities). Curiously, none of the "comprehensive reports" that appear regularly in peer-reviewed journals like Transfusion or Blood, where the authors have degrees in things like medicine and biochemistry, made it into the NYT article. I also note the report mistakenly claimed that "Italy, Spain, and France defer donors solely based on high-risk behavior, not on a donor’s history of MSM behavior". As a matter of fact, like most countries France permanently bans MSM from blood donation, as acknowledged by the report elsewhere, and its own sources, and this study from June 2011. Nevertheless, the appealing idea that France does not exclude MSM blood donors has caught on (here, here, here, and in this blog post authored by eight Democratic representatives).

The Miranda Myth

2011-05-26T01:56:00.008-05:00

Flashing red and blue lights woke me up in the middle of the night tonight. I went to the window and saw a guy with dreadlocks and a backpack, and a fat woman with two shopping carts and multiple purses. The guy with dreadlocks was being arrested.

The woman asked the cop where they were going. "He's going to jail," the cop said. For what? "For criminal mischief."
"Could you read him his rights?" she asked politely.
Then the officer said this: "I don't have to read him his rights. I only have to read him his rights if I'm taking him to court. I'm taking him to jail."

This statement confused me. (Needless to say, many things about the scene unfolding outside my window confused me.) Standing there in my underwear, I wondered, aren't cops required to read the Miranda rights when they make an arrest? I checked good ol' Wikipedia and, wouldn't you know it, this is a common myth. I guess I've watched too many cop movies (and hey, it's late). The police only have to read your Miranda rights if they are going to interrogate you and if any self-incriminating statements you make during interrogation are to be admissible in court. But if you're just "in the hood and up to no good" and a cop catches you, he doesn't have to read jack before he takes you to the clink.

The last thing I saw was the woman approaching the cop car. The dreadlocks guy sat in the back seat, hidden by tinted windows. "You don't have to say anything," she told him, in a reassuring, motherly tone. Then, she pointed a finger at him and her tone changed: "Don't say nothing until I get there!" The cop car drove off. She consolidated the baggage into a single cart, shoved it in front of her, and waddled angrily down the sidewalk, muttering to herself. In my head, the song "Bad Boys" from Cops was playing.

Now that I've discovered the subtleties of the Miranda warning, only one question remains: what the #@$% were those people doing outside my window?

The religion of Paul Dirac

2011-04-23T01:34:00.004-05:00

Paul Dirac was one of the giants of physics in the 20th century. He made fundamental contributions to our understanding of quantum theory, along with Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrodinger, and others. In the 1920's, before the current age of Big Science, the world's leading physicists could sit down in a room together, apparently, and discuss such idle topics as politics and religion. A Wiki article relates the story of one such conference, quoted from Heisenberg's book. I thought it was pretty funny (make sure to read until the end):

"...Dirac said:
“ I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins. ”

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter."

I made a graph

2011-04-17T19:55:00.005-05:00

I made this graph in order to try to answer the question: Is a public health system more expensive than a private one? The x-axis is government expenditure on health as a percentage of total health expenditure. The y-axis is total health expenditure, as a percentage of GDP.

The orange diamond represents the United States. Data is from 2007 and compiled from the World Health Organization 2010 report. The solid blue line is a linear fit.

The countries shown are from the top 27 countries by GDP per capita. Not shown are those countries which spend less than 4% GDP on health: Singapore, and the Islamic/Arabic monarchies Qatar, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. Also not shown are countries which receive external resources for health: Israel.

List of countries shown: Luxembourg, Norway, United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia, Austria, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Finland, France, Japan, Republic of Korea, Spain, Italy.

Thoughts?

The Climate Change Debate

2011-04-03T15:52:00.009-05:00

One remarkable aspect of the climate change debate is the difference between public and scientific opinion. Only 49% of the American public says rising global temperatures are a result of human activities (Gallup, 2007-2008). In contrast, 97% of climate scientists are convinced by the evidence that it is "very likely" greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for "most" of the "unequivocal" warming of average global temperatures over the last half of the 20th century (U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010).

In this respect, the debate over human-caused global warming is similar to the "debate" over the evolutionary origins of species. Among the public, the most basic principles of biology remain controversial: about half of Americans say they do not believe humans share a common ancestor with other species. One may even find a few dissenting biologists, somewhere, willing to speak to legislators of the need to teach evolution in schools only as a scientific "controversy". Their climate-change counterparts can be found making vastly disproportionate contributions to Congressional hearings, or the Wall Street Journal.

A recent review of climate change evidence characterized the debate this way (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2010):

"The history of science reveals a series of ‘controversies’. These often develop into a state where there is little debate within the relevant academic community (and what there is tends to be on peripheral issues), yet widespread popular debate remains. This usually occurs because the research has challenged the beliefs of a significant fraction of the population at large. The nature of the controversies, however, has changed. Where, for example, the advances made by Galileo and Darwin faced opposition because they challenged the established teachings of organized religion, climate scientists in the developed world have faced opposition from their more secular societies because they challenge beliefs that justify lifestyles and/or political allegiances (Malka et al. 2009; Nisbet 2009)."

But as the article points out, there is a crucial difference between the climate change controversy, and the evolution controversy. While "humankind could often afford to wait for previous controversies to abate", in the case of climate change there is evidence that "time for effective action is extremely short". The American Physical Society, which represents thousands of physicists (including yours truly!) agrees:

"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now."

Declare War and Go On Spring Break

2011-03-20T19:53:00.001-05:00

Declare war and go on spring break

Remember when “regime change”, attacking another country, and taking sides in another country’s “civil war”, were anathema to Liberals? Remember when two dozen countries invading a Muslim country wasn’t a “coalition because “who’s kidding whom?”, the U.S. is really leading and doing all the bombing? Remember when trying to hunt down a brutal Arab dictator who murdered his own people wasn’t enough reason to declare war and hunt him down?
But, this is another day and another time, and besides, “we” like this President, and nobody likes that dictator. Why, even the French are willing to oust him, it must be the right thing to do. Let’s just declare war and go on spring break with the kids…they’ve never been to Brazil. And besides, I’ve got my Blackberry if they really need me on any of this war stuff.

What about Iran?

2011-03-01T19:37:00.002-06:00

While President Obama sends U.S. warships to Libya, and Secretary Clinton calls for regime change, and the Obama administration openly sends in weapons to rebels to overthrow a government, the liberals cheer.
And so does Ahmadinejad, as his warships complete a trial run to Syria, and he arrests and executes adversaries in Iran, while our President says only "it would not be wise for the U.S. to be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs".

"According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, 500 Iranians are serving jail terms for political protests. Another 500 are detained and awaiting processing, including 80-year-old former Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi, the world's oldest political prisoner."

Even more ominous, 120 Iranians have been executed since Jan. 1, according to the rights group. Iran executes more prisoners per capita than any country and is second only to China in the total number of those killed by the state.

Where is the western media? Where is "the Beeb"? Where are the hushed tones of NPR reporting the arrests in the dark of night, and the executions in the broad light of day? Where is the condemnation from that august body, the UN? And where is our President...who chooses so carefully his places to "meddle"?

The Old Man

President reduces the size of government

2011-02-27T19:31:00.002-06:00

President Obama, in response to the din calling for reducing the cost and size of government, decided this past week to eliminate the Supreme Court. It's not just the cost of the court itself, but the huge expense of legal actions progressing through the courts to the Supreme Court. The President simply proclaimed the "Defense of Marriage" law enacted by the legislative branch (Congress), "unconstitutional", and directed the Justice Department not to defend the law. See, that was easy..no need for legal action...no need to change the law...the President can just proclaim which laws he judges to be "constitutional" and which ones he decides are "unconstitutional". Come to think of it, we don't have to spend all that money on the legislative branch either. Authoritarian government is so much more efficient.

The Old Man

O'Reilly Morph

2011-02-06T16:25:00.002-06:00

I just saw Bill O'Reilly interview President Obama. The interview was boring and bordered on irrelevant (although his minions will play to his ego and tell him how "hard hitting it was) with piercing questions like "do you think you've changed" and "do you think you've moved toward the middle?". But the amazing part was watching O'Reilly morph into Larry King!

The Old Man

NASA "Hanging by a Thread" according to U.S. Army Assistant Secretary

2011-02-05T01:58:00.001-06:00

U.S. Army Assistant Secretary Malcolm R. O'Neill gave graduate science students some frank career advice last week, warning that federal budget constraints have NASA "hanging on by a thread". The comments took place during a discussion after a lecture O'Neill delivered to the physics department. O'Neill, who earned his PhD in physics from Rice University and was assigned as the head of the (in)famous "Star Wars" program, talked at length about military-related research, as well as the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan war costs taxpayers $10 billion per year, he said.

According to the space agency's published budget, the NASA budget is expected to be $20 billion per year. In addition to the shuttle program, NASA funds a wide range of basic and applied research, which takes up half of its budget. Examples of projects supported by NASA funding include Earth-observing satellites whose data are made freely-available to researchers, new water-purification systems, and of course, grants and training for the next generation of scientists.

The day after O'Neill's lecture, Dmitri Denisov of Fermi National Laboratory discussed the termination of the Tevatron experiment, due to federal budget constraints. During the discussion, faculty and students -- including those working on the Large Hadron Collider, the main competition of the Tevatron -- expressed audible signs of consternation and disappointment.

The enormous Tevatron collider in Illinois was responsible for the discovery of the top quark, among other achievements, and was the most powerful high-energy physics experiment on the planet until the Large Hadron Collider became operational in 2009. But the machinery and the labor of 1,200 physicists came at a price of $35 million per year. Now that the curtains have fallen on the Tevatron, it is likely the much sought-after Higgs boson (if it exists), as well as any surprises Nature may have in store for the Standard Model, will be discovered at the LHC, with European funding.

Egyptian-Americans rally for democracy in Houston

2011-01-30T21:57:00.005-06:00

"Down, down, Mubarak!" That was the call and response being chanted today all around me as I stood outside the Egyptian consulate in Houston, Texas, in a crowd of about 100-200 people. They waved Egyptian and American flags, smiled and cheered as passing motorists honked their horns in support. Most of the crowd seemed to be Egyptian, or Egyptian-American; there were plenty of women wearing brightly-colored headscarves, holding signs in one hand and a stroller in the other. Images below reposted from Houston's indymedia.

The signs I saw read: "In solidarity with the Egyptian rage revolution", "30 years is enough", "Fair elections", "Constitutional reform", "US backed Mubarak dictatorship", "Obama: Democracy or Hypocrisy?", "America! Support the Egyptian people! Not the regime!" A shy little girl ran away as I tried to capture her sign on my cell phone: "Let the people live".

A young man, with the red, white and black Egyptian flag draped about his shoulders, told me he has been able to talk to his friends and family in Egypt only a few times since the regime cut off cell phone, Facebook, and Twitter services. I asked him what it is the protesters want. He basically said they want democracy. Opposition parties are effectively barred from power in Egypt. It is illegal to "insult" President Mubarak. All important government buildings must have a mural of Mubarak's visage.

Mubarak is getting ready to hand power over to his son. "His son is like 40, so if his son takes power we could face another 40 years of this."
"That sounds like monarchy, not democracy," I said.
"Exactly."

The protesters want Mubarak to leave, and then they want fair elections in which not just Mubarak's party can participate, and not just Mubarak is guaranteed to win. Egyptians are tired of the same "bullshit" every year, the same corruption, the same problems with unemployment and poverty, he said. Egypt is a rich country, he said, but the wealth and U.S. foreign aid is hoarded by a small segment of rich society; 50% of the people without political connections to the ruling party are in poverty. He has friends with college degrees who can't find jobs, and live homeless on the streets. "But Mubarak doesn't want to leave, because he's afraid they will try him as a criminal once he loses power."

What about the Muslim Brotherhood, I asked. "Egypt is a country of 80 million people. The Muslim Brotherhood has like 10 thousand members. Every country has extremists."

He said the protesters in Egypt are primarily a democratic youth movement, but the regime is trying to portray them as violent criminals and radical Islamists to the rest of the world. The regime deliberately withdrew police protection from neighborhoods and the National Museum, which contains priceless artifacts of Egyptian heritage. "The youths are smart. They got whatever weapons they could, sticks and knives, and protected their own neighborhoods against criminals. If they don't know you, you aren't allowed into their neighborhood. They locked arms outside the National Museum to keep out looters. They know that protecting Egyptian heritage and keeping the peace is important to the revolution." Some of the looters were cornered by citizens and found to have undercover police identification, he said.

"The Mubarak regime is sending the same message it has been sending for 30 years. The message is: 'without me, this is what Egypt will get. The country will be taken over by criminals and extremists. Egypt needs me.'" But in reality, this either-or choice between a dictator and extremists is just fear-mongering by the Mubarak regime, he said.

Why has the U.S. supported the dictatorship in Egypt? "To other countries, Mubarak is great. He gives them the impression he's a humanitarian. But to Egyptians, he's terrible."

What change?

2010-11-24T21:27:00.002-06:00

(Note: The Old Man wrote the following, which I post on his behalf.)

President Obama...some are still hoping, but...what's the change?

1. I will bring the troops home, starting immediately, and end the war in 12 months.

...as of September, gaining on two years into the Obama term, troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan was about 180,000, just below the all time high of about 195,000 during the previous administration. The cost of the wars reached a peak in 2007 of about $180B. The projected cost for 2010 (by the government) is about $170B, and requests by the Obama administration for 2011 extrapolate to...$170B. And...did you hear this week's proud statement by the President? He and NATO have agreed that they are aiming for a transfer of war leadership to the Afghanis by the end of...2014!...what change?

2. The economy...I'll create 3 million jobs with this stimulus bill, and we have to pass it right now (don't even bother to read it, there's no time) and we'll keep unemployment under 8%.

...as we labor along at almost 10% unemployment for almost two years, with no projected end in sight, most are getting tired of the “yeah, but it would have been even worse, and besides, it wasn't my fault”. If it weren't so sad, I'd be amused that Wall Street and the big banks have record earnings and huge bonuses again, while the rest of the country is hurting....what change?

3. Restore respect in the world by using diplomacy (they love me, don't they?)

...Iran thumbs its' nose at the U.S., with its' pursuit of nuclear weapons unabated and Ahmadinejad referring publicly to Obama as “a cowboy”. This week a U.S.scientist said he was “stunned” by his visit to a “vast new Nuclear enrichment facility in North Korea. Russia continues to support Iran, and China lectures us on fiscal responsibility. There is no progress on middle east peace, and Muslim extremists still vow to kill us....what change?

4. I'll close Gitmo within one year, (and end this endless detainment without trial)

...gaining on two years, no sign Gitmo will be closed, and one trial held. Further, the only one tried was only convicted of one conspiracy charge (not of any of the multiple terrorism charges) and the President said “we were prepared to hold him even if he wasn't convicted of any charges”....what change?

5. We're going to end the “backroom deals” and allow C-Span to view negotiations.

...this is just blatantly false, from the “cornhusker kickback” to the Florida deal to the Stupak bribe to the record earmarks to the refusal to let C-Span televise negotiations to the backroom secret negotiations with everybody from big banks to insurance com- panies to unions et al. ...what change?

6. I'll eliminate “don't ask don't tell” and immediately allow gays to serve in the military.

...almost two years and the president passes the responsibility to a commission and Congress. Disgraceful. Read up on Harry Truman and desegregation of the military. All it takes is a pen (and some courage)....what change?

7. The country needs a president who can get people to work together. I'll usher in the era of “post partisanship”.

…the last two years have been more divisive, not less divisive, and the president goes down in history as the only president to get a major piece of legislation passed without one vote from the other party....what change?

8. Health Care reform...every american will be covered (as opposed to Hillary's plan), and we'll reduce the skyrocketing costs, and you can keep your existing plan and Dr.

...the administration has already admitted that costs will go up, and only half of the 15% without insurance will be covered. Insurance companies are opting out of health insurance and the administration is busily granting waivers to it's law even before it takes effect....what change?

….Just asking

The Old Man

The Longest War

2010-10-09T00:19:00.005-05:00

"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road."

"I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations"

~ George W. Bush, during the 2000 presidential campaign

Americans recognize a grim anniversary this month as the war that began in Afghanistan in October 2001 becomes the longest war in our history. (Depending on who's counting; the Vietnam war arguably started with the authorization of conventional forces to fight North Vietnam in 1964, and withdrawal about nine years later.)

It's difficult to say whether or not the originally-stated goals of the invasion have been met. But it seems to me that whether we failed or succeeded, the mission is over. If 30,000 conventional U.S. troops and special forces haven't bumped into a 6-foot 6-inch man (taller, if you include the turban) attached to two kidney dialysis machines after nine years, they aren't going to find him in another nine years.

Some argue that we have to keep troops in Afghanistan until the Taliban are defeated. I disagree, for four reasons:

(1) The Taliban no longer pose any plausible threat to us. According to a de-classified report, the Taliban view Al-Qaeda as a "handicap". They have no plans to attack Americans outside of Afghanistan.

(2) There is no military solution to the Taliban. The Afghan leadership realizes this, and so do our own generals. Since 2007 the military has admitted the insurgency is winning. The de-classified report says they can sustain themselves "indefinitely". We simply cannot kill everyone living in Afghanistan who subscribes to fundamentalist Islam or hates foreign occupation. Nor do we have any right to try. American violence has proved as likely to kill the people we are "protecting", and boost recruitment for the insurgency, as anything else. One U.S. officer said to his troops, referring to shootings by convoys and checkpoints: "There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents”. Gen. McChrystal said: “We have shot an amazing number of people [this year], but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

(3) The report I cited notes that the Taliban's main focus is to be part of a legitimate government; to win the population by providing security and protection. Their "main effort" is not violence but an information campaign. So the "grand peace jirga" proposed by President Karzai really could result in a peaceful compromise. Perhaps Taliban regions will get some autonomy from the central government in Kabul. As Sec. of State Clinton said, "You don't make peace with your friends".

(4) The cost, in dollars and blood. Enough said.

President Obama said he intends to begin withdrawing combat forces in 2011, but his actions, and the consensus of the American and British establishment, cast doubt on this promise. Since taking office, Obama has escalated the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to nearly 100,000 and continued the construction of massive, permanent bases all over the country.

Why do both political parties favor continuing the war in Afghanistan? What are we doing over there?

I think the reasons are pretty openly stated. Two of the five goals of U.S. policy in Central Asia, according to State Department testimony to Congress, are "to increase the development and diversification of the region’s energy resources and supply routes", and "to foster competitive market economies".

What is meant by "diversification"? The State Dept. official is not using the word in the ordinary sense, since it is U.S. policy to discourage pipelines through Russia or our "energy competitor" Iran, even though such natural arrangements would diversify the region's supply routes. In this context, "diversification" means less control by the regional governments sitting on top of the resources, and greater control by foreign governments and businesses friendly to the U.S.

Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said in April 2006:

"Energy: as you know, we have worked long and hard on various pipelines from Central Asia ... we are working with international financial institutions, working with U.S. investors ... we are working with the Central Asian nations and Afghanistan to lower regional trade and investment barriers."

Again, this official is using highly technical language. By "lower barriers", he means lower barriers for us; but we want to raise barriers for people we don't like (the Russians, the Iranians).

The Afghanistan war, then, is like the younger Iraq war, of which Alan Greenspan said:

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

It's instructive to consider the fact -- at least in my reading of history -- that industrialized empires tend to lie to themselves in order to justify their power-plays. Japan insisted its invasion of China was in order to protect thousands of Japanese citizens from instability. Britain's greatest intellectuals talked of bringing civilization, order, and enlightenment to India, even though everyone today knows perfectly well India was dominated to secure markets for the Empire. Today, Americans can swallow the idea that our military occupation of Afghanistan is to protect women from Islamists, even though these self-sacrificing motivations appear nowhere in our government's stated policies, outside the rhetoric of politicians and magazines stirring up public opinion.

So, in a sense, this is the same war to ensure access to resources, markets, trade routes, and cheap labor that has been fought by the U.S. for centuries, and by every great power for millenia. This is not just the longest war in American history. This is the longest war in human history.

Fox News - the most trusted name in truthiness

2010-02-07T00:43:00.023-06:00

Most Americans -- 61% -- do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution [1]. In July 2009, an astonishing 58% of Republicans were not sure/doubted Obama was born in the United States [2]. In February 2002, a full 57% of Americans believed Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks or gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda, 22% believed WMD had been found in Iraq, and 56% believed world opinion favored the Iraq war or was divided evenly -- all of which was demonstrably false at the time [3].

So perhaps it should not be too surprising that Glenn Beck is America's second most beloved TV personality (next to Oprah Winfrey) and that 49% of Americans say they trust Fox News -- a better score than any other TV news channel. Politico reports:

“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said PPP President Dean Debnam in his analysis of the poll. “But the media landscape has really changed, and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”

This conclusion is backed up by a breakdown of the poll: 74% of Republicans said they trust Fox News, while only 30% of Democrats said they did.

The thing about Fox News is that it has a severe case of all the usual TV news biases, plus a very strong ideological bias. In recent years, MSNBC has tried to mimic the success of FN by becoming its leftist alter-ego. But Fox News still stands out by the way its coverage distorts the facts and misinforms its viewers, in the service of its conservative ideology. It even misinforms its viewers of the fact that it has an ideological bent.

An NBC poll found that whereas half the general public was misinformed, the overwhelming majority of Fox News viewers were misinformed about the proposed health insurance legislation:

In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.

All of these perceptions are demonstrably false, as shown by nonpartisan fact-checking groups. (The proposed health insurance legislation would not cover illegal immigrants, it would not lead to "a government takeover of health care" or taxpayer subsidies for abortion, and Sarah Palin's fantasy about death panels was Politifact.com's "lie of the year". Congratulations on your award, Sarah. No wonder Fox News hired you.)

You might think the NBC poll is untrustworthy. Fair enough. Let's go back to the original poll which found Fox News to be the most trusted network. Here's what that polling organization had to say:

Denham said he had first-hand experience of Fox News's value judgments.

His firm had conducted a poll that produced some strikingly poor results for the Democrats in terms of their popularity ratings. At exactly the same time Fox News commissioned its own internal poll, which came up with more favourable results for the Democrats, yet the network decided to go with PPP's results rather than its own.

"That showed me that when they have the opportunity to go with something more negative about the Democrats, they will."

A 2003 study from the U. of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were most likely to have factually untrue beliefs which were crucial to their support of the Iraq war. Here is just one example from the study [3]:

The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions....—and were more than twice as likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions.

...

When asked whether the US has found “clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization,” among the combined sample for the three-month period 49% said that such evidence had been found. This misperception was substantially higher among those who get their news primarily from Fox—67%. Once again the NPR-PBS audience was the lowest at 16%.

The Columbia Journalism Review (which has been critical of liberal bias in the mainstream media), reports:

The [leaked, internal] memo informed Fox news employees to “be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem controlled Congress,” and “just because Dems won, the war on terror isn’t over.”

The CJR also reported the "fourth-grade-style doctoring of pictures" of NYT employees to make them look ugly, and misleading coverage designed to implicate al-Qaeda or illegal immigrants in the California wildfires on "Fox and Friends".

The fact that Fox News has a pro-Republican ideology and misleads its viewers should not be surprising. After all, Rupert Murdoch has said openly that he used his media empire to try to influence public opinion in favor of the Iraq war. That doesn't sound like "We report, you decide" to me. And keep in mind, this is a guy who made his fortune peddling vulgar tabloids.

Roger Ailes, founder and president of Fox News, worked for decades as media consultant for Republican campaigns, including the Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Guliani campaigns. He also produced Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show. Progressive media watchdog FAIR reports [4]:

Described by fellow Bush aide Lee Atwater as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, ... he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93).

Here is what one Murdoch family member said recently about Fox News president Roger Ailes [5]:

Earlier this month the PR executive Matthew Freud, who is married to Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, told the New York Times he was "ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of journalistic standards".

Tony Snow, Neil Cavuto, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Mort Kondrake, Fred Barnes, John Gibson, Laura Ingram -- almost all the Fox News mainstays have worked for the Republican party or were contributors to conservative publications. The "liberal" commentators on FN are often, in fact, quite conservative or moderate. FAIR goes into great detail on this and I challenge anyone to dispute its facts [4]. FAIR has done quantitative studies of Fox News' ideological bias, and here is just a taste [6]:

Of the 56 partisan guests on Special Report between January and May, 50 were Republicans and six were Democrats -- a greater than 8 to 1 imbalance. In other words, 89 percent of guests with a party affiliation were Republicans.

Call FAIR untrustworthy if you like, but you'll have a harder time dismissing The Pew Research Center. Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded in their annual 2005 report :

Fox was measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air. ... In the degree to which journalists are allowed to offer their own opinions, Fox stands out. Across the programs studied, nearly seven out of ten stories (68%) included personal opinions from Fox's reporters -- the highest of any outlet studied by far.... Those findings seem to challenge Fox's promotional marketing, particularly its slogan, "We Report. You Decide."

The report added:

Some observers might argue that opinions clearly offered as such are more honest than a slant subtly embedded in the sound bites selected or questions asked. But that was not the case here. Given the live formats on cable, the opinions of reporters and anchors are often embedded in questions or thrown in as asides. Only occasionally were they labeled as commentary.

In the UK, this is actually illegal. You can't claim "We report, you decide" and then have your reporters constantly injecting personal opinions and half-truths into their reports. That is why Fox News was investigated in the UK for violating its TV news misinformation laws. And that is why Fox News is now banned there. CNN, the BBC, and Al-Jazeera English are not (watch it before judging it).

As if this wasn't enough proof that Fox News misinforms its viewers, here are just a few specific examples:

Watch a montage of the blatant FN promotion of the Tea Party protests. This is from media watchdog Media Matters for America, an admitted progressive outfit. Fox News tried to exaggerate the number of protesters and even spliced footage from a different event to make it look bigger. Oops.

Well-known liar Jerome Corsi was invited on Hannity & Colmes on multiple occasions ahead of the release of his book The Obama Nation. The book is full of demonstrable lies. One might expect a hard-hitting objective news channel to alert its viewers. Instead, I watched Sean Hannity say proudly "We launched it right here on this program" (referring to Corsi's book). Would a neutral and trustworthy news channel "launch" a dishonest smear book against one candidate during the heat of a political campaign?

Fox News "broke" the false story that Obama was educated at an Islamic madrassah in Indonesia. It was based on a conservative blog. Oops.

While visiting my parents, I once saw FN play -- for the second time -- a full six-and-a-half minute segment satirizing Obama as "the blessed child". That's not news, that's propaganda, and two 6.5 minute segments is an enormous block of time. This was all in July, right in the heat of the presidential race.

A self-confessed "Liberal Viewer" demonstrates pretty convincingly that Fox News basically trashed Kurt Vonnegut right after his death . He also shows how FN edited out a follow-up question in order to make it look like Obama was contradicting himself during the 2009 Democratic primaries. Liberal Viewer makes the same point I'm making: Fox News has all the biases and flaws of all major media, plus an ideological bias and a consistent tendency to distort the facts in order to serve this ideology. (Check out LiberalViewer's over 100 examples of Fox News bias and judge for yourself.)

Look at this "interview" with a representative from Greenpeace. How can anyone watch this juvenile attack piece and call it serious journalism? To his credit, the Greenpeace rep. did a great job sticking to calm logic and reason. Meanwhile, the Fox news-actress and her obnoxious male side-kick were acting buffoonishly, desperately attempting to frame environmentalists as silly loons, who barge in on us in the bathroom. Their goal is to give viewers a misperception of the issue.

[1] Gallup poll, Feb 2009
[2] Politico.com

[3] University of Maryland, "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War" 2003

[4] Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

[5] The Guardian, Jan 2010

[6] FAIR

Obama: The First Year

2010-01-31T20:14:00.011-06:00

Obama: The First Year

Why don't we rate the President based on what he said he would do, and what he said got him elected.

1) I'll end the war in Iraq in 16 months and bring the troops home.

Peak troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Iraq Afghanistan total time period
Bush: 160,000 26,000 186,000 2007 to early 2008
Obama: 124,000 65,000 189,000 October 2009

U.S deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan:
2008 (Last year of Bush): 466
2009 (first year of Obama): 450 (plus 30 in January 2010)
Source : DoD
…doesn't look like much of an antiwar president, does he?

2) I'll reach across the aisle and put an end to partisan politics…and usher in the post partisan era.

Partisanship is the worst it has ever been, and the whine that "they wouldn't let me be non partisan" only evokes the question "who is the leader who said he could get both parties to work together?". It should be embarrassing that the President, with a super majority, couldn't get one major piece of legislation enacted. He didn't need any Republican votes…so how can the Republicans be what stopped him…and why couldn't his great non partisan approach get at least a few Republican votes? No major legislation has been passed without some votes from the other party, yet Obama is the only president unable to influence even one vote. Some "post partisan" era.

3) I'll close Gitmo within the first year of my presidency.

Don't look now, but we're entering month thirteen, and the president hasn't released any more prisoners than President Bush did (and it's still open).

4) Transparency…no more back room meetings….the American people deserve to know what deals are being cut, and who's cutting them. I'll have CSPAN in meetings/negotiations.

The president didn't allow CSPAN to the myriad deal cutting negotiations with special interest groups, but he did drag the cameras to his meeting with Republicans. Pretty sorry performance here.

5) No more Earmarks

Except for the record number in his first year…pretty funny, if it weren't so serious.

6) No lobbyists will be welcome in my administration.

They may not be welcome, but they're there…17 at last count (with Goldman Sachs well represented as well). And read this…"The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes." Fred Baldassano, Obama Treasury Dep't Senior Advisor writing to a list of K Street Lobbyists. Does anybody else smell dead fish?

7)I'll get the deficits under control, and cut them in half by 2012

In one year, our new president has increased the deficit almost as much as all the president before him combined (I know, I know, he inherited a mess and there is nothing he can do about it).

A change president? An anti war president? A post partisan president? As they say, I'm just reporting the facts…you decide. (Sure, there are plenty of excuses to be made for failure, I'm just reporting on performance).

The Old Man
P.S. You won't see this on O'Reilly…it would be too impolite.

Your very own personal soapbox

2010-01-17T17:42:00.004-06:00

Whether you agree with Freyguy or merely disagree with The Old Man, we want to hear your take on the most important and not-beaten-to-death issues of the day. We'll even give you a hand dismounting your high-horse so you can clamber onto your soapbox.

There is now a list of Recent Comments on the sidebar, with links, which will help keep track of ongoing discussions.

For advice on how to easily view or post comments, see the updated
link on the sidebar under Menu, How to view and post comments.

Panic in Washington DC

2010-01-16T11:25:00.002-06:00

There is panic in the Congress and the White House today. Polls show that the Senate race in Massachusetts is a toss up, and a Republican could take a seat owned (by divine right) by the Democrats. This would not only be sacrilege, but would take away a filibuster proof Senate majority. This means the Senate might have to discuss and DEBATE the Health Care Manifesto. It would have to be discussed on the Senate floor...where C-SPAN is allowed, and the American people could see it. Why,...why...that might even cause... TRANSPARENCY!
Put the Haitian catastrophe on hold, put the war in Afghanistan on hold, put the economic "crisis" on hold,...our President is headed to Massachusetts to deal with a major crisis, and quell the panic in Washington DC.

The Old Man

Mr. President, was Joe Wilson right?

2010-01-06T20:11:00.002-06:00

There is no question that Representative Joe Wilson was rude and out of order when he shouted out "you lie!". But now, Mr. President, you must answer a more important question about his conduct...was he rude and out of order...but right? You are on tape numerous times telling the American people that the conference discussions about the health care legislation should be transparent, "on C-SPAN "...and would be in your administration. You said that the American people had a right to see what deals were being made, and what constituents favored. Yet, up to this moment, you sit silently condoning Ms. Pelosi's derisive dismissal of any such thing.

Were you sincere, Mr. President...were you telling the truth about your commitment to "transparency"? Or was Joe Wilson right?

The Old Man

Obamacare wins!...(never mind that nobody wants it)

2009-12-16T21:38:00.002-06:00

Obamacare…The “left” doesn’t want it passed. “The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal (on healthcare) is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies can charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health care costs from eating up an ever increasing percentage of our national productivity.” Huffington Post 12/15/09. Wow! That’s the left wing stating that this bill doesn’t help, but hurts the cost issue! The Huffington Post goes on to say “ What the Senate is currently discussing will make health care more expensive for individuals, families and businesses, with no check on the insurance companies…they’re on track to make the problems worse rather than better.” That’s the left wing, Washington insider, Obama supporting Huffington Post.

The “right” doesn’t want it passed. “All Republican Senators now oppose the bill…” WSJ. (So much for the “post partisan era”).

The Independents don’t want the bill passed. Senator Lieberman has been widely quoted as saying that he won’t support the bill with a public option or a Medicare buy down to age 55. (So Majority Leader Reid reportedly took those critical parts of the left agenda out of the bill to win a vote for something). The Independent, Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders said that his vote was “not certain” because the bill needed “a lot of work”. Brattleboro.com.

The past head of the Democratic National Committee (and a doctor) doesn’t want the bill passed. Howard Dean said “This is essentially the collapse of healthcare reform in the Senate and, honestly, the best thing to do right now is to kill the Senate bill.” ABC Morning News 12/15/09.

The American people don’t want the bill passed. The latest (Obama supporting) CNN poll (12/10/09) shows that 61% of Americans oppose the bill. 61%!!
The bill doesn’t meet any of the stated objectives. The latest CBO estimates for the Senate bill say that a family of four with a household income of $54,000/year should expect to pay 17% of their gross income on healthcare…that’s about $9,000/year. Wait a minute…that’s more than the average cost today (about $7,700/year)! So much for the “affordable healthcare for all”, and the portion of the uninsured because they can’t afford healthcare on moderate incomes.

The CMS (Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services) analysis reported (Dec.14th) that the Senate bill would cause total health expenditures to increase by $234 billion between 2010 and 2019. So much for “bending the cost curve down”.

The CBO estimates that the 15% of the population without health insurance will drop to (at best) 6% if the Senate bill were implemented. So much for “covering all Americans”.

But it will pass and become law for two reasons. The Democrats have a filibuster proof Congress that will pass something, anything, out of loyalty to the party and political payoffs that trump any loyalty to the citizens who voted for them or their own values. Senator Mary Landrieu is an excellent example. She bragged about her payoff, correcting a reporter when he suggested that it was worth $200 million for her to take home to Louisiana, she said “it’s closer to $300 million”. Anyone think she won’t vote “yes” in the final hour, no matter what’s in the bill?

The last few Senators will have their crafted objections overcome in the last hours (we have to have some drama) with broken armed analysts re-assessing the costs more favorably (or just saying it will cost less “cause Obama say so”); or Clintonian parsing of definitions, so that only dollars with even serial numbers can be used to fund abortion. Then there will be tears and a big celebration of the historic moment when the government started to take over another part of our lives.

The Old Man

Obama Tells Old Man not to breathe!

2009-12-12T11:39:00.002-06:00

Okay, maybe the title was a little overstated. President Obama didn’t say the official EPA ruling declaring CO2 emissions are bad for the planet meant that I couldn’t breathe…he just said I couldn’t exhale. I guess this is one of the “half truths” he accuses us who have different views of propagating. And clearly, there are options if I cannot, in my selfish, capitalist body, do what’s good for the planet. I am looking into surgical procedures to implant a CO2 converter into my sinus passages, so that after taking in good oxygen, only innocuous, although odious, gases are emitted back into the air. I do, however, worry that this would make me a politician.
I am also waiting to see if this surgery is covered under Obamacare, or covered by a grant from the Cap and Trade bill. I am considering another alternative by exercising my lungs to see if I can build them up so that I can only inhale in the U.S. and exhale when I get to a country that gets paid by the global warming initiative, because it is poor and is exempted from limits on CO2 emissions. They will welcome me, I suppose, because this will increase that country’s CO2 emissions, qualifying them for more funds from the concerned global community. I’ve already heard rumors that some countries are planning special discount travel packages for “exhalers”.
There are other alternatives being proposed by the administration, to be fair, that would allow me to exhale here at home. After all, the president doesn’t really want me to leave, I pay a lot of taxes and he plans for me to pay more. Further, he loses a convenient enemy if I leave. So, the plan would allow me to have a “carbon offset” to compensate for my selfish, greedy pollution by paying China or India to plant a tree to offset their pollution. And I can feel good about that innocent tree having a better chance at survival in China, where there will be some CO2 left that it needs to survive. (China and India have asked, however, that I pay for that tree in something other than U.S. dollars).
So, maybe I overreacted a little. I think I’ll just suck it up and get on board with this great social cause

The Old Man

Shut up and Support the President

2009-12-02T19:55:00.002-06:00

Shut up and Support the President!

I as a capitalist, a free enterprise devotee, a fiscal conservative, and a believer in a much smaller, less intrusive federal government whose primary roles are national defense, enforcement of a constructionist view of the Constitution for all of its’ citizens, and allowing free interstate commerce…have deep disagreements in many areas with the Marxist policies and “”one world” views of President Obama.
However, regarding the President’s speech last night on Afghanistan, I have a message for my colleagues who usually disagree with him. This is especially offered to those political leaders and pundits who call themselves conservatives, or view themselves as “loyal opposition”.
This message is (with all due respect): Shut up (the carping) and support the President. Leave the carping to the liberals, that’s what they do. This is War.

You wanted the President to stand up against terrorism, and commit to fight it to make us safer.
He just did.
You wanted the President to say that winning this war was vital to our national security, and that Pakistan and Afghanistan are important to us.
He just did.
You wanted him to “listen to the (military) commanders on the ground”.
He just did.
You wanted him to show courage and stand up to the left wing of his own party.
He just did.
Okay, we’re unhappy about setting a timeline (but with an out to assess conditions on the ground). And you’re not sure how he’ll deliver on his plan. But the President stood up, spoke up, and “manned up” in a difficult situation. We didn’t like it when others criticized the former president during war, showing the world and our enemies a divided country. There are legitimate arguments against being in a war in Afghanistan. There are legitimate arguments about how he will prosecute this war. But the President, for all intents and purposes, made the basic decision you thought he should make, and, so, if we're truly loyal opposition,…this is war…stand together, support the President.
The Old Man

Response to "Obamacare 2"

2009-10-31T19:18:00.009-05:00

JRB,

Good to hear from you again, as always! Don't worry -- I totally forgive you for the incendiary nature of your polemics. (Okay, so maybe I slide into polemics too, every now and then, haha). You are right, opinions can change as life unfolds. (It's never too late, you know!) I would be quite religious and conservative today if I couldn't change my mind. Let me know when you start trying to persuade me.

By the way, may I make a suggestion? Your post title needs a subtitle. I was thinking along the lines of "Obamacare 2: Blood Harvest". Or maybe "Obamacare 2: Rise of the Machines".

Okay ... seriously now, kidding aside ... I do have to ask: are the irrelevant insults about the sexual orientation and gender of Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi really necessary? Why do you keep bringing it up in your first post? I don't get it. Anyway, on to the points:

You are right, the public option is in the House bill and now the Senate bill. Excuse me a moment . . . . *celebratory dance* . . . . ahem, okay then.

The argument of Frank and people who want single-payer someday is that people will flock to public insurance because it will be much cheaper, secure, efficient, etc. If public insurance is better than private insurance, that's competition for you, don't hate the player hate the game.

You say low profit margins derive from competition. Of course. But we have Aetna, B.C.B.S., WellPoint, Cigna, WellCare, United, Humana just to name the biggest insurers....they aren't competing with each other? There's no competition? The primary competition that is lacking is competition between private and public insurance. And at some point, isn't too much competition a bad thing when it comes to insurance (i.e. more insurers, and therefore smaller pools of shared risk)?

The Commerce Clause: but interstate insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield are interstate commerce. No?

"If you don't like their prohibitions/exclusions, don't engage them ... they'll soon be out of business". Not sure what that means. If you have a preexisting condition or if you can't afford to pay, they probably don't want your business anyway.

Amendment IX: See my response to Fred under the comments to "Obamacare (Guest Post)" Oct. 24, 2009.

Please be specific on how the bill excludes Congress, unions, etc. If you're in a union you won't have a public option?

Death Panels: For goodness' sake, I was being facetious! There are no government-run death panels in Britain which would deny needed care to a person with muscular dystrophy, as our privately-owned death panels do. The quote from Stephen Hawking is an actual quote.

My health insurance: comes from an employer-sponsored insurance program.

Finally: my perspective has changed a lot. I voted for Bush in 2004 and believed America would never torture captured enemy combatants. Then my youthful idealism confronted reality. Of COURSE I'm open to changing my mind. And I'm sure you are as well ... right? : )

Obamacare 2 (Guest Post)

2009-10-30T16:42:00.001-05:00

Note:This is a guest post by JRB

To quote the OLD MAN’s Shakepeare (Hamlet, ACT III, Scene II),

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks!”

Responding to your posts, each in turn:

First, if you check the current legislative initiatives, the Government-run public option is back in, just as I predicted.

Second, if you read Congressman Frank’s public blitherings, he clearly states that a public option is the one sure way to achieve a single-payer (i.e., government run) system. Why? Because the mandates within the legislation will force people who change jobs into the public option, as will definitions which exclude private alternatives. These weaseling maneuvers, which Congress hopes the public won’t recognize, resurrect the old Henry Ford dictum. I.e., “you can have any color you want, so long as it’s black.”

Third, “King Herod” (the insurance industry) generally makes about a 2-3% profit margin on its product sales. That’s $20-30mm per billion in sales, or $12-18mm after the government exacts their levy. Large grocery chains make about 1% on sales. The low margins, and ergo prices, derive directly from competition, that horrible, blood-sucking capitalistic invention.

Fourth, you are spot-on w.r.t. the Patriot Act’s constitutional violations. It authorizes, among other things, self-authorized search warrants by the FBI without judicial approval. This is a clear violation of the Constitution (Amendment IV).

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html#amendmentiv).

I never stated, or implied, that Obama or the DUMBocrats had a monopoly on constitutional misogyny.

Fifth, your interaction with your physician regarding a health issue isn’t an interstate transaction; ergo it’s not covered under the seventeen specifically allowed federal prerogatives. Indeed the Framer’s original intent, within the Commerce Clause, was to ensure that one state did not prohibit another state from offering products & services to the first state’s citizenry.

Sixth, Aetna & CIGNA have no God-given rights (I’m glad you capitalized God; your parents clearly did something right!). If you don’t like their prohibitions/exclusions, don’t engage them. If they’re so dismissive of the public good, and a myriad of people agree with you, they’ll soon be out of business, just another of those awful characteristics of capitalism.

Seventh, Amendment IX, as you correctly quote, says that unenumerated rights “shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Amen to that! Please focus on the last three words, “by the people.” The people retain such rights, not the government. Nowhere does it state, or imply, that the federal government shall assume the administration of these rights on behalf of the people. If anything, it confers the securing of such rights to the states, but only after sanctioning by the citizenry. Ergo, the “explosion” you reference seems to be a “dud”.

Eighth, note who the current legislation excludes:
• Congress
• Government employees
• Union members
Is there anything in this “fraternity” that inspires consternation? Please tell me why any of these group deserves exemption from the laws they are set to impose on the rest of us.

Ninth, there is a delicious irony in your comment that,

“the government-run Death Panels are slow and inefficient by American standards”

while advocating that we have government run health care. So, you admit that the government has “death panels”, and, by logical extension, your proposition is that it’s better to have a slow and inefficiently run system, which delays poor decisions, rather than have a faster and more efficient system that engenders good decisions. Sounds like a pyrrhic trade off to me.

Tenth, pray tell, do you have health care, and from whence does it derive?

Lastly, please keep the incendiary nature of these polemics in perspective. I have known you since you were born. You are an intelligent, passionate, accomplished and articulate young man. I am as proud of you as are your parents, and as if you were my own progeny. Your views may change as life unfolds. Simply leave yourself open that one’s perspective may be altered as youthful idealism confronts reality.

Britain's government Death Panels keep disabled waiting longer, less efficient than than America's private insurance Death Panels

2009-10-26T02:51:00.000-05:00

The private insurance company Guardian deemed its reported 2008 profit margin of 4.2% too slim, and hired private investigators to look for any reason to drop customers with muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, and paralysis. When this strategy failed, Guardian's Death Panels-- which referred to its disabled customers as "dogs" and "trainwrecks" in internal memos released by court order --launched its "Moving Forward" campaign to drop their coverage anyway. Ian Pearl, a man born with muscular dystrophy who became ventillator-dependent in 1991, and requires constant nursing care to keep him alive, writes that for him this is a death sentence. The private insurance Death Panels will drop his coverage effective December 1, 2009 -- a mere 18 years after Pearl became dependent on full-time nursing care.

Meanwhile, British physicist Stephen Hawking continues to wait for his government-issued execution orders. Like Pearl, Hawking was born with muscular dystrophy. But in Britain, the government-run Death Panels are slow and inefficient by American standards, and long death sentence wait times are common. Hawking has been waiting for Death Panel review for nearly 24 years since he became dependent on full-time nursing care for survival.

Referring to the British National Health System (NHS), Hawking blamed government ineptitude for the delay. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

Obamacare (Guest Post )

2009-10-24T20:46:00.002-05:00

FREY vs FREY

Before I respond to FreyGuy’s defense of the ever-changing Health Care Legislation, especially his predilection for a so-called “public option”, I’ll first throw a giant monkey wrench into all the prior arguments. However, before I do that, I would note, by analogy, to which a future physicist can relate, that the legislative initiatives seem to come and go so fast, that were they mapped mathematically, the curve would more resemble a continuous function, rather than a discrete set of points.

Get ready, here’s the monkey wrench!

Congress has no authority under the Constitution to regulate health care.

(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203917304574412793406386548.html)

Congress is relying – mistakenly – on a liberal interpretation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html#section1)

which states:

[Congress shall have the power] “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”

This clause is among seventeen powers specifically ascribed to the federal government under Section 8. If a power is not so contained among the seventeen it is expressly reserved to the states (AMENDMENT X):

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html#amendmentx

Thus the Framers, even in their most soaring flights of fancy, never envisioned that 1/6th of the Nation’s economy would be subject to federal regulation. So, even if a poll showed that 100% of the people favored federal government run health care, the Constitution does not allow it. Poll results, however, change significantly when the question posed expressly adds a proviso that asks their opinion if added taxes or other confiscatory measures are placed upon the respondent.

However, for the sake of pure argument, let us wave an arbitrary hand and grant that, in a prolonged fit of legislative insanity, such powers did indeed reside within the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest deliberative body.” (As an aside, if this is the world’s greatest deliberative body, with average IQ less than 100, and nary a one above 125, then I shudder to imagine the acumen of a lesser deliberative body).

Now let us examine whether universal health care is an idea with merit.

First, let us set forth a few maxims which should govern the discussion:

• All insurance, whether auto, life, home, health, etc., and regardless of who delivers it, represents, by definition, a risk sharing pool. I.e., each participant puts his or her small amount of cash in a pool to provide protection against calamitous events which will be paid from the moneys supplied by other members of the pool (as well as earnings retained from prior activities of the insurance provider).

• Save for the auto segment, insurance is elective. In the case of auto insurance, it is mandatory not to protect you from others, but to protect others from you. In addition, the mandate comes not from the federal government, but from each of the 50 states. Health care insurance is to protect you. And to silence another oft –used, but ill-informed parallel, that home insurance is mandatory, it is not. It is only mandatory if you have a mortgage, which is required by the lender to protect his collateral. If you own your house outright, you can elect to insure it or not.

• Health care, under the Constitution, is not a right. It may be a compassionate thing to do, but it is not a natural right. Natural rights are a philosophical construct put forth by Thomas Jefferson who decreed that such rights are “endowed by the Creator” as opposed to the Adamsonian school, which argued that they were conferred “by the consent of the governed.” While both phrases are contained in the Declaration of Independence, a simple reading of the document, as well as scholarly review, admit that Jefferson’s take precedence. (http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm)

Your natural rights are spelled out in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, proposed by James Madison in 1789 and enacted into law in 1791. There is no mention of a ‘Right’ to health care in the Bill of Rights.

Thus, any insurance product represents a potential redistribution of wealth from those who have no claims to those who do, as well as the wealth of the insurance provider in case the premium pool (plus earnings thereon) is insufficient to cover claims. It is potential, because, if there are no claims, then, at least in the case of mutual insurance companies, excess moneys are returned to the policy holders in the form of dividends, as they are the owners of the company.

The difference between a private plan and a public one is that, in the former, the wealth redistribution takes place voluntarily between the participants in the risk sharing pool (and potentially the insurance company), whereas, with a public plan, the redistribution occurs involuntarily, from all taxpayers to those covered under the plan. Now, I don’t know about you, but when a governmental body tells me I have to do something, especially when their authority to do so is highly questionable, my natural inclination is to respond, UP YOURS!

Below are the issues I have with nationalized health care, at least in its current form. If anyone can offer reasonable assurance that these allegations have any factual basis, I’d feel more sanguine about climbing aboard the OBAMAWAGON.

1. Nationalized Health Care Won’t Cost Anything.
There are six dimensions to this facade. Four purportedly raise revenue; two reduce costs. Here they are:
• Revenue components
o Raise taxes on employers
Employers will raise prices on their goods & services, so this tax will be passed on to the consumer.
o Raise taxes on individuals
This is simply wealth redistribution, a veritable staple in the liberal/socialist financial cupboard, which is trying to turn America from a land of equal opportunity to a land of equal financial outcomes.
o Tax the insurance benefit (a 2nd tax)
Now here’s a novel idea. Presumably, if you receive health coverage from a private group plan offered and partially subsidized by your employer, the government wants to tax the benefit represented by the difference you pay under the group plan vs. the bucks you’d pay if you obtained the coverage outside the group plan. The problem is that, when filing your tax return, the IRS rules require that your income and expenses be cash-based. This is not a cash benefit, so the IRS would have to impute a non-cash value to this benefit, abrogating its own rules. Nice!
o Mandatory insurance
Forces the young & healthy, who don’t need coverage, to subsidize those who do (see#9 below)
• Cost saving components
o Reduce payments to doctors
This is a real savings, unless doctors begin leaving the profession in droves. If you coupled it with tort reform (see below) there’s real potential here.
o Reduce Medicare benefits
This is a classic example of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It saves no money, just transfers wealth from one pocket (senior citizens) to another (the uninsured).
There’s also a real cost saving conspicuous by its absence: tort reform. I.e., rein in the ambulance chasing legal bottom-dwellers. Given the American Bar Association donates overwhelmingly to the Democratic party, this is as likely to occur as the sun is to revolve around the Earth.
2. There will be no Health Care Rationing
This is simple supply & demand economics. If there is more demand for a product or service and/or less supply, the price will rise. But if we mandate more people be insured and slash moneys paid to providers, the system enters disequilibrium and service queues form until supply/demand equilibrium is re-established. England and Canada are prime examples. This is rationing by delay rather than by financial wherewithal. To paraphrase an old legal adage, “healthcare delayed is healthcare denied.”
3. The Government can Efficiently Run a National Health Care System
OK, let’s look at the record:
• Social Security – BROKE!
• Medicare – BROKE!
• Medicaid – BROKE!
• AMTRAK – BROKE!
• Post Office - BROKE!
• The Federal Budget - BROKE!
Do we detect a pattern here?! If so, why would we expect different results in a Nationalized Health Care System? Isn’t one of the classic definitions of insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?
4. Our Congressmen Know What’s in the Bill
Be serious! The bill stretches beyond 1,000 pages. Indeed, the bill likely emanating from a congressional conference committee is estimated at 2,300 pages. Congress hasn’t read that much of anything in their collective lifetime. Their staffs prepare summaries for them. Most staffers are 22-25 years of age, fresh out of college with liberal arts degrees, rendering them largely uneducated.

An example should suffice to lay this myth to rest. When the Patriot Act, pushed by then president Bush, was signed into law in OCT 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act) , Congress, via their internal intranet, had no access to the Bill until 15 minutes before the roll call. It was 315 pages long. There was no time to read it before the vote. Therefore, they were completely unaware of its contents when they voted overwhelmingly to enact it. This will be no different, except that the Healthcare Bill is three to eight times the length and even less likely to be read and understood.
5. The Bill Won’t Change at the Last Minute
Yes it will! Messrs. Reid and Pelosi (that’s right, I’m not sure Pelosi is a real woman, just as I’m uncertain that Barney Frank is a real man) have already said it will, and one of those changes they’ve alluded to will be a public option. Congressman Frank wants to use the public option to get to a Government run single-payer system and has publicly said so.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3BS4C9el98&feature=related).

Single-payer means there is no insurance provider save the federal government.

(BTW, do you recall when Congressman Frank, at his own town hall meeting, dissed a constituent by asking what planet she was from, forgetting, in the process, that he was there to serve them, and not vice-versa. What she should have responded was, “I’m from Mother Earth, but, based on your nocturnal proclivities, I’m pretty sure you’re not.”)
6. There will be no Pork in the Bill
Really?! Please comb the public record and find a single bill that didn’t include congressional pork.
7. Illegal Immigrants won’t be Covered by the Legislation
Uhhh, …, I don’t think so! While both House and Senate proposals purportedly exclude illegal aliens, they purposely exempt any requirement for such a person to provide identification. Republican amendments to require picture IDs from public option health care recipients have been defeated by Democratic party-line vote. This is the type of weaseling which makes people circumspect about how Congress operates and the degree of trust they should be accorded.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5919-Norfolk-Crime-Examiner~y2009m8d3-Illegal-aliens-will-be-covered-under-Obamas-healthcare-bill
8. The Public Option Won’t Squeeze Out Private Alternatives
By the Bill’s provisions, it will by statistical osmosis. I.e., if you’re covered by a private group plan, and leave that employer, you can’t enroll in a new employer’s group plan; you must go into the public option. Since most people change jobs during their careers, all those will be forced into the public option.

In addition, a private plan must meet the definition of being “qualified”. I.e., based on yet-to-be-determined government rules, if your employer’s private plan doesn’t meet the government’s standards, you’ll be forced into a public option, like it or not.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm
9. Insurance Coverage is not Mandatory.
It will be mandatory; that’s one of the ways to cover costs. Young adults, who are healthy, and may not see a doctor for years, will be required to join simply to subsidize others who need health services. In fact the more recent legislative versions allow the IRS to levy a penalty and the Justice Department to throw you in jail if you refuse to join. Now, I can tell you most assuredly that were I a young person (which I’m not, to which the OLD MAN can, and most enthusiastically would, attest), and were I to want the insurance, I would refuse it just to be able to tell the IRS to stick it where the sun don’t shine. And if the Justice Department comes ‘a-callin’, I’m going to invoke my 2nd Amendment rights.
10. If Additional Taxes on Companies and Individuals Exceed Claims, the Gub’mint will Return our Money
BWAHAHAHA! This supposition is so preposterous it deserves no reply!
11. The Federal Government has the Authority to Nationalize Health Care
No it doesn’t! We’ve already slain that beast in the preamble to this missive.

Finally, isn’t it heartening and inspiring to know that Congress, in a true egalitarian spirit, and with a deep and abiding concern for the constituencies who elected them, has not exempted its own members from the very law it purports to impose upon the rest of us?

OH, WAIT!! THEY DID!!

(http://kingsrightsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/end-congressional-exemption-from-obama.html)

(http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=50756)

Guest Post by JR Berger

Obama: "Silence the critics, I say!"

2009-10-19T20:32:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to figure out if it's scary or just silly. Maybe it's both. The president of the United States has (clearly) instructed his minions to go out and try to silence and/or discredit the only news station that commits the egregious sin of sometimes disagreeing with his policies, or, even worse, criticizing him. Anyone who believes that this is not an Obama approved (or directed) assault is...well, naive to the extreme. David Axelrod states (on a carefully picked TV cast) that Fox news is not a news operation, and should not be viewed as such. Anita(don't you just love Mao?)Dunn attacks Fox news for mistruths (without stating any). Robert Gibbs, repeats the attacks on Fox, while Rahm (The Enforcer) Emanuel, strongly suggests that other news networks not run anything that is on Fox (am I making myself clear?). All this in the space of a few days.

All presidents have had spats with, and complained about the media at some time during their tenures. But this is unprecedented. This is a thinly veiled, coordinated, president approved initiative to discredit, intimidate and shut off dissent. This is unamerican, strikes at the heart of freedom (free speech and dissent), and should be publicly rebuked, especially by those liberals who hate Fox News, but love free speech. To be a credible advocate of free speech and dissent, one must vigorously defend those rights for those with whom one disagrees.

The Old Man

Obama Voted Homecoming King!

2009-10-11T17:30:00.002-05:00

It would be nice if a so called "prestigious" award, presented in the name of one of man's highest ideals, was conferred after serious deliberations with rigorous standards. But the selection of President Obama, eight months into office, with his biggest peace accomplishment being gaining a fragile truce between a professor and a police officer over a beer, exposes the Nobel peace award process for what it is...a popularity contest. This is not unlike a high school Homecoming King and Queen vote, the attractive, popular kids get elected. I suppose we Americans could be happy that at least it says that they like our president...if it weren't for the fact that they like him for apologizing for the rest of us.

The Old Man

Reading Comprehension

2009-10-10T14:46:00.019-05:00

The argument in "Obama Math" follows from the following false premises: the uninsured are comprised of the following roughly equal groups,

Illegal immigrants
People eligible for public insurance, but not reached by them
People who have access to prive insurance but decide it is too expensive

These premises are contradicted by the very study cited, so the argument that rests on them can be dismissed.

In fact, it is not possible for these premises to be more thoroughly opposite what the Kaiser study actually says. Anyone with basic, grade-school level reading comprehension skills can discover this by reading the study, "The Uninsured: A Primer: Key facts about Americans without health insurance", Kaiser Family Foundation, 2008 (pdf). Or you can read the Senate Testimony from the Kaiser Foundation in 2009. Or read the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine 2009 report "America's Uninsured Crisis". I have cited all these studies before.

But let me address the above false premises in turn.

1. Illegal immigrants

There is brief mention of citizenship in the Kaiser study:

"The large majority of the uninsured (79%) are native or naturalized U.S. citizens."

The remaining 21% are explicitly identified as non-citizens. There is no mention of illegal immigrants. So much for premise (1).

2. Eligible, but not reached by public programs

There is zero mention in the study of people who are enrolled in public programs, but who nevertheless are not "reached", that is, do not receive due coverage. So the only viable interpretation of premise (2) is that one-third of the uninsured are eligible for public insurance, but not enrolled.

(By the way, reaching all those enrolled is quite an accomplishment for a supposedly inefficient government program. I wonder how many people are enrolled in private insurance who do not receive or are denied due coverage?)

There is one single mention of the enrollment issue in the 31-page Kaiser study:

"Medicaid and SCHIP cover half of all low-income children. These programs have played a critical role in improving access to care for children. Still, two-thirds of uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but are not enrolled.43 Some families are not aware of the availability of the programs or may not believe their children are eligible. But, many families face barriers to enrolling and keeping their children in public programs, including rules that require U.S. citizens to document their citizenship and identity when applying for Medicaid or renewing their coverage."

But only 20% of the uninsured are children to begin with, so we are talking about less than 14% of people being uninsured due to failure to enroll in public insurance. So much for premise (2).

If we care to take a brief stroll through the real world, the real study explicitly repeats, for 31 pages, the problem of ineligibility:

"Medicaid covers some parents and low-income individuals with disabilities, but most adults without dependent children—regardless of how poor—are ineligible for Medicaid. As a result, over 40% of poor parents and adults without children are uninsured (Figure 19)."

"Adults make up more than their share of the uninsured because they are less likely than children to be eligible for Medicaid"

"Public coverage had also increased among adults between 2000 and 2004, but with Medicaid’s limits on adult eligibility, it was not enough to buffer the loss of job-based coverage. "

"The near-poor (those with incomes between 100% and 199% of the poverty level) also run a high risk of being uninsured (29%), in part, because they are less likely to be eligible for Medicaid. "

"When people are unable to obtain employer-sponsored coverage and are ineligible for Medicaid, they may be left uninsured for long periods of time if individual coverage is either unaffordable or unavailable due to their health status."

"For example, a parent in a family of three working full-time at the minimum wage could not qualify for Medicaid in 29 states in 2007.44"

Ineligible. Not "eligible, but not being reached". Ineligible.

It's striking that this group of people, constantly referred to in these studies, is absent from premises (1) (2) and (3).

Of course, we could expand public programs to make more poor people eligible, a strategy which has insured millions of adults and children in the past, according to the study. We could even eliminate the minor enrollment problem by making public insurance available to everyone. Few people scratch their heads trying to figure out if they are poor enough to "qualify" for public libraries, museums, parks, or schools. I think that's because these are free, public services, there are no complicated rules designed to exclude most people and protect private sector profits.

But that would mean more of the bad kind of spending, and less of the good kind of spending, like the premiums we all pay and the taxes we all pay to subsidize private insurance profits right now, which the Kaiser study also discusses. Anyway, on to premise (3).

3. One third of the uninsured have access to private insurance, but decide it's too expensive

I'll just quote the study. See the actual study for nifty pie graphs. Keywords: afford, unaffordable, poor:

"Despite strong ties to the workforce—over eight in ten uninsured come from working families—about two-thirds of the uninsured are individuals and families who are poor (incomes less than the federal poverty level or $21,203 for a family of four in 2007) or near-poor (with incomes between one and two times the poverty level). "

"For many of the uninsured, the costs of health insurance and medical care are weighed against equally essential needs. The uninsured are about three times as likely as those with health coverage to live in a household that is having difficulty paying monthly expenses as basic as rent, food, and utilities.20"

"In 2007, 58% of all low-income employees were offered and eligible for employer-sponsored coverage, leaving more than four in ten without access to this coverage (Figure 16)."

"Despite having lower incomes and thus typically fewer resources to pay for necessities, 62% of low-income employees who are eligible for employer-sponsored coverage choose to enroll."

And just for fun, a quote from the Institute of Medicine 2009 report (cited above):

"Overall, fewer workers, particularly those with lower wages, are offered employer-sponsored insurance, and fewer among the workers that are offered such insurance can afford the premiums. ... For many individuals and families without employer-sponsored group coverage, nongroup coverage is unaffordable."

Unaffordable. Not "they had access, but decided not to get private insurance". Unaffordable.
So much for premise (3).

Should Obama have accepted the Nobel peace prize?

2009-10-10T02:16:00.004-05:00

From the Philadelphia Inquirer ,

WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, bringing the relatively novice leader a new measure of prestige on the world stage but also potential complications in carrying out a foreign policy that includes managing two wars.

This is a joke, right? Please tell me this is Norwegian humor.

Obama Math

2009-10-04T13:40:00.001-05:00

It’s been a long time since I took math in school, and President Obama did promise change. So it’s not surprising, I guess, that his approach to math never seems to add up to me. The first example follows.

The highly respected Kaiser study on health insurance, published a few years ago, broke the approximately 15% of Americans without health insurance into almost equal three parts. The first were illegal immigrants; the second were Medicaid and state assistance eligible people who had not been reached by, or didn’t know how to effectively get government health care; and the third were people who had access to private insurance, but opted out because they decided it was too expensive. The president has now stated publicly, in an address to congress, that no illegal immigrants will have access to his new health care plan. Okay, that solves about one third of the problem, but I fail to see what’s happened positively in that part of the decision. President Obama has also endorsed a plan making its’ way through the Senate, that will force all people not eligible for a government plan (like Medicaid or Medicare) to purchase a private health plan or be assessed $1,900 of a non tax to pay for their health insurance. Let me understand this better. The roughly one third of Americans without health insurance because they opted out…didn’t want to pay the premiums…will be solved by…effectively making them pay the premiums! As the cartoon character on a commercial says…Brilliant! As for the last third, those currently eligible for government aid and/or health insurance, the new plan will…offer them government aid and/or health insurance. Again…Brilliant!

So, all people will have health insurance. The illegal immigrants who don’t have health insurance today, won’t have it in the new plan either, but they won’t count now (‘cause Obama say so). Therefore these numbers, used to inflate the overall uninsured numbers to invoke “crisis”, will be eliminated and immediately bring the uninsured numbers down to about 36 million from the 47 million bandied about in the crusade to save America from the uninsured healthcare “crisis”. (See, success already). As a matter of fact, Administration supporters, since the startling revelation to liberals that it will cost more to add 47 million people to the health care system, have already started to say in the media that “nobody ever planned to add anything like 47 million people to the health care system.

The roughly one third uninsured who are currently eligible for state or Medicaid health insurance (but don’t sign up) will still have the same programs. But there’s a big difference. Now they’ll be told to sign up, or it’s not the governments’ fault, and they’ll count as covered, even though they don’t sign up or use the program (‘cause Obama say so). Whew! We’re down to about 5% of Americans without health insurance now, but that was hard work.

But we won’t rest with our lofty compassion, until we solve the health care “crisis” for the last third of the uninsured. This is the problem of the people we feel the worst about. People who said they can’t afford to pay for health insurance, even though it is available to them. They will be pleased that the new health care plan has a solution for them…Pay! Either pay your health insurance, or we’ll assess it from you (in a non tax, of course). If you don’t pay the assessment, we have the right to put you in jail.

Now that we have everyone covered, we have to manage this little issue of cost. So, we’ll save hundreds of millions by…taking away benefits from Medicare and Medicaid! Second, the government will reduce costs by weeding out hundreds of millions of dollars of waste and fraud in…the government run programs! Then we’ll add dozens of government agencies that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to oversee these programs.

I can’t put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t add up to me. I’ll just have to learn Obama math, I guess.

The Old Man

Is President Obama racist? (Jimmy carter, Discrimination and Racism 2)

2009-09-27T13:32:00.001-05:00

It was widely reported (e.g. in the NY Times), that President Obama recently pressured Governor Paterson (of NY) not to run for re-election. The president, when asked, has refused publicly to endorse Governor Paterson. This strikes me as odd. Governor Paterson is the first black American to be Governor of New York, is a Democrat, and has liberal views not unlike the president's. Why would President Obama not support the first black governor of New York? Could it be racism? Does he believe that a black man isn't fit to be governor of such an important state? Could it be that he doesn't think Governor Paterson can win, and winning trumps ideals about political views, overcoming adversity (Governor Paterson is legally blind, and was the first disabled student at Hempstead High School), and the example the Governor sets for black Americans and disabled young people (he also ran the NYC marathon). And...if winning trumps ideals and inspiration...what does that say about the president's character?

Does this make President Obama a racist? I don't know...I guess I'll have to ask Jimmy carter.

The Old Man
By the way...Governor Paterson graduated from Columbia just like you know who.

Right, wrong, or just missing the mark? (part 2)

2009-09-24T23:50:00.005-05:00

The problems with the anti-reform movement, if you like, are encapsulated in the man who stood up at a town hall meeting and told Rep. Robert Inglis (Republican, S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare".

But let me first say this: I think it's great that so many people have been showing up at town hall meetings, and the Tea Party protests. That's democracy in action. I disagree with the agenda to kill public health insurance, but I love the method: people getting informed and getting active; bringing their kids, too. I love the method just as much when it happens to be a massive anti-war protest involving hundreds of thousands of people and no corporate sponsors or primetime cable network to cheerlead for it. (Like this one, this one, this one, and this one.)

The problem with the Tea Party / town hall activities is that the bulk of the people involved--average people with genuine concerns--were whipped into fearful hysteria by public relations firms hired by corporations, who spread lies and propaganda and deliberately sabotaged meaningful discussion.

Two of the main groups behind the Tea Parties are corporate front-groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Their astro-turfing shenanigans have been well documented. The Wall Street Journal detailed FreedomWorks' phony "grassroots" website AngryRenter.com over a year ago.

A political action committee called Right Prinicples, whose founder Bob MacGuffie is involved with many tea party groups (AFP, teapartypatriots.com ("collaborator" of FreedomWorks), the Media Research Center's NewsBusters) released a memo recommending the tactics of shouting, disrupting, and inflating their numbers at town halls:

“The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

Read it yourself here. Listen to him defend the memo on the Alan Colmes show here. As you can see in all the videos and reports of the town halls, the advice was put to good use.

Glenn Beck's influence can't be overlooked. (You know, that guy who hates socialism and loves Thomas Paine, but apparently never read Paine's essays. The guy who admitted on The View he makes stuff up, that he is not an investigative reporter, doesn't check facts, just "commentates on life". The guy who said Obama is a racist who hates white people.) This nutty dude spearheaded the 9/12 project and spent a lot of time cheerleading for the Tea Parties on primetime cable. So did the rest of Fox News, whose boss, tabloid dispenser Rupert Murdoch, stated at the World Economic Forum that he uses his media empire to try to shape the public agenda. Fox News' promotion of the Tea Parties was, as always, good for a laugh, but it's even funnier when contrasted with their past coverage of anti-war protests.

While I expect anchors on Fox News to clown around buffoonishly for my amusement, it is surprising to witness Beck-level inanity spewing from more respectable conservative sources. Investors Business Daily (IBD), for example, dishonestly smeared the British National Health Service (NHS), saying:

"The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror movie script...people such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Stephen Hawking, who has lived in the UK all his life and unlike many Americans enjoys free healthcare, responded that he "wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS". The writers at IBD might consider whether a person with Mr. Hawking's disability and a modest salary would "have a chance" dealing with Aetna or Blue Cross Blue Shield instead of the NHS. Maybe we should ask the families of the 18,000 Americans who die each year due to lack of coverage. (By the way, I was treated at one of Britain's public hospitals once. Ask me if I survived.)

IBD might also consider the "horror movie script" character of the deluded fantasies of people who have been scared out of their wits by hysterical accusations Obama is a Nazi. Or Stalinist. Or anti-Christ. And he wants to euthanize grandma or send Glenn Beck's disabled daughter to a concentration camp.

So, to answer the question posed in my previous post: How do you shift longstanding popular opinion nearly 20 percentage points, in a matter of weeks? Step 1: spend millions of dollars on advertizing. Step 2: lie to people.

Right, wrong, or just missing the mark?

2009-09-22T20:55:00.015-05:00

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the Old Man and I have a lot in common in terms of our basic assumptions and values, and our goals. However, we disagree on certain facts, and their proportions. So, while we stand together and aim for the same targets--what we perceive to be anti-democratic trends, corrupt power, and distortion of the truth--a different understanding of what is factually true nudges our shots apart. I often think his targets are legitimate ones, but what he regards as a ten-point buck looks like a rubber ducky to me, and vice-versa.

Whose facts are right? I don't know. I think mine are, but I could be mistaken. I've cited sources so you can check for yourself.

There's a lot of truth in the Old Man's post "Obama and the Ruling Class", but in my opinion, that truth is sort of hidden underneath his intended argument. There are connections between Obama and the ruling class. Those connections are best captured by the Wall Street Journal, which reported health insurance stocks have gone up since lobbyists negotiated at the White House weeks ago, reaching a closed-doors agreement that may force people to buy the expensive, inefficient, unreliable private health insurance they despise, with no choice of a public option. Even if we elect a liberal President and a majority of Democrats, the lobbyists have stacked the deck against health reform because they pay major Dems, too.

A note on the czar issue: as we all know, comrades, historically presidents have appointed special advisers, often called "czars", to deal with major issues or new crises. Sometimes, so-called czars are confirmed by the Senate. Sometimes they are not, however, and in those cases, there is a serious question of constitutionality. Former president Bush filled over thirty "czar" posts, apparently an unprecedented number. Unfortunately, President Obama has taken advantage of the crises and continued this trend.

This brings me to Mark Lloyd: conservatives have made much of so-called "Diversity Czar" of the FCC Mark Lloyd's comments about Venezuela. Conservative sites like NewsBusters posted a short 39-second clip of Lloyd's comments, taking them entirely out of context. NewsBusters is one of many projects of the Media Research Center, which receives millions of dollars in funding from the same few corporate funds that prop up so many "think tanks" (conservative and liberal). You can listen to Lloyd's full comments, in context, here.

Lloyd says state-monopolized radio enabled the genocide in Rwanda. He says corporate domination of Venezuelan media usurped democracy. His very basic, obvious point is that in a democracy we don't want a monopoly over communication, by state or corporate power. He wants diversity. Hence his job title. He gives an EXCELLENT summary of the problems with American media here.

Personally, I don't support the Fairness Doctrine, but I do think a limited natural resource like radio frequencies should be owned by local people, only rented to private power. Same goes for the oil resources in Venezuela. Mark Lloyd correctly and bravely described the people's revolution which reinstated the democratic government there "incredible". He did not call Chavez' media policies "incredible" but did not call them all bad, either, for good reasons.

A bit of history: the mass, and largely peaceful uprising in Venezuela was in response to a 2002 military coup (sadly, with tacit U.S. support) which kidnapped the president, disbanded parliament, nulled their constitution and -- revealingly -- declared a reversal of oil policy. All in one day. (Source, source, source).

The coup was supported by media networks dominated by the Venezuelan oligarchy which lied, saying President Chavez had resigned, etc. Imagine if Al-Jazeera successfully kidnapped our president and dissolved the U.S. Congress, then tried to mislead us as we took to the streets to reclaim our democracy. We would shut down their stations instantly, their executives would be executed for high treason. The Venezuelan government, for its part, encouraged reconciliation, did not renew broadcasting licenses to two networks that supported the coup, started a pro-government media outlet, and launched investigations five years later. Not the mass kidnapping/killings and assassination of editors and Catholic priests that were carried out by U.S.-backed South American dictatorships. Investigations. Whooptey-doo.

I take that back, there was at least one assassination: the chief prosecutor investigating the shooting of civilians by coup supporters was assassinated. My mistake.

Okay: there are serious issues surrounding Hugo Chavez and free speech. But again, the real issues are buried under the intended point of the Old Man's post.

Same goes for the point about the mainstream media's coverage of the Tea Party protests. The coverage WAS amusing, on all networks. But there is no evidence the crowd was in the millions, contrary to what conservative blogs and British tabloids have claimed. FactCheck.org and Politifact.com have laid out the evidence. It was a huge crowd. Just not as big as the millions who gathered in the D.C. Mall for President Obama's inauguration, which was the largest crowd there, ever (check out the satellite photos).

Let's get some perspective: Americans right now are sharply divided on the proposed healthcare reforms, according to Gallup. This is quite interesting, because a solid majority of Americans favored passing a major health reform bill, with higher taxes and expanded government insurance coverage all the way up to July. So what happened in the space of a few months to cause decades-old popular support for healthcare reform to drop 16 to 20 points, so that opposition now has a small majority? Stay tuned, folks!

Jimmy carter, Discrimination and Politics

2009-09-20T19:58:00.002-05:00

Former President Jimmy Carter (whose accomplishments in race relations as president escape me at the moment), declared the other day that most of the opposition to President Obama's policies and beliefs are driven by racism.

I agree that there are small minded people, who inject some form of discrimination into all of their views. This is true of Southerners and Northerners, New Yorkers and people from the Mid West. Do you know any white people from the North, and/or Media people, who almost instinctively lower their assessments of someone's IQ because that someone speaks with a southern accent? How many people stereotype people from the deep South as racist or ignorant? I grew up in New York, where many people referred to the part of the country where we live (middle America) as "the flyover zone", with a disdainful stereotyping of the people "out there" as not very intelligent, and the whole area as not worth stopping in on your way to the other cultured part of the country (California). Jews, homosexuals and blacks are still discriminated against in this society, as are most of us, by some, for one reason or another. Some types of discrimination have been much worse than others, for sure.

But, the point is that the discrimination against Jews, black Americans and homosexuals, while still painful and wrong, has diminished to the point that it is a very small obstacle to success, and almost irrelevant in political discussion. Further, it has gotten to a point where overemphasis is deleterious to those groups, rather than helpful. From the President of the U.S., to the supreme court, to Secretaries of State, to sports and media, to Oprah, to the corporate heads of giants like American Express and Wall Street firms to college admissions, to being lawyers or doctors...to owning homes or starting businesses...these three groups do better in America than anywhere else in the world, and their ethnic or sexual or religious grouping now amounts to a speed bump in the pursuit of success. Yes, my liberal friends (and I mean that), as you often say...let's debate "...President Obama about his beliefs and policies..", and not whip out the race card as soon as someone disagrees with those beliefs and policies, trying to marginalize disagreement by calling it racism.

As for Jimmy Carter...yes you do know about him...if you don't, look it up, it's a matter of public record. It is not just that President Carter's church "…didn't have any black members." It's that the church (Plains Baptist) actively voted to not allow blacks to be members (1976 or 1977), while Carter was president (not something from when he was in college or in his twenties), and while he was a Deacon and Elder (leader) in that church!! This is significantly different than attending a church where there were no black members. Some of his own family members quit that church in protest and started a new church…but not the holier than thou Jimmy. This makes him a bona fide hypocrite, and not worth listening to.

Th Old Man

Obama and the Ruling Class

2009-09-13T15:30:00.004-05:00

Obama and the Ruling Class in America

To paraphrase a Ross Perot quote about NAFTA, don’t look now, but that sucking sound you hear might be your voice in government being taken away. The administration’s race toward socialist programs, massive and irresponsible spending, and government intrusion into citizen’s lives, overshadows an even more alarming pattern… the growing efforts to control media and what the people hear.

Before you dismiss this as over-reacting, consider the quotes from Mark Lloyd, an Obama appointed, unelected Czar of “Diversity in media”. The “Diversity Czar” has been assigned the task of assuring there is the right balance of reporting in the news media. “Right balance”, according to whom? Since when did the State have the right to monitor and regulate political content in the media? Mr. Lloyd has suggested assessing 100% of the total operating budget as a fee on radio shows with political content that is too unbalanced, and use this money to see that “public” (read State run) radio has “at least as much, if not more” funding and air time. He said “Part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads upset is our suggestion that the (private) commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay.” Too unbalanced according to…You got it, the State. Whose rules... you got it, the State. By the way, if Mr. Lloyd and the State take money from the private radio shows and dole it out to the “public” radio…do you think they’ll have any influence on political content? Keep in mind, the “public” radio station is specifically being set up and funded to counterbalance what Mr. Lloyd and the State believe to be unbalanced or not giving the “correct” view of the issues. Mr. Lloyd called Hugo Chavez takeover “…an incredible revolution.” He went on to praise Chavez, saying that “Chavez began to take very seriously the Media in his country” and dealt with it. Please note that Chavez “dealing with it”, meant he shut down over 200 radio stations and now has the State regulate the political content of television broadcasts. This is the approach publically praised by the Administration’s unelected “Radio Ruler”. Go on the internet…look it up. I know it sounds crazy….I think it is crazy…but it’s actually being proposed by the Administration.

Another aspect of this issue is the management of television media. Here it is much easier, because most of the TV media is following the Obama rhetoric like sailors following the Sirens. This weekend’s march on the capitol is an excellent example. The pictures from overhead and aerial videos are dramatic. (See one example below).

This is clearly one of the biggest marches ever on the capitol, and a huge protest. Yet, most of the TV media gave it only passing mention and print media tried to downplay the size, estimating the crowd as “thousands” or “tens of thousands”. Clearly, when the videos and overhead shots are put together, this is hundreds of thousands of people. The MSNBC reporter at the scene gushed “but or own people estimate the crowd at hundreds of thousands” (wonder if he’ll ever be heard from again).
The more shocking part is the reaction of the Ruling Class (otherwise known as Congress and the Adminstration). Think about it…with hundreds of thousands of people in the capitol, trying to make their voices heard to their supposed representatives…the President was spirited off (his helicopter flew over the advancing crowd) to attend a managed friendly crowd safely in the Target Center. He was, of course, cheered by that crowd (of about 15 thousand), boosting his impression that most Americans are wildly enthusiastic about his programs. That speech received much more press coverage than hundreds of thousands of citizens protesting their government. Even worse, Congressman after Congressman criticized and demonized the protesters, and vowed not to listen to them! Congressmen were publically quoted saying things like “I’m not going to put up with them (the protesters)”, and “This is my town hall meeting”, and “I’m not going to give them (that would be the voters) a forum”. One even talked on her cell phone disdainfully while one of “them” tried to ask a question of her.

There’s an old Buffalo Springfield song, “For What it’s Worth”, that has lyrics that just might apply again today.

There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear,
I think it’s time we stop children, what’s that sound,
Everybody look what’s going down.
There’s battle lines being drawn, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.
(Some) people speaking their minds, getting so much resistance from behind.
What a field day for the heat, a thousand people in the street,
Singing songs and they’re carrying signs…

I don’t know if this protest movement will succeed in causing political change as the one that did when that song was written, but either way, our system is at an inflection point, and the direction of the curve will change.

The Old Man

Utah Governor: Equal Rights = "Special Rights"

2009-08-31T03:00:00.002-05:00

Utah governor: No special rights for gay people

By BROCK VERGAKIS (AP) – 3 days ago

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday that discriminating against gay people shouldn't be illegal, although he would prefer it if everyone were treated with respect.
In his most definitive comments yet on gay rights, Herbert told reporters he doesn't believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are.
"We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't," Herbert said in his first monthly KUED news conference.
In Utah, it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender. The gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah has been trying to change state law for several years but has always been rebuffed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
....
"I agree that we ought to be able to just do the right thing. Unfortunately, the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission makes it clear that not all employers are doing the right thing," he said, referencing a city report released earlier this summer that said discrimination was rampant.

Follow the link for the whole article.

Equal rights are not "special rights"

2009-08-31T01:59:00.005-05:00

The Old Man,

First of all: would you mind please answering the non-rhetorical, earnest questions I posed? They are in italics, towards the end of my last post.

Secondly: I feel like we're talking past each other. I say something like, "Everyone should have equal rights" and you reply, "No one should have special rights". Er, yes, I agree with you, no one is entitled to special rights. I absolutely concede that point to you. Now, can we address the issues I raised?

Thirdly: I mentioned some very specific policies: the Defense of Marriage Act, the many state laws/amendments which outlaw gay marriage, civil unions, and adoption, Don't Ask Don't Tell. A straightforward response to this would be to say whether you A) think these policies are discriminatory, or B) do not. Instead, you point out that everybody is discriminated against. That's true as far as it goes, but as far as I am aware there is no state amendment prohibiting red-haired people or Mormons from adopting children. Just gay people. And if there were such discriminatory policies against so many groups of people -- all the more reason to discuss them, and rally opposition against them.

I am flabbergasted that you have so little to say about these discriminatory policies, and so much to say about hypothetical legislation that might force us to tolerate gay people and give them "special rights". You seem pretty worried about the "victim status" caused by flagrant discrimination, but not too worried about the discrimination itself.

Your response is doubly strange, because earlier your feathers were a little ruffled by words I wrote on this blog criticizing conservative Christians (talk about "victim status"). But critical words are nothing compared to, say, a state amendment prohibiting child adoption passed by 70% of the voters. Imagine if such an amendment was passed, prohibiting Christians from adopting children. Even if it only happened in one state, I think you would be outraged by the discrimination itself. Yet, as we speak, equally outrageous discrimination is being leveled against gay people, in not one but several states. Most of the measures passed recently, they are not relics from the past but new developments. Where is your outrage? Honestly, your concerns about the "victim status" and hypothetical "special rights" of gays and so forth seem like convenient distractions.

Let me make the points where we agree explicit, so it won't be necessary to bring them up again. I, along with most gay people I know, agree with you on the following points:

Nobody needs "special rights". Just regular, plain ol' equal rights will do.
All groups of people should try to move beyond a "victim status". One way of doing this is by changing state policies which flagrantly discriminate against them. This will discourage a "victim status".
We should not "legislate what people must think and believe". This includes legislating that people must think and believe marriage is between one man, one woman only.

So now let's apply the principles you, me, and most gay and transgendered people agree on to the Defense of Marriage Act; the many state laws and amendments which outlaw gay marriage and civil unions and adoption; and Don't Ask Don't Tell. I reach the conclusion that these measures are attacks on equality and basic human dignity. What conclusions do you reach?

I want to end with a thought-experiment: if the exact same policies were applied to Christians, I would find them equally intolerable and remain outraged. Would you call criticism of these policies a "red herring" and remain as unmoved as you seem to be now? Come on.

Marriage

2009-08-30T15:52:00.002-05:00

The point is not that homosexuals cannot be discriminated against, or even that they are not. They are discriminated against, and so is every other group by some people. The point is, when a group has overcome discrimination and that discrimination is no longer an impediment to education, wealth, jobs, home ownership, safety, etc., anymore than the average of other groups, it is time to move on from the "victim" status requiring special rights and trying to legislate what people must think and believe. That doesn't mean that a society shouldn't continue education and values of all people being treated equally.

The Old Man

Response: Marriage

2009-08-24T20:53:00.007-05:00

The Old Man,

Let me see if I understand your logic:

Gay people have higher income and education;
Therefore, they must not be discriminated against in any way;
Therefore, the gay marriage issue is a red herring.

Hmm, I am not seeing how that logic follows. Maybe it would help to apply it to a specific example:

Two lesbian women, who were getting married in a California courthouse the morning after Prop 8 passed, were statistically more likely to have higher education and income than heterosexuals;
Therefore, they can never be discriminated against for being gay;
Therefore, when a state official barged into the room and halted the ceremony, ruining what should have been the happiest day of their lives in front of dozens of family and friends, specifically because they are gay, that was not discrimination;
Therefore, the gay marriage issue is a red herring.

Nope, still doesn't make any sense to me.

Moving on, you are mistaken that Christian conservatives are my favorite target. Honestly. I have read how, in Egypt and Saudi Arabi, highly orthodox (and presumably quite conservative) Christians are discriminated against, and I wholeheartedly support their struggle for equality. I am simply against social bullying and legal discrimination. It happens that in this country, so-called conservative Christians are preventing gay people from getting married, not the other way around. Some of the people affected are my good friends, friends who have come to our house and spoken with you and Mom for an hour or more, friends who you have described as a "great kid".

Now look at what you wrote in the fourth paragraph: you speak of a group's culture being "impinged on" and "attacked". This is what I was talking about in my original post: you have completely inverted the situation, you call attack "defense" and defense "attack". Specifically, all of the following constitute attacks on the marriage, beliefs, culture, and families of certain groups of people:

The Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which Republicans passed and Clinton signed, serves to (borrowing your words) "impinge on and attack the culture and beliefs of a group ... by telling them that they cannot have a rite or belief that is defined other than how the State tells them to define it". I'm amazed that you described DOMA so perfectly, and then applied that description to those seeking to overturn it. Specifically, DOMA serves to deny many benefits including Social Security benefits to lifelong partners.
Many state laws and amendments deny worthy gay couples the right to adopt children.
Many same-sex partners are forced to pay legal fees and jump through hoops to get some basic protections, and even then they are still sometimes denied the right to visit each other in the hospital when they are sick and dying; and denied custody of the children.
Focus on the Family opposes school policies to combat bullying, including bullying based on sexual orientation. Even though gay teens are notoriously targeted and bullied at school.
Preachers bellow that gays are going to Hell.

Again, these actions constitute attacks. These actions cannot be compared to non-violent defenses against them. For example, when I simply write words on a page, and those words criticize the attacks and the homophobic ideology which supports them, I am not attacking anyone or being intolerant. I am defending, without violence or coercion, "the culture and beliefs of a group" (using your words) from state- and church-sponsored bigotry.

Let me make my point clear by using a concrete example: when an Episcopelian priest, in an Episcopelian church, oversees the holy union of two people who happen to be same-sex, according to their beliefs and rites; and furthermore, when this union is treated equally under the law as any other between consenting adults; how is this an attack? Who, specifically, has been attacked here, and how?

Seriously. That's not rhetorical. Who has been attacked? How?

And, to continue with this example: when some stranger steps in, and prevents that marriage from being recognized equally under the law because the newlyweds are gay; and when that person publicly calls it sinful and a danger to children, because they are gay; what is this, if not an attack and an imposition -- on the priest, the newlyweds, gay people, transgendered people, their family and friends? If they have one ounce of self-respect are they not entitled to defend their culture, beliefs and values, through non-violent self-expression?

Again, not rhetorical. Is that not an attack? Are they not entitled to stick up for themselves?

You say you support civil unions. Separate, but equal. So far, that principle has worked out like it did last time: we have the separate part. Just not the equal part.

You ended on a promising note: you said "let's stop trying to legislate beliefs and values". Right. So tell conservatives to stop doing it, then.

Marriage

2009-08-23T17:43:00.001-05:00

I see the homosexual marriage issue as somewhat of a red herring. The grad student goes on and on about discrimination against homosexuals in ancient societies, fascist governments, and, of course, his favorite double target, Christian Conservatives (or, as liberals are wont to say, “right-wing Christians”). As an aside, that reminds me of how often supposedly tolerant liberals are indignant about stereotyping unless they’re doing the stereotyping.

The reason I view this issue as a red herring is well documented in the grad student’s diatribe. Homosexuals have suffered terrible abuse and prejudice throughout history, but are better accepted and more successful in current American society than in most societies in history (including our own, if we go back some years). This group has higher education levels than average, as well as above average home ownership, and about the same income levels as heterosexuals. Indeed, one survey noted that “…“status income” levels were slightly higher on average for gays…” The report tried to assign status to different occupations, and noted that relatively more from this group entered the educational profession, which had status, but lower pay than the average college degreed profession. So, there is no statistical evidence that discrimination has limited people in housing, education, wealth or legal status.

Further, nobody stops homosexuals from living together or becoming partners. There are very few restrictions on Wills, powers of attorney, visitation rights, assignment of benefits or life insurance for homosexuals, if those are documented. Civil unions solve the remaining few, and, as the grad student knows, I am for those (as are most Americans).

But marriage is, to me, as President Obama says, “between a man and a woman”. It is a rite, not a right. It is wholly unnecessary to impinge on and attack the culture and beliefs of a group (even the majority group) by telling them that they cannot have a rite or belief that is defined other than how the State tells them to define it. The grad student rails that those of us who want to continue to define marriage as between a man and a woman, cannot adequately prove that consenting to marriage for homosexuals would damage heterosexual marriages or families. But in a late night (for me) debate he couldn’t demonstrate how homosexuals, once allowed legal status of civil unions, would be harmed by not having the rite of marriage attached to that legal position.

The truth is, it is all about legislating acceptance and winning votes by convincing a group that they are victims and need the patronizing politician to protect them. Homosexuals have been discriminated against, and laws should be blind to sexuality. I think they are now in the vast majority of cases. There will always be prejudice against some against all…sexuality, races, religions, you, me…all of us. But this is a pretty free and pretty much equal opportunity society in my view. It’s time to move on from the politically contrived victim industry. My Christianity teaches me to try to love all, and not appoint myself as judge of others. Let’s try to be sure that our laws allow equal opportunity and our education mitigates hatred and prejudice. But let’s stop trying to legislate beliefs and values.

The Old Man

"Mawwiage"

2009-08-13T00:42:00.018-05:00

Mawwiage.

For some strange reason, I've been thinking a lot lately about marriage. And that gets me thinking about gay marriage.

Actually, forget gay people for a second: just consider transgendered people / hermaphrodites. I suppose right-wing Christians believe God created intersex people to test our faith--you know, the same reason He created fossils, and Jews. Nevertheless, for some people, the terribly inconvenient facts of biology do not allow them to fit neatly into traditional definitions of male and female. In some cases, a decision was made at birth to assign a person's gender through surgery. If that decision turns out to have been hasty, and a transgendered person ends up feeling an undeniable attraction towards the same (?) sex, who are we to judge?

The ambiguity of some peoples' gender, by itself, should be a good enough moral and legal reason to allow people to choose a same-sex spouse if they wish. (At present, Dick Cheney seems to understand this; President Obama does not.) A common objection is, well, why not let people marry their pets, then? Great question. The common-sense answer is that an animal cannot consent to such an arrangement, can't be the executor of a will, can't make life-or-death hospital decisions, etc. For some reason, these painfully basic considerations hardly make a dent in gay marriage opposition. In fact, in my experience, the strongest gay marriage opponents tend to be the least intellectually curious about the actual facts of biology and sexuality; they cannot articulate concretely, specifically, how gays corrupt straight people, children, and puppies, but they nevertheless feel certain this is the case. Why?

In my opinion, these are the tell-tale symptoms of prejudice. It's interesting to observe the same symptoms in what opponents to inter-racial marriage were saying, decades ago: they were simply defending themselves from black activists who were trying to corrupt white purity, to force us to accept them, etc. Today, after decades of soul-searching, most of us realize that was just a lame excuse for prejudice. The same is true of gay marriage opposition: it's not really about "defending the family", or even defending "marriage". Gently examine, probe, dissect those claims, and they fall apart. The truth is, it is the right-wing that wants to demean and bully other peoples' families, other peoples' marriages. "Defending marriage" is just a lame excuse for what is today a lingering prejudice in most of America, a prejudice that was once part of a strong global tradition of homophobia, a prejudice which has dwindled and retreated under the hammer-blows of ethical and scientific progress. To see this, we have to examine the forms "defending the family" has taken globally and historically.

Like antisemitism, homophobia is symptomatic of authoritarian societies. It is well-known that homosexuals were targeted by the Nazis, to protect the "healthy sensibility" of the German people, Christian civilization, and so on. It probably comes as no shock that these sentiments were shared by their allies, the Italian and Spanish fascists. And of course, as we all know, sexual hysteria and homophobia go back to the Middle Ages, the Church, and ancient Israel. But I was intrigued to discover that homosexuals were also demeaned and bullied in Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and Castro's Cuba. In those contexts, homophobia was couched in terms of safegaurding the masculine ethic of the workers from the intrusion of the effeminate tendencies of the evil capitalists. In the McCarthy-era U.S., on the other hand, homosexuality was associated with communism. Today, our planet's most enthusiastic homophobes are the Islamists, such as the Taliban and their ilk. (I hasten to add that many Muslims are bitterly opposed to the Islamists.) North Korea probably ranks highly as well.

So that's a rather charming group we have there. Contrast it with the nations and movements that have been relatively tolerant of gays: Rome, Greece, and China at the peak of their enlightened civilizations; and the modern, Western democracies.

Now, I do not want to exaggerate the similarities between the American anti-gay movement and its analogues in fascist and theocratic regimes. Obviously, there is no equivalence between the right wing in Iran (for example) and the right wing in the U.S. However, in spite of differences in severity and intensity, there are some fascinating common threads.

There's plain ignorance, of course, like when conservatives suggest that gays "choose" to be sexually and emotionally attracted to the same gender. This issue was settled long ago among scientists, heterosexuals do not (and cannot) choose to dilate their pupils, or show other involuntary signs of arousal, when shown provocative photos of the opposite gender; and the same is true for homosexuals, who respond this way when shown photos of the same gender. The funniest (saddest?) example of homophobic ignorance was when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed there are no gay people in all of Iran. Now, ignorance is not necessarily anything to be ashamed of. It can be easily corrected if the facts are available, and if a person is intellectually curious. But prejudice has a way of dulling one's curiosity.

Then there's the idea that gays are boogeymen who will bring about the destruction of everything we hold dear...somehow. The late Jerry Falwell for instance felt sure the tragedies of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were expressions of God's just wrath against gays (and feminists, etc). This takes on a milder form when mainstream gay marriage opponents speak in abstract terms about how treating gays equally will destroy "the family" or "marriage". How? Somehow.

This leads naturally to the notion that attacking gays is, in fact, defense. I find the thinking behind this notion utterly fascinating. It seems that gay people, like all people, wish to be socially accepted and tolerated, as well as treated equally under the law. This is regarded as a fiendish assault which must be defended against. So for example, when a state official interrupted a same-sex wedding ceremony that was taking place in a California courtroom, the morning after Proposition 8 passed, in front of dozens of supportive family and friends, that was an attack on a family. But gay marriage opponents consider that action to be a defense of "the family" (if they bother to consider it). They consider it to be a defense of religious freedom, too, when in reality it is an attack on the freedom of Unitarians, Episcopelians, and many other religious/non-religious people who believe in the sacredness and worth of same-sex marriage. Presumably, when the Obama administration fired Dan Choi, a West Point grad and fluent Arab speaker who had been to Iraq, because he came out of the closet, that somehow defended our entire nation. These are remarkable feats of Orwellian doublethink, and it takes a well-trained intellect not to notice the obvious contradictions.

Speaking of contradiction -- in anti-gay movements, this sometimes borders on full-blown schizophrenia. It's quite interesting how, among those who preach against homosexuality, so many turn out to be gay, or pedophiles, or adulterers themselves. Maybe they should take counsel from G. W. Bush's favorite philosopher, Jesus, who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Boo-yah!

Remarkably, many conservatives excuse homophobia on "moral" grounds, i.e. the Bible (which in my opinion is often morally bankrupt to start with). This claim is almost too funny to be true. Anyone who has glanced at the Bible for a nanosecond will double over with laughter at the idea that the mainstream conservative agenda is Bible-based. If they want gay marriage to be illegal because of what it says in the Bible, then they ought to want all marriage outside the Church, divorce, and military service to be illegal, too. They ought to be liberal bleeding-hearts who give all their belongings to the poor, and who advocate "turning the other cheek" over pre-emptive war. They ought to believe in exorcism and speaking in tongues. Now, some conservatives, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, are slightly more consistent in these matters than most. But those cases cause one to double over with laughter for other reasons.

And this brings me to, in my opinion, the most universal and most fundamental characteristic of homophobia: its deep connections to organized dogmatism. Homophobia as dogma goes back as far as ancient Israel, continues through the Inquisition, and leads up to the rise of secular religions (like communism) and Islamism today. In Jerusalem, the Holiest place on Earth (not to be confused with Disney Land, which is merely the Happiest place on Earth), about the only thing that arouses the united voice of the Orthodox Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders is their opposition to a gay pride parade.

Why is this important? Because the unstated basis for American conservative opposition to gay marriage, today, is a remnant of this powerful prejudice. It's based on an unquestionable dogma: homosexuality is wrong. Because God says so. Normally, we don't accept that kind of statement. So for example, anyone who claimed today "watching movies is wrong, God says so" would be challenged to back up that assertion. Asking a conservative the exact same question about homosexuality, on the other hand, is unthinkable. That question is declared to be out-of-bounds, and for good cause: you can't justify prejudice.

So this is what it feels like to have a prejudice: it feels like being certain of something, but being unable to articulate good reasons for it; being un-curious about relevant facts, and consequences surrounding the issue.

I think I can say this, because I myself used to be strongly opposed to gay marriage. Like many straight men, I felt some disgust at the idea of male-male homosexuality. I think this can be forgiven. But you know what? I suppose I also feel some disgust at the idea of my parents', or grandparents' sexuality. In fact, I'm not enthusiastic about the sex lives of most people I see walking down the street. A mature person, however, can appreciate the fact that two people love and care for each other, and have committed themselves to another person for life. Personally, I find happiness in the fact that they have found happiness. And when it comes to their sex lives, I mind my own damn business.

The good news is this prejudice has been chipped away at for so long, it is no longer about remotely-plausible goals like defending civilization, or family, or the Bible. In America, it has been reduced to defending a word. The word "marriage". That's like opposing interracial dating in defense of the word "white". So the rational basis for the anti-gay marriage position has never been flimsier. The prejudice is still hanging on by a thread. But I think as more gay people openly demonstrate the dignity and love of their commitments, and how they are just regular people; and as more straight Americans look in the mirror, and forgive themselves for the prejudice they see; and as the younger generation grows up; then that thread will finally snap.

Healthcare: Just the facts, m'am.

2009-07-27T04:44:00.015-05:00

This is a response to the appropriately-titled “The Uninsured Healthcare Myth”, parts 1 and 2.

The Senate testimony from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured put it rather bluntly:

"Medicare was enacted because the private health insurance market did not work for the elderly."

Where the private market does "work", it suffers from

"high administrative costs, unaffordable premiums, exclusion based on health status, and complexity and lack of comparability across plans".

But that can't be true, because it would contradict the infallible dogma that free markets are a cure-all for everything. Reading on, we find that the current Medicare and Medicaid programs are not exactly free rides:

"Medicaid’s strict eligibility rules require people who need long-term care to spend-down all of their assets and contribute nearly all of their income to the cost of care ... [they must] contribute their entire income, including pension and social security payments (except for a small personal needs allowance) to the cost of care. Others with modest savings above Medicaid’s resource thresholds must spend down their available assets before they can qualify for assistance."

In other words, Medicaid doesn't even try to prevent you from being financially ruined by health misfortune. Medicaid just helps you survive, after you're ruined.

There are 45.7 million people without health insurance in the U.S. (2007 Census ). That's about 15% of our population. In all other wealthy nations, it's zero. Of those uninsured, 79% are U.S. citizens. The other 21% are immigrants, both legal and illegal. Furthermore:

"Non-citizens have less access to employer coverage because they are more likely to have low-wage jobs and work for firms that do not offer coverage. At the same time, they are often restricted from public coverage." (Kaiser Family Foundation key facts, and FactChek.org )

According to FactChek.org, citing the Kaiser study:

"What else can we say about the uninsured? More than 80 percent are from families in which at least one person works ... two thirds are near or below the poverty line ... nearly half are below the age of 30 ... whites make up two thirds of the population but less than half of the uninsured ...."

According to a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science:

"Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage."

18,000 unnecessary deaths every year. In the richest nation on Earth. According to liberal "scientists" and their "facts", anyway.

Now, let's assume the Old Man is right in claiming that 60% of the uninsured are eligible for “government health insurance (Medicaid and state programs)”, but they simply aren't signing up. Something's fishy here. Being eligible for Medicaid currently means going utterly broke beforehand (see above). It's hard to believe people would pay all of their income, sell their house, spend their savings, qualify for Medicaid—and then forget to enroll. Perhaps many of them have Alzheimer's. At any rate, here's one possible solution, and this goes for the “state programs” as well: just enroll uninsured people automatically.

Reviewing data from the World Health Organization, there are three salient facts about health care in the U.S., compared to other wealthy nations (and many not-so-wealthy nations):

We have a more privatized system
We spend more on drugs and insurance
We get worse care

We spend about 15% of our GDP on health costs (data from the WHO ). Sweden, on the other hand, spends 9% of its GDP. In the U.S., costs are split about even between government and private insurance plans. In Sweden, 82% of total health care expenditure comes from the government; virtually all of the remaining cost is paid for out-of-pocket (not private insurance plans). The U.S. government spends 22% of its total revenue on health costs; Sweden spends only 14%. Swedes have a longer life expectancy, they have less than half our infant mortality rate, and they are ranked highly for health system responsiveness and fairness--meaning low-income people don't get worse care (WHO data, qtd. in University of Maine Bureau of Labor Education ). Oh, and a much higher percentage of Swedes are satisfied with their system.

Sweden is not a unique case. The same trend plays out if you look at the data for Germany, France, Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, the UK, and so on. (There is one interesting exception where we are not only better-than-average, but ranked first place: system responsiveness.) We're more private, we spend more, we get worse care, we're more dissatisfied, even though we are the richest and most powerful nation in the history of our species. Other than that, we have a great system.

The Old Man claims Medicare and Medicaid cost more than private insurance, running “$9,600 per patient compared to approximately $7,100 per patient for private insurance”. That's an interesting statistic. (By the way, what's the source? And does the $7,100 per patient include out-of-pocket expenses, or just the cost of the insurance plan itself?)

Several key facts may account for this difference. Private insurance covers people in general. Medicare/Medicaid, on the other hand, is designed to cover the most expensive forms of health care. A for-profit insurance company, by nature, is designed to avoid covering the most expensive (and least profitable) forms of health care. This includes long-term care for the elderly and disabled, and people with chronic illnesses. Long-term care cost $178 billion in 2006 (according to the Kaiser study), of which 63% was paid by Medicare/Medicaid, 22% was out-of-pocket, and only 9% was contributed by private insurance (Kaiser study). Mission accomplished! Yep, we already have a big government health care program, alright. Its purpose is to make people with money, who are middle-aged and healthy, pay into the profits of the private system for care they won't get when they need it most, AND foot the bill for the chronically ill, the poor and the old, because the private system (by design) does not "work" for those people.

Speaking of profits, check out the Fortune 500 on the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Profit has made up 25% of sales revenue for decades in the top pharmaceutical companies. By my estimate, the top 10 companies in pharmaceuticals, and the top 10 health insurers (United Health Group, Wellpoint, Aetna, etc.) made combined profits of fifty billion dollars in 2007 alone. That's one of many costs of a private health care system: we pay for the care, plus fifty billion extra. Each year.

And here's another cost of our private system: lobbyists. About one-quarter of health industry expenses go to funding thousands (literally) of lobbyists in Washington; political campaign contributions; and media campaigns. All to prevent the democratic majority of us from reforming the system. That's according to the former head of corporate communications at CIGNA. (Watch the interview from a few weeks ago. Interestingly, he mentions the tactic of focusing public attention on Michael Moore, instead of real issues.)

The drug companies are not far behind, with an army of 3,000 lobbyists and cash to match, according to the Center for Public Integrity . But lobbyists aren't the industry's biggest expense. Neither is actual drug research and development. No, their biggest expense, by a hefty margin, is not R&D for the next miracle pill, but marketing. To the tune of billions of dollars each year. (How much did that wasteful, inefficient government enterprise, the Human Genome Project, spend on marketing?) This may seem inefficient and wasteful, until we realize that the word "efficiency" really means efficiency in creating profits. In fact, the most profitable drug companies (Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and GlaxoSmithKline) seem to have the biggest marketing/research expenditure ratios. Don't get me wrong--I'm not against people making profits. But when it comes to health care, there are collective and ethical considerations, and our private system doesn't seem to work. Allowing companies to market prescription drugs in TV commercials may fit with the conservative free-market paradigm, but maybe that's one bit of liberal regulation we were better off having.

For at least ten (and I believe twenty) years, polls have shown a solid majority of Americans have said it is the federal government's responsibility (in other words, our collective responsibility) to make sure everyone has health coverage, as is the case in all other wealthy nations. Just like food, shelter, and an education. And they have been saying for years that they want the government to expand its involvement. In fact, I could have sworn the Old Man told me he favored expanding Medicaid....at any rate, the pharmaceutical and health care industries have been blocking democracy for many years, and it continues to this day.

Healthcare Myths Part 2

2009-07-26T18:55:00.001-05:00

There was a very interesting AP article in the newspapers today. It was titled: “Silver Lining in Healthcare Storm? Lobbyists.”

The article starts out “A strong force, perhaps as powerful in Congress as President Obama, is keeping the drive for healthcare going, even as lawmakers seem hopelessly at odds. Lobbyists. The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are all saying Congress must make major changes this year. Television ads paid for by drug companies and insurers continued to emphasize the benefits of a healthcare overhaul…”
Wait a minute…aren’t the “powerful lobbyists,” the “big drug companies,” the insurance companies who are only interested in profits, the high doctor fees….the villains railed against by President Obama, the liberals, the State run media, and the Grad Student?? What do you think is going on here? Are these “powerful,” “evil,” “profit hungry,” “heartless,” “big business,” entities now “the good guys” because they’re: (a) paying the right people now; (b) doing Congress’ bidding; (c) reached deals with the current administration where their interests will be protected; or (d) they’ve just had a change of heart,… have become altruistic and are willing to give up all profits and their former ways?
Is there a clue in the deal that the AMA struck, to support reductions in Medicare and Medicaid costs (saving $219 billion) for the bill “providing $245 billion to eliminate an annual shortfall in payments to doctors”? Democrats then introduced legislation to remove this ($245B) obligation from counting against the federal deficit!!

So, the government will (a) claim $219 billion in savings, (b) get AMA support, and (c) not count $245 billion of committed funds for the doctors in the AMA. Magic! I can hardly wait to hear what the drug companies are going to get, can you? Sounds more like “Pay-Vote” than “Pay-Go”.
Hmmm….doesn’t sound like “change we can believe in” to me…how about you?

The Uninsured Healthcare Myth

2009-07-19T18:58:00.003-05:00

The State and the State run Media have been whipping up a frenzy about the uninsured, the "Crisis" of millions of Americans without health insurance (implying it is caused by greed and heartlessness of business, of course).

The health care system can be improved, and we should endeavor to do so. There are no perfect health care systems out there, no matter the media and the administration presenting government run health care as nirvana, or Michael Moore's love affair with the Cuban health care system (now overwhelmed with foreigners flocking there for treatment after his glowing review). There are, however, three huge myths about our health care system being foisted on us by the State and the State run media.

The first myth is that 45 million Americans are without health insurance because they can't get it (due to being unemployed, or their employer doesn't offer it, or they are denied because of pre-existing conditions), or can't afford it. But this is just flat untrue. Approximately one-third of all of those 45 million uninsured are eligible for government health insurance (Medicaid and state programs) and almost 40% of the children are eligible. This data is reported as roughly the same whether you check the Census Bureau, the CDC, or the comprehensive government sponsored Kaiser Commision for Study of Medicaid and the Uninsured. (Please note, these are all government or government sponsored data...no "right wing" or conservative group info was used (or else the data would be even more damning)). Another 20% of the uninsured earn over $50k per year, and have employer plans or private plans (Which average less than $5k per year)available, but choose not to pay for them. Granted, paying up to 10% of your income for health insurance is not fun, but it is certainly a viable alternative. By the way, almost half of those people earn $75k or more per year. The Kaiser study estimated that 26% of the uninsured were not U.S. citizens, but it was not clear how much overlap there is between the unisured who are medicaid eligible, plus those who earn over $50k/year and the 26% who are not citizens. I assume there is a very large overlap, but it is certainly not 100% overlap. Therefore, over half of the 45 million uninsured are eligible for government insurance, or should be able to afford it, or are not citizens. Interestingly, the Kaiser study found that health "90 percent are in health that can be considered excellent or good". This is more understandable when you realize that 60% of the uninsured are under 35 years old.
A 2005 study by BlueCross Blue Shield showed very similar data...of 41 million uninsured (in 2005), 14 million were eligible for government health insurance,but not enrolled, and another 13 million earned over $50k/year (in 2004). That's right, about 60% of the uninsured were eligible and just hadn't signed up, or were working and should have been able to afford insurance.

The second myth is that the goverment will lower health care costs and insurance costs (by being a big, efficient provider). That's almost laughable. We have a big, government health care program. It's called Medicare/Medicaid. It costs more than private insurance (approximately $9,600 per patient compared to approximately $7,100 per patient for private insurance). And...Medicare/Medicaid just added prescription drug coverage (included in almost all private plans) in 2006...it's going up from here!It's projected to go bankrupt! Are you people crazy?!....the Government in the same sentence with low cost or efficient? The government who says we have to spend One Trillion Dollars to save money?! But the government won't have the paper work and bureaucracy of the insurance companies...right?

The third myth is that we'll all be healthier when the government runs health care...why?..."cause Obama say so". Every private insurance program I've been in had "wellness" programs. There is little or no evidence they work, because people are so reluctant to change their lifestyles. Do you really think, as the most obese nation in the world, people who should lose weight to improve their health don't know it? I'm all for education and promotion of healthy lifestyles, but not for the government telling people what their choices should be.

Yes, the health care system can be improved. But it is a myth that there are huge numbers of people who can't get or afford health insurance (at the most 6% to 7% of Americans), and it is a myth that the government will make health care less costly and be a more efficient provider (it may well lower cost to some by shifting that cost to others, or just running at a deficit, butthat's not efficiency or lower cost). Instead of spending a trillion dollars to give control of health care to the government, we could do two things quickly and much less expensively. Spend more money to reach the one-third of the uninsured who are eligible for government insurance but not enrolled (which by the way, points out that as a percentage the government is much more delinquent in signing covering eligible patients than the private sector). Second, as mentioned earlier, we have a government healthcare/insurance program...Medicare/Medicaid. If the argument is that insurance is available, but too expensive for working families earning $40k per year, expand Medicare eligibility up to 2 times the poverty rate (instead of 1.33)and Medicaid would cover another 20% of the "uninsured". These two steps would solve as much of the problem as the CBO says the government's $1 trillion plan(or $1 1/2 trillion, but who's counting)would solve.

But that wouldn't accomplish the real mission...give access to and control of the hundreds of billions of dollars in the health care system to the State.

The Old Man

News Flash! The Old Man Agrees with Obama

2009-06-21T12:29:00.001-05:00

News Flash! The Old Man Agrees with Obama

The Tools that tyrants dread…the internet, cell phones and a communication network out of their control…are facilitating political upheaval in Iran. And I agree with President Obama’s response.

The United States should not give to the military theocracy in Iran the foil that this massive protest of highly centralized government control of Iranian life is really instigated by, and supported by the United States and its’ operatives. As I’ve discussed with the Grad Student many times over the years, the most important tool for a despot is a great enemy from which the people need protection, and towards whom their frustrations and anger can be directed. It helps greatly if that enemy has things “the people” do not…e.g. wealth, status, strength, etc. It helps even more if that common enemy is seen as elitist and telling “the people” what choices they ought to make.

So, notwithstanding my very different views from our president on foreign policy, capitalism and government control, I agree with President Obama’s public stance that the U.S. should not be seen as “meddling” in Iranian politics. I even agree with the president stating that “there is not much difference between Mousavi and Ahmahdinijad”. Whether there is or isn’t, that statement gives a clear message to the world that the United States “doesn’t have a dog in this fight”…i.e. the fight between Mousavi and Ahmadinijad. This makes it clear that the U.S. is not trying to get a more favorable leader (or a puppet) into power in Iran. (And, I don’t believe the rumor that President Obama’s first private response to the rioting was “gosh, I just had dinner scheduled with my new friend A-Jad, I hope he doesn’t get overthrown.”)

But, kidding aside, President Obama is right about his stance, and he will, I believe, as the nascent uprising in Iran progresses, gradually increase his support for the people of Iran (not Mousavi) and against repression. I, further, think the Congress is wrong to make a public statement with and official resolution that appears counter to President Obama’s policy stance. Disagreeing with him is fine, but not an official, voted position that is not helpful.

I cannot resist, however, pointing out to the Grad Student, that some predicted that democracy and capitalism (helped by the internet and cell phones) once planted in a major Arab country in the middle east, would spread…and that, with its’ educated people, Iran was the next most likely place that a form of democracy, spurred by capitalism and free enterprise, would grow. (As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t doubt that several countries in the Middle East might be more capitalistic, have more of a free enterprise system than the U.S. in ten years.)

The Old Man

Leadership, President Pelosi and the "Death of Truth Commission

2009-05-17T20:56:00.002-05:00

Leadership, President Pelosi and the “Death of Truth Commission”

I was, even as an “old man”, amazed as I watched and listened to Acting President Pelosi the past few days. Boil away all the rhetoric, and below is a series of assertions from her own words (not what someone attributed to her).
• The Acting President calls for a “Truth Commission” to investigate who knew what about enhanced interrogation (waterboarding) and should government officials involved in those decisions be tried for crimes.
• Madame Speaker (and Acting President), upon learning that some are saying that she (as a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee) was briefed on enhanced interrogation in 2003…denies she was briefed.
• The Acting President, as records leak out that indicate she was briefed along with Porter Goss (the Republican on the House Intelligence Committee), states that she wasn’t there, but that her staff member was there and there was no mention of “waterboarding”.
• She amends her statement to say that “we were told waterboarding was not being used”. “That’s the only mention, that they were not using it . And now we know that earlier they were.” (Note: Ms. Pelosi is flat out saying two things in this statement: that the CIA told her that they were not using waterboarding, and that they had used waterboarding). This is not subject to “misunderstanding” or interpretation; this directly accuses the CIA of lying to Congress (quickly, now, who was the head of the CIA at the time, and which president appointed him?).
• Acting President Pelosi calls a news conference and, when asked if she is accusing the CIA of lying to her…answers “yes,…I am”. And goes on to say “They do it all the time”.
• Ms. Pelosi replied, when asked if her knowledge (and lack of any known objection for 6 years) made her complicit, stated forcefully, “ My statement is clear, and let me say it again. Uh, I’m sorry, I have to find the page…when my staff person…I’m sorry, this page is out of order…”.
• After new CIA head Leon Panetta (I’ll remember who appointed this right wing fanatic in a minute) said publically that Pelosi was “briefed truthfully”, the Acting President issued a statement saying “ My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration (Emmanual Goldstein) did not inform Congress is separate from my respect for those (liars) in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe.”
• Ms. Pelosi then, on May 14th, said that one of her aides told her in February, 2003, that the CIA had briefed other members of Congress about the use of waterboarding. Upon questioning as to why she didn’t object at the time, she said that it was because Rep. Jane Hartman wrote a letter of protest.( But there is no evidence that Ms. Pelosi “signed on" to this letter, and, upon airing of the letter, it is not a letter of protest, but a letter seeking clarification.)

Can any objective person believe anything Ms. Pelosi says?

And where is the Titular President in all of this? President Obama said that he thought waterboarding was torture and should not be done. But he expressed his view that he was against looking backward, and having investigations of past practices. He stated that the country was better off to look forward and move on. I agreed with him. But then came pressure from the left wing. Later he said it was “ a matter for the Attorney General” to consider and make a decision. (I wonder if he meant the AG that he appointed and serves at his leisure.) And now the Titular president is strangely silent on the issue.
Why not get his own party together, “reach across the aisle” to the Republicans, and say (in this new “post partisan” era), the past is the past, let’s stop ripping the country apart with these partisan attacks that don’t change the past, and move forward, addressing the economy, national security and the issues we can change now and into the future, to help the American people today? That would be Leadership.

Do we really need the weekly “Hate” for Emmanual Goldstein, right now?
The Old Man

Dear John

2009-04-11T18:48:00.003-05:00

There is a continuing discussion between myself and John going on, in the comments of the Old Man's post "Physics [is less than] Theology". It's mostly a rant between know-nothings about the meaning of life, and all that. But if you're into that kind of thing, click here. If you're a real masochist, you might even subject yourself to participating in the conversation.

On the other hand, if you are a sadist you might be interested in this:
Waterboarding produced false leads; Abu Zubaida didn't know much

And concerned about this:
CIA use of contract workers, black sites for interrogations banned

Thank you Obama for reclaiming our principles and our sanity.

INRE: " burning capitalism;who lit the fire?"

2009-04-05T19:03:00.002-05:00

I'll try to respond a little more briefly than the treatise presented by Freyguy on "Capitalism Burning". He's only in his first year of the Phd program, and I doubt the physics department will accept "Capitalism" as thesis material, but it's certainly long enough and the viewpoint original enough to be counted as a thesis.

The grad student brings out one of his favorite whipping boys, Fox News, and accuses them of blaming Fannie and Freddie for the whole financial meltdown. Regardless of what Fox Newa says or doesn't say, I can state what I ascertain based on facts, and why I believe the significant contribution to the global financial meltdown of the Fannie and Freddie collapse is so important and instructive.

First, it is important to understand how big a role the overheated U.S. housing market and the irresponsible lending to it, played in the financial meltdown. Bools will be written about this, but I'll be as brief as possible, and let the readers do some of their own research. When the government seized Fannie and Freddie they had over $5 trillion of mortgages...more than half of the bloated biggest mortgage market in the world. At that time, the current Treasury Secretary Paulson said " Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and so interwoven in our financial system, that a failure of either of them would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the world." (Sunday broadcast news) "They (Fannie and Fredie) guarantee or own roughly half of all the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market and this figure has been steadily increasing as other lenders either failed or reduced their exposue to a falling market." "Almost all U.S. mortgage lenders, from huge financial institutions like Citigroup to small local banks, rely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." BBC 7 Sept., 2008.

Further, large amounts of this massive mortgage debt portfolio was rolled up into packages named "Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and sold as securities by banks. These also collapsed with the housing market collapse. "The banking industry will be forced to take hundreds of billions of dollars of further writedowns on mortgage backed securities after Merrill Lynch sold $30.6 billion of CDOs for only 22% of face value." " Sean Egan of Egan Jones called this sale a watershed moment, with implications that would trigger huge additional writedowns on CDOs worldwide. This sends a loud and clear signal that the issue with CDOs is not liquidity in the market, but problems with the value of the underlying assets (mortgages)." (Times of London July 30, 2008). "A large proportion of synthetic CDOs reference Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." (Forbes Sept. 2008).

Wow!...Trillions of dollars of mortgages held by two insolvent GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises)...Hundreds of Billions of dollars of mortgage related writedowns and additional hundreds of billions of dollars writeoffs on CDOs, of which a "large proportion reference Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac". Sounds like a pretty big part of the problem to me (and Congress seems to be fine with paying their executives $210 million in bonuses for this colossal failure).

I wish to make three points in response to Freyguy's post. (None of them have to do with the now standard liberal response to any criticism of current policy: "Oh yeah, but Bush started it, and the war in Iraq, and besides Europe didn't like Bush".)

1) The government is an incredibly poor manager of business, banking and the economy (no matter which party is in power) and should endeavor to do as little as possible in these areas. The government is poor in these areas for only two major reasons: the lack of skill (i.e. trainig and experience) and motivation(i.e. political vs. financial). However, I agree with the government having an important rol;e in regulating business, banking and the economy, as well as having the key role in monetary policy. The examples of this are too numerous to list, but Social security, Medicare, the aforementioned Fannie Mae, the postal service are good for starters (all bankrupt). And Fannie Mae is an excellent example of both business incompetence and political motivation superceding financial prudence. It is well documented and a matter of public record that Fannie Mae was directed by the government to increase the issuance of mortgages to people who were unlikely to be able to pay them, in the interests of increasing home ownership for constituent groups. (I'm not blaming the people who took these mortgages or saying it was a good or bad thing...simply that it was a financially imprudent and risky thing that was politically motivated).

2) The Grad student, liberals and some conservatives, really misunderstand government regulation of business and banking. It is done largely by...Congress...the legislative branch (remember?...the branch that makes laws)..not the president, or the executive branch. Guess who oversaw and held hearings to review regulations regarding Fannie and Freddie as long ago as 2003? That's right...the Congress. The heads of the relevant committtes were (as they are today) Senator Dodd and Barney Frank. Yes, Republicans were for deregulation of banks years ago, but the Congress had to pass the legislation on those changes. People...if you're angry...be angry at the lifetime job, family business, ruling elite in your CONGRESS!

3)I agree with the Grad student that there are serious problems created by the "coziness" of the financial industry and the government. But I struggle to understand how direct control of the financial institutions by the government somehow makes that relationship less "cozy" (seems to me it just went from "cozy" to "intimate".By the way...anybody want to guess who the top two alltime high presidential candidate recipients of wall street dollars were? (Hint: they're both in the present administration). My solutions? (A)Businesses and banks who fail, should...fail. (B)Government and Financial industry "coziness" would be significantly helped with term limits. (C)All campaign donations must be made anonymously.

How to put out the fire

2009-04-02T13:50:00.002-05:00

By the way the Atlantic Monthly article "The Quiet Coup" is enormously enlightening (according to Business Week). The author is Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the IMF. Briefly, he argues that the U.S. financial crisis is similar to the crises experienced by emerging markets. In every case, the problem is "private-public partnership", i.e. crony capitalism. According to Johnson, there is a solution...read about it here.

Our economy may be burning, but who lit the fire?

2009-04-02T01:16:00.006-05:00

Turn on Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and you might occasionally get the impression that two companies--Freddie and Fannie--caused the worldwide financial meltdown. It had nothing to do with Citigroup, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, armies of hedge fund managers and their Ponzi schemes, etc.--it all comes down to Freddie and Fannie, and the interference in private capital by government. It was this defilement which so angered the God of Free Markets and brought about a recession and global financial crisis. The suggestion that poor, lazy masses of people--especially minorities--had some hand in it is not far off.

I know that's not the Old Man's argument. But it is a common conception that has to be got out of the way.

The Old Man does argue in his latest post that the media is dropping the ball. However, it seems to me that much of the media has been very informative--especially the business news.

According to what I have learned from Business Week, the WSJ, the Business Review, and the Financial Times, issues like Freddie, Fannie, and the housing bubble contributed to but did not cause the current worldwide financial meltdown. In fact the current financial bailouts are just the most recent manifestation of a recurring trend over the past few decades that privatizes profits and socializes risk. (Remember S&L?) There are lively debates amongst the experts which I cannot pretend to resolve; however, a strong majority of bankers at the IMF, bank CEOs, regulators, chiefs at the World Bank and Nobel-prize winning economists are saying that there are fundamental problems with our finance and banking system. These problems have to do with business ethics, turning a blind eye to Ponzi schemes like Madoff's, the "too big to fail" problem (which can combine with Ponzi schemes in catastrophic ways), lack of regulation and oversight and systemic risk. The problem is not a bloated, socialist government, it's a government that appoints self-interested bankers and consultants to top positions, and gets elected based on who has a bigger pile of campaign money. In fact one former IMF banker argues that a financial oligarchy has seized the U.S. economy and says most bank CEOs (but not the top five) agree with him.

If you follow the links above, you'll see the business background of my sources. I stress this, so I won't be misunderstood as somehow being anti-business. In fact if you believe in free markets you should definitely be alarmed by financial oligarchies and the control of government by big businesses. I think old-fashioned conservatives like trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt would share this alarm.

There is also a lively debate on what to do now, how to free up credit to avoid total catastrophe. This is not a debate between capitalism vs. socialism. This is a debate businessmen and economists are having amongst themselves on what short-term measures to take in order to save our economy. The Old Man is on one side, arguing that large companies should be allowed to fail, and that stimulus will only increase the national debt. A modest majority seem to be on the other side, arguing that without large public investment and short term government intervention credit will freeze, jobs will be lost and the public debt will be even worse in the long run. Both seem like plausible, consistent positions to me.

What is not plausible or consistent is to argue that the current level of spending and government meddling is unprecedented, that it marks the beginning of authoritarian federal control, or that it is the end of private wealth in this country. The Bush administration rounds people up and holds them without trial for 8 years, spies on our citizens without warrants; yet suddenly our Constitution is in crisis because executives at AIG had some of their federal-bailout bonuses taken away? Please.

Let's talk about "spending". The running costs of our fiasco in Iraq are $12 billion/month (up from 8 in 2003) and $16 billion/month in Afghanistan. (You remember Iraq--that country we were forced to conquer in order to confiscate non-existent WMD and topple the world's sole horrible dictator; and Afghanistan, the one we invaded in order to kill that bearded man who keeps issuing videotapes). Based on conservative estimates by a Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist at the World Bank, the total cost of the Iraq war to the American taxpayer comes to $3 trillion. This is more than all the recent bailouts, stimulus and money-printing combined. Where were fiscal conservatives hiding, month after month, for the past six years? Why weren't they demanding an end to the Bush tax cuts and foreign loans, which deferred the costs of Iraq to the next generation? I won't even go into the social costs. And how about the $500 billion we spend each year on the Defense Department? It is time we asked ourselves why we are the only country on Earth that needs to have BOTH a thermonuclear arsenal capable of destroying the planet, AND conventional forces many times more powerful than the rest of the world's armies combined. Talk about "big government".

Contrast all that spending with the recent $800 billion stimulus package. Here is a handy breakdown on allocations (courtesy Financial Times). The money is being used to upgrade fire departments and health clinics. It's going to big cities for food stamps. It's going to states and schools, unemployment, student loans, tax breaks, construction of highways, needed improvements and construction on federal buildings, the National Science Foundation, and so on. This is not like the utterly wasteful spending on Iraq. This is investment in our country, for once.

Let's talk about the conservative governors. According to the WSJ, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, as well as darlings of the GOP Gov. Sarah Palin (Alaska) and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana), have all made comical shows of protesting some of the federal stimulus money--while accepting most of it. Gov. Sanford accepted more than $2.8 billion in federal stimulus. Now he may refuse to accept an additional $700 million, because there are strings attached. Apparently taxpayers in New York, California, and other states believe the money they give to S. Carolina for education should be used for education. Go figure.

Meanwhile in S. Carolina, where unemployment has reached 11% and pupil spending is 43rd in the nation, conservative residents understand the political game their governor is playing:

"I'm real disappointed in the governor that he's doing what he's doing for political reasons, apparently," said Lexington County Sheriff James Metts, a Republican who echoed the rising indignation among the governor's core base of conservative voters. "We have programs that are being cut, school teachers being cut, jobs being lost by the thousand across the state."

The same sad story is being played out in a few other states with Republican governors, like Texas and Louisiana. Not to worry: the Obama administration recently announced that state governors, not legislatures, can control the money after all, thus averting those governors' possible rejection of stimulus money. Low-income conservatives in southern and midwestern states can thank Obama later.

Partisan News Media Fiddles while Capitalism Burns

2009-03-22T16:48:00.004-05:00

Some truly remarkable things happened this past week or so.

The government announced that they are printing $1.2 Trillion

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the President's proposed budget will create a $1. 8 Trillion deficit in 2009, and a $1.4 Trillion deficit in 2010...much larger than the administration's projections.

GM releases a statement that they don't need anymore Government bailout money in March, but a day later, the administration (Stephen Rattner, Auto Task Force Leader) says that "GM and Chrysler could end up needing a considerably higher amount" and that the administration is looking into it's "role in managing the resolution".

The Congress votes to approve legislation to retroactively tax, at a confiscatory rate, bonuses contractually paid to AIG executives.

The Administration floats a trial balloon to, for the first time in history, have the government stop paying for health care of wounded veterans, and pass it to the private sector.

Several state governors announce that they will reject part of the "stinkulous" pay out for their states as they discover that taking the money requires them to adopt unemployment and contract provisions dictated by the central government.

Wow! These are some issues with profound effect and implications about where our country and society are going. And to me, they represent alarming changes to our economic and political system. But what is the media reporting? The big issues of the week for the media are:

Did Laura Ingraham (conservative talk show host) imply that Megan McCain was overweight, and is that a major women's rights issue?

Aren't we all outraged that those executives at AIG got big bonuses?

The President picks his teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.

The President is going on the Jay Leno show!

Should the Secretary Geithner resign?

The government is printing massive amounts of money...more than at any time in history. The economic reaction (but not the media's) was swift: Gold up 8% and oil up 7% in 24 hours; the dollar lost 4% of it's value vs. the Euro the next day; the stock market stopped it's brief rally and continued it's plunge since the beginning of the year. Can anyone else out there see "stagflation" coming? This government spending binge is insanity. It may reduce the relative cost of the massive government debt being created, but it is a cruel tax on those middle class, working americans, as commodities (like heating oil or gas, gas for their cars. food and hard goods inflate faster than their earnings in a high unemployment environment, at the same time that their pensions, savings and 401ks get decimated.The "cap and trade" legislation would make this inflation even worse. It may (or may not) make people feel good about trying to be more "green", but this is a thinly veiled tax on everyone who uses oil or gas or electricity to heat their homes or gas to drive their cars...and it is a bigger percentage of the disposable income of middle and lower income families.

Is anyone in the media (including self appointed Paul Revere O'Reilly) sounding the alarm about what a $1.8 Trillion deficit, and printing money probably means for the economy and our standard of living? We can't possibly pay down that size mortgage on our future for a generation (it's roughly equal to the GDP of the whole world, just for reference)."It is incumbent on every generationto pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted upon, would save one half the wars of the world." (Thomas) Jefferson. Where is the "responsibility to future generations" cited in the campaign?

The AIG bonuses are repugnant. But, hell, the Congress spent more than those bonuses on things like studying pig odor, and a bridge to nowhere in Robt Byrd's home turf.The much bigger issue is ignoring the Bill of Attainder provision in the constitution. Before you get glassy eyed, it simple says that the legislative branch can't act as prosecutor, judge and jury by passing "ex post facto" laws to (essentially) "get" a group of people they want to "get". (Article 1, section 9provides that "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed". "The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or, more simply...trial by legislature." (U.S. v. Brown 1965). This is a core value of our society in danger of being swept away by one party rule, that the congress can effectively change a contract made in the private sector after the fact, and pass legislation to punish or confiscate money from a targeted group of people. Further, Senator Dodd has now, live on CNN yesterday, admitted that his staff, reacting to concerns from Geithner's office, amended language in the AIG bailout to allow the bonuses to be paid. That's right, both the Congress and the Administration knew about and were involved in changing language to allow the very AIG bonuses that they then expressed outrage about and passes legislation to take away. (By the way, the Congres also approved a large raise for the Postmaster General whose taxpayer funded operation lost a record amount of money, and approved large retention bonuses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayer funded enterprises that were at the epicenter of the subprime mortgage collapse, and are taking billions of dollars of bailout money.

And, with our soldiers bravely sacrificing for us, the Administration flew a trial balloon proposal to take away government responsibility for healthcare for wounded veterans (and tell them to use their own private insurance). The President, I'm afraid with a sense of politics instead of compassion, decided to reject that plan.

Socialism..."A system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social (state) control." (Encyclopedia Brittanica). America's changing , comrade. But, hey...did you hear the big news? It appears that Laura Ingraham implied that Megan McCain's fat!

Physics < Theology II

2009-02-22T12:50:00.002-06:00

Colin made a great point in his comment on my previous post about science and religion. He posited that "The problem with religion is that...it is static...very much the same as it was thousands of years ago." I just don't agree that it's a problem.

The basic tenets of christianity (the religion I know the most about)are, and should be "static" or unchanging. These are: Love, hope truth, faith and compassion. They also include the concept of inalienable rights for all of mankind, that are endowed by a greater power than man, and exist beyond man's laws. Christianity (as well as other religions) teaches that these tenets and conduct are more important than material wealth, or power. I have seen no discovery that changes these. Perhaps that is why they endure.

Physics < Theology

2009-02-15T20:34:00.004-06:00

This will be a brief presentation of the other point of view regarding Freyguy's attack on God and believers in his new post "Physics>Theology". But first, I must advise that I will continue to post about the "stinkulus bill", the largest, least read, least transparent, least bipartisan major bill ever passed.

My opposing view to Freyguy's post will not be nearly as long. My view, as a believer, is not based in any amazement over a talking snake (as Freyguy alludes). I am amazed, though, that people who believe that an exploding rock randomly created the complexities of all life, rely on the unbelievability of a talking snake to prove there is no God.

The basic tenets of my beliefs are that faith is more powerful than knowledge, and that faith is better vested in a majesty greater than man. It is about the search for purpose superseding the quest for proof. I've mentioned a number of times to him (I suppose that's redundant, as fathers always repeat themselves) that, although I have no proof there is God, I have a lifetime of evidence that man just can't be the highest form of being.

This is no plea for ignorance. I often bemoan the fact that so many times people make important decisions without seeking knowledge about the subject, or disregard past experience as relevant. Human endeavors should be pursued with the most knowledge one can gain, as well as an understanding of past performance to guide the probability of future outcomes.

Rather, I argue that greater knowledge inspires greater awe of elements that shape the universe...and those that shape man, instead of being shaped by man. They encompass hope, compassion, and love, as well as life itself. And those "inalienable rights" that were understood so late by man, were always endowed by God. The fundamental problem most non-believers have is in trying to shape God in man's image, instead of believing that God's image is in each one of us, but beyond our attempts at personification (or proof)...and perhaps in being too proud of their intellectual abilities to point out that a snake couldn't talk.

The Old Man

Scandal! Infidel Tricks Francis Collins into Giving, Signing Free Book

2009-02-13T14:01:00.007-06:00

I recently had the opportunity to hear Dr. Francis Collins give two lectures. Dr. Collins is the former head of the Human Genome Project, an outspoken Christian and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. The first lecture was about the Human Genome Project. Later, he gave a second lecture on his beliefs about the relationship between science and religion. Hundreds of students and members of the public packed the lecture hall to hear him speak, spilling into overflow rooms provided with video feeds. Collins argues that evolution is a fact, that it does not contradict the Bible because not all of the Bible is literally true, and that there is scientific evidence for a God that intervenes in the universe. You can watch the lecture here.

I didn't buy his pitch. But he has an interesting perspective, and he is a light-hearted, funny guy with an opinion to share. I even got free copies of Language of God and C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity out of the deal.

Below - Dr. Francis Collins unwittingly signs his book for Freyguy, seen here hunching over like an idiot even though he is completely in frame.

Physics > Theology

2009-02-12T23:29:00.009-06:00

Hooray! It's my turn to choose a topic again. Since The Old Man and I started this blog a couple of months ago, we have discussed "the end of capitalism", "the water torture", and Obama's "stinkulus bill". It's time to address the omnipotent elephant in the room: God.

No, I am not talking about Genesha, the Hindu Lord of Success, although I suppose he is an omnipotent elephant. Nor am I talking about the ancient gods, like Thor, Zeus, or Rah. While I don't dismiss these as possibilities a priori, approximately half the world's population does--the Christian/Islamic segment, with a tiny Jewish minority. So, on this blog in general, I may as well focus on Yahweh, the god of Abraham and PreachingToday.com 's 2005 Person of the Year.

Even thusly narrowed, this remains an impossibly broad topic. So in this single post I'd just like to just share some disparate personal thoughts, and hear what people have to say in response.

I used to be Christian. In fact, when I first enrolled at Archbishop Alter high school, I looked forward to the mandatory theology class. To me, questions about how God works and how Jesus wants us to live our lives were the ultimate questions in life. I loved the class. The topic was the New Testament as viewed from scholarly-historical and faith perspectives. The trouble was, I found the scholarly-historical perspective rather compelling! I still appreciated many of the ethics espoused in the New Testament, like the Golden Rule (although Confucius advocated the same principle thousands of years before Jesus). But I didn't buy the miracles. (I have not read it, but Thomas Jefferson attempted to rectify this problem by removing all supernatural content from what is now known as the Jefferson Bible.) This led me to a sort of natural progression to physics and a set of philosophical values which, I found out, fit the description of a secular humanist.

I have come to believe that the universe as we understand it through science is bigger, more mysterious, more awesome and in some ways more terrifying than any description of God that has been dreamed up. As a bonus, there also happens to be a lot of evidence for it. In regard to "how it all started", the two separate creation myths of Genesis are overmatched in poetry and profundity--not to mention accuracy--by modern cosmology. Consider the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, which magnfied a tiny speck of the night sky in a random direction. Every fleck of light in that image is an entire galaxy (except those few large balls of light with spikes sticking out--those are foreground stars); each galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars like our Sun. Based on this image and other data, it has been estimated that there are many hundreds of billions of large galaxies in the observable universe. And if the inflation model of big bang theory is correct, the size of the entire universe compared to the size of the observable universe is like comparing the observable universe to a single proton.

Now, I have heard it seriously suggested that nothing is meaningful, beautiful, etc. if Yahweh did not create it. But go stare at the Hubble Deep Field for a few minutes. Then tell me how "meaningful" it would be if all that was merely leftovers from the special creation of one particular speck, on which woman came from a rib and a talking snake made her realize she was naked.

The science of physics, in particular, overtook its religious predecessor and counterpart--theology--and left it in the dust long ago, in my opinion. This shouldn't be surprising, since the methods of physics involve questioning, calculating, experimenting, and ruling out hypotheses; theology in general does not, and cannot, do any of those things, since no known measurement device can distinguish divine revelation from the voices produced in one's own head. This is why we remember Isaac Newton for his lasting contributions to fundamental physics; not his large volume of work in Bible numerology, or the fact that he succeeded in pleasing God by dying a virgin. It is also why Albert Einstein is often claimed by the religious as a God-fearing man, even though he rejected the idea of a personal God and thought religion "childish".

Stephen Hawking freely uses the metaphor of God, as do a few of my physics textbooks, on occasion. But this is a consequence of the physicist's annoying habit of encroaching on, and conquering, the theologian's turf.

A case in point:

When Benjamin Franklin invented the "lightning attractor" in the 18th century, the priests, reverends, and many other self-appointed spokesmen for God had understandable reservations. The lightning rod, as it came to be known, seemed to interfere with the Divine order. The Harvard-educated Reverend Thomas Prince (after whom Princeton, Massachusetts is named) believed these abominable "points of Iron" would force God to take more drastic measures. In 1755, he published an addendum to his sermon "Earthquakes the Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure" saying, in part:

"the more points of Iron are erected round the Earth, to draw the Electrical Substance out of the Air, the more the Earth must needs be charged The Reverend Thomas Prince with it. And therefore it seems worthy of Consideration whether any part of the Earth, being fuller of this terrible Substance, may not be exposed to more shocking Earthquakes. In Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadfully Shaken, - 0, there is no getting out of the mighty Hand of God. If we still think to avoid it in the Air we cannot in the Earth; yea, it may grow more fatal."

(I believe he refers to the 1755 Boston earthquake.) Presumably, the good Reverend used the Standard Method of the Theologian in Reaching his Conclusions: he Closed his eyes, let his Imagination run wild, and yea, he Wrote down the Results.

Of course, it's easy for us to dismiss his argument as silly today, after hundreds of years of success using lightning rods. But imagine living in 1755. There was no such thing as shifting tectonic plates or a Richter scale back then, no unified theory of electricity and magnetism; there were simply Earthquakes and Volcanoes, and that eerie glowing Substance responsible for Lightning. Their origins were not of this world; they were the awesome manifestations of Heaven's will.

So, in my opinion Rev. Prince's logic was pretty sound; it was simply based on bad premises. Remember that most people back then, including well-educated reverends, truly believed lightning and earthquakes were under divine control. Given that assumption, erecting a lightning rod is sort of like running away from a divine spanking; the Heavenly Parents will simply chase you down, shouting "You're only making it worse for yourself!"

So why don't we buy the good Reverend's argument today? Because we reject his premise. Most of us no longer believe destructive phenomena are instruments of Divine Judgment. And the reason we came to reject it, the reason countless lives have been saved, has nothing to do with breakthroughs in theology.

Your thoughts?

-Freyguy

'Anonymous' Weighs in on Stimulus

2009-02-07T11:57:00.003-06:00

The following was originally posted by 'Anonymous' in the comments section. -Freyguy

Hypocrisy indeed.

If you're wanting to point fingers over our nation's bewildering national debt, you're going to have to let off Obama and go chase down ol' Georgie in Texas. You show me careless spending of trillions of dollars, I will show you the Iraq war. The biggest Charlie Foxtrot this great country has ever had to put up with. We're so up to our eyeballs in IOU's from the countless missteps of the Bush Administration, that even China is fed up with us now.

But that's a debate for another day. I suppose there's no use in looking at the mistakes from the past (except to hopefully learn from them). What we need to focus on now, is the future, and how Obama will attempt to correct these blunders he inherited from George Christ Bush.

Anyone who has ever studied public economics should know that in times like these, government spending is a common, and arguably necessary, strategy. Just look at what FDR did during the Great Depression! We could let the market run its course without government intervention, but I think we all know why that's not an acceptable idea. It's the government's responsibility to look out for it's people, especially for those who are less fortunate, and who would most certainly suffer the most (and are suffering the most) should the economy hit an even rockier bottom. This stimulus package is not an extravagance, it is a necessity. The key is not to just give money to people in the hopes that they'll spend it, like Bush did. The idea is to create programs that give people jobs, and that will help to save money in the long run.

That's what Obama's plan does. It will create thousands of jobs to try and restrain our debilitating unemployment rate, and it invests in many other things, like Green buildings (what's wrong with blue ones, you ask?) that will help save billions of dollars in energy costs in the long run.

The argument that our country can't handle all of this spending in light of our current debt (keeping in mind that this spending wouldn't be any problem at all if we hadn't already thrown 10 trillion into our Middle Eastern money pit) is flawed. Nobody has any intention of spending the 1 trillion from the stimulus package at one time. It will happen gradually, and most likely when its all said and done, the entire trillion will not be used.

What's more, for those people who complain about the other programs the stimulus package covers that they feel are unnecessary (and which make up only about 2% of the entire bill), I can't say anything more than "sorry." Obama is not spending money on anything that he didn't say he would spend money on. As someone who voted for Obama, I couldn't be happier that he is giving money to improve education, our country's sexual health, science and research, and much more. I've spent the last eight years disagreeing with the choices that our president has made--its nice to feel like my opinions are being represented for once. For all of you irritated conservatives who disagree with the stimulus package, it's not that Obama is doing anything unethical (which he isn't), or that he is not representing his constituents properly (because he is). This is just what it feels like to be on the losing side.

OBAMA PAY BAraCK METER DAY 3

2009-02-03T21:06:00.002-06:00

The environmentalists gave our new president a lot of support (when they weren't at the airport for a sendoff of Al Gore on his private jet). Don't you think they deserve to be paid BAraCK? Well, on page 119 of the "stinkulus"bill", They got $600 million for grants to study "diesel emission reduction", and $650 million for "alternative energy technologies" and "energy efficiency enhancements" (whatever they are). Then, on page 176,...the best yet...$1.5 billion for "Green Schools". (I didn't know that hue was so expensive, couldn't they pick another color?)

The point here is not to argue whether any of these projects are good for us or not. The point is that no informed person can believe that the financial credit crisis or the economy is going to be helped any more than tangentially by this $2.75 billion of taxpayer money. This is another example of declaring a crisis, and then loading up the solution with favorite social and political spending programs. But we're not supposed to ask what's actually included in the "stinkulus bill", just believe we have to have it right away. Why?...'cause Obama say so.

And, the environmentalists are happy...because we can check them off on Day 3 of the meter watch...they've been PAID BAraCK!

The Meter is Broken

2009-02-01T19:55:00.017-06:00

You know America is in trouble when "even O'Reilly", author of such hard-hitting investigative works as Kids Are Americans Too, does not devote sufficient attention to the new President's many crimes.

The first thing that strikes me about the Old Man's last two posts is the absence of any external sources of information. We are expected to simply take it on faith that the he has all his facts straight--a risky proposition, considering Fox News consumes 90% of my parents' household electricity bill. Rather than examine every claim, assumption, and insinuation, let me just quickly take a small sample from the Old Man's posts and compare that sample with reality.

I Googled "Wilma Liebman" and found some great information. Pres. Obama did appoint her as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. This is not a controversial choice, since she has served on the board since 1997, was appointed to it by Clinton and (twice!) by Bush, and has a long record in labor, government, and law.

The Old Man quotes her as saying "What institution will be as effective in controlling the randomness of fortune of democratic capitalism?" Therefore, he says, she does not "believe in" democratic capitalism. But that does not logically follow from her statement. She merely thinks a certain institution [unions] can control the unpredictable ups and downs of fortune in democratic capitalism. I can think of at least one other institution which serves a similar purpose: the Federal Reserve. But the Fed is an institution which protects (among others) an elite class of wealthy private investors--the brilliant custodians of our most recent financial catastrophe--whereas unions merely protect millions of ordinary employees. Therefore, the Fed is within the bounds of "democratic capitalism" while unions are evil socialism.

The quote in question comes from Liebman's scholarly article, Labor Law Inside Out. I went ahead and did the unthinkable and actually read the paper in its entirety. Anyone who reads it will see that she does not argue to "allow unionization without elections". Her position is quite the opposite. What her paper demonstrates is that there was an unprecedented and unfair change in labor policy during the Bush years in opposition to union representation. Liebman writes:

A series of decisions of the past five years signal a serious shift in policy. These decisions, each with significant dissenting opinions, can be explained only by the Board’s present orientation toward protecting employee free choice only in the narrow sense: taking special care to ensure that employees are free to refrain from union activity and to reject union representation, while showing less concern about the right of employees to choose (and keep) a union.

She goes on to explain what the precedents were (citing particular cases) for equitable treatment between employees and employers:

St. Elizabeth Manor and Lee Lumber sought to preserve the stability of the bargaining relationship by giving the parties a chance to make the process work before the union’s status was tested, and yet both respected employees’ freedom to reject or change representation after a reasonable period for bargaining had elapsed. Levitz Furniture permitted the employer acting on its own, without a Board election, to honor the freely expressed choice of a majority of its employees to reject union representation, but [eliminated the] “good faith doubt” standard [which allowed an employer to reject union recognition without an employee vote].

She explains how the Board, during the Bush years, rejected union elections and longstanding precedents, citing several cases in particular:

The Board majority, agreeing with the dissenters in St. Elizabeth Manor, held that employees of the acquired company should be allowed to “exercise their statutory rights and vote out the incumbent union.” (Id. [emphasis added]). In other words, the incumbent union in a successorship situation will not be entitled to a reasonable period for bargaining with the new employer, insulated from challenge to its status.
...
And, in Wurtland Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, 351 NLRB No. 50 (2007), the Board majority decided that the employer had lawfully withdrawn recognition from the union based on a petition signed by over 50 percent of employees seeking “a vote to remove the Union.” ... [The Board rejected] the dissent’s argument that the employer should have let a Board election determine employees’ sentiments about representation...
...
In turn, employee free choice is increasingly construed to minimize the choice of employees who selected union representation. Unionized employers are given a longer “leash” as “vindicator”9 of their employees’ rights by unilaterally withdrawing recognition, rather than by using the Board’s election machinery to test the union’s majority.

While unilateral employer action to withdraw recognition from a union is apparently favored (so employees do not have to endure representation if they do not want it), no parallel concern has been shown for employees who have voted for union representation but have to wait for legal challenges to be exhausted in order to enjoy its benefits. Correspondingly, the Board has recently made explicit that unilateral employer action to recognize a union—without a Board election—is not favored.
...
What the Board has now created is a complicated bureaucratic procedure that deviates from long-established doctrine by (1) allowing 30 percent of the unit to compel an election to vote on representation, notwithstanding that a majority has just chosen union representation, and (2) permitting a challenge to the union’s majority status without a reasonable time for bargaining having elapsed. Also, by requiring the posting at the workplace—after the voluntary recognition occurs—of an official notice informing employees of their right to file a decertification petition, the Board is breaking new ground. No equivalent workplace posting is required to notify unrepresented employees of their right to select union representation, or of their rights generally under the Act.
...
By effectively giving employers greater freedom to determine whether their workers will have union representation, the current Board’s approach threatens the basic, and unique, aim of federal labor law: empowering employees to act collectively and so to counterbalance the power of employers over their work lives....

Employees may well choose, freely, to decline unionization, to reject the union that has represented them, to deal with their employers individually, and to cede to employers all effective control over the workplace. But the Board is warranted in adopting legal rules to ensure that the choice is genuinely free and that it is exercised by employees themselves, not by their employers in their name.

I urge anyone interested in the topic to read the report and contrast it with what was quoted out of context from the report. Unfortunately I do not have time to check all the other claims/accusations, including the ones about ACORN. But the disparity between what was said about Liebman, and the truth about Liebman, gives some reason to pause before accepting the version of reality presented without evidence in the last two posts.

One thing is true: Obama has indeed "repaid" the 12.4% of Americans who are part of a union, and who helped elect him, by appointing someone who thinks union recognition should be based on elections, not unilateral employer withdrawal. Normally, when elected representatives "repay" millions of voters and supporters by correcting unfair policies, we call that democracy. I hope to see more of it.

-Freyguy

(Below: 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike)

OBAMA PAYBAraCK METER Day 2

2009-02-01T13:22:00.002-06:00

This is not a new topic, there are just too many pay backs to follow to let the meter go for more than a day or two without an update. So, apologies to the Grad student who is trying to get some studying done towards that PhD, for jumping back in here.

Guess who is in the $825 billion (and counting) "stimulus" package? That's right...ACORN! I thought they were largely volunteers....how does a contribution to a non profit, volunteer organization create jobs and stimulate the economy? The "stimulus" package has $4.19 Billion earmarked for "neighborhood stabilization activities". Does everyone know that the acronym ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now"? Does anyone doubt who will be at the head of the line to get a big chunk of that $4 Billion for "neighborhood stabilization activities"? This is, at the least, irresponsible to include billions of dollars for political programs, if not an out and out payoff for political support. ACORN even got Disney characters, some Dallas Cowboys, and a cat registered to vote for Obama. They are under federal investigation for voter fraud, and ...in line for a big payout under the new administration. (Hurry up, America, support the "stimulus" bill, don't ask what's really in it. After all, it's a crisis of epic proportions and we just have to do it...you know it couldn't be earmarks or pork....'cause Obama say so.

OBAMA PAYBAraCK METER

2009-01-31T12:26:00.002-06:00

Time for a new topic. Today I'm starting my Obama "PAYBAraCK METER". There is no check and balance with the new one party rule, and the media is largely in the tank for our new president. Even O'Reilly won't investigate or comment on Obama transgressions and political payoffs. It is, without any watchdog media for this administration, up to we bloggers to report on the political payoffs and corruption when/if such occurs.

For example: has anyone heard any thing about that "internal investigation" of his administration's connection to the selling of the Senate seat in Chicago ? President Obama announced he would report on "in a few days" and assured us that he was committed to "transparancy" in this new administration. That was a month ago. O'Reilly, along with the rest of the media that he accuses of being "in the tank for Obama", seems to have forgotten about it. And, by the way, Fitzgerald has gotten awfully quiet about the whole affair as well. If he wasn't prepared to indict Blagojevich for over two months, why did he have to jump out and hold a news conference last December? Very curious, don't you think? Could there have been any "PAY BAraCK" about to take place here that got derailed? Where's that "transparency"? I know there's no "transparency" so far, but I don't know if there's PAY BAraCK in this case or not yet. The media (including O'Reilly) is convinced there is no wrong doing..."cause Obama say so".

So my first official listing of PAY BAraCK the new administration is the Unions. First, the president appoints a socialist to head the NLRB. I am not ranting when I refer to Wilma Liebman as a socialist. It's simply true. One of her recent quotes before congress, in referring to unionization said " What institution will be as effective in controlling the randomness of fortune of democratic capitalism?". That's right, she doesn't believe in "democratic capitalism". After all, it creates wealth randomly, and "we" (that would be the ruling elite) need to manage who gets what wealth (a much better method of control than military control). Liebman argues forcefully to allow unionization without elections (that democracy stuff sometimes gives the wrong answer). Further, Obama has expressed favor for "cardcheck", legislation that strongly favors unions by overriding those risky democratic, secret ballot elections. Liebman is an outspoken champion of that legislation, stating that individual freedoms sometimes have to be overlooked in the interest of collectivism and social justice. Further, President Obama reversed a previous presidential order outlawing unions from requiring members to pay for political campaigns, to the candidates of the union leaderships choosing, of course (no self interest there, I suppose).

Yes, Unions...check them off, they've been paid BAraCK!

Next time the PAY BAraCK Meter will check ACORN to see if the new administration found a way to funnel some money to them (Hint...it couldn't be "earmarks" could it?)

The Water Torture

2009-01-25T14:32:00.002-06:00

The boy has gone off the deep end here. I won't post a long retort. I don't believe in torture. U.S. law says that "water boarding " is not illegal ( I think it was allowed in the old days in my fraternity hazing, also). If you think it should be illegal, change the law (which I think Obama just did, except he allowed a waiver whenever it is necessary, what ever that means...did Bill Clinton sneak back into office while I wasn't looking?).

But criminalizing the lawful (at the time) acts of the opposing party when one party gets the power to do so, and then executing the past president for "war crimes", puts us a huge step backward to the modus operamdi of banana republics. And the reference to the Japanese leaders tried for war crimes "which included water torture" is really misleading. That's like saying a convicted serial murderer was executed for crimes that " included assault for punching a man."

Twilight of capitalism: Brief response to Brief response

2009-01-25T13:47:00.003-06:00

Well, it is a glimmer of hope that the boy has conceded that the capitalistic model produces a more productive economic society. He fires back forcefully, though, while retreating to areas supposedly of more interest to liberals anyway...health care and education.

As to world health care ratings, a lot has to do with who sets the parameters and the weighting of those parameters. For example, the World Health Organization (with an appropriate acronym), rates the U.S. health care system (among their 8 parameters) as faring very poorly in "distribution of response", while rating the U.S. #1 in "Response", but poor in "fairness". Colombia, for example, ranks above the U.S. (22 vs. 37) in WHO's rating system, largely due to its #1 rating in "fairness"...everyone gets the same cost and the same level of lousy health care! Even Roger Moore isn't flying down to Colombia for his health care (and I don't think that gastric bypass surgery he had in Cuba worked so well either).

Secondly, the grad student is right that the data shows that the U.S. rates down toward the middle of the pack in developed nations in life expectancy. But it is only 1.2 years below second place, and this is explained by gun violence. The U.S. has 4 times the average homicide rate of these countries, and almost 70% is related to guns. Homicide and suicide rates in the U.S. are about equal to the rest of the developed world when we remove gun murders and suicides. For the record...although a conservative...I am for the removal of handguns from the general public. That one act would, over time improve our health and society.

A similar situation arises in infant mortality. The leading causes in the U.S. are malformations, underweight premature births and SIDS. But a look under the surface shows that this disparity is almost entirely the result of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as extreme weight and nutrition issues by the mother. These are lifestyle issues, not the result of poor health care, or even the access to it.

As for the Cuba embargo? I have two questions for my liberal adversaries.
1) If the U.S. is not the greatest economic engine in the world, and their socialist economic system works well, why isn't Cuba just fine trading with all those socialist nations? Why are they impoverished just because they can't trade with us? They have Russia, France, Hugo Chavez, etc., etc.

2) What American president could have removed the Cuban embargo 30 years ago, but didn't, and then, while speaking in Cuba, criticized other presidents for the embargo?

Capitalism response to anon

2009-01-21T19:29:00.002-06:00

I appreciate the response from anonymous on "The twilight of capitalism". He or she makes a reasonable argument. But I urge the writer to think through the good points made with a little deeper evaluation. This is not very well put, but very important to understand...things happen in systems. This is to say that capitalism, combined with free enterprise and democracy, produced the resources that produce the incentives that motivate research, and even more importantly, development. The commercial development of academic research is as important as the invention or innovation itself. An example is the automobile. The fact that a Frenchman invented a form of an automobile, or that Daimler invented what most view as the start of the modern automobile, is less important than the commercial production that changed lives in the economic system in America by Olds and Ford.

Much of the funding for those academic institutions who do research comes from the private sector, which, in a capitalistic society is skewed towards results instead of politics. Further, if they were painfully honest, many researchers would admit that much motivation is derived from potential reward in a capitalist system. For example,does Anon know that Lederle Labs and other commercial companies contributed millions of dollars to fund the development of a polio vaccine? Does the writer know that the March of Dimes (encouraged by Roosevelt) gathered huge contributions from an affluent capitalistic society, and was the biggest contributor to the research on Polio? Things happen in systems.

You are, of course, right that the U.S. government is responsible for much great research. But from where did NASA get the breakthrough materials and electronic components for their rockets and space flight? And that first integrated circuit? The Nobel prize was awarded to Jack Kilby, a young engineer at Texas Instruments. He made it viable by making the individual components out of one block of material with a metal layer on top instead of discrete components. This made the integrated circuit useful (and millions of dollars for Texas Instruments). Kilby became wealthy as well, as he led the team that invented the hand held calculator at TI. Microprocessors are simply an evolution of the Integrated Circuit to put the whole CPU (central processing unit) onto a single IC chip (VSLI chip). The government contracted and sponsored much research, but the drivers were Texas Instruments, Intel (Moore) and Garret AI Research..all private enterprise firms. Things happen in systems.

Two more points for Anon to consider. Researchers don't write history. Often biased liberal arts majors write history. I believe my experiences of what happened more than someone else recreating a view of what he/she believes might have happened through the filter of their biases.

If our capitalist economic system is "200 years old" and has produced more wealth, innovation, higher standard of living, more per capita output, and a bigger middle class than any other economic system in history...should we trade it in for ...socialism that is older and proven less productive, or the failed communist (state run) economic system? What is the alternative model that has a proven track record of better economic outcomes and productivity? To paraphrase the great Churchill...it's the worst system except for all the rest of them.

The Water Torture

2009-01-19T01:18:00.008-06:00

"The United States does not torture." The American people and the rest of the world listened to this evasive refrain on dozens of occasions, along with President Bush's vague allusions to new "tough", "alternative" tactics. Given what we now know about the Bush administration's use of "waterboarding", a.k.a the water torture, such proclamations can only be seen as contempt for American ideals, human rights and the rule of law, and an insult to our intelligence, dressed in the language of Orwellian newspeak.

The practice of restraining a victim with the head inclined downward, a cloth stuffed in his mouth, and pouring water down his breathing passages, goes back all the way to the Spanish Inquisition:

Often in combination with the rack was applied the “torture of water”. This was generally adopted when racking, in itself, proved ineffectual. The victim, while pinioned on the rack, was compelled to swallow water, which was dropped slowly on a piece of silk or fine linen placed in his mouth. This material, under pressure of the water, gradually glided down the throat, producing the sensation experienced by a person who is drowning. A variation…was to cover the face…upon which the water was poured slowly, running into the mouth and nostrils and hindering or preventing breathing almost to the point of suffocation. [1]

It is not, in fact, simulated drowning. It is actual drowning--albeit slow and controlled, and halted before actual death. All the usual drowning symptoms occur, including spasms, vomiting, water entering the lungs, panic, etc. Years later, victims often find themselves waking from sleep in panic, with the sensation of not being able to breathe.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo, and the Japanese, during WWII. Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo was hanged for war crimes which included waterboarding. Many lower-ranking Japanese officers were also sentenced. Waterboarding was used by the infamous Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia. It has been recognized as torture, and illegal, by U.S. generals going back to the Vietnam War.

Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong, according to countless politicians, legal experts, U.S. military officials, psychologists, journalists, veterans, etc. [2-6]. Wouldn't you know it, it's wrong even when we use it on really bad people. Here are the reasons, as if they bear repeating:

Torture is a violation of fundamental human rights.
Torture does not yield reliable information.
Torture sets the wrong precedent, endangering our own soldiers.

When it comes to interrogation, it happens that humane methods and effective methods are one in the same. Consider the interrogation of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in early 2002:

Zubaydah was stabilized at the nearest hospital, and the F.B.I. continued its questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. An agent showed him photographs of suspected al-Qaeda members until Zubaydah finally spoke up, blurting out that "Moktar," or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had planned 9/11. He then proceeded to lay out the details of the plot. America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely.

It was an extraordinary success story. But it was one that would evaporate with the arrival of the C.I.A's interrogation team. At the direction of an accompanying psychologist, the team planned to conduct a psychic demolition in which they'd get Zubaydah to reveal everything by severing his sense of personality and scaring him almost to death.

This is the approach President Bush appeared to have in mind when, in a lengthy public address last year, he cited the "tough" but successful interrogation of Zubaydah to defend the C.I.A.'s secret prisons, America's use of coercive interrogation tactics, and the abolishment of habeas corpus for detainees. He said that Zubaydah had been questioned using an "alternative set" of tactics formulated by the C.I.A. This program, he said, was fully monitored by the C.I.A.'s inspector general and required extensive training for interrogators before they were allowed to question captured terrorists.

...The tactics were a "voodoo science," says Michael Rolince, former section chief of the F.B.I.'s International Terrorism Operations. [7]

The torture of Zubaydah, and thus the end of getting any reliable information from him, is just one in a mountain of sad examples over the past eight years, in which the Bush administration has demonstrated its disregard for human rights, international law, and reality.

I know it sounds corny, but I really do love America. That's why it agonizes me to see the U.S. embrace dark-age barbarism, lies and deceit at the highest levels of its democratic institutions.

One strength of our fragile democracy is the possibility for self-correction and positive change. The American public did see through the Bush administration's lies and successfully pressured Bush to (sort of) ban torture in mid-2007. The public supported two candidates in the 2008 elections who both opposed water torture (John McCain having been himself a victim of torture). On Thursday, President-elect Obama's pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder, said unequivocally at a Congressional hearing that waterboarding is torture.

But Bush's attorney general refused to investigate interrogators who employed waterboarding, and Dick Cheney has repeatedly defended the practice. Bush, Cheney, and other officials explicitly condoned and authorized the use of waterboarding on multiple documented occasions. [8]

This is no small matter: waterboarding is a war crime. Japanese officers and generals were jailed for use of the practice on American soldiers in WWII. Ordinary American citizens are investigated, tried, and jailed every day for crimes that are far less serious. Are elected officials, and their appointees, above U.S. and international law?

In my opinion, it is not enough to merely end the practice of waterboarding. If we as Americans have any integrity, not to mention concern for the future well-being of American POW's, George W. Bush and all responsible parties ought to stand trial for war crimes.

References:
[1] History of Torture Throughout the Ages, by George Ryley Scott, 2005
[2], [3], [4], [5], [6]
[7] Vanity Fair, 2007
[8] CIA Tactics Endorsed in Secret Memos, 2008

Brief Response to 'Twilight of Capitalism'

2009-01-19T00:33:00.004-06:00

This is highly unorthodox! It was my turn to start a new debate topic! :)

I don't blame you, TOM. (Short for The Old Man). I should have made a post by now.

Brief response:

The fact that the U.S. has the highest GDP (aside from exceptional cases of small, resource-rich nations) is indeed interesting. The fact that many important inventions have come from the U.S. is also interesting. Nevertheless, what I said about European systems in terms of healthcare, education, and the middle class remains true. It's not clear to me how the adoption of better public healthcare or education practices would have prevented such triumphs as the Moon-landing, for example. And surely the two world wars which devastated all the major powers, sparing only the U.S. and its massive global military, with its bases in the oil-rich Middle East (replacing the British ones), contributed to the 1900's being an "American century".

As for Cuba...who said anything about Cuba? I wasn't advocating Cuban-style policy or economics. But I will concede that the continuing, half-century-long trade embargo against Cuba is a great example of how restrictions on free trade can devastate a nation economically and socially. In this case, those were the intended effects. (See the American Society for Internal Medicine for a report on how the U.S. embargo has affected healthcare in Cuba)

Twilight of capitalism

2009-01-18T20:12:00.002-06:00

I can't help but notice all the references Eric uses. I guess that's what grad students do, research and see what data and other people say. History is sure different when one is the reference, and experienced what was happening, as opposed to reading what someone else says happened. Nonetheless, here are a couple of data points that might interest those who think that socialism is a better system. The GDP per capita ranks output per citizen. The only few countries ranked above the U.S. are very small, economically inconsequential ones like Brunei, Luxomborg or Qatar. The lone socialist state in the top ten is Norway, a few spots above the U.S. But Norway is there for the same reasons some Arab states rank high...a population smaller than Ohio and the world's 4th largest exporter of oil (not to mention gas).

GDP per Capita Rank (top 150 )

U.S. 6

United Kingdom 16

Belgium 19

Germany 21

France 23

Italy 25

...and Roger Moore's Utopia, Cuba? It is unranked as it doesn't make the top 150. That's right, capitalism and free enterprise is the most productive system in the world and produces the most output per person, even after being hamstrung by our government's steady drift toward socialism and the scourge of the most litigious society in the world.

Secondly, from where did the most innovation, the most productive inventions and developments come? From commercial development of the automobile to flight to TV to the computer to the telephone to plastics to the integrated circuit to the polio vaccine to the tractor to the microprocessor to the first nuclear power reactor to the laser to the mobile phone to global positioning systems to DNA...it was America. The United States had more than 60% of all patents issued in the world in the decade I was your age (1967 to 1977). The U.S agriculture system is the most productive in the world (even slowed down by government subsidies to not produce). And, ...who were those guys who landed on the moon?

Do you remember staying at a hotel in Rochester, Minnesota on one of your basketball roadtrips? Do you remember seeing the entourage of the Shah of Iran, one of the richest men ion the world, as he was being treated across the street at the Mayo clinic for his cancer? He wasn't on his way to Cuba.

When were the golden years of capitalism and free enterprise in America? I lived a lot of them in the twentieth century...commonly known as "the American century".

Business as Usual

2009-01-10T23:06:00.002-06:00

The Old Man, with his decades of experience in business and his Harvard degree in business and his lifelong obsession with business, knows a little more about business than I do. His well-reasoned arguments on the current bailouts have me shaking, I admit, in my ignorant liberal boots.

Rather than disagree with him outright, and therefore risk blowing my cover as someone who has a rudimentary understanding of economics, I’ll rely on Rule #5 and agree with the Old Man substantially.

For example, I agree that performance should be rewarded. That is why I am so surprised to hear the “fading” European systems written off so casually. When it comes to healthcare, education, and strengthening the middle class, the fact is we are getting our asses kicked by those evil socialists. The results of comparative studies over the years have become monotonous: “The United States ranked last across a range of measures ofhealth care in a comparison of 19 industrialised countries,despite spending more than twice as much per person on healthas any other of the countries” [1]. “U.S. students scored lower on science [and math] literacy than their peers [in other industrialized nations]” [2]. “The new [Congressional Budget Office] data document that income inequality continued to widen in 2004. The average after-tax income of the richest one percent of households rose…20 percent [in 2004]. …In contrast, the income of the middle fifth of the population rose [3.6 percent]. The income of the bottom fifth rose a scant $200 (or 1.4 percent)” [3]. And so on.

I am also confused by the notion that this is the twilight of capitalism. When exactly was the golden age of free-market capitalism, when government, business, and public welfare were not entangled (for better or for worse)?

Was it during the 1980’s, when campaigns of state-sponsored terror were used to encourage the people of Central and South America to remain open to U.S. investors? Maybe it was during the earlier Cold War years, when enormous sums of tax dollars fueled a booming arms and manufacturing industry; when technologies leading to the now-profitable internet were funded by new government bureaucracies, like the 1700-employee National Science Foundation. Or was it when Eisenhower embarked upon that wasteful public works project of unprecedented cost, now known as the interstate highway system?

Maybe it was earlier—like when the Federal Reserve was created to interfere with those wonderful free-market processes called panics and depressions. It certainly could not have been at the turn of the 20^th century, when the public was duped into supporting war with Spain in order to establish a colonial empire friendly to U.S. business. The phrase “free enterprise” begins to sound embarrassing as we reach back to the period when an entire workforce was literally enslaved.

The current bailout, it seems to me, is just a continuation of the historical trend. This time, elites suffered major losses and a civil war broke out over our tax dollars; hence the furious coverage in corporate-owned media over who-gets-what. And this time, the disparity between enacted policy and the popular will was especially noticeable.

The move towards universal healthcare, in my opinion, follows the same basic pattern except that in this case business interests happened to converge with the public interest. A majority of (wicked, socialist) Americans have favored universal healthcare for years. That’s partly because 18,000 of us have been dying per year due to lack of coverage [4]. But democracy is only possible now, because enough factions of private interests—including the automakers—have finally noticed that they spend “twice as much per person on healthas any other of the countries” [1] with which they compete. (That is one reason GM has higher labor costs than Toyota) [5].

References:

[1] BMJ (formerly British Journal of Medicine), 2008. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/337/jul21_1/a889

[2] U.S. Dept. of Education, 2006. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008016

[3] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2007. http://www.cbpp.org/1-23-07inc.htm

[4] Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, 2004. http://www.iom.edu/?id=17848

[5] CBS News, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/19/business/main4677571.shtml

How to view and post comments

2009-01-08T22:24:00.029-06:00

Do you think Freyguy is right, or do you think The Old Man has got it all wrong? Whatever your views, we want to hear your opinion!

Participating in the discussion is easy. First, find a post you want to comment on. The post will begin with a header like this:
_____________________________________

Oct 31, 2009
Response to "Obamacare 2"
Posted by Freyguy at 7:18 AM 6 comments

_____________________________________

Click on any of those links. Now you can scroll down to see all the comments that have been posted. At the bottom of the page, a friendly white box has appeared. Type something like "Nailed it again, Freyguy!" in the box. Finally, hit the Post Comment button.

Important Advice on posting comments

Write it in a word processor, first. Sometimes, when you hit the Post Comment button, an error occurs and your comment is lost forever. Avoid this catastrophe by writing and saving in something like Notepad, Wordpad, or Microsoft Word. Then copy and paste into the comment box. Can't paste into the box? If you're using Firefox, try Internet Explorer. Or, click the Preview button, then click Edit, and it should let you paste now.
Take credit for your brilliant ideas. The best way to keep track of who's-who is to select Name/URL from the Comment as dropdown menu. Just type your name or a pen name--no need for a URL.

Questions? Comments? Problems? Send me a note at Freyguy79@aol.com

The Twilight of Capitalism

2009-01-03T19:07:00.002-06:00

It is amazing to me that our country's slow drift toward socialism accelerated so noticeably during the term of a supposed conservative president. I'm talking about the ridiculous bailouts, and the growing list of financial institutions, businesses, state governments and advocacy groups lining up for a government handout. The cost will easily pass a trillion dollars, and that doesn't count the coming Obama socialization of health care. Now banks, the auto industry and health care will be managed by the Congress that oversees an insolvent social security program, a bankrupt Fannie Mae mortgage business, and presides over a huge government budget deficit. This is not to mention the "growing out of control" medicare/medicaid programs.

Further, there is no evidence that these irresponsible giveaways will accomplish anything, other than to reward and perpetuate the conduct that turned a cyclical downturn into an economic crisis. Henry Paulson has engineered handing out $350 billion to financial institutions so far, and three months later there is no loosening of credit for businesses or consumers...in fact, it's gotten worse (although I hear that Henry's friends in "the Hamptons" feel better). Handing out $7 billion to PNC paid for them to buy National City Bank for $5.6 billion (and now both banks are restricting credit). Bailout money did help Citi Group continue their efforts to raise $8 billion for a middle eastern country (why not raise it for themselves, and not take taxpayer money?), and pay $35 million severance to an executive so he could buy a $23 million apartment in NYC. (I suppose Henry's spin is that the government prevented one more person from becoming homeless...how noble). But are any of you average people out there feeling better off now that Henry (authorized by our Congress) has handed out $35o billion of your tax dollars?

So now the government owns part of the largest banks and the largest insurance company, and has its' eyes on "helping" the American automotive companies manage to success. But once again, there is no link to pay for performance...i.e. the auto companies (and their unions) don't have to do anything other than say they will cease to exist and promise to do better. This is similar to the financial institution bailouts...no performance required and none received (I guess it did work by that measure). By the way, we should all understand that this is a Union bailout, not an auto company bailout. The U.S. auto companies pay roughly twice the hourly wage plus benefits rate that the Japanese car companies do (in the U.S.).

Why not reward performance? For example...for banks to get bailout money (to ease the credit crunch) they have to increase lending (to creditworthy businesses and consumers)....the auto companies and Unions have to come up with an agreement that restructures them to be competitive before they get bailout money...instead of giving them a pile of money and hoping it will turn out better.

Here we are at the twilight of capitalism and free enterprise; the system that created the most powerful economic society in world history, trying to emulate the ever fading European model of socialism.

Is this a good idea?

2008-12-25T13:13:00.002-06:00

Is this blog a good idea? I don't know. Is there still interest in civil discourse across the chasm of very different political views? Can a physics grad student and an old MBA capitalist, with our gap widened by 40 years of age and quite different scio-economic experiences, constructively discuss world and life perspectives of such diverse beliefs? Can we be passionate, but not angry? Can we have some sarcasm at times without vitriol? Can we disagree, but not disrespect (with snide condescension)?

We struggle to find this in the sage pundits of the media. And (we both agree) our political leaders are (largely) more embarrassing than inspiring, as their sole objective seems to be to win for their side rather than to craft any solution.

I represent almost everything the boy's fellow travellers view as causes of all problems...almost abhorrent. I am, as my sign off indicates, an old man (the first two bad marks). Further, I lead a manufacturing business, and have a reprehensible title. To make matters worse, I am a practicing, go to church, christian (a common sinner, to be sure, but a believer); and I have a currently politically unfavorable complexion.

How can one send a believing, protestant son to a catholic high school, and have him graduate as an atheist? How can a father encourage (and pay for) a good, scientific college degree and then have the boy campaign for Obama? I mean, I understand the touchy-feely liberal arts majors' ebullience for Obama, and the tears of the theatre majors. But physics, although not as factual as the old man's engineering major, still requires some rational thinking.

I hope, this blog is a good idea, and that contact with some real people out there will help redirect the boy's thinking, before his Phd physics studies and academia have him irretrievably drift off into "theorydom".

Debate Topic #1: Is This Blog a Good Idea?

2008-12-25T01:21:00.006-06:00

My Old Man and I love to discuss "issues". Whether the issue is taxes, gay marriage or the meaning of life, whether we're at the kitchen table or in a restaurant, there's no activity we enjoy more than a good ol' fashioned mind brawl.

Out of respect for our family and friends; and everyone within earshot of our endless back-and-forths; and public order--we have decided to take our mental sparring sessions to the lawless, virtual international waters called "the internet". Welcome to our blog.

I've taken the liberty of choosing our first topic: Is this blog a good idea? Here's a chance to agree on the format and introduce ourselves.

First, some ground rules. Here is what I propose:

We will take turns choosing debate topics.
The person whose turn it is to choose a topic can write an opening statement at his leisure.
The other person can post a rebuttal, at his leisure. The rebuttal should be no longer than the opening statement.
You may choose a topic that is identical to, or a continuation of, a previous topic.
We are allowed to agree.

So, if the Old Man agrees to those rules (and he is allowed to--see rule #5), let's get to it. The first opening statement:

The biggest difference between me and my Old Man is that he has a lot more experience, what with being an old man and all. He knows a lot more about history because he was there for most of it, as radiocarbon dating has confirmed. "Yes, but what my son lacks in experience he makes up for in confidence," he will no doubt reply.

Though neither of us likes to be pigeonholed, he's something of a conservative traditionalist, and I'm something of a progressive secularist. For example, in 2008 he voted for John McCain; I voted for Barack Obama. He attends church; I started a club for secular students.

In spite of our differences, there is much common ground. We share the last name Frey, for starters (hence the name of this blog). We also share a love of knowledge, reading and independent thinking. We respect facts and calm reasoning more than hysterical rhetoric--and we're both fond of catching each other stooping to the latter. We would both like to see less entertainment in the news media and more rigorous, honest, and civil discourse.

This blog was the Old Man's idea, and it was a good one. Finally, we can settle our intellectual differences out loud and in public, without the embarassment of having the police show up, arrest us for disturbing the peace, and emphatically remind us of our right to remain silent. Let this blog be our ultimate decision to waive that right.

I'd just like to end with two quotes:

"Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle"
~Thomas Jefferson

"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."
~Proverbs 27:17

Okay Old Man, the ball is in your proverbial court. En garde!
-Freyguy

About this blog

2008-09-27T20:26:00.004-05:00

Conservative vs. Liberal,
Religious vs. Secular,
Frey vs. Frey.

This blog was created as a space for the debate-loving father and son, The Old Man and Freyguy. We come here to discuss politics, religion, and other "impolite" topics best kept away from the dinner table--and to rib each other generally.

Argue with us! Friends, family, strangers -- anyone who enjoys a good argument is welcome to participate by submitting Comments (click here to see how, for the computer illiterate) or Guest Posts (send to Freyguy79@aol.com with catchy subject header like "The Old Man is wrong again!").

Click here for Freyguy's introductory post.
Click here for The Old Man's introductory post.

(Yes, I did change the date so this would appear as the first post.)